The road out of Candlecross wore a faint shine of wax in the ruts, like the world had learned to be careful and hadn't quite forgotten. The candle crown behind us burned steady; orchards lifted in terraces; the river talked to itself under willow shade. I stitched Sunlines every twenty paces—thin commas that teach a road its grammar.
┌──────────── PRE-ENCOUNTER ───────────┐
│ Eirion — HP: 13,120 / 13,180 MP: 2,760 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 19% Oathbond: Linked (~88%) │
│ Buffs: Wayleave (narrow), Etiquette (soft) │
│ Aurelia — HP: 12,330 / 12,460 │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
We were almost past the toll milestone when the hedge coughed up a cart and six men who thought confidence was a uniform. Cloaks like old ledgers; cudgels wrapped in pitch cloth; a net that smelled of fish and presumption.
"Afternoon, lady," the leader said, grin trying to be sovereign as he stepped into my lane. "Road tax is—"
Aurelia's chair-scrape didn't happen because there was no chair; nevertheless, the weather changed. She drifted the precise inch to my back and the air decided to be a courtroom.
"Eyes front," she told him.
He misread her as everyone's mistake. "She your keeper? I'm talking to—"
I set two low arcs over the ruts—Sunline Sutures—and drew a soft Civility Zone across the track. The air between brightened to a quiet rule.
CIVILITY ZONE (active) — Improper breach → Daze (2s) + Shame (–10% Accuracy, 30s).
House clause (Wayleave): Ask; don't assume. No seizing breath under alarm.
They stepped in anyway. The Zone clicked like a spoon on crystal: the leader's hand froze mid-reach; his eyes blinked a polite two-count; his fingers returned to his side of the light. Shame made his boots suddenly unsure of where the ground was.
"Conversation stays that side," I said mildly. "If you're here to be kind, you'll manage from there."
Pitch-cloth man didn't like that the road had lines. He swung the net from behind—cheap angle, target the healer first.
"Back-clauses," Aurelia said.
"Divorce filed." I traced a Counter-Signature ring around our boots: My shadow is not my consent. The first grab at my heels completed to me and died in the cut.
The net came anyway—close quarters insisting without invitation. Aurelia stepped—rim kissing the net's mouth, elbow turning the weight, hip correcting the math of his stance. Bellguard tapped the weighted cord—Aegis +12% banked warm.
"Listen," I said, because habit. "You can be paid with distance and we can all go home without a new story."
They had already decided on their story. Two rushed low, two high; the last one flanked down the ditch with a hook and an opinion he'd die with. The leader spat, "Just grab her—"
I didn't flinch. I wrote.
"Road Rule." I stamped a Counter-Signature across the ruts: Aid is alms. Ask; don't assume. Hands off healers. Wayleave took the clause and spread it like good gossip. The cart's mule flicked an ear as if it had been thanked.
The leader's laugh turned to a startled cough when Aurelia arrived behind him without sound—emotionless, eyes like flat gold, shield in one hand as if gravity answered to her first.
Her voice was cold iron laid on the tongue. "I must be imagining things. I know I don't see monsters bothering my brother."
Silence landed like a verdict.
One bandit looked down at his own hands like they'd betrayed him by still being hands.
Pitch-cloth chose badly. He swung for my head. I didn't give him my head—just the flat of Lysithea and a quick Prism Mercy off the cart's dented pan. Three silent sub-lines braided the air and snipped the net cords without shaking a leaf. Reprise pecked little bright pips at his wrists until the cudgel decided it would rather be the ground.
The hook from the ditch darted for my ankle. Suture Screen unfurled like gauze, caught the iron, and sang no until the hook remembered it could be a stick.
Two lunged chest-to-chest—ugly close. Tricant rode my breath: Smite down the seam of the first man's padded vest to shave his confidence to size; Mend into Aurelia's forearm where parry torque lived from her last rim set; Thread to stitch a cracked rut lip so my next step would be true.
The leader tried bravado again instead of breath. Bad choice.
Aurelia didn't raise her voice. She raised the weather. Knight's Mandate rolled off her—a pressure that makes indecent intent heavy. Two men's knees discovered they could be pilgrims. The last one, to his credit, fought it for exactly one and a half heartbeats and then found a very respectful relationship with the road.
"On your feet when you've found your manners," she said. "Otherwise stay down and consider asking."
Someone panicked. The pitch-cloth man flung a fire gourd—tar and wick and bad ideas.
"Edge-cast," Aurelia warned.
"Always." I kissed the gourd's arc with a Sunline and tapped a hair Nova along the edge—Prism Mercy split the fire into three obedient threads that curled into the dust and unhappened without drama. Reprise cleaned the sparks like tidy birds.
One of them got lucky and landed a club on my shoulder. Air left. Aegis scalded back to 9%. The world tilted narrow.
Aurelia filled the space where my breath should be. "With me."
"With you." I opened White Mercy—partial as a pressure front that made footing honest, hands calmer than pride. It filled rather than boomed; bruises turned down; panic cooled into something with room for thinking.
The leader finally saw his map was wrong. He looked at Aurelia and saw what happens to men who don't ask; he looked at me and saw a light that did not ask his permission to be law.
He found yes the way some men find religion—on his knees.
"Status," Aurelia said, because accounting is the mercy after a fight.
┌──────────── POST-INCIDENT ───────────┐
│ Hostiles: 6 bandits (disarmed, stable)│
│ Injuries (minor): bruises x3, sprains x1│
│ HP — Eirion: 12,420 / 13,180 │
│ HP — Aurelia: 12,250 / 12,460 │
│ MP: 2,140 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 14% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 90% │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
We did the small right things. Thread wrapped a sprain so the man could walk away. Mend unknotted a rib someone else would have paid for later. I set a Sunline bow on the cart's shaft and wrote the clause slowly so even bad habits could read it: Ask; don't assume. Hands off healers. No seizing breath under alarm.
The leader swallowed. "We—mistook."
"You assumed," Aurelia said, not cruel. "Fix it."
He looked at me, not at my mouth, not at my clothes—at my hands and what they had been doing. "Healer," he said, voice smaller and more honest, "may we… go?"
"You may leave," I said. "Next time, ask the road for permission before you take it."
They backed out of the Civility Zone like men leaving a chapel the morning after a bad night, then turned and became smaller in a hurry.
The willow leaves made a small approving sound. The cart's mule flicked both ears and did not apologize because animals are efficient.
The System set a modest coin on the ledger.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ ROAD INCIDENT — RESOLVED │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Bandit attempt defused │
│ Collateral: none │
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +7,500 │
│ ▸ Road Scrip +20 │
│ ▸ Relic Scrap: Pitch-Stopper Wick │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
We resumed the habit of commas. I let the Zone fade to a ribbon; the Wayleave walked ahead of our feet like a sentence that ends in morning. Aurelia drifted that exact inch closer to my back, the inch that says here and means safe.
"Thank you," I said, because gratitude is part of good law.
She watched the hedge for any more ideas it might have. "Don't make me say that line often," she murmured.
"It was effective," I said, fighting a smile.
"It was true," she corrected, and the word sat between us like a small, warm stone.
Down the grade, Candlecross bells tested a contented chord. The road, having been complimented correctly, went on behaving. And the day—after deciding briefly to be a story about assumptions—remembered it was supposed to be about arriving.
The old toll-kiln squatted in a fold of the hills like a tooth half-pulled: brick beehives black with pitch, cart ruts varnished in tar, a timber frame where hides once dried and men now did. Lanterns wore hoods of smoked glass so light would keep its voice down. A black ribbon—circle that refused to close—hung over the door like a joke no one should laugh at.
The six who'd gone out came back small. They clattered their courage together at the threshold and spilled it with their story.
"Two elves," the lead said, words running as if chased. "Pretty as coin. One's a singer with a sword, the other—" he stopped, reconsidered the world "—the other is a wall that hates you in a polite way."
A man rose from a chair that had eaten a dozen backs. His coat was river-merchant fine over brigand hungers, beard clipped to arithmetic. On his desk: a half-written ledger, a coil of nets, and a seal the size of a thumb—spent wax flaked like old scabs.
"Royal?" he asked, not because he cared about crowns but because there are buyers for certain words.
"They look like royalty," the lead said quickly. "Move like it. Healer sings laws."
The boss—Skell Pitch by the name men gave him when they couldn't afford longer—tapped the ledger with a knuckle. "Gather everyone," he said. "We don't miss this."
He stood under the black ribbon and looked at his world like a butcher looks at a map. "I want them alive," he said. "Do not injure them too much. Nets, hooks, paper bombs for the singing—pin the syllables. Tar veils to choke glass. If you see a bell, you bow its tongue with a glove." He pointed at the spent seal. "If the healer sings charity, call it pending until I say otherwise."
Men moved. A force of fifty took shape out of debts and winter. Nets were folded into fans; cudgels were wrapped in pitch cloth; three tar kegs found their ropes. Someone hung a scrap of false halo from a nail and laughed until it made the air wrong.
"Where?" Skell Pitch asked.
"On the Pilgrim Road," the runner said. "Between the willow bends and the milestone, stitching little lines like he owns grammar."
Skell smiled in a way inventory smiles when it thinks it's about to become money. "Then we'll teach them punctuation," he said. "March."
The beehives exhaled a tar breath as fifty boots learned the road.
We made camp by a willow-braided oxbow where the river practiced its cursive and a stone milestone remembered every hand that had counted their miles aloud. The candle crown of Candlecross was a warm thumb on the far horizon; the road smelled of wax and honest mud.
I hummed a rule under my breath and wrote it down with light.
Two thin Sunlines stitched from milestone to willow root. A quiet Peal under the lantern glass. The air turned to a house with manners.
"Wayleave," I said softly. "Ask; don't assume. Aid is alms."
Aurelia set her shield with its rim toward the road—a coin leaned where the world could see its queen. Her eyes walked the hedge. "We didn't make enemies today," she said. "But something made us an opportunity."
"Maybe word ran faster than we did." I unrolled a narrow Suture Bridge across the road like a runner laid for a procession and tucked a Reservoir Mercy into the waxy hum beneath. Warmth settled in the track like a second blanket.
"Trip lines?" she asked.
I nodded and laid three hair-thin Sunlines in the verge, each strung to a small bellglass thimble. I kissed the glass with a fingertip and set a rule in the pane: Bond Mirror of our last shared Mend so the ring would sound us, not them.
We ate fen bread and candlefruit and counted our bruises. The willow wrote gentle notes against the river. Night stacked itself in careful pages.
┌──────────── PRE-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐
│ Eirion Luminara │
│ HP: 12,940 / 13,180 MP: 2,140 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 14% Oathbond: ~88% │
│ Buffs: Wayleave (active), Reservoir Mercy (road), │
│ Etiquette Canticle (camp, soft) │
│ Gear: Lysithea — Bride's Oath (Legendary) │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
The dispatch slate on the milestone blinked its cool little coin.
POSTING — TOLL-KILN MUSTER
Intel: Bandit boss "Skell Pitch" mustering ~50 for capture operations; nets, tar veils, paper silence bombs, light-smother gear.
Objective: Protect travelers; disperse or apprehend cohort; preserve Wayleave.
Hazards: Scald (tar), Stifle (smoke), Trip/Net, Silence pouches (spell pinch).
Bonus: Civilians uninjured; maintain Oathbond ≥ 70%.
Note: Open road—edge-casts preferred; no wide Novas near tar. Use river glass/water for tone.
Aurelia's mouth made its smallest not-smile. "They brought nets," she said, which is how she says of course they did.
"Suture Screen eats nets," I said. "And Amen Break will make any false halo miscount."
"Hooks?" she asked.
"Umbra Divorce on our boots," I said, drawing a tight Counter-Signature around our feet: My shadow is not my consent. "First two Shears fail."
She tapped her rim once against the milestone—her version of thinking. "We don't burst," she said. "We remove options. If they throw tar, you route tone under it. If they pitch silence, you sing through glass."
"Understood." I glanced at the river. "Ripple Peal in water to keep smoke from getting confident."
"And when they discover they cannot be cheap," Aurelia said, settling that inch at my back that lets mountains sit down, "we will offer them a law."
"I'll write it big," I promised.
The thimbles along the verge chimed once—polite, alarm turned trustworthy. Then again, overlapping, like rain beginning as courtesy and then deciding to commit.
Boots moved the hedge. Pitch cloth creaked. Someone whispered the word royal like a key that would fit a lot of locks.
I stood, breathed, and checked the straightness of the lane we'd taught the road.
"Eirion," Aurelia said, without looking, because she doesn't have to.
"With you," I answered, and set my palm on Lysithea's flat so the sword could hear what the night would soon insist on.
The hedge opened in fifty wrong places at once, nets folded into smiles, tar kegs on ropes, cudgels wrapped like lies, and a man with a river-merchant's beard and ledger eyes stepped into our Wayleave and tried to pretend it was his.
Skell Pitch smiled the way men do when they think they've finally found a number large enough to sit on a truth.
"Evening," he said. "By order of commerce, you are—"
"—in-breach," I said, and the road squared its shoulders as the chapter turned the page.