The horn on the far ridge sent its three notes again. The last note wavered like heat on stone. Frost on the railings did not melt. It only learned to listen.
A new scent rode the north path. Ink. Pressed wax. Clean cloth that had been folded and kept in a chest. It moved steady. It did not hide. In the trees beyond our wall, another scent waited. Cold fur. Wet pine. River salt. It moved slow and kept to shadow.
Elder Lin stood in the outer court. His hands were inside his sleeves. Jin stood by the brazier and let the steam warm his face. The guards on the wall leaned to see the bend in the road and then leaned back so the stone would not complain.
The mark at my throat warmed. The bell inside my chest hummed its low line.
A man came into view on the upper path. His robe was winter black with white thread at the seams. His hair held the first grey. On his chest a round crest, dark as old ink, caught the pale light. He climbed without asking his feet to show off. He stopped where the shadow of the gate touched his boots.
Elder Lin stepped forward one pace. "You carry a crest."
"I do," the man said. His voice was even. "From Verdant Hollow."
He unpinned the crest with careful fingers and held it with both hands. It was black wax set into a shallow wooden cup, bound with a thin silver thread. A plum branch was pressed into the wax. Simple. Unbroken.
"They send greeting to Elder Lin," he said. "And a request. They wish to speak on the matter of a ward that is lost."
At the word ward the bell inside me changed its note. Not louder. Closer. The wind ran along the eaves and then stood still.
"What ward," Elder Lin asked.
"They do not name it in ink," the man said. "They say it will know its name when it hears it."
His breath smelled of tea and winter air. No wire scent lived in it. His honesty had a clean weight.
Elder Lin held out his hand. The messenger stepped forward and placed the crest on his palm. The elder looked at it without touching the wax with his skin.
"You will take tea here," Elder Lin said. "Then you will tell me which roads you used and which you did not."
"Gladly," the man said.
Jin ran for the kettle. His steps were quick and straight. I turned my head toward the trees.
The second shape had stopped on the last rise below the wall. Its eyes watched the gate without blinking. It breathed through its nose and kept the breath down so it would not smoke. The scent of river salt and wet pine slid along the stone and folded back as if a hand were there.
The messenger and Elder Lin took places inside the outer hall. The crest lay on the low table between them. Steam rose in thin lines. Elder Lin thanked Jin by name when the cups were set down. Jin held himself a little taller and did not spill.
The gate court emptied for a breath. It felt like a held note.
The thing in the trees moved.
It stepped into view where the path turns under the wall. It was long in the body and heavy through the chest. Pale fur under winter dirt. A narrow head with old scars near the eye. The fur along its back stood in a thin ridge. Its claws were not for climbing trees. They were for stone.
It did not rush. It walked the edge where the wall's shadow lay cold. It watched the hinge of the gate the way a hand watches a latch. It tested the air for the line I had bitten last night. It found nothing there. It tasted the trace where the line had been and did not like the taste.
A door inside the guest hall slid a hand's width. The trader with the soft smile stood just within. His breath brought that thin wire scent to the court again. It was softer under tea, but it remained.
He looked at the creature with one quick glance and then looked at Elder Lin and then looked at me and stayed where the shadow made him small.
The guards shifted. One settled the butt of his spear on the stone with care. Elder Lin did not turn his head. He set the crest back on the table and set his palm beside it.
I went to the threshold and stood with my front paws on the wood and my back paws on the stone. The mark at my throat warmed. The bell inside me answered. I let a low sound live in my chest. Not a bark. Not a howl. A simple sound that made the air in front of me sure of itself.
The creature came on until its whiskers met the scent of salt at the threshold. It put one paw on the first step. It set its weight by degrees. Its eyes left the hinge and found my throat.
It did not see a line of light. It did not need to. It felt a place where the air was firm.
"Easy," Elder Lin said to the house.
The creature went for me the way such things always go. Straight for the throat. It came low and to the side as if it had learned that trick long ago and it had always worked.
It found the wrong place.
The mark at my throat held. My jaw opened and shut the way rain finds a crack. My teeth touched the thin taste that had slept beneath the skin at the join of neck and shoulder. For one blink I tasted hot iron and sour smoke. Then that taste died.
The creature stumbled. Not from pain. From the sudden lack of the thing that had been guiding its legs. Its eyes cleared the way a window clears when a hand wipes it. It found itself too close to me without knowing how it had come to be there. I stepped into the space and leaned my weight and set it where the shoulder meets the step.
It slid. It turned to bite from instinct. Elder Lin lifted his hand over the stone and moved it as if to lift a curtain. The pale line that sometimes chooses to lie where the moon wishes followed his fingers and lay across the creature's muzzle.
It did not bind. It reminded.
"Back," Elder Lin said. "Leave the way you came."
I kept my teeth near its skin without pressure. The creature heard the word that was not for it and still knew it. It backed two steps, then three. It turned on the lower step, made a sound low in its chest that said I will remember, and went into the pines where needles hold the smell of a thing after it leaves.
The guard on the wall let out the breath he had been counting. Jin did not move until the kettle had stopped its small talk. Then he poured again so that the cups would have warmth to hold.
The trader in the guest hall doorway smiled without teeth and closed the door until it was a slice of dark.
The messenger's gaze had followed none of that. He was watching me. Not with fear. Not with the look that counts fangs and decides what can be sold. He watched the mark at my throat and the way it warmed and cooled with my breath.
He stood. He stepped to the open edge of the hall. He did not cross the threshold. He set his cup down and put his open hands where I could see them. Then he bowed. Not deep. Enough.
"Forgive me for speaking plain," he said. "The ward we seek is here."
Elder Lin's face did not change. He did not look away from the messenger or at me. He invited the man to go on by not speaking.
"The message does not name," the man said. "It says only that a thing kept in moonlight would answer when it heard the name it was given before ink learned to say it."
He looked at my throat again.
"Say the name," Elder Lin said.
The messenger did not look at the trader's door. He did not look at the wall where the guard still watched. He looked at the space just above my head. His breath did not hurry.
"Sentinel," he said.
The bell inside me struck once, soft and clear. Not for anyone else. For me.
The elder did not move. Jin's fingers tightened on the handle of the kettle without spilling. The guard on the wall turned his head as if to hear a bird.
The messenger did not speak again. He waited in the way a person waits when they have asked a true question and will accept the answer if it is no.
I set my paw on the wood of the threshold and then set it back on the stone. I breathed in. His breath brought tea and winter air. No wire. No pitch. No trick.
Behind him, in the guest hall, the trader let his smile grow in the dark where he thought no one could see it. The wire inside his breath brightened. It tugged at something below the steps and far beyond, where the path falls into the trees. It was not the same tug as last night. It was a little one. A test. A small hammer on a thin nail.
The bell inside me felt it. It did not strike. It turned toward it the way a head turns when a sound comes from behind.
Elder Lin did not look at the doorway. "You bring a crest and a word," he said to the messenger. "You will also bring the names of the people who will stand up if I ask where this ward will be kept and what rules will watch over it."
The messenger bowed again. "Yes. By the time the sun reaches the south roof I will have said what I know and written what I do not."
He lifted his cup and drank as if tea were work and he did not wish to be poor at his work.
A soft scrape came from beyond the wall. Not claws. Wood on wood. A rope pulled over a rough post. The guard looked at Elder Lin. Elder Lin did not look back. He set his cup down. He walked to the gate and set his palm on the bell. He did not ring it. He let the iron know that his hand was there.
The rope outside creaked again. Then it stopped. A bird called once and then remembered it was winter and hushed itself.
The trader's door opened a finger's width. He had his pack on his shoulder. No one had told him he could leave. He looked at the gate. He looked at the messenger. He looked at me. His breath carried the wire again. Thin and sharp and pleased with itself.
"Traveler," Elder Lin said without turning. "The road waits when a man is asked to go. Not before."
The trader's smile did not move. The door closed. It stayed closed.
We stood in that held place for a time that felt long and was not.
The messenger set the crest on the table again where the light could find it. "Before night," he said, "others will come to ask the same question with less tea and more noise. If the ward is here, she is safer north. If I am wrong, I will say the wrong and bow."
Elder Lin looked at the crest. He looked at me. He looked at the door where the trader slept now without sleeping.
"You will write what you promised," he said. "You will eat and you will keep your hands where my house can see them."
The messenger bowed. "Yes."
He took his cup and followed Jin to the inner room to wash and warm his hands. His steps were quiet. He did not look back.
I stayed by the threshold. The mark at my throat cooled and warmed with my breath. The bell hummed and learned the hour as it changed.
The ridge sent the three notes of the bone horn one more time. The last note fell off as if a hand had pressed it down. Out beyond the pines, something large put its weight on the path. It did not hurry. It came from a place where the air smells of iron that is not from a mouth.
The trader in the guest hall drew a small thing from the fold of his cloak and held it under his sleeve. It smelled of resin and hair and a breath that nests inside small things. He looked at the gate and smiled to himself.
The bell inside me struck once, clean and close. The mark at my throat brightened.
I stepped from the threshold and set my paws on the cold stone, ready to hold the line again.
The mountain drew a breath as if it had a voice and had decided it would use it.