Theren reappears. "Patrol signal from the north marker. Moving faster than I estimated."
Leoric rises before the sentence ends. The commander reassembles in the space of a breath — orders quiet and immediate, everyone moving. "We take the service tunnel. Corrine leads."
I get up, check the northwest latch, and open the hatch. I look back once. Then I go first, because this part of the world is still mine, and going first is the only kind of trust I know how to give.
10
LEORIC
Corrine's service tunnel exits into a drainage channel south of the bathhouse that runs under the old market road. She navigates the junctions from memory, one hand on the left wall, pace unchanged through two turns and a drop I would have missed entirely. The channel widens after forty meters and becomes something a person can walk without planning every step, and that's when Theren falls in beside me.
"I'm meeting someone. Three hours east." Low enough not to carry.
"Who?" He asks.
"A records officer — Osrel. He handled administrative logistics for three border commands during the late campaign. Blackwater was one of them."
"And you're telling me now."
"I'm telling you because I need to."
He walks another twenty meters. "You told her first."
I don't answer, because he knows I didn't. Theren won't accept that right now, he's not in the mood. His mood tells me he's sick of seeing someone he trusts make a series of small changes and has added them into a sum that worries him.
"She identified the trap ward at the garrison ruins," he continues. "She knew the bathhouse. She reads the routes the same way you read patrols. And she has been three steps from your shoulder since the cave."
"All accurate."
"My concern is that you're more concerned for her that you let on, and it's becoming noticeable to people other than me."
"I'll manage it."
"You don't look like you can." He drops it there and falls back.
The channel opens into a culvert that feeds eventually into the lowland of Vareth, and from there the path is above ground through broken land that hasn't been regularly checked since the truce. I keep the escort spread and Corrine in the middle, not because I'm managing anything, but because the bounty notices from the bathhouse described her well enough to make what we're doing a liability.
The land ahead narrows into three possible routes: one through the exposed wash, one along the broken ridge, and one through the old courier ruins half-buried in the hillside. I lift a hand and the escort halts.
"Theren," I call. "Take two men and check the wash. Quietly. If there are fresh tracks, do not follow them."
His eyes narrow by a fraction. He knows when an order is larger than it sounds. "And you?"
"The ridge."
Corrine looks past me toward the hillside. "It's open."
"That is why I am checking it."
She doesn't believe that answer. Good. She shouldn't. But she has no better one, and I do not give her time to create something else.
"Stay with the escort," I instruct.
"I was not aware I had started taking instructions badly."
"You have been taking them badly since I met you."
Her mouth tightens. "Careful. That almost sounded like humor."
