“Those are just raw ingredients,” Resh said. “Without tying them to the ley of the Anchor—”
“It just needs coaxing,” Auryn explained, as though the statement was obvious.
Resh watched the color of her cheeks, not the map. “Show me,” he murmured.
They moved to the nearest Anchor—an ugly block sunk into the muck, runes hammered rather than carved. A pair of mages stood beside it, arguing over something.
Auryn freed a thin sheet of copper from a repair bundle, rolled it between her fingers until it thinned into a narrow tube. She padded to a recently extinguished fire pit, reached in, and pulled out a handful of gray ash. She coated the tube of copper with it, silver light pulsing from her palms. The copper turned white.
The mages at the Anchor had stopped arguing, now watching her with wide eyes.
She’s casting without a conduit again. Either they’re enthralled, or they’re ready to call her a heretic for it.
His pulse leapt into his throat.
I shouldn’t let her cast at all. She’s still unwell.
But he couldn’t interrupt her. Not now. Because he was invested in this too, and curious beyond that. He folded his arms across his chest, observing as she pressed the white tube to the side of the Anchor stone. More light trickled from her palms as she joined them together.
The wind shifted around them. The wardline answered with a low, satisfied thrumming, the sound traveling out along the wet ground likean animal purring against earth. The modified copper wire drank the moisture and sang. Auryn looked upwards.
Her eyes followed the radius of the ward. Resh could see it, too, but no one else could.
She has Manasight,he realized with awe.
Three Riftwardens stiffened where they stood at the perimeter. One muttered a correction under his breath, the other snapped back, both of them talking too quickly, too sharply—not at Auryn, but about her. Their dowsing rods quivered in their hands, copper rings chiming discord.
“Impossible,” one hissed. “It shouldn’t—”
“Not with copper. Not like that.”
Around them, men paused without meaning to. One touched the notch at his throat. Another passed a bead from left to right hand and tucked it into his sleeve. The word moved again, softer, like a tide pulling under—Sokâr.
The sound landed under Resh’s armor, but he did not flinch. “No more,” he decreed, and the nearest sergeant took the hint, clapping his gloves and barking at his line to move.
Thessia’s mouth slanted. “Effective.”
“Efficient,” Resh corrected before he could stop himself.
Auryn only smiled, her breath thin. “You see? It just wanted to hear a different song,” she said to the stone. The Anchor did not disagree.
They turned down the row of tents. A Reskala with his arm bound in a sling looked up as they passed; his eyes went wet and wild at the edges. “Lady Sokâr,” he blurted, then swallowed the title like a hot coal. “I…we prayed you’d wake.”
Auryn slowed, the world tilting a degree. Resh felt it and tightened their linked arms a fraction.
“What is your name?” Auryn asked.
“Calen,” he said, too fast.
She listened to him the way she always listened to rivers and stones. “May your strength return in its own time, Calen,” she smiled. “And if it tarries, let your patience be the stronger. Will you hold that for me?”
His breath hitched. He nodded hard, knuckles whitening around the edge of his blanket. She touched the corner of the sling, just a brush, and the boy closed his eyes like a door against sudden light.
Resh leaned, his voice velveted over steel. “Back to rest, Reskala.”
“Commander,” Calen breathed, obeying.
They walked on. The hum of the wardline tracked them beneath the mud. A whisper of porridge and smoke threaded the air. At the edge of camp, two scouts appeared out of the mist with Talia between them, mud to her knees, grin crooked and irreverent as always. A Riftwarden walked on their heels, his hands steadying a Dowsing Rod.
