The woman came up the road carrying a loaf beneath one arm and a question she had been considering since the night before.
Rowan was at the lower bend when the watch called. He had slept after his turn at the cart, though not for long enough to stop feeling the board beneath his elbow. Beyond the stream, a man in a warden's cloak walked beside the woman. Neither had brought an animal. She waited while Rowan came down through the passage, then held out the loaf.
“This was meant to go farther. Your man left it on my table.”
“Bren?”
“The one who told everyone where to put their hands. They stayed with us last night.” She gave her name as Sella. Rowan remembered her bringing dry wood at the second roof on the way up. “The man they were carrying slept. Not much, but he slept. They were still there when we left.”
Rowan took the bread. Behind her, the warden rested a hand on the wall and caught his breath.
“Derren,” he said. “I work the branch below her place. She found me there after your people arrived.”
“How long from the roof?”
“We left before light. I wanted her to tell you herself.”
Sella looked past Rowan toward the cleared bend. Beyond it, a guard stood beside the carts. “Bren asked if I’d seen the officer’s party. I think I did. A day after these came down.”
Rowan lowered the loaf. “Did you know who they were?”
“Not their names. They had papers for a landing and a box they wouldn't let me put beside the fire. Your man described it. The one with brass at the corners.”
“Come through,” Rowan said. “There's somewhere to sit.”
She made him put the bread into his bag before following. Derren went ahead round the bend. Rowan walked beside her, past the timber they had moved. She glanced at it, then looked toward the shelter.
Cadd met them beside the covered cart. His eyes went to Derren's cloak, then the woman's empty hands.
“Just you?”
“Just us,” Derren said. “I've someone keeping the roof until she's back.”
Rowan found Sella a place beside the fire, clear of the shelter entrance. Phia brought water. Belda looked out when she heard another voice, then returned to the traveler within. Rowan sat on the low wall with his book open, leaving Sella room to speak without a table between them.
They had come to her roof late in the morning, she said. Six people, carrying their things between them. One man had put down a case and asked how much farther to the old river landing. She had pointed him toward the maintained road, where the present landing contact could be found.
“He said that wasn't the place on his instruction. He showed me enough to prove it, though I hadn't asked him to. A river house, stone steps and someone meeting them with a boat.”
“Did you read the instruction?”
“The place. Not the whole page. He held the rest folded underneath.”
Rowan drew the roof, then the road descending beyond it. “Which way did they leave?”
“By the old lower turn. I told them there was no regular boat there now. The steps haven't been used for loading since the channel moved.” She leaned forward to see the marks. “There. Before that long bend. Not after it.”
He moved the turn uphill.
“Did they say someone had arranged a boat especially?”
“He said they were expected. I thought that meant they had.”
“Did anyone else speak?”
“A woman asked whether the house was still standing. I told her it was, when I was last there. She asked about water too. They filled everything they could carry before leaving.” Sella turned the cup in her hands. “If I'd known nobody was waiting for them, I'd have said more.”
“You told them the landing had changed.”
“Yes. He wanted to know whether the path had.”
Derren stood behind her, studying Rowan's first drawing. “It has, in places. The lower reach isn't one we send travelers onto.”
“Since when?”
“The regular boat stopped coming before I took this side. People still go down for stone, or to the upper trees. We keep the near part for them. Farther on, it turns toward the old water.”
Rowan looked toward Phia. She had been listening with her hands around her own cup.
“The river house,” she said. “I know the shore from the other side. Not that path.”
“Can it take them out?”
“I can find the house’s working when we’re nearer. If the water still reaches its shore, we’ll have another way to look for them.”
Sella had seen no one return in the following days. Her brother had kept the roof during her one morning away; he had seen no group either.
Cadd came beside him. “The woman who keeps the officer's papers went with him. She'd have asked about the water.”
“And six left?”
“Six. The brass-bound case was hers to carry, once they decided it was going without a cart.” He looked at Sella. “Was the younger man helping her?”
“He had one end. She kept the other.”
Cadd nodded. “That's them.”
Rowan put Cadd’s name beside the identification and closed the book. Sella reached for it before remembering it was not hers.
“There was something else. The man who asked the way said they'd return for the others. He wasn't leaving them altogether.”
Rowan waited.
“He asked if a boat could bring people back to this side. I told him to ask whoever was bringing his.”
Cadd looked down the road. For a moment Rowan thought he would speak. Instead, he went to relieve the guard standing beside the wall.
Phia took Sella's empty cup. “Have you eaten?”
“Not since we left.”
“Then we'll cut the bread your man forgot.”
“He had plenty to remember,” Sella said, but she followed Phia to the fire.
Derren stayed while Rowan found the old drawing in his notebook: a shoulder of ground, a descending path and the stone where he had read the protection turning inland.
He had not followed that path. It lay beyond the account Thane wanted.
Derren put a finger beside the shoulder. “I come up here from Sella's. The old turn is farther down, but it reaches this same side.”
Rowan set the roof drawing beside it. They did not join neatly. He moved the smaller sheet until the direction of the slope agreed, then left the gap between them.
“Do you know where the held course turns from the old path?”
“At a standing stone, just beyond the last worked trees. I check it from the road side. I've not taken a load farther.”
“How far from the roof?”
“An hour to the turn. Less to the stone after that. The river house is farther again. Half a day, when the way was kept.”
They could reach the division today. Finding six people and bringing them back would need more light than remained.
Belda came out with a damp cloth in her hand. She stopped beside the sheets.
“You're going?”
“To see the old approach. We've reason to look there.”
She glanced toward Phia, then the canvas. “He kept down what he drank this morning. That doesn't mean he can go where you're going.”
“He stays here.”
“The cut can wait another day if it has to. I can manage them with someone to bring water and keep the bedding out of my way.”
“Sella will stay until we know where we're sleeping,” Derren said. “She offered before we came.”
Rowan went to ask her himself. The woman had finished a slice of the loaf and was brushing crumbs from her skirt.
“Derren's told you?”
“Enough. I'm not going down that old path with you.” She looked at Belda. “You tell me what you need carrying. Not all at once.”
“I won't,” Belda said.
Phia put her emptied bag on the wall. She selected the smaller bundle of cloth, the hand-cleaning preparation and enough food to stay out overnight. The clinical supplies remained with Belda. Rowan checked his own pack and put the new account inside its road cover.
Cadd came over when he had made the watch change.
“Venn knows what was shouted. I'd take him,” Rowan said. “Derren knows the turn. Phia and I make four.”
“And this stays mine.”
“Yes. The Cresting warden stays with you. You keep both approaches watched.”
Cadd glanced at the remaining men beside the carts. “We can do that. Don't send Venn back with a scrap of paper and expect me to have him by supper.”
“I won't. If we've word to send, it'll come by the roof. They know where we've gone.”
Rowan left Sella the search route for Bren or anyone bringing word from below: old turn, standing stone, river house.
Before leaving, he looked in on the travelers. The turned canvas and cart now screened their bedding from the higher trees. Cadd joined him at the entrance.
“Nothing from there overnight?” Rowan asked.
“Nothing I could see.”
“Keep the empty wrapping out of the fire if you find any. Or a tool. I'd rather have it later than send you up for it now.”
Cadd looked toward the lower bend. “Six people. I’d like to know where they’ve gone.”
“So would I.”
“Then find them.”
They left after the morning meal. At the stream below the bend, Venn stopped to wet the strip across his knuckle. He had changed it before leaving; the fresh cloth remained pale around the edges. Derren waited without looking back toward the camp.
Rowan checked that he had his ash, then followed them south.
The road felt wider with no loaded animals beside him. They made good time down the reaches where Oris had brought the heavier bags up separately. At each turn Rowan could see another portion of the hillside, then lose it again. The path to the old landing lay somewhere beneath those views. Knowing its destination did not straighten the road that would take them to it.
They reached Sella's roof in the early afternoon. Bren's party had gone on. The keeper's brother showed them the place where the frame had rested and told Phia the carried man had eaten before they lifted him. Bren had left no request for someone to come after them. They had kept their four bearers and both animals.
Rowan left an account of Sella’s sighting and their search route with the keeper’s brother, to go with the next traveler toward the Glenn.
They filled their water and went on.
Below the roof, the maintained road turned into worked woodland. Cut poles lay in bundles above a drainage ditch. Derren exchanged a few words with a man lifting one onto his shoulder, then led them past the nearer trees.
The old turn had no sign naming a landing. A shallow wheel rut left the road beside a stone wall and went through an opening barely wide enough for the carts that had once used it. Farther down, bushes had grown into one rut while feet kept the other open. Rowan stopped at the wall, looking along the two ways.
An officer carrying an old direction could see a road here. Someone with a heavy case might welcome the descent after the turns above.
Venn went a little farther, then crouched beside the rut. He lifted a piece of cord from the ground. Its cut end was unraveling, the other crushed flat where it had borne weight.
“Could have come off their case.”
“Or a load of poles,” Derren said.
Venn laid it on the wall. Rowan noted the place and wrapped the cord in paper before they continued.
The standing stone showed between the trees at the end of the worked reach. A shallow groove crossed its upper face, nearly filled with moss. Derren put his hand against the lower side, then took it away.
“This is where I stop the lower account.”
Rowan set down his pack. He brought ash across the heel of his hand and let the change settle behind his eyes. The road's protection rose toward the stone through darker ground. At the joining, it turned away from the descending track, passing beneath a shelf of roots toward the inland approach. A thinner reach remained beside the rut for a little way, faint enough that ordinary shadows kept interrupting it.
He drew a strand of moonlight into his palm. Held lightly, it answered from the stone and made the near division clearer. The main course continued under the roots. The weaker reach went downward, stretched toward something he could not find from here.
Rowan moved no farther than the edge of the stone. Beneath the old path, darkness lay close to the failing return. It did not advance when he looked at it. That almost made him want to look longer.
Phia came beside him. “Which one are you holding?”
“The division. Not the lower reach.”
“Good. Leave that where it is.”
He released the thread. Ordinary daylight came back in pieces: the white place on the stone, Venn's cloak, a leaf bright against the earth. His wrist had not hurt, but he rested his hand against his knee until the change had gone from his eyes.
Derren watched the lower track. “I've felt it turn away here. I haven't seen what you see.”
In his notebook Rowan put the stone beneath the older drawing and marked where the held course divided.
“What protects the house?” he asked.
“An older working in the rock,” Phia said. She knelt beside the small runnel crossing the path and drew a thread of water between her fingers. It lengthened downhill, bright where it passed the stone. “That still answers. The nearer return has changed.”
Derren indicated a narrower way continuing beside the roots. “This joins the inland track. There's a roof on its lower side. Small, but it's kept. We can come back here from it tomorrow.”
“How far?”
“Before dark. If we don't spend the rest of the light on this descent.”
The six had descended with full water vessels and an instruction promising a boat. Rowan looked down the ruts, trying to imagine how far they had trusted it.
Venn was still examining the near ground. He pointed to a scrape in the moss beside the rut.
“Something went round here. Not long ago.”
Rowan came closer. A stone had been pushed against a root, leaving a dark place where its underside had lain. Beyond it, the track narrowed between the bank and a low branch. A loaded person could have moved the stone to make room. So could someone carrying firewood uphill.
Below them the path left the road’s protection. Rowan looked at the remaining light.
“We'll use the kept roof,” he said. “I want to come back from this side in the morning.”
Venn looked downhill once more, then stood. Derren took the inland way.
Before lifting his pack, Rowan set the displaced stone on the edge of the track. He would know whether it moved again.
Through the roots, the held approach was narrow but clear. Phia walked behind him, looking toward the lower trees. As the road disappeared, the river sounded farther down the slope, steady enough to hide a person's steps.
Rowan let Derren draw ahead until he could see the small roof beneath the next rise. Smoke had marked its stones before, though none rose from it now. The door faced the inland approach. He went to that side first, leaving the descending path outside the room he meant to sleep in.