“Yes, it was a gift from Zanja. I’ve never seen Karis wear it,” Emil said, when Garland finally asked. “Perhaps she was afraid she’d wreck it, as she wrecks all her clothes. Did you see the spot where Norina clipped off the tassel that she tied in Zanja’s hair? Oh, our Truthken was thinking like a fire blood that day!”

In his wandering years, Garland thought he had learned something about winning the trust of Shaftali farmers. A sober decorum and a distinct sense of shame at one’s landless state had proven essential. But this garrulous group strolled into a farmstead like a bunch of holiday‑makers: oblivious to danger, indifferent to their lack of food and shelter, radically unconventional and making no attempt to seem less so. Then Karis took out her tool box, J’han his medicine chest, and Garland his rolling pin. Leeba would make instant friends with the children, who knew a mischief‑maker when they saw one, Emil and Medric coaxed the elders to talk about the past, and Norina kept out of the way with her mouth shut. The skeptical farmers were more than won over: they were astounded. This visit became an event, a progress, a performance. Whole families stayed up late and wasted precious lamp oil so they could gape a little longer at their amazing guests. Sooner or later, Emil would read part of Medric’s book to them. Sooner or later, someone looked at Karis a little too long or deeply, and would suddenly find a Truthken whispering in his ear, and then there would be a pale and thoughtful silence.

Sometimes, though, the entire performance proved unnecessary. One day, with the wind coming bitter from the north, and the clouds piling up in the sky like dumplings in a stew, they reached the untidy edge of a sprawling town and slipped in under cover of an early twilight, dragging their sledges up a narrow alley from which no one had bothered to clear the snow. Leeba had lapsed into the incessant whining that was the warning that they had better stop soon. They paused at someone’s back wall, which looked like all the others except that it had a few stylized glyphs carved into the stone. Medric read the glyphs for Garland while Emil let himself in the gate, waded through the snow‑choked kitchen garden, and knocked on the back door. “It’s the owl glyph, which can mean searching or restlessness, and the glyph that’s called Peace, combined with Come‑to‑Rest. It’s pretty unambiguous, for a glyph sign. I guess that this used to be a healer’s hostel, or at least that this wall used to enclose one.”

“There was one around here once,” said J’han, who had plucked his irritable daughter from her sledge and was rocking her vigorously to make her be quiet.

The back door opened. Emil talked, with his hat in his hand, and then waited, and then someone flung open the door, crying, “Emil? What in the name of Shaftal… ?” There was much energetic embracing, and Garland caught glimpses of a stout, brightly dressed woman, who eagerly started for the back gate when Emil pointed.

“What’s this?” she cried. “A circus troupe?”

Karis, Medric, and Garland all started laughing and could not seem to stop. “Come in!” the woman said. “Books, you say? Well, say no more! Goodness, look at that bright little girl. I’ll bet you run your parents ragged, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Leeba proudly.

“So did I, and look at how I turned out. Come in, will you? Well, I don’t know what we’ll do with all your gear, but we’ll figure something out. Quickly, since there’s a storm brewing. I guess you’ll be staying a while? I hope you don’t mind sleeping on the floor. Well, get busy. You look strong enough.”

This last she said to Karis, who was still struggling to compose herself, wiping her eyes on the end of her muffler.

The whirl of words fell silent. Norina took a step forward, but Karis lifted a big, black‑palmed hand and the Truthken stopped in her tracks. “I’m Karis.”

The woman put her hand in Karis’s: stunned, amazed, then suddenly in tears. She said to Emil, who had come up beside her. “I should have known she’d be with you! Where anyone with any sense would be! The one everyone is looking for, you already found her!”

“I found her before anyone started looking,” said Emil. He added somberly, “You need to keep this secret. Not even your family can know. Can you do that?”

The woman turned again to Karis. “Yes. Yes, but…”

“I am a Truthken,” Norina said, “and by your oath I bind you.”

The woman replied fearlessly, “May I not ask a single question? I will go mad!”

“A shame,” said Norina.

“Shaftal!” the woman breathed. “Well, what am I supposed to say?”

“Say, ‘Madam Truthken, by the land I accept the binding of an oath of silence.’”

The woman said her part, obedient, ecstatic, like an actor rehearsing a play.

Hers was a family of tailors, it turned out, who were as appalled by the state of their guests’ clothing as Garland was by the state of his hosts’ kitchen. When they left after the storm had passed, every last one of the travelers was wearing a new suit of clothes, though their old clothes had also been so finely mended that to replace them hardly seemed necessary. And they left behind at least a hundred books, which the tailors swore would be scattered through four regions by day’s end, and as far as the southern and northern borders within a week.

The travelers would soon run out of books.

The day before Long Night, they came through the hills on a sunless afternoon, a ragtag collection of wool‑dressed wanderers with chillblained, blistered hands. They had tied their snow shoes atop the sledges, for the snow had crusted enough to bear even Karis’s weight. Leeba had played like an otter all morning, sliding hilariously down every icy slope. She played without her regular playmate, for Medric was utterly worn out. Now, she rode in state in her sledge, blanket‑wrapped in a pillowy nest.

Medric wiped his frosted spectacles for the fiftieth time. “Maybe I’m just too old to play with Leeba. Maybe it’s time we had another child.”

Norina said, “I hope you’re volunteering to be the mother, little man. I’m sure Karis could alter your equipment.”

“Never mind,” said Medric hastily.

They had seen no signs of settlement since dawn, when they staggered forth from the abandoned shepherd’s hut in which they had spent the night. A barren land: open, rolling, practically treeless, with boulders poking through the snow like broken teeth. Sheep country.

The wind picked up. They wrapped their faces, tied down their hats, put a second pair of gloves on their already gloved hands, and faced the wind only when they had to. There was no more laughter. Karis stopped once, pointed at Medric, and pointed at the half‑empty sledge of books she hauled. He mutely took a seat in the sledge, and folded himself up against the cold, passive as a piece of luggage. Karis hauled him.

Later, she stopped again, and turned her back to the wind. They huddled around to hear her cold‑slurred words. “We’ve been seen.”

Emil tried to speak, vigorously rubbed his frozen face, and tried again. “How many?”

“Many more than us.”

“Armed?”

“Yes.”

“Paladins. They’ll try to head us off first.”

They sorted themselves out, with Emil in front now, Norina at his right, Leeba complaining in Karis’s arms, Medric afoot again, hauling the empty sledge, Garland hauling the sledge of supplies and J’han the sledge of books. Garland supposed Karis carried Leeba for the child’s protection–there was no place safer. But perhaps Leeba would also protect Karis, for the Paladins might go out of their way to avoid injuring a child.

Soon, a black‑dressed woman swooped down the hill, flying on her skis as the ravens swooped on the wind overhead.

She blocked their way. Two pistols, certainly loaded and primed, were holstered in the belts that crossed her chest. A dagger was sheathed at her side. “You’re lost,” she informed them politely.