She thought about it often, awake in the nights, often alone. She paced the perimeter of the basin, silent-footed, careful not to disturb sleepers. They did not post watches here, Kerian marveled at that. They all slept the nights through, secure in the embrace of a warding none doubted.

“The old woman,” Jeratt told Kerian on the first night. “You don’t always see her, the woman’s half-crazy, but you can count on the ward.”

Kerian had seen that they all did, going about the nights and days as though they were safe within walls. And so she paced, and sometimes went up the hill and sat on high ground, thinking.

This band were outlaws in the eyes of Lord Thagol, hunted by his Knights and gleeful disrupters of his peace. They hated him, some with passion, some with private cause.

“Saw him once,” Jeratt said. “Pickin’ around the wreck of a supply train we tore up. Cold as winter, him. Nah, you see the mark of how mad he is on his Knights, the poor bastards he sends out to collar us and kill us. Them’s the ones look like ghosts, for all you hear about him being the spooky one. Them’s the ones.” He shook his head, spat, and pulled his lips back in a feral grin. “The Skull Knight, he does something to their minds when he ain’t happy. Fills ‘em up with nightmares and such.”

Her voice thin as a blade’s edge, Kerian said, “On the parapet of the eastern bridge in Qualinost, Thagol pikes the heads of those his Knights catch and kill.”

He scratched his chin. “Aye, but he can’t pike all of us. We’re all over the hills, Kerianseray. Here in the east, out in the western part of the kingdom. Not so many of us up in the north by the White-Rage, but a few in the south, too. Some’s just outlaws, robbers and killers, but a lot of us ain’t that. A lot of us’re just drifters, not fittin’ anywhere but places like here.”

Kerian began to see that Jeratt wasn’t so bad, and she thought that there were worse places to be than in the basin among the outlaws. They were cordial, if not friendly. This, for Iydahar’s sake and for the sake of what she’d done for Ayensha.

“Ayensha is my niece,” Jeratt said gently. “Her mother was my own mother’s sister. I love the girl well, and I thank you for the saving of her.”

“Are Iydahar and Ayensha part of your …band?”

He twisted a wry smile. “She is, he ain’t.”

Dar held a kind of sway over them, though. They looked to him; they heeded him. The mystery of that was not one Jeratt was willing to unfold, and Dar himself never came into the light of the fires to share the truth of it.

The days changed, nights brought warning of winter, and sometimes frost sparkled on the stones in the morning. Perhaps Kerian could have moved on, but she still hoped to speak with her brother. Most days there was no glimpse of him. Truth to tell, she didn’t feel much like leaving this safe place.

On one of those frosty mornings, Kerian said, “Jeratt, am I a prisoner?”

Jeratt shrugged. “I don’t know about that. Maybe you’re a guest You sit here among die fires, eat our food and use our blankets to keep you warm, and no one’s stopping you from using the privy places, but you walk up the hfll too for-” He shook his head. “Yeah. Maybe you are a prisoner, something like that You walk too far, you don’t get anywhere fast.”

Kerian knew what he meant She’d twice before felt the distortion of her senses and the lost feeling brought on by the forest She had no interest in feeling that again.

Jeratt chewed on a strip of tough venison, working his jaws until it was soft enough to swallow. He offered her some. She chewed for a while and drank icy water to wash it down.

Into the gilded bedchamber of the elf king came news of death. Word came several nights after he’d seen Nayla and Haugh return to the wood with his order to find Kerian, his token to give to her. He had watched for their return, for Kerian’s return. He had gone to sleep nights waiting, hoping. No word had come.

Now, this night, when he had no court function to attend, no meeting with his mother, no claim at all upon his time or attention to distract him from worry, the king sat reading in his library. He sat warm before a high fire, listening to the sounds of Planchet in the bedchamber, his servant muttering to himself, talking to others, ordering the rest of the night for his master.

Gilthas smiled, hearing his servant’s voice. Planchet had been the first to know how things stood between the king and the pretty servant of Senator Rashas, the Kagon-esti woman Kerianseray. He had been the first enrolled in the secret of their love and the secrets that had grown from it. Gil imagined his trusty man now, going around the bedchamber, his hands full of the clothing the king had discarded throughout the day-the morning robe, the robes of state for the afternoon’s session with the Senate, a riding costume, for he’d hunted in the Royal Forest in hours after that. When Planchet knocked, he was not prepared to see what he did see, the white face, the darkening eyes as Planchet stood in the doorway between the bedchamber and the library.

“My lord king,” he said. He held no armful of clothing, and he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. They hung, empty by his sides. “They are killed, sir.”

Gilthas closed his book, his heart loud in his ears. The breath of the fire in the hearth was a roaring. The red glow of the tame flames made Planchet’s face shine whiter.

“Nayla Firethorn and Haugh Daggerhart. Dead in the ashes of a burnt tavern. The burning, it was the work of Sir Eamutt’s men. The killing of your mother’s folk …” Planchet’s eyes glittered. “My lord king, that was the work of others. Kagonesti, they say.”

“Kerian-”

“The burning was of the Hare and Hound in Sliath-nost, and many houses in Sliathnost were also burnt. In payment for a Knight’s life, they say. Two other taverns have been burnt, one at Ealanost, another ten miles south at the waycross where the north-south road from Ealanost meets the road to Qualinost. In all cases, it is said by survivors that Knights have come to demand that Kerian be hunted and captured and brought to Qualinost for-” he stopped, then swallowed hard- “for beheading, my lord king.”

Planchet, faithful servant, winced to see his king take each word in, winced to see his poet king’s eyes fill with dread.

“Find her,” said the king, his voice grating, hoarse and thin. “Send more men to find her.”

Gilthas turned his back on the library, on his servant then leaving to do his king’s bidding. He opened the glass-paned doors to the balcony and stepped into the night.

Upon the bridges of the elven capital, the silvery spans that had stood to ward a fabled kingdom for centuries, the king saw that no guard walked. Beneath the starred sky, the moon just rising, no black armored Knight marched. The towers stood dark, no light of brazier gleaming from slitted windows, yet in the misty moonlight, he imagined he saw subtle motion, drifting images of ancient Forest Keepers. He imagined-it seemed so clear to him!-that he heard the tread of their booted feet, the rattle of their armor.

Gilthas shook himself, banishing the fantasy.

Behind him, Gilthas was aware of Planchet returning to the library, the chime of a crystal carafe against a crystal goblet. The king did not turn but remained looking out to the bridges. The severed heads of elves perched upon the eastern bridge. His belly turned as he smelled the stench of rotting flesh brought to him on an unkind breeze. He wondered where Thagol’s Knights were, the ever-present patrols used to marching above the captured city.

Across the city, a tall dark figure walked out from the unlighted eastern tower, illumined by starlight and the new-risen moon. The elf king’s eyes narrowed. The figure stood at the inner parapet, leaning upon the wall with a hand on either side of a severed head. He didn’t seem to notice them or care that he breathed the stench of decay. The night breeze caught the figure’s cloak and tugged it back from his shoulders, flaring like wings. In the starlight, the man’s face shone white as a scar.