The bandages helped. Not enough, but some.
Mirelle worked quickly, her hands surprisingly gentle as she wrapped the cloth around his
torso. The pain was constant but manageable—distant, like something happening to
someone else.
"Dessa said Sable is a Sovereign-rank," Roen said. "One of fifteen in the world."
"You believe her?"
"I think she was trying to scare me. But that doesn't mean she was lying." He thought about
the way fire had bent around Sable in Ashford. The casual confidence. The way she'd
handed him the sphere like it was nothing more than a package to be delivered. "If Sable is
that powerful, why does she need me?"
"Maybe she doesn't. Maybe she needed someone disposable."
The words stung because they were probably true. Roen was thread-blind, untrained,
unimportant. The perfect courier for something dangerous. If he died, no one would care. No
one would even notice.
"Then why pay me?" he asked. "Why promise fifty crowns? If I'm disposable, just threaten
me. Force me to do it."
Mirelle finished tying the bandage and sat back on her heels. In the dim light filtering through
the fog, her face was unreadable.
"I don't know," she admitted. "But maybe we find out."
"How?"
"The Pale Mountain monastery. That's where we're going. Maybe the monks have answers."
It was as good a plan as any. Better than most. Roen pulled his shirt back down and gingerly
got to his feet. The world swam for a moment, then steadied.
"How far?"
"Three weeks. Maybe more if we have to avoid the main roads." Mirelle stood beside him.
"Can you walk?"
"I can walk."
He could. Just not quickly, and not for long. But the alternative was staying here, waiting for
Dessa and her people to find them. So he walked.
They moved through the Moors like ghosts, keeping to the shadows, avoiding open ground.
The landscape shifted around them—dead forest giving way to rocky hills, rocky hills giving
way to vast stretches of nothing. No water. No food. No shelter.
Just endless gray.
By the second day, Roen's ribs had gone from aching to screaming. Every step was a fresh
agony. Every breath a battle.
"We need to stop," Mirelle said. "You're killing yourself."
"We need to keep moving."
"We need to find help." She grabbed his arm, forcing him to look at her. "There's a village
ahead. I saw smoke yesterday. Maybe an hour's walk."
"Villages mean questions. Questions mean attention."
"Dying means we don't finish the job." Her eyes were hard. "You're no good to anyone dead,
Roen. Including yourself."
He wanted to argue. But she was right. He was running on fumes and stubbornness, and
both were running out.
"Fine. But we're careful. No names. No details. We're just travelers."
"Travelers with matching injuries and no supplies?" Mirelle shook her head. "They'll know
we're running from something."
"Then we tell them we're running from bandits. It's close enough to the truth."
They walked. The sun climbed higher, burning away some of the fog. By afternoon, they
crested a rise and saw it: a cluster of buildings huddled together against the Moors like
sheep against wolves.
Thornwick.
It wasn't much—a dozen buildings, a low wall, a tavern with smoke rising from its chimney.
But it had the look of a place that had survived. The walls were thick, the gates watched.
Two guards leaned on spears, looking bored.
"We can't go in the main gate," Mirelle said. "They'll ask questions. Dessa's people might
have sent word ahead."
"We need supplies." Roen's ribs ached, and they'd run through their food the day before.
"And I need a healer. A real one."
"A healer means questions."
"Dying means we don't finish the job." He threw her own words back at her. "There has to be
a way."
There was. A side entrance, barely more than a gap in the wall, used by farmers bringing
goods to market. They slipped through in the early evening, when the guards were changing
shifts, and made their way to the tavern's back door.
Roen knocked. Waited. The door opened to reveal a heavyset woman with gray-streaked
hair and a face that had seen everything the Moors had to offer and stopped being surprised
decades ago.
She looked at Roen's bandaged ribs. At Mirelle's mud-streaked face. At the way they kept
glancing over their shoulders.
"Trouble?" she asked.
"Always," Roen admitted. "But we can pay."
"Everyone says that. Few do." She jerked her thumb toward a back room. "Sit. I'll bring food.
Then we talk about what you really need."