"More or less."
She was already moving.
She crouched beside him and pulled back the edge of his coat without asking. Her hands found the wound immediately, pressing and checking without hesitation before moving on.
He watched her while she worked.
The dead creature lay nearby. The air around it carried iron and opened earth, heavy enough that the afternoon wind didn't clear it. The bag she was pulling supplies from was his.
He'd noticed it earlier, hanging at her right side before she crouched. It had been lying a few feet away from the rest of the wreckage, separate enough to stand out.
Something pressed in, uninvited.
A different light. Hands moving across a smooth surface. The smell of something sterile that had no name in this world.
Gone before he could look at it directly.
"That from my supplies?" he asked.
"Your bandages are cleaner than mine."
"I'll take that as a yes."
She didn't respond.
She wrapped the wound carefully, hands moving fast but steady. She tightened the bandage, paused to check the pressure, then adjusted it again.
Dry scrub rustled somewhere beyond the wreckage. The hardpan ticked faintly in the heat.
A moment later she leaned back on her heels and studied the result, head tilted slightly.
He looked past her toward the sky.
The Scar stretched across the blue above him, jagged and pale in the afternoon light. Its far edge always looked wrong against the sky, as if the world had been cut and badly sealed.
He knew its outline the same way he knew the prince's name and the exile tied to it. The body remembered even when the details inside it were missing.
"We need to move before dark."
She had already turned east, scanning the terrain with quick movements.
"We won't survive long if we stay in the open during night."
He followed her gaze for a moment, then focused on the practical question.
"How far to Ashmark?"
She glanced back at him briefly. "Two days."
"That much?"
"We won't use the main road."
He studied her expression. She was still watching the terrain, face stiff.
"Why not?" he asked.
She turned and looked directly at him.
"I'm Sinbound."
She fell silent after that. Just watched his face.
The word hit him and stirred something in the body's memory. Old associations surfaced, worn smooth from repetition.
Danger.
Her attention never left him.
He looked east again, thinking over the route.
"How much time does going around add?"
"Half a day."
The answer came after a moment, slower than the others.
"That's not bad."
She stayed silent for a few seconds.
"Do you know what Sinbound means?"
"I know the word."
"Then you know what I'm talking about."
"I know it makes the main road complicated." He shrugged carefully. "I'm asking about the detour."
She held his gaze for another beat. Thought passed behind her eyes without reaching her face.
Then she turned away and began sorting through the broken supply frames scattered around the crash site.
Her choices happened quickly. Once she picked something, she didn't second-guess it.
She moved through the wreckage without hesitation, reading each pile before she touched it.
He pushed himself upright into a sitting position. Pain pulled sharply along his side and he paused to breathe through it.
He shifted slightly against the wreckage. "The gate guards. In Ashmark. Are they Crown soldiers?"
She made a short sound that might have been a laugh.
"Crown soldiers. Sure."
She pulled a water skin from the wreckage and weighed it in one hand, testing how full it was.
"There's a garrison."
She set the water skin aside in a small keep pile.
"And?"
She moved to the next broken frame and searched through it without looking up.
"They take orders from whoever's been paying them the longest. Right now that isn't the Crown."
He watched her hands move through the debris.
"Sounds like you've been in the city before."
"Twice."
She pulled a wrapped bundle from beneath a collapsed support frame, checked what was inside, then set it beside her.
"First time I needed rest and passage. The city was easier than going around."
She retied the cloth around the bundle.
"Second time was a mistake."
She added it to the keep pile.
"The people with real authority inside those walls don't care about a prince's seal or a garrison's authority. They control the supply routes, the warehouse district, and the gate guards, whether the guards realize it or not."
She glanced at him.
Or rather, at the signet ring on his finger.
"Your title gets you through the gate. After that, you're dealing with a completely different set of rules."
"Who sets those rules?" he asked.
"A man named Harvin Coss."
She tightened the knot on the bundle she had packed.
"He's been building influence out here longer than most crowns bother paying attention. Controls the mines, the supply lines, the contracts for half the work crews operating in the Badlands."
She finished tying the bundle.
"The steward who runs Ashmark on paper does whatever Coss finds convenient." She cinched the knot tighter. "If you plan to stay around, get used to the idea."
Harvin Coss.
Everything attached to the name was new.
He searched the body's memory for context about Ashmark's internal factions and found only vague outlines. He knew Ashmark had factions. The names behind them were blank.
"Is that who you're taking me to?" he asked.
She stopped moving.
Then she looked back at him over her shoulder.
"What makes you think I'm taking you anywhere specific?"
He met her gaze without answering.
They held eye contact for a moment.
Then she turned back to the pack and continued organizing supplies.
"I haven't decided yet."
"You have a plan, though."
"Probably."
She stood and lifted the pack once, checking the balance.
"A prince is worth something in Ashmark."
She didn't look at him when she said it.
He considered that.
The missing pieces in her explanation were deliberate. She had said exactly what she needed to say. The timing of her intervention. The bag already recovered. The route already forming in her mind.
The outline of the plan was clear enough.
"Can you walk?"
He took stock.
The bandage held. Pain concentrated in his side and left leg. The rest was manageable.
"Yes."
She studied his bandaged side, then his face.
"Three hours of light left. We need to cover ground."
Standing took longer than he wanted it to.
She watched without stepping in to help. She also didn't comment when he finally managed it.
Once he was upright, she checked the straps on the pack, turned east, and started walking.
He followed.
The hardpan stretched ahead of them in wide, dry sheets. Low scrub caught the fading light. Jagged rock formations broke up the horizon at uneven intervals.
He chose not to look back.
Three hours of light.
He breathed through the tight pull in his side and kept pace.
She had given him one name.
The one he actually needed was still hers.