Chapter 51 — Reaching Back

I went to Arlen two days later, drawn by Seraphine through a careful network of coded messages left at a hollow tree along the orchard wall, and found him waiting in the same ruined chapel, though this time he had brought Maren with him — the two old soldiers greeting each other with the wary respect of people who had once, I gathered, served on opposite sides of some long-forgotten conflict.

I told him everything — the intruder's inhuman grace, the warning voice that had cut through the cold presence just in time, Vane's chilling mention of an Ashworth cousin's descendants who might serve his purpose if I proved too difficult to use directly.

"A cousin's line," Arlen said grimly, when I'd finished. "I feared this possibility, though I'd hoped, foolishly, that it had died out entirely with the scattering. Elowen had a cousin, once — Maribeth Ashworth, a generation removed, carrying a thinner measure of the same gift. She married into a minor eastern house decades ago, before I ever took up my oath. I lost track of that branch of the family long before your mother ever reached Vale."

"Could her descendants still be found?"

"If Vane found them," Arlen said, "then yes, clearly, they can be found. Which means I need to learn who and where far more quickly than I'd planned to, before he decides a cooperative alternative is worth pursuing over a difficult one." He studied me a long moment, something calculating behind his weathered eyes. "You mentioned a voice. Warning you, the night of the intruder. Can you describe it more fully?"

"Young," I said, turning the memory over carefully. "Urgent. Not my mother's voice, not the layered presence I usually feel through the pendant. A single voice, clear and immediate, as though they'd reached specifically for me rather than simply existing in the old channels waiting to be found."

Arlen exchanged a long look with Maren, something unspoken passing between them that I could not fully read. "There is a possibility," he said slowly, "that I had not wanted to raise until I was more certain of it. The old stories speak of Reweavers occasionally finding one another across a broken timeline — not merely sensing a rival's presence, as you've already experienced through the stones, but making genuine contact, when the bond between them is strong enough, or desperate enough, to bridge the distance."

"You think the voice was another Reweaver. Not the cold presence. Someone else entirely."

"I think," Arlen said carefully, "that you should try to reach them again, under safer circumstances than a midnight glasshouse with no one standing watch. If there is truly an ally walking this broken timeline alongside you, finding them properly could change everything about how this war is fought."

I told him, too, about the papers in Vane's chambers — the cousin's line, the chilling note about a second bearer who might serve his purpose if I proved uncooperative. Arlen's face had gone grave by the time I finished, and he was quiet a long moment, turning the name Maribeth Ashworth over in his memory with visible effort.

"I knew her, briefly, many years ago," he said finally. "A quiet woman, married into minor eastern nobility, carrying only a faint trace of the gift compared to what runs in your own blood. I lost track of her line entirely after the scattering tightened its secrecy in its final years. If Vane has found a path to her descendants that I haven't, it troubles me more than I care to admit — it means his reach into the old records exceeds even what I'd feared."

"Can you find them first?" I asked. "Before he does, or before he decides to act on what he already knows?"

"I can try," Arlen said. "It will take time I'm not certain we have, and resources I'll need to call in carefully, from people I haven't spoken to in years, some of whom may no longer trust me enough to answer honestly." He studied me a long moment, something weighing behind his careful eyes. "In the meantime, I want you to consider reaching for this voice again, Liora. Cressida, if that's truly her name. Not recklessly, not alone — but deliberately, with proper guard around you, in a place secured against discovery. If she warned you once, unprompted, she may be willing to tell you a great deal more, if you simply ask her directly rather than waiting for her to volunteer it on her own terms."

Maren, who had listened to the whole exchange in watchful silence, finally spoke. "If you're going to do this, do it somewhere I can stand close enough to pull you back bodily if something goes wrong. I've seen what happened to you reaching for that iron ring in my own cottage. I'd rather not watch it happen again without someone steady enough to catch you."

I agreed, grateful for her bluntness, and we settled, between the four of us, on the following night — the chapel again, with proper watch posted, with Kael and Seraphine both present, and with whatever answer Cressida was willing to give finally, deliberately, sought out rather than simply hoped for in the dark.

The day between stretched long and strange, the household's ordinary rhythms feeling almost absurd against the weight of what waited that evening — my father's careful inquiries about the intruder investigation, Seraphine's determined effort to appear composed before the staff, the small, ordinary business of meals and correspondence carrying on as though nothing at all had shifted beneath the surface of the house. I spent the hours restless, turning the pendant over in my mind, rehearsing the questions I most needed answered, and trying, without much success, to quiet the nervous hope that had taken root since Cressida's first unbidden warning — the hope that perhaps, after months of counting enemies, I had finally found someone walking this strange, doubled road who understood, more fully than anyone else alive, exactly what it cost to carry a life relived.