There were demands I could talk my way around.
Show me your hand was proving difficult.
Roxxy held out her gauntlet, palm up. Behind her, the thing beyond the Barrier dragged one jointed finger across the crack. The scrape came through the station walls and settled in my teeth.
"Now, Ren."
I kept my right arm against my stomach. Blood had soaked through to my fingertips.
"I would rather not."
"That was not a request."
"Then I refuse with less enthusiasm."
Halden stepped closer, still holding his broken sword.
"You touched that root," Roxxy said. "And it turned to ash."
Before I could answer, a gold line split open along the wall beside Pell's head. He pressed both hands over the break. Light leaked between his fingers.
"Interrogate him later!"
Roxxy glanced up. The hand pressed harder, and a second crack appeared above the roof.
"Move. Help Tobin. Halden, rear guard. Pell, get us to the return point."
"What about the core?" Halden asked.
"It stays."
Pell backed away from the wall. "It might buy the central array an hour. Without it, we lose the breach now."
I tried lifting the bag of swords with my left arm. The strap came up. The bag did not.
Roxxy kicked it aside. "Leave it."
"Those belong to the crown."
"So do you, apparently. Walk."
I wasn't sure which part of that sentence I disliked more.
We spilled onto the road. Blossoms hung beside ripe fruit, and one tree carried leaves on only half its branches. The orchard had stopped changing without settling on a season.
Pell snatched up the instrument hanging from his wrist cord and checked it.
"Ninety seconds until the return window."
Halden waved us uphill. The knights half-carried Tobin, whose ruined greave scraped over the stones.
"I can hop," he protested.
"Save your strength." One bearer tightened an arm around his waist. "We've got you."
We made it twenty yards before the station groaned behind us.
Another branch of black root pushed through the doorway. It slid over the threshold, dragging a fresh length from beneath the station floor. Weeds browned and disappeared wherever it passed.
Pell glanced back and nearly tripped. "Why is it following us?"
Through the Lens, I could see a black thread running from the root to my right hand. It disappeared beneath the bandages and continued up my arm, pulsing beside the veins.
The thing beyond the Barrier had noticed the Touch of Rot—and somehow the Touch had answered.
There you are.
The voice brushed the inside of my skull. My knee gave way.
Roxxy caught my left elbow. "What is it?"
"Stone."
She looked at the flat paving beneath my feet, then hauled me upright.
"Stay with me."
The road began changing behind us. Stones cracked, sank into mud, and emerged newly cut before splitting again. The effect chased our heels in uneven jumps.
One knight lost the sole of a boot. Another clapped a hand over his mouth as his beard lengthened between his fingers, then shrank back to stubble.
"Keep moving!" Halden shouted.
My arm hurt deep around the bone now. Each step shook it. I tried closing my hand.
Thumb. First finger. Second. Third.
The smallest finger did not move. I tried again, watching it bump uselessly against my coat.
Five fingers had been excessive anyway.
The return circle waited at the top of the road. Pell dropped to his knees and unpacked three fresh silver rods.
"Equal distances. In the sockets."
Halden planted one. Roxxy took the second. I picked up the third with my left hand.
"No." Pell took it from me and twisted it into its socket. "Watch the road."
The root had cleared the station. Nothing stood between it and us.
A white point appeared above the ring. Pell pressed his palms together, and the point stretched into a trembling oval.
"Palace end's open. One minute."
Through the gap I saw soldiers crowding around the receiving platform, mages over their circles, Duke Valerius standing well away from anything dangerous.
"Wider," Roxxy said.
Pell's shoulders shook. The oval stretched another few inches, barely enough for a person in armor.
Halden put a knight through first, passed Tobin into the waiting hands, and sent the second bearer after him. Two more knights followed. One lost the end of a cloak. It frayed into loose threads and dust before touching the ground.
Pell's nose began to bleed. He swayed, and Halden caught him.
"Can they hold it from there?"
Pell nodded. The captain pushed him through.
The portal contracted as soon as the mage vanished. Its upper edge sagged until there was barely room to crawl.
Halden looked at Roxxy.
"Go," she said.
"My place is—"
"That was an order."
He knelt and forced himself into the light. His shield caught. He turned it sideways and disappeared.
Only Roxxy and I remained.
The black root reached the return circle.
"Your turn," she said.
The thread around my arm had thickened. When I stepped toward the opening, a loop of it reached into the Gate Room. I stopped. The loop stopped too.
If I crossed with it attached, what would follow me?
"You first."
Roxxy grabbed my coat. "Do not become noble now. It does not suit you."
"I was thinking of your rank."
"You were not."
She pulled me toward the opening. My right arm jerked backward even as the rest of me moved forward. The bandages constricted. Something cold pushed beneath my fingernails.
I tore free and fell beside the circle.
"Ren!"
The root rose behind me. Faces pressed briefly against its surface—a cheek, a mouth, one closed eye—then sank before any of them became complete. I stopped counting after the fourth.
Roxxy drew her sword.
"Don't," I said.
She stepped between us anyway. The root bent toward her, and I caught it with my right hand.
Roxxy saw.
There was no hood, no altered voice, no grand speech about gardens. Just my blood-slick fingers closing around the thing. I could barely keep them there.
The voice inside my head became almost gentle.
Come back.
"I've never been there," I whispered.
Your hand has.
The thread tightened across my wrist. I couldn't get enough air to say the word. I forced the curse through my fingers anyway.
The root stiffened. Grey spread beneath my palm, but too slowly. Each patch I destroyed filled out again as gold drained from the road. Stones rose new from the earth. Trees behind the root collapsed into seedlings.
My little finger split along the first joint. I saw the skin part, saw the blood, and felt nothing there at all.
"Ren, let go!"
"I am trying."
Roxxy dropped her sword and seized my coat with both hands. I stopped trying to rot the whole branch and pressed the curse into the thin connection at my palm.
The thread frayed. She pulled again, and it snapped with the tiny sound of a plucked string.
Ash burst from the root. Roxxy fell backward through the opening, taking me with her.
For an instant, I was stretched between two places. The Gate Room pulled at my left side. The orchard held my right. The voice beyond the Barrier said something I could not understand.
Then Roxxy's armored shoulder struck my ribs, and we tumbled onto the palace floor.
A black tip followed my boot. The gate snapped shut across it.
Severed from the root, the fragment wrinkled and went grey. Halden brought his shield down before it could move. It shattered into dry ash; the shield remained whole.
Every mage in the Gate Room started shouting at once.
Pell crawled toward the receiving circle. Nearby, a healer was cutting the ruined armor from Tobin's leg. Tobin stared at the ceiling, answering questions in a voice I could barely hear.
Valerius looked first at Roxxy, then at the ash.
"What did you bring back?"
"Seal the room."
"Your Highness, surely the proper first step is to report to His Majesty."
"The room first."
Soldiers dragged the heavy doors closed and dropped the bars into place. At Roxxy's order, the mages began checking the receiving circle while a healer crouched beside the remains of the root.
I stayed on the floor. It seemed a sensible place to be.
Another healer knelt beside me and reached for my sleeve. I caught the healer's wrist with my left hand.
"Contaminated."
The healer stopped, pulled on gloves, and called for a containment cuff.
Roxxy came over. Her gaze settled on my hand, then moved to my face.
She had heard the name beyond the Barrier. She had watched me use the curse. A story about roses was not going to fix this.
"Do not uncover his arm in here," she said. "Can you contain it for transport?"
The healer examined the soaked sleeve without touching it. "I can try. Clear some space."
Roxxy sent the nearest soldiers back. The healer wrapped my arm in waxed linen and fitted a copper cuff above my elbow. A line of light closed around it.
My arm kept burning. Whatever the cuff was meant to hold in, it did nothing for the pain.
Valerius approached but stopped outside the cleared space.
"The lower cells are warded."
"He needs treatment," Roxxy said.
"And guards."
"Yes."
That single word disappointed me more than it should have.
The healer watched the cuff through several pulses of light. "The ward is holding for now. Send me with him. The Academy has an isolation room equipped for injuries like this."
"Arrange a warded litter," Roxxy told Halden. "Clear the route. Two guards at his door, no visitors, and reports directly to me."
"The porter?" Valerius asked.
"Ren."
"Yes. The porter."
"He pulled Sir Tobin out of a temporal sink. He will be treated. He will also remain in custody."
Valerius looked at me for a moment before inclining his head.
"As you command."
Roxxy had not said Gardener in front of him. I couldn't tell whether she was protecting me or keeping something for herself.
By the time Halden returned with the litter, the edges of the room had begun to blur. Attendants lifted me, and the healer secured my arm against my chest. Fresh warmth spread inside the linen.
Roxxy walked beside us to the barred doors. She held a stoppered glass vial, the grey ash sealed inside. Behind her, the other healer was enclosing the last fragments from the floor.
"At the Academy," she asked, "what do you grow?"
"Mostly roses."
"What happens when their roots turn black?"
"Usually someone has watered them too much."
She raised the vial.
"And when they turn to this?"
I looked at the ash, then at her.
"I ask for hazard pay."
She did not smile.
On her nod, the soldiers lifted the bar. The attendants carried me into the cleared passage, the healer at my shoulder and two guards behind us.
"We finish our conversation after the healer is done," Roxxy called after me.
That sounded less like concern than a sentence.