LOGINNight held the medical tent in a low circle of lamp light.
Maren slept. The fever was down. The wound still wept into the fresh cloth Ilsa had packed at dusk. Her breathing was steady enough that Wren had stopped counting it. Across the cot, Ilsa sat on a low stool with her hands wrapped around a cup that had gone cold hours ago. The tent smelled of clean cloth and the bitter drink Ilsa used when pain would not let a body rest.Wren sat opposite her. She had come in with a qDawn had not fully cleared the medical tent when Wren spoke. The night with Ilsa still sat in her body. The journals. The name. The man's hand on the last page. She had not slept. She had walked until the dark thinned and then she had come straight back here."Trunk."One word. Maren's eyes opened. The fever was gone. The wound still held her to the cot. Wren stood at the side of it with her hands empty and her voice already low."Ilsa told me," Wren said. "What he left. Where you kept it."Maren's mouth tightened. She tried to push up on her elbows and failed. The stitches pulled; she hissed and went still."Lie down," Wren said. "I am not here to fight the wound. I am here for the trunk.""You should not have that name yet.""I have it. Ilsa gave me the rest of what the journals hold. You have the key. I want both."Maren's breath came thin. She looked at the flap, at the lamp, at Wren's face. The argument tha
Night held the medical tent in a low circle of lamp light.Maren slept. The fever was down. The wound still wept into the fresh cloth Ilsa had packed at dusk. Her breathing was steady enough that Wren had stopped counting it. Across the cot, Ilsa sat on a low stool with her hands wrapped around a cup that had gone cold hours ago. The tent smelled of clean cloth and the bitter drink Ilsa used when pain would not let a body rest.Wren sat opposite her. She had come in with a question and no clear hope of an answer that would fit in a single night."Darius told me you know more than you have said," Wren said. "I am ready."Ilsa looked at Maren once, then at the flap. She rose, crossed the tent, and locked it. The sound was small and final. She came back to the stool, set the cup aside, and from beneath the low table drew three old journals bound in dark hide, the edges worn soft by hands that were not hers. She set them on the table between the lamp
Noon put a hard light on the ranking room.Selene had been washed and bandaged. Clean cloth on her wrists. A borrowed dress that did not quite fit. She sat with her hands in her lap and asked, before anyone else spoke, that Wren be present for what she had to say.The Alpha allowed it. No one argued. Harran was already at the table with a slate. Sera stood near the wall, arms loose, eyes on Selene. Vorn had his arms folded. Corwin took the place by the door, where he could see Selene's face and the room at once.Wren sat where she was told. She did not sit beside her sister. The chair they gave her was half a step back from the table, close enough to hear, far enough that the account would not land as a private conversation between blood. She kept her hands open on her knees and her face clean of anything the table could use against her later in another room.Selene began without being prompted."I was at the stores when the horn sounded.
Dawn came thin over the eastern stretch.Wren had not left the chair by Maren's cot. The lamp was low. The fever had broken in the last hour; Maren's breathing had evened, and the worst of the heat had gone out of her skin. Ilsa had checked once in the grey before true light, said nothing that needed answering, and left them with the quiet. Wren had counted the breaths until she trusted them, then counted them again. Sleep had not come. She had not asked it to. The chair had been enough.A shout rose from the east gate.Not a warning horn. A voice, sharp with surprise.Wren was on her feet before the second call. She reached the tent flap in time to see the gate open and a figure come through alone.Selene.Barefoot. Wrists marked where rope had been. Hem torn. Hair loose and dull with dust. She walked as if the ground were unfamiliar, one step and then the next, and the whole of the near stretch turned to look. No one called her name at first. The silence had its own weight.Kade rea
Wren sat on the low stone at the edge of the eastern stretch. The far lip still showed the break. She had not gone back inside the medical tent. The day had left her with nothing useful to do with her hands and too much to do with the rest of her.Footsteps approached. She did not need to turn. She already knew the weight of them.Darius stopped a few paces away. His gear was still on. He had come from the direction of the inner posts, or the board, or both. He had not stopped to put any of it away."You have been out here a long time.""I needed the air.""Ilsa said you left without a word.""She has what she needs from me. There was nothing else to do in there."He sat on the stone, not quite beside her. For a stretch neither of them spoke. The quiet was not empty. It held the day."Are you all right."The question was plain. Not soft. Not empty."No."He waited. He did not offer a comfort that would have been a lie."They did not come for the stretch," she said. "If they had wanted
The count started before the dust settled. The eastern stretch still smelled of powder and the iron of blood that had not yet been washed off the stone. People moved because the work required it. No one moved because they wanted to. Bren had the Ironveil numbers first. He gave them standing, voice flat, no ceremony in it. "Two cut. One bite that will hold. No dead." The Alpha's second wrote it and did not look up. Across the board an Ironveil fighter set down a skin and said nothing. The number did not need defending. Ashmoor's slate took longer. A ranking wolf came in from the northern section with a list he had not finished copying, blood dried at his cuff and a second scrap of names folded under the first. "Three dead on the northern post. Two more at the join who did not come back. Four cut who will not stand tonight. Two we have not found. I have the names of the dead. The two are still a gap." "Write the dead," the Alpha's second said. "Write the gap. Do not fill either wit







