8 #3

She nodded. She could explain the captain’s words, the wound, the memory of Darian. Ceyr had seen a hand that nearly killed him after he surrendered.

“What if I want to do it again tomorrow?”

Kaoran gathered the remaining books.

“You say so before we leave. We change the plan, your position, or who goes forward to speak. Now we know where stopping is hardest.”

Isolde packed the shirt. She would have to carry that part of the day too.

Outside, a bugle answered from the Nydel road. The patrol had reached the post.

Isolde put out the lamps in the house. She took the knife, the records, and the new glove. Kaoran opened the well exit.

Before descending, she left three ash marks on the table.

The enemy would keep her face, an ever-slighter limp, and the certainty that a woman of fire lived in the mountains. Isolde kept the choice the captain had tried to take from her.

* * *

The report took twelve days to reach Caleryon.

Varek brought it to the Council chamber in an unsealed folder. He waited for the session on bridges to end, dismissed the scribes, and laid four statements before Darian.

“A dead woman has attacked our men,” he said.

Darian recognized Kaoran Thennar’s name on the first page.

He had looked for him after Cendral. A former rider, northern officer, expelled or retired depending on the archive consulted.

He had lived near Nydel for fifteen years and maintained ties with miners, healers, and routes that avoided the posts.

The second statement belonged to Captain Rovan Bale, officer of the aqueduct patrol. He claimed to have seen Isolde Valarys’s face in the beech pass. He described her hair, the injury to her left hand, and a scar beneath her ribs that he could not have seen.

“Where did he get the detail about the wound?” Darian asked.

“He was in Cendral. He saw blood on the woman Thennar brought out of the gorge.”

“Hundreds of people came out wounded.”

“Few use red fire and have the heir’s face.”

Darian moved to the third statement. Two soldiers insisted the woman was called Iria. One hadn’t seen her face. The other had been stunned by the explosion of a blue stone.

The fourth bore the trembling signature of Ceyr Alen, a nineteen-year-old recruit.

The fugitive had defeated the captain, could have killed the surrendered men, and chose to withdraw. Before extinguishing the fire, she breathed three times. Ceyr recorded the words he thought he heard: the mountain listens.

“I want to speak to the recruit,” Darian said.

“He’s in the lower tower.”

“Under arrest?”

“He disobeyed a direct order.”

“He surrendered after losing his weapon.”

“The captain ordered him to stop her.”

Darian closed the folder.

“An unarmed soldier against someone who had just brought down six men. His decision preserved a witness.”

“His decision let her escape.”

Varek approached the map of the Range.

“The news cannot leave this room. If Isolde lives, the mourning, your office, and every agreement since Cendral will come under suspicion.”

“They already are.”

“Aelyn’s doubts and a tavern’s songs lack the weight of a living body.”

Darian read the description again. Isolde’s left hand had worked when she fell. The wound was beneath her ribs. Rheskan was still alive. Survival was possible; every night since Cendral, he had tried to turn that possibility into a certainty or a fear.

“Bale wrote that the woman is twenty-two,” he said.

“An estimate.”

“Isolde turned twenty-two at the start of summer.”

Varek stayed silent.

“How does the captain know?” Darian asked.

“Perhaps he questioned her.”

“The report describes a fight. No conversation about birthdays.”

“Are you suggesting the man prepared a story?”

“I’m suggesting he wants to remedy his earlier failure. He’s had a year and a half to study portraits and descriptions of the wounded.”

Varek rested a finger on Nydel.

“There is also the healer. Enna Vael treated a woman in the days after Cendral. Her neighbors saw her going up with instruments. Then Iria Thennar appeared and stole the records.”

“You searched the house.”

“Your men searched the house. The hidden chamber was discovered months later.”

“It was empty.”

“Now the house is too.”

Darian knew Varek’s method. He accumulated facts until fear forced acceptance of the most useful interpretation. The method worked because the interpretation could be true.

“What do you propose?” he asked.

“A small team. No insignia. It will watch Thennar’s contacts and the Nydel routes. If the woman appears, they’ll bring her in alive.”

“Why alive?”

“We need to know whom she has spoken to.”

“Then you’ll kill her.”

“The kingdom has already buried her name.”

Darian opened the folder again. In Cendral, he had believed a fall would resolve the choice he had spent months avoiding. Isolde survived in four statements and the trembling of his own hand.

“I choose the team,” he said.

“Your affection has already cost enough.”

“My men can approach without setting the mountains on fire.”

“Your men could warn her.”

“Then we send one from each command. Every order bears both signatures.”

Varek agreed. The solution ensured each would watch the other.

Ceyr Alen was brought into the chamber at dusk. He had a clean bandage around his neck and a burn mark on his sleeve. He looked at the empty throne before lowering his head.

“Tell me what happened,” Darian said.

The young man repeated the report. His voice changed when he described the fire. The fugitive could have killed him with the flame. She stopped after breathing three times. Ceyr didn’t know why.

“Did they call her Isolde?” Darian asked.

“The old man did.”

“Are you certain?”

“I heard the first syllables. The captain had already said she was the princess.”

“Did she answer?”

“She said the heir died.”

“How was she wearing her hair?”

“Short on one side. Braided behind. She had ash on her face.”

Darian remembered Isolde bending to read the ring beside the pond.

She had had to push a braid from her face; then she kissed him with a hand on his neck.

He could still find the warmth of those fingers.

Now Ceyr described a glove, cut hair, and a woman who had nearly killed him on hearing the regent’s name.

Darian laid the pen on the report. Searching for her meant leading Varek’s men to her. He had just argued over how many of his own soldiers would accompany them.

“Why did she let you live?” he asked.

Ceyr swallowed.

“I surrendered.”

“The captain was on the ground too.”

“She wanted to kill him.”

“What stopped her?”

“The old man stood beside me and told her to put out the line. She looked at him. Then she took those three breaths.”

Darian looked away. Thennar had been able to approach Isolde while the pass burned; she had let that man help someone standing before her fire. He didn’t know what they had learned to do together. He recorded the old man’s position beside Ceyr and left the memory of the pond out of the minutes.

“You’re assigned to the east gate,” he said. “Without arrest, and without speaking of the pass outside an official questioning.”

Varek watched from the shadows.

“The captain recommends dismissal,” he said.

“I am the regent.”

The statement tightened the room. Ceyr bowed his head and left with the guard.

Darian carried the folder to the brazier. He could burn it and delay the hunt. Varek would already have copies. Destroying this one would only reveal fear.

He put the statements inside his personal archive and locked it.

On the map, he marked the beech pass with three small dots. Beneath them, he wrote the roads leading to Nydel and gave the sheet to the person who would arrange the surveillance. He kept the recruit’s statement about the three breaths inside the folder.