Page 13 of Zenith Court

The word was still in the air when the blade went into Aldric’s thigh.

The blade came from the man already in the mud. Aldric finished him without looking, then dropped to one knee in the gateway. He kept his stave raised while blood ran between the fingers pressed to his thigh.

“Nobody comes to me,” he said at the volume he used for footwork corrections. “Hold your posts. Ashford—numbers.”

“Six down, ten standing, four at the track that haven’t moved,” Caspian called from the porch. “They’re not pressing the gate. They’re waiting.”

Kieran stopped smiling. His joke had ended in the same breath as the blade entered Aldric’s leg. He took the next man over the rail without another word, and his silence frightened me almost as much as Jonah did.

At the mouth of the track, a rider waited in the gray light.

The others turned toward him without needing an order. Walkin. Aldric’s ledger named him as the Council enforcer leading the hunt. Marrow’s report had named the threat; Magnus’s filing had made us public. They had not needed our courier or a villager to find the farm. Magnus had ridden from his own gates to our table, and the route could be followed.

Walkin’s voice carried across the yard, calm and clear.

“Dismount at the fence and go over. They built it to cost you a minute.” He paused. “The minute is in the budget.”

The rest of them came off their horses in order, ten more at the rail, and my wrist lit.

Three gray coats crossed the fence wide of Jonah and Kieran and ran for the gate—for Aldric, still down on one knee. Fear went through me.

I did not reach, but the current rose through all three lines at once anyway—cold marble, green apple, leather. My mouth flooded bitter, my wrist burned white, and the spring channel lifted out of its cut.

Water tore out of the channel and trough and crossed the yard at chest height. It took all three runners off their feet and drove one into the fence hard enough to crack a rail. It also caught Delphine as she came up the cellar stairs and threw her into the porch steps.

The current saved Aldric and struck Delphine. I had not aimed it at either of them. It had answered my fear and taken everyone in its path.

Delphine got up. She came off the steps with one arm held against her ribs, found my eyes across the yard, and mouthed go.

Aldric acted before the water settled. “Scatter,” he called, still on one knee, stave raised. “As drilled. Slow group now.”

Rev came out of the cellar with the document satchel strapped across her chest and got under Aldric’s left arm. Cosima took his right, the watch ledger secured to her back. Aldric kept giving orders—pressure here, weight off the leg, don’t stop for me—while they carried him behind the house and down the spring cut into the alder scrub. No gray coat followed; the riders on the slope were occupied with us, as the drill intended.

“Now us,” Caspian said. “Far corner. Jonah, yield the fence on three.”

Kieran scattered the remaining porch wood across the yard to slow them. Jonah held the rail until Caspian’s third count, then fell back through the orchard beside me, facing the men behind us. Delphine ran between Caspian and me with her arm pinned to her side. At the far corner we climbed our own fence and dropped into the tree line as the first torch came up the track.

They fired the barn before we reached the first ridge. The house followed. Men carried torches from room to room and across the porch. No one chased us past the fence. We entered the trees while they burned the holding behind us.

Kieran had cut the goat’s tether before leaving his post; his knife remained in the wood. She had not run. The last I saw of her, she stood in the middle of the yard facing the men who were burning it.

Survive, the table had said. We were.

The high path ran east along the ridge for a mile before dropping. The fire stayed visible through the trees behind us, orange against the frost. There would be time to grieve the fence, the house, the bread, and the cellar full of jars. For now, we kept walking.

Caspian listed what we had as we went: two knives, one stave, the wren and the cloth summons against my ribs, half a loaf in Kieran’s coat, no water skins, eleven miles to the crossroads. Delphine breathed carefully around her injured ribs and twice refused help. Jonah guarded the rear, listening toward the valley.

Kieran walked beside me in silence.

“You never finished your joke,” I said.

“It wasn’t worth finishing.” He watched the path. “The timing was atrocious.”

I let that be enough. My wrist had dimmed to embers, but the bitter taste of the current remained.

At the first bend I counted us. Caspian, Kieran, Jonah, Delphine, me: five on this road. Three on the other road: Rev, Cosima, and Aldric—if Rev could stop the bleeding. Five and three made eight, everyone who had slept under that roof.

I counted again at the wall and at the stream crossing. Behind us, the farm burned steadily.