Lala occupied herself by searching out insects to stomp on, and Grandmother gazed into the fire, wondering when the rain would let up so they could continue their journey. She wondered if the Watchers sat out there in the rain waiting for them to emerge from the cave. She’d felt their gaze ever since they started along Way of the Moon. She and her people were being stalked.

She did not mention the Watchers to the others, not wishing to alarm them until there was a specific threat. The regard of the Watchers went beyond the general awareness the forest had of their passage; the Watchers were intentional in their regard. Intelligent.

Perhaps the Watchers were trying to figure out how strong Grandmother and her people were; how much of a defense they’d put up if attacked. Maybe they were just curious.

What Grandmother did know was that she wasn’t going to take any chances, and so she doubled her wardings at each of their campsites, including the entrance to this cave.

As she stared into the fire, she also wondered what was happening on the other side of the wall. How was Colonel Birch faring? How went the muster and training of Second Empire’s forces? She had a way of seeing what he was up to, but the forest made the use of the art unreliable. Well, she had to try sometime, and their circumstances might not be as good later on.

Long ago she’d collected fingernail clippings from the colonel just for the purpose of seeing through his eyes. She pried one out of a tiny pouch she kept in her yarn basket. It was a fine crescent specimen, perhaps from the thumb. Birch kept his fingernails remarkably immaculate, but she supposed that was the difference between an officer expected to serve in court and a common soldier.

She knotted a length of sky blue yarn around the fingernail—knots of seeing. Sky blue was good, she found, for seeing over a distance, like looking through the clear sky itself.

“Show me,” she commanded as she tied the last knot. She flung it into the fire. The fire flared. The yarn writhed as the flames consumed it.

At first she thought the spell would resist her, but then a window opened in the fire and she held her breath. Snow. Snow framed by the flames of their campfire. Squalls battered rows of tents and were so dense she could not see far.

Three figures struggled into view and halted before her/ Birch. One of them had his hands bound behind his back and his face was bruised and bloody. He wore green. One of the king’s accursed Green Riders.

“What do you want done with the spy?” one of the men holding him asked.

“He is a messenger,” Birch said, his voice disembodied. Of course it would be, since Grandmother watched through his eyes. “Therefore we shall send the king a message.”

“I understand.” A knife flashed out and the man sank it into the Rider’s back.

The Rider’s eyes went wide. Snowflakes caught in his hair as it was tousled by the wind. Beneath the blood caked on his face, Grandmother saw he was young.

But never innocent. No, she knew better. From the beginning the Green Riders opposed the empire, acting as scouts, messengers, and warriors for their king. And yes, as spies, using their miniscule but insidious abilities with the art to commit evil upon the forces of the empire, and now Second Empire.

She felt no surge of compassion, not even when Birch’s man twisted the knife in the Rider’s back. The young man’s mouth opened in a silent cry as he fell to his knees, sinking into the snow. Some mother just lost a son. So had the mothers of the empire lost sons, many sons, to the heathen Sacoridians.

No, she felt no compassion when he collapsed into the snow, crimson flowing from his mouth. An enemy of Second Empire was dead and she could only rejoice.

“Prepare the message,” Birch said. “Those Greenie horses are clever—this one’ll go right to the king.”

There was laughter, then all Grandmother could see was snow, snowflakes swirling this way and that. The vision extinguished and she was left in darkness. Dark except for the one candle Cole lit on the other side of the cave. He brought it over to Grandmother and they all stared at the dead campfire. The cave smelled of damp soot.

Sarat reached for the ladle in the stewpot, but could not pull it out. “What have you done, Grandmother?” she chided. “The stew is frozen solid.”

“Oh, dear,” Grandmother replied. Once again the instability of the forest’s etherea had twisted her spell. “I’m sorry, child. We’ll have to start the fire again and thaw it out.”

As Cole used his candle to light fresh kindling, Grandmother reflected that next time she’d wait until after supper to work a spell. But what she’d just witnessed was more satisfying than any meal.

BIRCH’S MESSAGE

Karigan sighed in relief as Condor plodded up the last rise of the Winding Way and the castle gates at last came into view. The fickle weather, changing from snow to sleet to rain, only to freeze again, had challenged them almost every day of their return journey.

Ironically, on this, their last day of travel, the weather turned bright and warm, slush melting into puddles on the cobbled streets, and many of Sacor City’s denizens were out and about to absorb the sunshine so long denied them.

At the gates proper, she found the way blocked by a donkey cart. Chickens in cages piled on the cart cackled and squawked, and a milk cow, tied to the back end, serenely chewed her cud. The cart’s master sat astride an old mare and was deep into an argument with the guards.

Karigan could not hear exactly what the argument was about, except that the guards did not wish to grant the man passage. Here she was, so close to her destination, only to be delayed yet again. At least she carried no urgent message, and so she resigned herself to waiting. The sunshine pouring down on her shoulders was not unpleasant, and her eyelids drooped.