The morning came through the boarding house window grey and indifferent, the way Marth mornings apparently came regardless of what had happened the night before or what was going to happen next.
Ard was awake before the light was fully formed. He had been awake before the light was fully formed every morning of his life and the boarding house bed, which was softer than anything he had slept on in recent memory, had not changed that. He lay on his back and looked at the ceiling and listened to Chubs breathing in the other bed with the deep, committed rhythm of someone who had decided sleep was a project and was seeing it through.
The talisman was in his hand. He had taken it out in the dark without deciding to, the bone disc warm from his pocket, the carved raven on its face catching the thin morning light from the window. He turned it over. The mark on the back — the same mark as the stone, as the raven figure's chest in the ritual room — looked back at him with the patient blankness of something that was not ready to explain itself yet.
He thought about the village.
About the four covered shapes on the road's edge and the damaged buildings and the dry channels where the purified water had run and the older guard's voice — more frequent, less warning, further from the known gate sites, everywhere — saying it the way you said things that had stopped being alarming because they had been true for long enough to become ordinary.
He thought about Jack.
Wherever Jack was. Whatever Jack had done in the weeks since the festival, since the drink, since the forest. Whether Jack knew about the Rift and the village or whether that had been the world's own particular cruelty operating independently of Jack's. Whether it mattered which.
He put the talisman back in his pocket.
Chubs made a sound in his sleep that was not quite a word and turned over and pulled the blanket higher and continued his project.
Ard got up.
He stood at the window and looked at Marth in the early morning. The city was already awake in its lower sections — the harbour especially, movement visible even from here, the docks active with the particular purposeful industry of people who had tides to account for and did not negotiate with them. Steam vented from pipes between the upper buildings in thin white columns that caught the morning light before the wind took them. A bell somewhere in the middle distance rang twice, sharp and clear, and was answered by another further away.
He thought about the road south.
He thought about the ceremony that no longer existed as an option, about the path that had been a door and was now something less defined and therefore something larger. He thought about the walls of the ritual room and the fracture in the stone and the ravens stepping through it and the Hollow Sage's voice saying feel it, not think it and Dawn's evasion when he asked what she was.
He thought about the word Aquos, which he had heard exactly once, from the older guard's mouth in the context of Rift activity and strange reports from the coast.
He was still at the window when Chubs woke up.
The conversation over breakfast — bread and something hot that the boarding house proprietor produced without ceremony and left on the table without explanation — was not so much a decision as an acknowledgement of something already decided.
"We can't stay here," Ard said.
"No," Chubs agreed, tearing bread.
"The village is gone."
"Yes."
"We have—" Ard looked at what they had. One talisman of uncertain value. One marked stone of uncertain purpose. One book wrapped in cloth. The pendant. The knife. The clothes on their backs and the dead paladin's robe folded on the chair. "—limited resources."
"I have been eating on credit for four days," Chubs said. "So our resources are technically negative at the moment."
"I need to sell the talisman."
"And then?"
Ard looked at the window. At the city outside it, the harbour, the ships at berth with their masts against the morning sky pointing at places neither of them had been.
"South," he said. "There's something happening on the coast. The guards mentioned it. The Rift activity is moving in that direction."
Chubs chewed. "That sounds like a reason to go north."
"It sounds like a reason to understand what's happening."
"Those are very different instincts."
"Yes," Ard said. "They are."
Chubs looked at him for a moment with the direct quality he had when he was taking a real reading of something. Then he nodded, once, the way he nodded when the decision was already made and he was simply confirming his presence in it.
"South," he said. "How?"
The talisman sold for less than it was worth and more than Ard had expected, the merchant in the antiquities quarter of Marth's middle district spending a long time examining it before naming a price that suggested he recognised the markings and had no intention of saying so. Ard took the coins without negotiating — he had no basis for negotiation, no knowledge of the market, no leverage. He filed the lesson and left.
They had enough for supplies. Barely.
What they did not have was a way south that didn't involve walking, which was not impossible but was slow and exposed and the road between Marth and the coastal cities passed through terrain that the older guard's comments about Rift activity had made feel less theoretical than it had previously.
The caravan was Chubs' idea, which he would later deny.
"I'm not saying we hide in it," he said, standing at the edge of the merchant quarter where three large covered carts were being loaded with the organised chaos of a departure in progress. "I'm saying we observe the situation."
"You're saying we hide in it."
"I'm saying we assess the available options."
The available options were three covered carts heading south, their canvas sides thick enough to conceal two people of average size among the merchandise if the merchandise was dense enough, which it appeared to be. The loading was mostly complete. The guards — six of them, mercenaries by their equipment and bearing — were occupied with the front of the convoy, checking horses, consulting a map, doing the things people did before a long departure.
"This is going to go wrong," Ard said.
"Probably," Chubs agreed. "Are we doing it anyway?"
They did it anyway.
The inside of the cart smelled of salted goods and packed cloth and the particular close heat of an enclosed space in morning sun. There was, objectively, enough room for one person of average size among the stacked merchandise if that person was willing to be creative about their position.
There was not enough room for two.
"Your elbow," Chubs said, in the low urgent voice of someone trying not to be heard through canvas.
"That's not my elbow."
"What is it?"
"A crate."
"It feels like an elbow."
"It's a crate, Chubs."
"Can you move it?"
"It weighs approximately as much as you do."
A pause. The cart began to move, the lurch of it forward sending them both sideways into the merchandise with a sound that was louder than ideal.
"Don't," Ard said.
"I didn't do anything."
"You were about to."
"I was about to adjust my position—"
"Don't adjust your position."
"My leg is asleep."
"Your leg can stay asleep."
The cart rolled on. The road beneath them was cobblestone for the first stretch and then became something less refined, the rhythm of it changing from regular to unpredictable, each bump transferring directly through the cart's frame and into whatever part of their bodies was in contact with the floor. The merchandise shifted occasionally. Chubs made a sound every time it did.
"I'm going to say something," Chubs said, after approximately an hour of this.
"Don't."
"There is a very large crate—"
"I know."
"—that is moving."
"I know."
"Toward me specifically."
"Lean the other—"
The crate moved.
Chubs moved with it, in the way of someone with no other option, which meant his elbow moved into Ard's ribs with the force of the crate's full momentum behind it, which meant Ard made a sound he had not planned to make, which was loud enough that both of them went completely still and listened.
The cart continued.
They looked at each other in the dim canvas-filtered light.
"Fine," Ard breathed.
A pause.
"Are we fine?" Chubs whispered.
The canvas at the back of the cart moved.
Two arms — large, efficient, the arms of someone who had done this before and had opinions about people who necessitated it — reached in and closed around them both simultaneously. The merchandise parted. The canvas opened. Daylight arrived with the particular brutality of something that had been patient for an hour and was now done being patient.
They came out of the cart with the dignity available to people being removed from a cart by their collars, which was limited.
The road stretched behind them. The caravan had stopped. The six mercenaries were arranged in a loose semicircle with the particular relaxed readiness of people who were not alarmed but were also not relaxed, their hands at their weapons without drawing them, their faces wearing a range of expressions from professionally neutral to actively entertained.
The one in the centre was neither.
He was looking at them with the focused attention of someone doing a rapid and thorough assessment — age, condition, threat level, intent — the way experienced people looked at unexpected things before deciding what they were going to do about them. Tanned skin, hair buzzed close to his skull and very blonde, eyes that were a specific and striking blue that caught the morning light. Well built in the way of someone who worked at it and had been working at it for a long time. His hand was on his sword's hilt without gripping it, which was a distinction that mattered.
Beside him, a step back and slightly to the left — the position of someone who was second and comfortable with it — a man who was the opposite of the first in almost every visible quality. Leaner, darker in colouring, his clothes better made than practical, the bearing of someone from a background that had involved people doing things for him before he had decided he would prefer to do them himself. He was looking at Ard and Chubs with an expression that had moved past assessment into something that might have been amusement if he had been allowing it to be.
The first man — the one in the centre — spoke.
"Who are you?"
His voice was level. Not threatening, not welcoming. The voice of someone who asked questions because they wanted accurate answers rather than particular ones.
"Travellers," Ard said.
"Travellers who were in my cart."
"We needed to travel south."
"So you hid in my merchandise."
"We observed the available options."
A brief silence. Beside the first man, the second one's expression completed its journey to amusement and stayed there.
"Thieves," said one of the others — large, standing to the right, his hand fully gripping his sword rather than resting on its hilt. "Check their pockets, Cassian. They'll have taken something."
"We didn't take anything," Chubs said, with the particular dignity of someone covered in cart-dust and recently removed from a crate by their collar. "We added ourselves, which is the opposite of theft."
The man called Cassian looked at Chubs for a moment. Then at Ard. Then back at the cart, with the expression of someone running calculations.
"Empty your pockets," he said.
They emptied their pockets. The marked stone. The talisman's replacement — they had bought a small utility knife with part of the talisman money. The coins remaining from the sale. The fire kit. Nothing that belonged to the cart.
Cassian looked at the items.
Then he looked at them — at Ard specifically, at the pendant visible at his collar, at the dead paladin's robe he was still wearing because it was the only thing he had, at the general presentation of someone who had been through a great deal recently and was showing most of it honestly rather than strategically.
"Where are you from?" he said.
"Brindleford," Ard said. "North. The village was hit by a Rift event ten days ago. We have nothing to go back to."
Something shifted in Cassian's expression. Not softening exactly — more a recalibration. The assessment was still running but the category it was sorting them into had changed.
"Where are you going?" he said.
"South," Ard said. "Coastal. We heard there's activity. We want to understand it."
"You want to understand Rift activity."
"Yes."
"You're—" Cassian looked at them both. "How old are you?"
"Eighteen," Ard said.
"Eighteen," Chubs confirmed.
Cassian was quiet for a moment. The man beside him — Julius, Ard assumed, from the way he stood — said nothing but his expression was doing everything his voice wasn't, which appeared to include a comprehensive opinion on the situation and a recommendation he was keeping to himself for now.
Then Cassian said: "Can either of you lift?"
"Yes," Ard said.
"Load and unload carts? Set camp? General labour?"
"Yes," Chubs said. "I'm also an excellent cook."
The man they would later confirm was Chu, standing at the back of the group with his arms crossed and the relaxed expression of someone for whom very little was urgent, looked at Chubs with mild interest for the first time.
"We don't need a cook," Cassian said.
"Chu's cooking has been a developing situation," Julius said pleasantly. It was the first thing he had said and he said it the way educated people said things they had been thinking for a while and had found the precise right moment for.
Chu did not appear offended. He also did not appear to disagree.
Cassian looked at Ard and Chubs for a long moment. Then he looked at the cart they had been removed from, and at the road ahead, and at the general logistics of a convoy that had a long way to go and could use two extra pairs of hands.
"You work," he said. "You eat with us, you sleep with the camp, you follow instructions and you don't touch the merchandise unless I tell you to. When we reach our destination you go your own way."
"Agreed," Ard said, before Chubs could add anything.
"And you ride outside the carts," Cassian added.
"Agreed," Chubs said, with feeling.
The first campsite was three hours south of Marth, where the road widened into a natural flat beside a stream and the trees gave enough shelter that a fire wouldn't broadcast itself to every direction simultaneously. The mercenaries set camp with the economy of people who had done it hundreds of times — each person knowing their role, the tasks distributing themselves without discussion, the whole thing assembled in twenty minutes with the particular competence of long practice.
Ard and Chubs watched, then helped where it was obvious they could, then watched again when it became clear that helping in the wrong place was worse than not helping.
Chu produced food from somewhere that had not been obviously accessible and had it over the fire before the light was fully gone, the smell of it filling the camp with something that was significantly better than its ingredients suggested. Ard ate without speaking and thought about the last time he had eaten something someone else had cooked and how long ago that was.
When the fire had settled into its lower, comfortable register and the camp had found its evening rhythm, Cassian sat across from them.
"Aquos," he said.
Ard looked up.
"That's where we're going. You said you'd heard about coastal activity — Aquos is the centre of it. It's where the reports are coming from. It's where the merchants want their goods." He looked at the fire. "Have you heard of it?"
"No," Ard said.
Cassian was quiet for a moment, the way people were quiet before they described something that resisted simple description.
"Imagine a crater," he said. "Vast. The kind of scale that makes you revise your understanding of what vast means. And at the bottom of it, a city."
He paused.
Julius picked it up without being asked, the way he picked things up — smoothly, as though he had been part of the sentence all along. "White and blue. You can see it from the crater rim on a clear day — the towers catch the light first, then the rest of it resolves. Takes a moment to understand what you're looking at because nothing you've seen before gives you the framework for it."
"Behind the city," Cassian continued, "the cliff face is split. And behind the cliff face is the ocean. Not a cove, not a bay. The open ocean, held back by a barrier."
Chubs put down his bowl. "Held back how?"
"The barrier," Julius said. "Magical. Old. The legend is that a dying Saint willed it into existence — Saints being the highest order of the faithful, second only to the deities themselves. The power required to hold an ocean in place permanently—" He paused. "It is not a small thing."
"And if it failed," Cassian said, "Aquos would cease to exist. The crater would fill. Everything in it." He said it without drama, just the flat accuracy of someone describing a structural fact. "That is why it matters. That is why the merchants pay well for the run. That is why the strange activity off the coast is not a local problem."
Ard looked at the fire.
"The Cult of the Abyss," he said.
Both men looked at him.
"I heard it in Marth. The guards mentioned it."
Cassian and Julius exchanged a look that had something in it — not alarm, the look of people who had been aware of something for a while and had been watching to see how widely it had spread.
"Where did you hear it specifically?" Julius said.
"The older guard. At Brindleford. He mentioned Rift activity increasing along the coast. He didn't use the name but the innkeeper in Marth did. Just once, quietly."
Cassian looked at the fire for a long moment.
"Get some rest," he said. "We move at dawn."
It was not an answer. It was also not a denial, and Ard filed the distinction carefully as he settled his back against his pack and looked at the stars coming through the tree cover overhead.
South. Aquos. Something happening that was large enough to be felt in a village at the base of a mountain a long way from the coast.
He thought about the fracture in the wall carving. About things stepping through cracks in the world.
He closed his eyes.
The fire crackled. Somewhere in the camp Belize was doing a quiet perimeter check, his anxious alertness finding its most useful expression in the dark. Chu was cleaning his cookware with the unhurried thoroughness of someone who took the maintenance of his tools seriously. Mae had already produced her navigation charts and was reviewing something by firelight with the focused irritation of someone finding a discrepancy she had not put there.
Li sat at the camp's edge and sharpened her blade with a rhythm so steady it became part of the night's ambient sound.
Ard listened to it and slept.