POV: Seraphina
Thalion had been walking toward the western fire when he stopped. He turned back. He came to the foot of the bedroll and sat down on the packed dirt, knees folded under him, close enough that the dust on his boots was in her field of sight when her eyes lowered toward the cub.
Her eyes stayed on the cub.
She had kept Namir's name silent through the night. She had been on the line when he fell. Her blade should have reached him before the demon did. Keeping it silent had felt like the respect he was owed.
She breathed out. The breath shook a little at the end.
"Namir," she said. The word came out low. "I am sorry. I should have reached you."
Thalion turned his head a little toward her. He let her finish.
"He was good. He took the demon that came for me. He asked for nothing in return."
"I will set him at dawn," Thalion said. "I will say his name. I will say what his father would say."
Seraphina's throat moved. She set her jaw against it and nodded once.
Thalion's hand lifted off his knee. He moved it across the small distance to hers. His palm came down warm over the back of her hand.
"It was my ground," he said, low. "I read it wrong. I was clearing room for your fire when I should have been watching for him. Namir paid for that. He should not have."
She kept her hand under his. She let him have it.
She closed her eyes. Guilt rose through her ribs. It always rose when she thought of Caelan in the same breath as anyone else. The letter sat in the chest where she had left it among her papers. Caelan's hand. Flamekeep. The one night that had been theirs alone. Caelan would have wanted her to keep moving. He would have wanted her hand warm again.
She opened her eyes.
She looked at Thalion. The crown prince of the empire. He sat in packed dirt at the foot of her bedroll with his hand on hers. He had just told her a choice of his was why one of her men had not come off the ground. Men of his rank kept their words back. He had not. He had not for her sake.
She closed her hand around his.
The cub had been still on her boot. Now it lifted its head and watched their hands a long breath. After a moment it dragged itself forward and pressed its small body into the space between her thigh and his knee.
Thalion's free hand moved down to the cub's small back and rested there. The cub leaned into his hand.
Seraphina felt her throat go tight. She breathed past it.
The three of them sat that way for a long breath. To anyone passing the courtyard, the bedroll and the dirt and the cub between them would have looked like a family. The picture was a lie. She let it stand for two breaths anyway.
Thalion's thumb moved once across her knuckles. He kept the rest to himself.
She turned the ring on her right hand once with her thumb under his palm. The band was cool. She turned it back.
After a while Thalion stood up. He bowed his head once toward the eastern fire where Namir's body lay folded under a cloak. Then he walked back to the western fire, slower than he had walked out. Seraphina watched him go.
She put her palm to her ribs. The cold under her breastbone was the same as it had been at the close of the long night. She would leave it alone for the three days Corwin had given her. She would.
She got to her feet.
She thought of the paladin Corwin had stitched the night before. The one whose chest should not still be moving. She had passed his cot when they had brought her in for her own arm. The medics had been working then. He had been one of hers. She owed him at least a look. She owed him a face.
She crossed the courtyard. Yona came in from the supply line and fell in behind her.
The medical tent was as it had been at second watch. The lamp burned low. Corwin sat on a stool beside the cot. A bone needle rested in the wash basin near his elbow.
Seraphina knelt beside the man.
She knew his face. He was Sereth, the paladin who had ridden in Gavrel's line on the road to the third estate. He had a square jaw and a scar along it older than tonight. His helm sat polished on the floor beside him. Someone in the camp had cleaned it. She would find out who, later, and thank them.
Corwin watched her, silent.
She lifted her hand and held it above the closed wound at his side. Gold ran from her palm along Corwin's stitches before she had thought to call it. The stitches loosened where the light passed. The skin under them came together and the seam closed clean. His side under her palm went warm. The skin came smooth. There had been a wound there a breath ago. There was no wound now.
Sereth's eyes opened.
He looked at her. He knew her. He had been hers since the day he had pledged to Gavrel's company. The look on him now was not a soldier's look.
His mouth moved. The words came out steady. His mouth knew them already.
"Aen vael oraith. Nareth en aestir."
The cold under her breastbone warmed. Warmth came up through her palm from the man on the cot. It met the cold and began to thaw it. She had never heard the language. Her body knew it anyway.
Sereth's eyes closed. His chest moved deeper than it had moved through the long night.
Corwin moved his hand toward the needle. He paused with his fingers over it. He looked at Seraphina. He looked at the man. He left the needle where it was.
Yona was at the tent seam. She had been there from the moment Seraphina had crossed the courtyard.
Seraphina rose and walked past Yona out of the tent. She knew Yona was going to Thalion.
POV: Yona
Thalion was at the perimeter cookfire. The rider for Lucien stood beside him with the reins ready. The sealed packet sat at Thalion's belt, his hand resting on the seal.
Yona crossed the courtyard and stopped at the distance Lady Seraphina's handmaid owed the crown prince. She inclined her head.
"Your Highness. I have something that cannot wait."
Thalion turned to face her fully. "Go on, Yona."
"On the road yesterday, when her horse bolted and pulled her with it at the stirrup, gold ran along her body. Faint at first, then bright at every strike, then thin between. It went out before the horse turned wide. I held it back until I had seen it twice. I have seen it twice now. The fire heals her. The fire also calls them, the demons. I do not think she knows she is calling them."
He waited for her to go on.
"Liora has counted three in Captain Gavrel's company who run stronger when my lady stands on the line. The corporal Renn. The one called the Shard. The captain himself. Each first showed the gift at a different estate, in her presence, doing her work. The remaining fifteen are paladins of Xanna-Aulle and nothing more."
Thalion's hand came off the seal at his belt and rested flat against his thigh. The cookfire popped.
"There is more, Your Highness. The medical tent. She came to Sereth, the paladin Corwin closed last night. She set her palm above the wound. The gold came out of her into him before she meant to send it. Where the gold passed, Corwin's stitching gave up its hold and fell away. The skin came together under it without a seam. Where the wound had been there was nothing. Sereth woke. His eyes opened on her face and stayed. He knew her, but not the way a soldier knows his commander. He spoke a phrase. Neither I nor Corwin could place it."
"What did he say."
She gave it to him plainly. "Aen vael oraith. Nareth en aestir. No tongue I know. No tongue Corwin knows either."
Thalion looked past her at nothing for a moment. Yona had been a child in Lady Adrianne's household. She had seen the shape that was on his face now rise once on her old mistress's face, before the killings. A person meeting a piece of their bloodline that the archives had passed over. The archives his mother had walked him through last autumn. The bloodline doctrine the records had taught him. The words Yona had just brought him, which the records had no place for.
"Thank you, Yona."
He turned to the rider. "Tell Lucien to come fast. Three days at most." He handed the rider the sealed packet.
He lifted his voice toward the cookfire. "Brennan."
Brennan came at the run from the picket line.
"Strike the camp. We move in the hour. North to the height above the next estate. Tighter ground. We hold there until Lucien comes. Supply wagons first. Gavrel on the line."
"Yes, Your Highness." Brennan was already going.
"Keep her in the medical tent until I come," he said to Yona.
"Yes, Your Highness."
Yona was already turning back toward the medical tent.
POV: Thalion
He came to the medical tent shortly after first light. Seraphina was on her knees beside the man on the cot. Corwin was still on his stool. Yona had taken the seam.
He crossed the tent and stopped within reach of her. The hum had been settling under his ribs since he had passed the supply line. It settled the rest of the way.
"Lucien will come in three days," he said. "He rides straight. The camp is breaking now. We move in the hour. North, to the height above the next estate. We hold there until he comes."
Seraphina looked up at him. "Three days."
"Three days."
"Good."
Sereth lay on the cot with clean skin where Corwin's bandage had been at second watch. The stitching was gone. His chest moved deeper than sleep alone could have given him. Thalion had ridden the column with him for months. He knew the man's hand on a blade. He had eaten across a fire from him more nights than he could count.
Sereth was clean. The proof was in his own mouth, lying there. The trouble was the rest of the company. He did not have a count of how many of them were still his.
Two had broken already. Two of his own had run before the third estate. He had ridden out before dawn and found them on the road. He had thought, after them, that it was over. He had been wrong.
The gold had moved along Seraphina's body on the road yesterday when her horse had bolted. The column had said nothing about it for the rest of that day. Plenty of them had eyes good enough to have seen.
He had taken her hand at the bedroll. He had given her the smaller truth about the ground. He had kept the bigger one back. The bigger one was still on the inside of his mouth.
He kept it there.
"I will look at every face on the move," he said. "Every man behind us."
Seraphina lifted her head. "You think there is another."
"I think there is more than one."
She held his look. She did not ask him for the names. She nodded once, the same nod she had given him at the bedroll.
"Then go," she said. "I will be ready."
He set his hand briefly on her shoulder. He took it away.
He left the tent.
At the rear of the second supply wagon, a man stood with his hands lowered. He had been working with sacks of meal a few breaths before. He had stopped.
He brought his wrist to his mouth and whispered.
A small bird came down out of the morning sky and settled on his wrist. It was the size of two thumbs together. Dark feathers. Small black eyes that caught the morning light in a color no bird in the camp had. The band on its leg carried no column markings and no imperial seal. A thin strip of rolled cloth was tucked under the band. He slid it out with two fingers, read it, folded it, and tucked it back. He whispered to the bird a second time.
The bird lifted off his wrist and went low across the grass to the southeast. Its wings stayed against its body. The grass below its line stayed flat.
The man turned back to the sacks of meal and lifted one onto the wagon bed.
The camp moved on around him.