31 · Those Who Return by the Road

a bar.

Orel still bled beneath the dressing. Derren had kept the beam from killing him without preventing the loss of his leg; Teren could have cut more carefully, Ivara thought, until she remembered Teren lay on the other stretcher. The Blackember healer would have to decide what could be saved of the rest.

Orel asked them to leave him. Serik replied that he had no authority to give orders.

The joke let them advance three steps before the man began screaming at the movement.

Cael walked behind Teren's stretcher. He tried to help lift it. Maera pushed his hand away. She did not forbid it to punish him: she needed his bound wrists to stay where she could see them. She had no strength to pity him and watch him at the same time.

At the narrowest point, the cleric's stretcher brushed the rail. The blanket caught, exposing a foot.

Neris stopped to cover it.

“We have to keep going,” Ivara said.

The gnome looked at her with a

fury that did not belong to the argument. The mage crouched beside her, freed the cloth and took the stretcher's end again. She did not insist. Sometimes the only gesture someone could make for the dead was also what kept them able to walk.

Elyen crossed supported between two people. Each step opened his back wound. Ash entered his mouth; he asked for water, then spat it out because he could not swallow without coughing. Maera let him curse. He had no reason to remember his species, profession or history in a noble tongue while his body hurt.

Beran went last. He struck a beam twice and heard a different answer. He did not touch it again.

Reaching the upper corridor, they all sat without agreeing to it. They had reached somewhere the roof remained whole, and that was all the triumph they could bear.

Cael asked how much farther.

Neris wanted to answer with an insult. She found herself too tired even to choose one. Serik pointed to the

stairs.

“Far enough that you have to keep walking.”

In the Ash Atrium, Radan waited with six of Dalia's men. He had taken the captives to the observation post and returned with help.

Maera struck his chest with one hand.

“I told you to go on.”

“I can come back for someone too.”

He embraced her carefully, avoiding her burned fingers.

The fighting at the approaches had lasted two days. Ysara refused to cross the border despite provocations from one of Darven's bands. Darven had two looters from his own people hanged and kept three Armada officers alive for exchange. It was no clean alliance or reconciliation. They had avoided one war while fighting over something else, and the dead could not distinguish the precision of the terms.

In Blackember, Dalia ordered the bells rung for everyone. Some protested because they rang for enemy soldiers too. Some covered their ears because they waited for a name no one had been able to bring.

Teren was taken to the bathhouse. The

healer who had received him before departure washed his face. Neris waited in the corridor, holding the cup Sura had given her. Iven's letter was already in the hands of the person meant to read it. That delivery, at least, had arrived in time.

Serik watched Cael until Adela sent custodians from the four cities. Once, the chancellor asked whether Teren had returned.

“No,” the paladin replied.

He did not add “yet.”

The cart intended for the valley journey had a broken wheel. Beran asked for tools and let Neris sit nearby. He did not yet know how he would hold the wood.

On the second day, they argued over where to bury him.

Teren had no close family in Blackember. His father was dead, and letters to a distant sister had returned unanswered for years. Oren offered a grave in Lindvale. Dawnrock claimed the body as a member of its hospice. Neris could not bear that word, “claimed,” still reaching him.

The healer intervened before the debate became an

accusation.

“He spoke to me of the mill,” she said. “Not a grave.”

Serik proposed taking him to the valley. The road would delay departure because Elyen could not travel yet. They prepared a service chamber where mountain water ran beneath the floor. It was the coldest part of the baths. The woman explained how long they could wait before acting. No one called it a ceremony to draw him back.

Maera sat outside the door. She had watched living people all her life, to protect them and prevent them leaving. She did not know what to do with a dead man who could neither hear a risk nor heed it. She ended by sharpening one knife and putting it away unfinished. The sound seemed an offence.

Darven came to ask whether she wanted an escort sent to the valley. Seeing her face, he stopped speaking of arrangements.

He sat nearby.

For a while they were two people from the same city who had learned too soon to ask for

little. Then the leader told her Radan was eating.

Maera nodded. That news did not compensate for the death. It let her pass the next hour.

Neris came with the bandurria splinters and Sura's cup. She wanted to leave something beside the body, but the cup was still useful, and Teren would have resented anyone thirsty being deprived of it. She left it in the corridor and drank.

The gnome did not sing.

On the third day, Beran asked for help with the cart wheel. Neris held a piece. The dwarf tried to work as before, failed and struck the wood with the hammer. She waited without comforting him.

When he asked her to bring her hand closer, she obeyed.

They finished together.

At the fourth dawn, the healer entered with clean water.

Teren sat on the table's edge, naked beneath the blanket, trying to remember where he had left his boots.

She neither shouted nor called the guards. She put down the pitcher, brought him a glass and sat

opposite until he could say his own name.