They arrived at Rowanthar on the third day.
The route north of the caravan road was longer but empty. Nobody had much to say. Geminia's side was improving, slowly. The weather held.
Rowanthar was bigger than Sagehold in every direction — wider streets, taller walls, a market that sounded like a market should.
Harven held the curtain back as the gate came into view. The tension that had been in him since Sagehold dissolved visibly. He breathed out.
Orin looked at the people instead — vendors, children running underfoot, an old woman pinning cloth in front of her house. All of them living in a world that had no knowledge of what was happening two days' walk away.
The convoy came through the gate without trouble. The streets inside smelled of spice and woodsmoke, carriage noise and haggling voices. Regular things. Regular city.
Harven stepped down as soon as they stopped in front of his warehouse. He straightened his coat. He walked to Orin with the bag already in his hand.
"As agreed," he said.
Orin took it. "Yes."
Harven stood there. He looked at Leo, then the twins, then Piscessa, then back at Orin. He wanted to say something and was trying to figure out if there was a version of it that came out right.
"Eryndel," he said finally. Quiet. "How many made it?"
"We don't know," Orin said.
Harven nodded, slowly, and turned and walked into his warehouse.
Eclipse Blood stood in the Rowanthar street while the city went about its business around them.
"Find an inn," Orin said.
The inn was middling in every way, which was fine. Floors that didn't embarrass themselves. Mattresses that didn't fight you. A landlord who asked no unnecessary questions.
Geminio hit the bed with his full body weight the moment the door was open. The springs complained loudly.
"Better than the cot," he announced to the ceiling.
Geminia sat at the bed's edge and started working off her blade harness, muscle memory doing most of it. "The cot's warmer."
"You just like arguing."
"I like being right."
Leo's door opened and closed. No conversation.
Piscessa was looking at his door.
"He alright?" she asked.
"Leo's always alright," Orin said.
She looked like she had something to say about that but let it go. Went to her own room.
Orin stood in the corridor for a moment longer, then went downstairs.
The eating area was half-full, the noise of it low and friendly. Orin ordered something, sat with his back to the wall.
The chair across from him moved.
Leo sat down, ordered without looking at anyone, and leaned back.
"Thought you were sleeping," Orin said.
"Thought you were."
A while passed. The sound of the room filled in around them — someone arguing cheerfully about the price of barley, someone else talking about a horse they'd seen, a group of young men at the far end who'd been drinking since the afternoon. A whole city of things that had nothing to do with Eryndel.
"They don't know," Leo said.
"No."
"Two days away." He turned his cup. "And they have no idea anything happened."
"News travels slow out here."
"When it gets here—" Leo started.
"Not our concern," Orin said.
Leo made a low sound in his throat. He didn't push it.
The quiet between them was comfortable in the way that quiet between two people gets when there's been enough of it over enough years.
Then Leo put his glass down.
"I was here before," he said. "Rowanthar. Long time ago."
Orin looked at him.
"Young, then. Before —" He stopped. Worked his beard, thinking. "I had this idea that if you worked hard enough, and paid attention enough, and made the right calls — you could hold things together. Keep them from going wrong." He almost laughed. "Took me a long time to give that up."
"And now you're back," Orin said.
"And now I'm back." Leo picked up his glass. "Older. Still making calls." He drank. "Still getting it wrong sometimes."
Orin looked at him for a moment. There was more in what Leo had said, he could feel the shape of it, but he didn't reach for it. Leo would say the rest when he wanted to.
The city moved outside the window.
Orin left close to midnight.
He walked with no particular direction, following streets he didn't know, until he found the stone bridge on the eastern side of the city. Below it, a narrow river ran slow and dark, moonlight breaking up on the surface.
He stood at the railing and looked at it.
Eryndel was still with him. The child screaming near the well. The way that mother had been holding on. And under that, older things — a forest, a fortress gate that stayed closed, a promise he'd made to someone who was already dying when he made it.
Footsteps on the bridge stones. Light, unhurried.
Piscessa settled beside him with her elbows on the railing, looking at the same water.
Neither of them said anything for a while.
"I thought about turning back," she said eventually. "At Eryndel. When we saw how many there were." She looked at the water. "Just for a second. I thought — this isn't what we were hired for."
"But you didn't turn back."
"No." She paused. "And that's what I've been thinking about since."
Orin waited.
"There's a difference," Piscessa said, "between doing something because you can't stop yourself and doing it because you chose to. I don't know which one that was, for me. At Eryndel."
Orin was quiet for a moment. The water moved below them.
"That child at the well," he said finally. Not finishing the thought right away.
Piscessa waited.
"I looked at them and I just… knew. That I was supposed to be there. That I couldn't have been anywhere else." He was quiet again. "I don't know if that's choosing or not being able to stop."
"Maybe it's both," Piscessa said.
"Maybe."
She straightened up. "I'm going back. Don't stay out in the cold too long."
She left. Her footsteps faded on the bridge stones.
Orin stayed and watched the water for a while, and then he turned and walked back.
Morning came in through the shutters, and Eclipse Blood found each other in the dining room before the sun was properly up.
Geminio had ordered enough for two people and was already working through it. Geminia was complaining about the portion sizes of her own food in a way that suggested she wanted some of his. Leo's coffee was in front of him and he was looking at it like they were negotiating terms. Piscessa was at the end of the table, eating quietly. Orin came in last, sat down, and ordered.
Geminio poked Geminia's arm. "You snored."
"I didn't."
"I could hear you through the wall."
"The walls here are thin. You heard someone else."
"It was definitely you. It had your particular sound."
"I don't have a snoring sound."
"You do. Like a very small animal doing something large."
Geminia took a piece of bread and threw it at him without looking. He caught it and ate it. Leo shook his head.
Orin looked at them, then went back to his food.
After the meal, Piscessa stood. "Going to find ammunition before we go." She left without waiting.
Twenty minutes later she came back empty-handed.
Leo saw it first. "Nothing?"
Piscessa sat down and put something on the table instead. A piece of paper, worn, the kind that had been torn from a posting board.
"Three places in the market had this," she said. "Same paper, same hand."
Orin picked it up. The writing was cramped and uneven. At the bottom right corner, a symbol: a circle divided by a straight line through the middle, like something cut in two.
"What is it?" Geminio asked, leaning over.
"Don't know," Piscessa said. "But I saw the same mark in Eryndel. On the wall of one of the burned houses."
Quiet at the table.
Orin looked at the symbol. It was simple — almost too simple, the kind of simple that means something has been reduced down from something more complicated.
"Keep it," he said, handing it back.
Leo looked at him. Orin looked back at Leo for a moment, and something passed between them.
"We leave this afternoon," Orin said, turning to the window. "Get what you need."
Chairs scraped. People moved.
They left Rowanthar with the sun already tilting toward the west.
Orin leading. Leo beside him. The twins a few paces back. Piscessa at the rear.
After a few minutes Geminio said, quietly, to Geminia: "That symbol. You ever seen it?"
"No."
"Me neither." He watched Orin's back ahead. "Feels like something, though."
Geminia glanced at Piscessa's pocket, where the paper was, then looked back at the road without answering.
Leo walked beside Orin without speaking. Then, after a while:
"That symbol."
"You recognize it?" Orin said.
Leo was quiet.
Orin didn't push.
The city fell behind them and eventually disappeared around a bend. Ahead, the road back to Sagehold stretched out long and straight through the afternoon light.
Eclipse Blood kept walking.