Luvztospoon woke with a boot planted against his chest.
“Stay down,” a woman said.
He reached for his sword.
“That too.”
He opened his eyes. An orc crouched above him, holding a knife against the strap of his ruined shoulder plate. Her hair was tied back in two short braids. A strip of red cloth marked the armor at her upper arm. He tried to sit up. She pushed him back with the boot.
“I dragged you out of a river. You can survive five minutes of being told what to do.”
Luvztospoon looked past her at the trees.
“The bridge.”
“Collapsed.”
“There was a woman.”
“Blood elf. They took her across the far bank.”
He caught the orc's wrist. She looked at his hand, then his face.
“Alive,” she said. “She was alive.”
His grip loosened. The orc cut the broken strap.
“Rashka. Southern road patrol.”
“Luvztospoon.”
“That’s unfortunate. I’ll use Tauren until you stop bleeding.”
He looked down. The ribbon was still clenched in his fist.
He opened his hand by degrees. The cloth was damp from the river and creased around his fingers. Something about its survival made the rest of the world impossible to accept. Across the gorge Seven had been standing upright, speaking to him clearly. Then there had been stone falling, water closing over his head, and the same current pushing him away from her no matter how hard he fought.
Rashka watched him without asking for the story. Her knife had already opened his damaged shoulder strap, and she was examining the wound with the brisk attention of someone who had seen men die while insisting they were fine. When he tried to rise, the ground tilted. She caught him by the armor before he could fall again.
“She gave me this,” he said.
“I gathered that.”
“She didn't think I could follow her.”
Rashka knotted a clean strip of cloth around the wound. “You can't. Not yet. That's not the same as never.”
✦
Sevenofknine counted the wagon's turns. Left at the bridge road. Right beneath trees. A long climb. Then the steady hollow sound of wheels on stone. Malrec had searched her at the first stop. She had eaten the copied page before he reached it. The paper stuck to her tongue. She swallowed it in small painful pieces while he examined her sword, her dagger, and the torn packet of ash.
He had taken everything except the memory of the words.
\A bearer who enters the seat may turn the binding inward.\
She repeated them silently as the wagon climbed.
She kept her eyes lowered whenever a guard leaned toward her. In the small compartment there was nothing to mark the time except the turns of the wheels and the way the light changed through a crack in the boards. She imagined Luvztospoon climbing out of the river and let herself imagine it only once. Any longer and she would begin pleading with a hope that had no way to answer.
When the wagon jolted over a stone, she pressed her shoulder against the side and repeated the sentence again. The diagram had made a distinction between a bearer and a keeper. A keeper could be replaced. A bearer who understood the seat might change the bargain. She was not certain what the text meant, only that the authors had believed choice could survive somewhere inside their cruel machine.
At dusk, they reached a gate set between two towers. The broken crown of an old watchkeep rose behind it. Three of its battlements had fallen inward, leaving the shape that had given the place its name. Hollow Crown. Beyond its walls, lamps burned over doors without handles. Sevenofknine listened for the sound of other prisoners. She heard coughing. Chains. Someone singing very quietly.
Malrec caught her elbow as she stepped down.
“You will speak when asked.”
She looked at his swollen face.
“Does that hurt?”
His fingers tightened. She needed him angry. Angry men watched faces and missed hands. While he shoved her toward the entrance, she took a bent nail from the wagon's loose sideboard.
✦
Rashka brought Luvztospoon to the road station in a supply cart. He protested until she asked whether he preferred crawling. The station stood behind a timber palisade. Its forge chimney rose beside a watchtower, and a Horde banner cracked in the wind above the gate. Maelin was waiting inside. She looked at his shoulder and said nothing for a long time.
“The others?” he asked.
“Safe. Tomas is answering questions. The three from the mill are being taken to a settlement tomorrow.”
“Seven’s at Hollow Crown.”
“Rashka told me.”
“Then we go there.”
Maelin set a basin beside the cot.
“First I close this wound.”
He started to rise. Rashka stood in the doorway.
“We lost two scouts on that road last month. You need a route, a weapon, and an arm that works.”
“I have an arm that works.”
“You needed both to get out of the river.”
He looked away. Maelin moved a stool within reach.
“You can be furious while I work.”
He lay back. Above him, a crack ran the length of the ceiling beam. He watched it while the needle moved through his shoulder. When the pain grew worse, he held the ribbon against his palm.
✦
Sevenofknine's cell held a cot, a bucket, and a woman young enough that her face still seemed unfinished. She wore a gray tunic and kept her hands tucked beneath her arms.
“They put me here to wash you,” she said when the guard left.
“And listen?”
The woman nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Nessa.”
“What happens if you hear nothing?”
Nessa stared at the floor. Sevenofknine sat on the cot.
“Then you should hear that I’m frightened.”
The younger woman looked up.
“Tell him that. He’ll like it.”
Nessa brought a cloth and a bowl of water. Sevenofknine let her wipe dried blood from her cheek. There was a bruise beneath the sleeve at Nessa's wrist.
“How long?” Sevenofknine asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you leave this room?”
“To carry meals. To clean the hall.”
“Then you know where things are.”
Nessa's hand stopped.
“Don’t ask me.”
Sevenofknine waited until the cloth began moving again.
“All right.”
When Nessa emptied the basin, Sevenofknine slipped the nail beneath the cot's loose mattress seam. That night, a voice spoke from the wall. It was Luvztospoon's voice.
“I’m outside.”
Sevenofknine sat upright. Nessa began to cry without making a sound.
“Let me in, Seven.”
Sevenofknine put her feet on the floor. For one terrible moment, she wanted to believe it. Then she remembered his hand fastening the ribbon. The slow care of it. How he waited whenever her memories hurt. Luvz would have asked what was wrong. He would never have left her alone with Nessa's frightened breathing.
“You’re not him,” she told the wall.
The voice stopped. She took Nessa's hand in the dark.
✦
On the second day, Rashka brought Luvztospoon a map. He had managed to stand by then. On the third, he walked to the forge. The smith was an older Tauren with one broken horn and a leather apron scorched across the chest. He looked at the ruined sword.
“I can join a new edge to the sound metal. I can’t replace what was carved into the tip.”
“Keep the runes that remain,” Luvztospoon said.
“And the balance?”
“Make it something I can fight with.”
The smith took the blade.
“Ergan.”
“Luvztospoon.”
“I remember your father.”
Luvztospoon looked up sharply. Ergan turned the sword under the light.
“Years ago. Bought hinges from me. Complained about every one.”
“They squeaked.”
“He bought the cheap ones.”
For the first time since the bridge, Luvztospoon almost smiled.
✦
On the third night, Nessa told Sevenofknine where Malrec kept the records.
“In the room above the lower hall. He has the key.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“The man in the wall called me by my brother's name yesterday.”
Sevenofknine waited.
“My brother died,” Nessa said. “But he never called me Nessa. He called me Mouse.”
She looked toward the wall.
“It didn’t know.”
Sevenofknine put the bent nail in her palm.
“Then we know something it doesn’t.”
Nessa closed her fingers around it.
✦
On the fourth morning, Ergan returned the sword. The repaired blade was shorter and broader, its new edge pale beside the old runes. A line of hammered iron marked the join. Luvztospoon lifted it. His shoulder ached, but held. Rashka watched him make a slow cut through empty air.
“Again,” she said.
“We should be on the road.”
“We leave tonight. Until then, again.”
He raised the sword. Far north, Sevenofknine knelt beside her cell door and began lifting the screws from its lock plate, one careful turn at a time.