The smith hesitated, then gave a tight nod. He drew a stiff, rolled map from his belt pouch, the edges sweat-stained and reeking faintly of smoke.
Radeon smoothed it out on a dry strip of plank between them, pinning the curling corners with his palms.
Fay watched from where she sat. Pain knifed through her injured leg and kept her planted, but she hissed and pushed it down. She knew the map mattered.
"We're closest to the Requiem Griefwaters. Ain't that right, Master Hoggs?"
Hoggs looked up, then scanned left, then right. He narrowed his eyes, weighing the scenery he saw, and gave a short nod.
A river that ran on and on, deep green shading to black, wide as a sea in places. Tales said that those who swam its waters never came back alive.
Hoggs did not trouble himself with such thoughts. He voiced his concern.
"Siege camp's a day off, even with a good horse," Hoggs said, not pausing as he wiped the grit from an ingot and set it in a crate. "And I've no day to waste. Oy! Boys! Here. Get your backs under these and carry them. Now."
Hoggs looked at Radeon and saw he was satisfied with the explanation. He took the map and left with his young apprentices in tow.
Fay watched his back until the last of them slipped from view.
The pain in her legs stayed sharp, a bright thing that should have demanded all her attention, yet it was not what held her.
What pinned her tongue was the sight of Radeon at work with that same steady calm.
He set their belongings in order as if the world had not just grown teeth, his fingers sorting and stacking in place of hers.
Fay watched him, wondering where a man learned to keep his mind so quiet when dread was loud.
A small part of her wanted to ask, to pry at the seams, to hear whatever secrets he kept folded up inside him.
Instead, she kept silent and tried to help. Every shift sent a fresh spike of pain through her, and her face gave her away with each wince.
She reached for what she could, and even that was too heavy.
"Fay." Radeon met her eyes. "You did well back there."
"I... I only clung to you, Senior, but... thank you."
"Show me your leg." Radeon's voice left no room for argument.
Fay hesitated, then inched closer. Radeon's hand closed around her calf. She winced at the simplest touch, her breath catching between her teeth.
It tightened Fay's throat for reasons she could not name. She had never let a man touch her like this before.
Radeon did not let his thoughts run the way Fay's did. He simply worked.
From his sleeves, he drew thin needles. Heat climbed along them as his qi stirred, a faint shimmer that wrapped the metal.
With a flick of his fingers, the needles leapt. Tens of bright slivers bit into her bruised flesh in neat rows.
Fay's muscles loosened beneath them. The pain dulled, then eased back, retreating like a tide.
The ugly eggplant bloom of the bruise began to pale at the edges, as if some careful hand were rubbing the color away.
"I-it already pains me far less, Senior Radeon. Your technique is... truly profound."
"It's nothing." Radeon handed Fay the cleaned jerky and hard bread. "We eat first."
They chewed in silence. Jerky, scraped and wiped as clean as they could manage, still tasted of wood chips and mud.
Radeon watched the captain's crew heap their findings. Crates thumped down in rough stacks, wood on wood, the sound carrying through the planks.
He counted without meaning to. Ten. Twenty. More. By the time the men stopped, more than forty boxes sat piled like a small fort.
Radeon kept his gaze on them as the heaps grew, then drew a slow breath and fed a thin stream of energy into his eyes.
The world answered in lines of color, faint at first, drifting at the edge of sight. He let the goods blur and fixed on the men instead.
Threads. Fine, pale lines stretched from him toward the nearest sailors.
Then more came. Thin as hair at first. They clung to each man like cobwebs, trembling when they shifted.
With each slow blink, the strands swelled. Hair turned to cord. Cord turned to rope. Rope became barbed lassos that twisted and knotted up under their chins.
They closed over throats with a steady pull. A sign of death. Not the clean kind.
Radeon read it for what it was. A chill walked his spine from neck to shoulder.
Fay saw the smallest break in him, no more than a tightening at the eyes. A stillness that had not been there a breath before.
She did not know what he saw or how far ahead his sight could reach. She only knew that whatever waited on them was near.
Close enough that when Radeon finally looked back at her, she understood the seriousness without a word.
"Fay." His voice went flat. Commanding. "Weight on that leg."
She pushed herself up and took a few steps. The bruise complained, yet her foot found the planks.
"It still aches, but... it seems I can walk on it, Senior," she said.
Radeon slipped a hand into his sleeve and drew out a violet pill, no bigger than a nail clipping.
It sat on his palm like a bruised seed. He pinched it between thumb and forefinger and let his qi do the cutting.
When he opened his hand again, the pill lay quartered. Radeon offered one to Fay.
"Take it. Don't argue, just drink."
She did not hesitate. The quarter crumbled between her teeth, then turned to dust on her tongue. A soft warmth followed it down her throat.
The fatigue fled like a lie caught in daylight. Muscles that had dragged a breath ago turned obedient, loose and ready, as if they had never ached at all.
Comfort ought to have followed, the steadying kind that lets you unclench your teeth.
It did not. Fay kept staring at Radeon. His face had gone from merely cool to carved serious.
Stoic in a way that made Fay's stomach knot, as if Radeon was already bracing for what was to come.
"When I say run, you run for the river." Radeon kept it tight. "You can swim it. Trust me. The river won't be what kills you."
"S-Senior, but the records say otherwise..."
"Fay. Books aren't gospel." His eyes cut to Simeon and the guards. "With me. There."
Radeon led Fay along the broken spine of the wreck, toward the shadowed rear of the ruined spirit ship, where the planks still rose higher than a man.
Behind them, the noise thinned and dulled, swallowed by splintered wood and distance.
"Check your pockets," Radeon said.
"W-What pockets?" Fay asked, uncertain.
"Inside the cloak I made," Radeon said, pointing.
Fay tracked Radeon's hand and slipped her own beneath the inner lining.
The chameleon's hide was soft and dark. Her eyes gave her nothing. She trusted her fingers instead.
There. A seam that had no business existing, stitched too neatly to be honest.
Beneath it, a bulge no larger than her palm, slick and unyielding, like river stones.
She pressed once, then again, the small, hard give of spirit stones, packed tight together. Not a few. A hundred of them.
"H-How?" Fay whispered.
"Check another pocket," Radeon said, pointing again.
Fay searched again, slower this time, refusing to believe her own hands. She slid her fingers along the lining until they caught on another fold that should have lain flat.
Fay worried it open with her nails and found a second tight nest of cold weight, packed so dense it bit into her skin.
Her throat went dry. She swallowed, and the dryness swallowed back.
"H-how many pockets are in here, Senior?" she asked, her face paling at the weight of that sudden fortune.
"About fifty," Radeon said casually. "Half of them already full."
Fay stared at Radeon. She had been wearing it like a common cloak through road dust and sweat, never once feeling the treasure she'd carried.
Radeon's eyes stayed on her, patient as a man watching a slow spill.
When her face finally caught up to what her hands had already known, he let out a low chuckle, soft and pleased.
"You keep saying you're not worth much." Radeon lifted her cloak, and the hidden weight answered with a dull, crowded shift. "Fine. Carry this, and prove yourself wrong."