Page 75 of Raven’s Fight

Isolde has the foal's morning feeding. The practical thing. The ordinary weight of the flight going on with its business, given exactly when I need to know it.

He knows what helps. He has always known what helps — that is Charron's particular gift, giving people what they need before they know they need it.

I send back warmth and thank you. I hold the bond open one moment longer, just for the connection itself: the knowledge that he is there, and Blackhaven is there, and Nova is with Solaris, and Isolde is in the stables where she is every morning, and the ordinary workings of the flight are running.

Then I close it and go back to the courtyard.

The third pair tries at the fifty-minute mark. Titan has taken up a position at the paddock gate by then, and whatever he says through stillness alone is enough that they don't even reach the fence. The foal, who has apparently decided that anything the mares object to is her business too, joins in with considerable enthusiasm anyway.

They look at Titan. He looks at them. They leave faster than the first two pairs.

I make a note to give Titan something better than the standard apple slice later.

✦ ✦ ✦

She comes into sight just before the hour.

Not Raven. Anipe.

I see her moving along the south approach path, and it takes me three full seconds to understand what I'm looking at.

Staff move through the grounds during the Purge to carry off the wounded and keep watch. It's part of what makes the whole thing work — the faculty presence that makes the Purge lawful rather than simply permitted violence. What they don't do is carry weapons. The rules are clear about that. The rules are the entire reason the Purge is something other than chaos, and keeping the faculty out of the students' fighting is the thing that holds it together.

Anipe has a crossbow.

She's moving with purpose. Not the careful, roundabout movement of someone keeping watch — the direct movement of someone who knows where she's going and means to get there.

The staircase to the upper south walk is at the end of the south approach path. From up there she'd have a clear view of most of the central grounds, including the armory corridor entrance.

I reach through the bond at once. Both of them — the mate-bond, thin at this distance, and the herd-bond, which I know won't carry anything complicated but might carry urgency. I push the urgency out toward her.

The mate-bond stretches and thins. She's over by the armory corridor, on the far side of the main building, and the distance and the stone between us are doing something to it.

It doesn't reach her.

I look at the mirror in my lap.

Orpheus taught me two signals. The first means danger, change direction. The second means south, high up. He said: if you see something from the loft and you can't reach her through the bond, these two together will tell her everything she needs to know.

I find the angle — the gap in the loft boards where the morning light comes through just right for the mirror to throw a flash toward the courtyard side of the main building.

Anipe is still on the approach path. She hasn't reached the stairs. She doesn't have her view yet.

I flash the first signal. Pause. The second. Pause. The first again.

Nothing. Long enough that I think she's already in the corridor, already past the point where a flash can reach her.

Then her path changes.

It's subtle. A slight correction in the way she was moving, the difference between heading straight into the armory corridor and angling a little away from it. Small enough that most people wouldn't read it as deliberate.

I'm not most people. I know the way she moves the way I know the way the horses move.

She's seen it. She's changing course.

I lower the mirror. My hands are shaking slightly. I hold them against my thighs until they stop.

Below me, Titan stamps once — the stamp that means he has sized things up and found them acceptable. He goes back to his hay. The foal runs a small circle in the paddock for no reason at all and stops, entirely pleased with herself.