Over her shoulder she has carried all day a fire‑blackened tin pot with a length of rope tied to its handles for a shoulder strap. She also carries a wooden box that once was decorated with pastoral scenes, but from which most of the paint now has been scraped off. Although in her day’s journeys she sees nothing but stones, when she stops walking she can always find a pool of water within a few steps of her fire: a pool just big enough to fill her pot. And as the water heats, she takes out of the wooden box a porcelain tea set and a tin of tea that is neither full nor empty. By the time the twigs burn to ashes, the water boils. She steeps a pot of tea and drinks it while looking at the stars.

These stars are unfamiliar: not unremembered, but entirely different from night to night. Yet the landscape across which she travels by day remains the same: rocky mountaintops that give her no glimpse at all of what lies beyond them. Nothing distinguishes this landscape. She cannot even be certain that the sun rises in the same place every dawn. She is following the owl, who is leading the way to the Land of the Dead.

By the time the teapot is empty, it is sunrise. She packs the tea set and slings her burdens over her shoulders. She spots the owl, flying in the distance. Again, she follows.

The day’s bread was in the oven. With the storm shutters open, Garland could watch the tentative dawn of early winter: its stark, crisp shadows, black on white, the rising glimmer of the snow. He could see the ravens on the porch rail, impatient for their cornbread, bickering like children over perches in the sun. Garland had awakened to a kitchen hung with snowshoes–Karis, apparently unable to sleep again, had done her insomniac’s work here.

The kitchen door clicked open and he turned, surprised. Medric, who he last had seen wrapped in Emil’s arms in the attic room the three of them shared, stumbled in: only half dressed, spectacles askew, fingers still ink‑stained from the previous night’s work on his manuscript. “Brrr!” He squinted at the pale light reflecting in from the snow.

“It’s called a sunrise,” said Garland. “What are you doing up so early? After Karis was awake all night? Trading places with her?”

“Gods! No!” Medric shuddered. “It was a dream.”

Medric didn’t drink tea or spirits and didn’t eat butter or sugar or meat or cheese, and so was a thin wisp of a man who felt the cold quite keenly. Garland distractedly considered what to feed him at what was for Medric a wretched hour. Hot milk. “I suppose you don’t take honey?”

Medric shook his head mournfully. “I’d like to stay sane. Or not get any madder than I am.”

“Honey causes madness?” Every day in this household was another amazement. Garland warmed the milk, determined to do it slowly so the milk would sweeten on its own.

Medric rubbed his eyes, mumbled crankily, and then burst out, “You know her!”

“Who?”

“The one I dreamed of. I never met her, so youmust have, in Watfield. Otherwise, I couldn’t have dreamed of her.”

“A soldier? I knew them all, five years ago. What did this dream woman like to eat?”

Garland had asked his question flippantly, but Medric replied promptly, “Cheese, with an apple and a glass of wine.”

“And a couple of butter biscuits, I hope.”

Medric shrugged. Clearly, he was a man who saw no reason to think about food.

“With tastes like that, she’s probably an officer.” Garland stirred the milk steadily, peacefully, letting his memories rise: sergeants, captains, lieutenants, commanders. The higher the position, the older the person who held it, generally. “How old? Thirty? Fifty?”

Medric grumbled something, pulling himself out of his daze. “She’s energetic, not so beat up as most veterans get. But she’s not young. A lucky fighter.”

Garland was remembering his last day in Watfield garrison. Summoned to the general’s quarters, he found himself confronted by a very angry, very large man who gestured dismissively at the untouched plate on his table: beef in gravy with mushrooms and vegetables covered by a crisp pastry. Garland had been worrying all evening that he had used too much rosemary in the gravy, which is a mistake impossible to recover from, and surely that was what the general wanted to complain about. “Do you call this soldier’s fare?” the general had roared when Garland came in.

Garland could vividly recall what at the time he had scarcely noticed: that the other plates on the table were scraped clean, that the woman who sat at Cadmar’s right had looked sharply away when the general uttered his unimaginable, unacceptable command that from now on Garland was to cook badly. What had she been hiding from Garland–or from Cadmar–when she looked so swiftly away? Embarrassment? Contempt? Garland wanted to describe her to Medric now, but he could not think of what distinguished her in appearance from any other Sainnite. There were some things the soldiers had said about her, though, and he repeated them, struggling to remember. “She learned the names and history of every single person in her command. If they went hungry or cold or wet, so did she. She always hauled her own load.”

“I think I like her,” Medric said. “Whoever she is.”

“The lieutenant‑general, Clement.”

“The lieutenant‑general?”Medric sat upright, blinking. “She hauls her own load?”

“I’m just telling you what I heard when she first arrived.” Garland tasted the foaming milk. Not sweet yet.

“I understand the general is a bloody fool,” said Medric.

“That certainly is true.”

“Then how did he get himself a competent lieutenant?”

“She’d been his lieutenant an awfully long time. Every promotion for him was a promotion for her.”

“It was torturefor her.” Medric’s spectacles were reflecting the fire again. Garland felt a shudder. Karis might exercise her talent invisibly, or at least in a way that almost seemed ordinary, but this peculiar man could not pull off that trick. “They came over on the boat together, from Sainna,” he said. “She was a child. She thought he was a perfect soldier. She learned better–but she couldn’t escape him. He remained her superior. His rise controlled hers. But, finally, she managed to escape him and for a few years they both were commanders, equals. And then the old general died.”

Medric was only half articulating. In the twilight region between sleep and wakefulness, he opened his mouth and through speaking understood what he had no business knowing.

Medric opened his eyes. “Am I making your skin crawl yet?”

“Yes,” Garland said, and let out his breath. “The milk is ready, I think.”

“You’re being very helpful, you know.”

“Helpful for what? Why do you want to understand her like this?”

“To intrude on her, you mean? Oh, don’t deny it–I know it seems unsavory. But how else are we to win this war, except by knowing the enemy better than they know us?”

Garland poured two mugs of milk, gave one to Medric, and then flavored his own with honey and spices, the scent of which made Medric look distinctly rueful. “The enemy,” Garland repeated. “You mean our fathers’ people.”

“Oh, I’m a traitor no matter who I mean by ‘enemy,’” said Medric lightly. “And so are you. You might let me have just a tiny bit of that cinnamon.”

Garland grated some cinnamon into Medric’s milk. The young seer’s eyes closed as he breathed in the smell. He said, still sniffing, No one in this house has ever asked me to be unprincipled, though. And they won’t ask it of you, either.“

“Unless I’m asked to murder Karis’s wife,” said Garland recklessly.

Medric’s spectacles had steamed up as he held his nose over the mug. He took them off, rubbed his eyes, and said with terrible sadness, “Etnil and I–we are always exactly parallel to each other, and we couldn’t step on each other’s toes if we tried. But Karis and Zanja, they had to fight their way into that dance of theirs. Gods– it was exciting to watch.” He put his spectacles back on, found them still steamy, and irritably took them off again. “I won’t deny that Zanja’s murder was barbarous, heartless, and cruel,” he said. “But don’t call it unprincipled. Norina loved her for her discipline. I loved her quickness. Emil, well, he just loved her. Killing Zanja was a triumph of principle over passion. It may have been the most principled act of my life. I certainly hope I’m never asked to do such a thing again.”