By morning, Pell knew when Phia would want the water changed. He brought the jar before she asked, setting it beside Arven’s bench. The wounded man watched him with eyes clearer than they had been the night before.
Rusk sat at the other end of the room. Outside, the spring’s channel ran beneath the curved shield. A leaf had caught against its surface during the night. Rowan touched the working as he passed, feeling Phia’s water move through the layers he had begun. It answered readily, with none of the pulling tension he had expected to find.
He had wanted another pair of hands at the door. Phia had given them room to sleep.
The call came after the light reached the spring. Derren returned with food, a warden named Nerin and a woman carrying a bag against her hip. She looked through the doorway before greeting Rowan.
“Ansa,” the woman said. “Which one needs care?”
“The shoulder wound. Phia’s with him.”
“Then let me reach him before you tell me the rest.”
She went inside. Derren had found both of them at the settlement below the nearer roof. A man had taken Rowan’s sheet onward to Cadd; there was no reply yet. Nerin heard Venn’s account, secured the two wrapped blades in his own pack and took a place where he could see the room and the track together.
Phia came out while Ansa was examining Arven. “He’s easier this morning. I’ve left her what I used.”
“She’s staying?”
“With Derren and Nerin. We can go down.”
Rowan looked toward the old descent. He had watched its opening much of the night, knowing six people might still be waiting below it. Now he hesitated over the room he would leave. Pell stood beside Arven’s bed, turning an empty cup between his hands. Nerin asked him to put it with the clean things, and the boy went to the shelf.
“We’ll come back here,” Rowan told Derren. “If we find the house late, we’ll stay there for the night.”
“Send someone who can tell me what you need.”
“I will.”
Phia drew the shield inward before they left. Light slid back from the spring and seated closer round the roof. Nerin put his hand against it, then looked at her.
“That’ll save an argument at the door.”
“You’ll still have to listen to him.” She nodded toward Rusk.
“I’d hoped you could fix that as well.”
Phia smiled and picked up her bag.
They took Venn down the inland path. At the standing stone Rowan found the weaker course turning toward the old landing. He used ash long enough to place its edge, then followed it with the light still faint behind his eyes. Below them, one rut had become a watercourse. Fir roots crossed the other, and the stones once laid along its outer edge were buried in the growth beneath it.
A small bag hung from a branch. Its lower seam had split, leaving grains in the wet leaves. Phia touched the empty corner while Rowan unfastened it.
“They’ve been hungry,” she said.
He folded it inside his coat. Farther down, the river opened between the trunks. The old landing steps ended above exposed stones; water ran beyond them, separated from the shore by a channel. No boat waited there.
Smoke rose from a low building upstream.
Venn had seen it too. He came beside Rowan, looking past the trees as though he might already count the people within.
“Someone’s there.”
They followed the path toward the house. At the next turn, it broke away. A fresh face of earth ran beneath hanging roots, the wheel rut still visible at either end. Water crossed the remaining shelf of rock on the inner side and spilled into the gap.
Rowan stopped before Venn reached it. The thin protection trembled beside a worn stone above the break. Beyond the shelf, darkness pressed close beneath the exposed roots. A small insect moved over the wet rock. It reached the lower edge and stopped, its legs drawing slowly inward.
He looked up sharply when a voice called from the far side.
“Don’t come across there.”
A woman stood at the next turn with one hand against a tree. Behind her, a broad-handed man came slowly from the house carrying a pole.
“Wardens,” Venn called. “From the Glenn.”
The woman lowered her head. For a moment Rowan thought she would sit down. Then she gripped the tree and looked across at them again.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes. How many are there?”
“Six. We haven’t lost anyone.”
The man put down his pole. Neither of them moved toward the break.
“Who’s hurt?” Phia asked.
“An ankle. He’s at the house. We can bring him here, but we couldn’t get him over.”
“Leave him comfortable. We’ll come to you.”
Phia went uphill to the water emerging beneath the root. She drew it between her hands, gathering the runoff from the shelf into a clear band. It curved down into the gap, then spread beneath the broken edge. More came from the river below, rising through the leaves without breaking them. The two reaches met under the roots.
Rowan felt the nearer working steady as she lifted. Water bore against the surviving ground, supporting the earth beneath the far turn. Across the gap, the woman stepped back from the tree to watch it.
He licked his fingers and took ash. Green light gathered as he raised them; moonlight answered from his other hand. He spread a low shield over the passage Phia had made, taking it beyond the rock’s lower edge. Darkness withdrew beneath it, gathering close enough that he could see its pressure against the light.
Phia glanced at the working. “Keep that seated. I’ll take the ground.”
He clasped his hands and released the shield onto the two standing places. Her water lifted another breadth beneath it. The passage no longer ended against empty air: a held current lay across the break, broad enough for them to walk beside one another.
Rowan stepped onto it. Water moved beneath his boot without giving way. On the farther side, he turned to receive Phia’s bag while she crossed. Venn followed, looking down once before he reached the tree.
“Enna,” the woman said. “I keep the officer’s account.” She took the bag Rowan held and stood with it hugged against her coat. “We thought someone would come from the landing.”
“Thane asked there. Nobody had recorded your arrival.”
“We didn’t arrive.”
The broad-handed man was called Oswen. He lifted the other packs with his left hand and steadied Enna at the turn. His right arm stayed close to his body. Rowan noticed it, but waited until they were beneath the roof.
The river house had a large room and a smaller one beneath the lower end of the roof. Two people sat by the window, one wrapped in a blanket, the other mending leather with a needle too large for the stitch. A man lay beside the wall with his foot raised on folded cloth. The officer stood when they came in.
“Harran,” Enna said. “They’ve come from the Glenn.”
“I sent someone back,” he told Rowan.
“Help reached the carts. Some of the injured are going south now.”
The man on the bedding raised his head. “Cadd?”
“He’s still with the camp,” Venn said.
The traveler lay back. Harran rested one hand on the table. His fingers left five dark marks in the dust.
Rowan set down his pack. “Show me the direction you followed.”
Enna opened the brass-bound case. The instruction’s corner had grown soft from unfolding. It named this house and the old landing steps, promising a boat without giving another meeting place if it failed to come.
“It came with the reception arrangements,” Harran said. “We had to reach the island before the commander.”
“Sella told you the regular landing had moved.”
“She couldn’t know whether a separate boat had been arranged.”
Rowan looked toward the window. Harran followed his glance. Across the exposed stones, the river ran well away from the steps.
“I thought the delay was in the arrangements,” he said. “Someone would have to come when they found it.”
“You tried going back?”
“The next day,” Enna said. “Rain came down from the higher ground. Part of the bank slipped while we were here. Oswen crossed the shelf, but Nall fell against a root trying to follow. We got him back down.”
Oswen sat on the table’s edge. “My arm went cold on the lower rock. Not from the water.”
He pushed back his sleeve. A grey mark crossed his wrist, darker at its center. Rowan put down the instruction.
Phia came from Nall’s bed. Oswen held out the arm as if he wanted her to take it and was afraid she would. She supported it above the mark. A thin film of water gathered over his skin, drawing clear at the edges, then dull where it crossed the grey.
Her expression changed.
“What have you felt since?”
“Cold at first. Then it hardly felt like anything. I thought it was getting better.”
“Show me with your other hand where you touched the rock.”
He pointed across his forearm. Phia let the water fall into a bowl. She asked him to close his hand, then open it, watching his fingers each time.
Oswen looked from her to Rowan. “Can I still help him up?”
“You can walk beside him,” Phia said. “Let me carry the weight.”
She sat with him while he described the first crossing. Rowan listened, recording his own observation of the mark beneath Oswen’s words. He asked Enna for the day it happened. She found it in her account, a page of larger handwriting where the paper had refused to lie flat beneath her hand.
They had filled their vessels at Sella’s and carried food for the boat journey. When the waiting went on, they found grain in a sealed bin. Oswen examined it before they cooked any. Another pair had tried the rock above the house, returning when they found no way to bring Nall with them. There was no path along the farther shore.
“We stopped dividing the grain as though we were leaving tomorrow,” Enna said. “That helped.”
Harran looked at the bin beside the hearth. “They’d have gone if I told them to. I wouldn’t send anyone through what happened to him.”
Rowan had been ready to dislike him. The wrong instruction remained on the table; the six people who had followed it were still together. He folded the page and gave it back to Enna.
Phia examined Nall while Rowan brought food from his pack. The foot was swollen. The young man kept his eyes on her hands, answering quickly whenever she asked a question. She settled the ankle in its padding and told him how she meant to support it on the way out. He listened more slowly then.
Venn came beside Rowan at the door. “I can reach the roof before dark. Tell them we’ve found everyone.”
Rowan looked at the light through the trees. The new passage would take him across readily; beyond it, he knew the kept approach.
“Stay there tonight. Ask Ansa to come down in the morning. Food and a carrying frame for the broader road. Phia will bring him past the break.”
“And the arm?”
“Put that in the account too.”
Enna closed her case. “I’ll go with him. I can tell them what we’ll need.”
Phia watched her take the few steps to the door, then gave her bread. Rowan wrote a short sheet for Derren: all six found, the house held, one ankle injury and one mark following contact with the ground beyond the protection. He named the place and the day. The deliberate cuts and the men at the roof stayed on their separate sheet.
Venn read it before putting it inside his coat. Enna left the case beneath the table. They went out together with food and water, both looking back when they reached the turn.
Rowan watched them cross the gap. Phia had turned the water into the shelter of the banks, leaving it seated there with his shield above. Beyond its light, the lower rock remained dark. He could get people past it.
Inside, Harran had taken off his coat and was asking where to put the water. Phia pointed beside the hearth. He shifted the pot and brought the vessel where Nall could reach it.
The leather-mending traveler passed Rowan an empty bowl. “We’ve enough for tonight. You’ll get the full meal if you don’t ask what’s in it.”
“I’ve eaten worse without asking.”
“Good. You’ll like this.”
Rowan sat beside Nall. The young man had begun describing the rooms he was meant to help prepare at the island station, the work for which he had actually joined the party. From the doorway the river sounded steady beneath the house’s protection. Rowan let him talk until the meal was ready.