They found the farmhouse at dusk on the second day, and Cael nearly fell through its gate.The thigh wound had gone hot and swollen. He had been limping on it for two days, leaning on Mira's shoulder and a stick cut from a willow, and every step sent a bright wire of pain up his spine. His lips were cracked. His vision kept sliding sideways."There's smoke," Mira said. "Chimney smoke. Someone's home.""Could be a trap.""Could be dinner." She tightened her grip on his arm. "I'm choosing dinner."The house sat in a fold of stony hills, low and grey, with a goat pen beside it and a wall of stacked fieldstone running down to a brook. A woman was crouched in the pen with a bucket, milking a brown nanny with the unhurried rhythm of someone who had done it ten thousand times.She did not look up as they approached."That's a sword wound," she said. "A day and a half old. Not deep enough to hit the artery, or you'd be dead. Sit on the wall."Cael blinked. "How did you—""I can smell it." She

Ysolde would not come with them. "I'm too old to cross the Karsh on foot," she said, tying a bundle of dried goat cheese into a cloth. "And someone has to look after the nanny. She's carrying twins." "Kell knows where you live," Cael said. "Kell knows where I've always lived. He's had thirty years to burn the house down and never has." She pressed the bundle into his hands. "He won't start now." "You don't know that." "No," she admitted. "But it's what I'm choosing to believe. Old women are allowed that." Mira, already shouldering the satchel, hovered near the gate and pretended not to listen. Dawn was thin and pink over the hills. "I wrote this for Darrow Venn," Ysolde went on, tucking a folded letter into Cael's coat. "He'll be gruff. He'll tell you he stopped teaching years ago. Give him the letter and say Marr sent you. If he laughs, wait. If he swears, wait longer. He's decided to like you by then." "And if he refuses?" "Then you've lost nothing. And you can say I told y

Cael did not sleep again that night. He sat in the doorway of the cairn hut with the ledger open on his knee and a stub of charcoal in his fist. The page stared back at him. Eleven names stood in neat rows, each with a spell beside it, each with some small human fact the void had carried over: a sister who sold ribbons, seven children in Calvarre. His hand hovered over the next line. "You're thinking too loud," Mira said from the blankets. "I'm trying to decide what to write." "About the man on the ridge?" "He didn't die." Cael's voice came out rough. "There's no line for that." "Then make one." He looked at the page for a long time. Then he wrote, slowly: *12. Snow-Binding. Drowning curse. Taken at the third switchback.* *Caster: spared.* He didn't know the man's name. The void did not offer it, and for once he did not ask. But he underlined the word spared twice, hard enough to tear the paper, and closed the book. They found the caster waiting at the foot of the trail at