K had learned several useful things during his years with the Gauntlet Guild.
Never accept a monster contract written by someone who described the monster as probably small. Never play cards with a river priest, because vows of poverty did not prevent cheating. Never assume a locked door was the only locked thing in a room.
Most importantly, never build a plan after being awake for thirty hours.
Valerie disagreed with this last principle.
They had already tested hers.
At sunrise they left the Stopped Wheel and followed the capital road through the eastern fields, both of them pretending that choosing a direction constituted a strategy. They made it less than a mile. Beyond the first stone bridge, royal soldiers had raised a temporary checkpoint from two wagons, a chain, and the authority to inconvenience everyone. A painted board displayed three charcoal likenesses beneath the crown seal. The first was Aldric. The second was a Meredian face no artist could have seen clearly. The third was Valerie.
The drawing made her look older and crueler. It also gave her dark hair, which K regarded as reassuring evidence that the crown remained capable of ordinary incompetence.
Two farmers waited beside an overturned produce cart while soldiers cut open sacks of grain. A family knelt in the ditch with their hands behind their heads. At the centre of the road, a clerk held a recording crystal toward each traveler's face before allowing them through.
Valerie watched from behind a hedgerow.
"I can cross the stream upstream," she whispered. "Follow the tree line until the old quarry, then rejoin the road north of them."
"The riders in the orchard are waiting for exactly that."
She found them after a moment: three ash-mantled figures positioned where the morning glare concealed their armour.
"We take one alive," she said. "Learn the patrol changes."
"There are nine visible soldiers, three concealed riders, and likely another team beyond the quarry."
"I've fought worse."
K looked at her. "Yesterday you fought worse. That is not the same as winning."
Her hand tightened around the wrapped sword.
For a dangerous second, he thought she might walk toward the checkpoint simply because stopping felt unbearable. Then one of the kneeling children began to cry. Valerie watched a soldier haul the child's father upright by his collar, and judgment slowly returned to her expression.
"If they identify me," she said, "that family becomes involved."
"Yes."
She hated the answer because it was true.
They withdrew through the wet field and returned to Drierie by the mill path. It was the first retreat of their partnership and therefore, K decided, a foundational success.
"We leave now," she said.
She stood outside the Stopped Wheel beneath the pale beginning of morning. Drierie's eastern road curved through wet fields toward Erenora, visible in the distance only as a dark suggestion beneath the horizon. The road looked empty. K had spent enough time around empty roads to distrust them.
"We leave after sleep," he said.
"My father does not have time for sleep."
"Your father needs us capable of reaching him. At present you look ready to challenge the first patrol you see, and I am considering whether that horse trough would accept me as a permanent resident."
Valerie's eyes moved toward the capital. She still carried Saughtrick's reserve sword wrapped in her cloak, careful not to let the bundle touch her body. Mira's blood had dried black along one edge of the fabric.
K did not look at it longer than necessary.
"Two rooms," he continued. "Four hours. Then the branch, supplies, and a route through the gate cordon that does not require us to assault twelve people before breakfast. Marrek's crystal gives us a starting point, not an answer."
Edda folded her arms. "Three hours."
K raised five fingers. "Five."
"That is the wrong direction."
"Negotiation requires movement."
Her stare lowered one of his fingers. "Four."
"Agreed." K reached for the key before she reconsidered.
The Stopped Wheel's owner was a square-built woman named Edda who had the composed expression of someone accustomed to travelers arriving with secrets. Her husband, Pell, was narrower, louder, and responsible for the painted sign outside. K knew this because Pell volunteered the information while registering them under false names.
"The wheel is symbolic," Pell said defensively.
"Of what?" Valerie asked.
"Stopping."
"It accomplishes that," K said.
They rented adjoining rooms on the second floor. Valerie entered hers, set the wrapped sword inside, and turned the key without saying good night. K heard the second bolt slide into place.
He stood outside her door for a moment.
"Four hours," he said.
No answer.
"If you climb out the window, use the left side. The right gutter is decorative."
Still no answer.
K went to his room.
He removed his leather coat, boots, knives, secondary knives, the knife he kept for people who found the secondary knives, and the dead half of Marrek's displacement crystal. The grey stone landed on the bedside table with almost no sound. Daily training had taught his body to remain capable while exhausted; Welhemdor had taught him that capable and wise were unrelated conditions.
Marrek had given him a simple task: protect Saughtrick's daughter.
Marrek was dead. Valerie's sister was dead. Valerie herself sat one thin wall away with a sword she could barely bear to touch. By the generous standards of Gauntlet contracting, K's performance required improvement.
He lay down and stared at the ceiling.
His real guild order complicated matters.
Henvul had not sent him merely to establish whether the artifact existed. The written quest, sealed for K's eyes, used a more precise word: retrieve. If the object surfaced, K was to take possession before the crown, the Church, the Magista School, Meredios, or the Astverozan Empire could do so. No explanation of what the artifact did. No account of why the eastern branch had authority to seize it from three sovereign institutions excluding the T'almorian republic and Welhemdor. Only a priority mark usually reserved for threats capable of crossing borders without permission.
K had told Valerie the truth in Drierie.
He had not told her all of it.
There were cheap lies, expensive lies, and truths with carefully rented rooms missing from them. He preferred the third kind when conscience insisted on becoming involved.
The message relay in his travel case clicked.
K closed his eyes.
"Not now."
It clicked again with the stubborn rhythm of a manager who knew he was being ignored.
K opened the case and activated the small projection plate. Greenish light formed the head and shoulders of Henvul above the metal. The eastern branch director looked as though he had not slept either, though on him exhaustion produced severity rather than charm.
"Report," Henvul said.
K settled the relay crystal against his ear. "Good morning."
Henvul's voice arrived clipped by distance and displeasure. "It ceased being good when you arrested Gorven in the middle of an unstable succession dispute."
"He was a criminal before the dispute." K moved his breakfast out of range of the crystal's accusatory light.
"He was also the only Black Feather captain preventing Orion La Tuis from returning to Erenora." Henvul let the name carry the consequence.
K sat up. "Orion was in the tribal country."
"Was. News of Gorven's arrest reached him before news of the arena breach reached us. The Underway is already dividing territory. Three gambling houses burned overnight. Someone nailed a tax collector to the Gate of Promises."
K paused over the report. "Alive?"
"Irrelevant," Henvul said, meaning administratively.
K imagined the tax collector's position. "It feels relevant to him."
Henvul's projected stare could have sanded wood. "You have placed the guild between a returning gang lord, a royal hunt order, and an artifact operation compromised by Church intelligence. Then you accepted private work from the captain's lieutenant without registering the contract."
"Marrek did not have time for forms."
"Marrek is dead."
The words were quieter than the others.
K looked at the grey crystal.
"Confirmed?"
"His body was found in the Ulkhander home beside the younger daughter. Royal notices name Valerie as the killer. Crystal footage will be released by midday."
K felt his expression empty.
"How quickly prepared of them."
Henvul delivered each instruction as if fastening a separate lock. "Bring Valerie to a secure branch. Do not enter Erenora until I establish which branches remain secure. Continue the retrieval order. Do not confuse protecting her with sharing classified objectives."
K watched Valerie's closed door. "I would never confuse two complicated mistakes."
"K." The warning survived the poor connection perfectly.
His humour softened. "I heard you."
The projection vanished.
Sleep had become unrealistic.
K knocked on the wall between the rooms. "Change of schedule. We may have a problem."
No answer came.
He tried Valerie's door. Locked.
Edda climbed the stairs carrying folded sheets. K asked whether she had seen Valerie leave.
"No."
"If she does, send someone to the Drierie Gauntlet branch. Do not confront her, follow her, surprise her, or mention her sword."
Edda considered him. "Is she dangerous?"
"Only to people preventing her from doing something dangerous."
Edda studied him over the folded towels. "And are you one of those people?"
K looked again toward Valerie's silent room. "Increasingly."
K slipped the dead crystal into his pocket and headed into the village.