3 #4

Kaoran looked at the stitches, her left hand, and the walking stick.

“Months before you can move without help. Longer to regain stamina. Your hand may never close the way it used to. The sword you know may no longer serve you.”

Isolde took in each sentence without looking away.

“And the fire?”

“You could burn Nydel tonight. Mastering the exact place where it stops will take years.”

“How many?”

“As many as you need.”

The answer would have been unbearable a few days earlier. Now Isolde understood that a false number could kill her as effectively as a knife.

She unfolded the decree on the table. The scorched corner left ash beneath Darian’s signature. Isolde smoothed the paper with her good hand and forced the other to stay open.

“We’ll let him keep believing I died.”

Kaoran brought her a weight to hold down the curling corner. She set it on the seal.

“Aelyn will have to believe it too,” Isolde said.

It was hard to speak the name. Her friend would be searching lists, opening doors, and enduring the men who explained why she should stop asking questions. Isolde rested her forearm on the edge before her leg began to shake.

“As long as reaching her could lead them to her door,” she added. “If we find a safe route, we’ll discuss it again.”

Kaoran nodded.

Isolde uncovered the signature and folded the paper. Concealing her survival meant leaving the people she loved with that news. She would have to accept that hurt during her recovery and remember why she had chosen it each time she asked for help from the man who had just lifted the trapdoor.

Kaoran went to the wall and took down the map of the district. Years of rain had rippled the parchment. Nydel occupied the center, drawn with seven houses though it now had more than a hundred. Two lines climbed toward the Obsidian Range, and another followed the watercourse east.

“If we stay, the house has to stop looking as though two people live here,” he said.

“We’ll hide my bed.”

“Your clothes too, the extra bowl, the bandages, and every footprint between the door and the stable. You’ll use the chamber whenever someone crosses the wall.”

Isolde studied the map.

“The soldiers saw the tracks end here. Next time they’ll bring dogs or open the floor.”

“There’s an old entrance from the well.”

“They’ll know it if any of them served on the frontier.”

Kaoran pointed to a faded line to the south.

“The irrigation channel disappears beneath the hillside. The tunnel reaches a dry cistern behind the barn.”

“That gives us one exit. We need another.”

“The stable roof touches the rock. You can reach the pines from there.”

“With my leg, I can’t.”

Kaoran studied the distance shown.

“We can string a rope.”

“A rope leaves a direction.”

Isolde took a piece of charcoal and added two marks to the map. One followed the west wall, where the stones formed a blind spot from the path. The other descended toward the streambed.

“If they find the well exit, they’ll want me to flee into the woods,” she said. “Lay a false trail that way. I’ll go down through the water.”

“The water nearly killed you eleven days ago.”

“That’s why no one will expect me to choose it.”

“You won’t be able to stand in the streambed either.”

Isolde set down the charcoal.

“Yet.”

Kaoran traced the proposed route with a finger. He added a circle where two streams met.

“There’s a hollow here. It fits one person and stays above the floodwater. Tomorrow we’ll store water, blankets, and food there.”

“A blade too.”

“A short blade.”

“A sword.”

“When you can reach it.”

Isolde looked at the walking stick.

“I reached the stable.”

“Falling.”

“I reached it.”

Kaoran folded the map.

Over the next hour, he dismantled Isolde’s bed and stored the pieces in the upper chamber, hidden behind the chest. He prepared a pallet that could be rolled up and lowered into the well chamber.

Together, they put the bloodstained clothes in a chest and divided the medicines among three hiding places.

She worked sitting down. She tied bandages with her right hand, sorted food, and wrote a list of signals on the back of a wrapper.

One knock: someone at the wall.

Two: a patrol on the path.

Three: leave through the well immediately.

Kaoran added four.

“What does that mean?” Isolde asked.

“That I’ve made tea.”

“That doesn’t need a signal.”

“It depends on the quality of the tea.”

She almost smiled. She put the paper away with the decree and checked that she could reach the knife from the trapdoor.

Kaoran picked up the crossbar from the broken chair. Isolde asked him to leave it on the bench. She could wrap the split with cord while he prepared the provisions; she chose the task because it was damage she could repair sitting down.

“Tomorrow I want to try the path to the wall,” she said.

“We’ll have to begin sooner. The two steps between the pallet and the bench, without me supporting your weight.”

Isolde looked at that space. Rain beat outside, erasing the path she had tried to walk. She placed the stick within reach of her right hand.

At dawn, she would begin there.