Somebody was watching me swing.
Swing two hundred and six. Two hundred and seven. I didn't have to look to know it. Someone was standing at the edge of the training yard, perfectly still, and it wasn't Sigrid and it wasn't Naomi.
Naomi had been up since before dawn. By the time I came down, she was already at the gate sending riders out to the farms past the last fields, and the watch on the wall had doubled overnight. Hana had the kitchen boiling linen for bandages. "Just in case," she'd said, which is Hana for definitely.
At swing two hundred and fifty, I gave up pretending and looked.
A royal guard. Crimson tabard with a little gold star under a crown, light armor, and a helmet with the visor down. Small, for a knight. A practice spear rested across her shoulders like a yoke, with both wrists hooked over it.
The one whose helmet had wobbled at the gate.
"Morning," she said.
"Morning."
"You're doing it wrong."
I stopped mid-swing. "Excuse me?"
"Not the swing. The swing's fine. You're counting under your breath. It wastes air."
"How else am I supposed to know where I am?"
"Count in your head."
"Then I lose count."
"Then you get to do more." She seemed to think this was an excellent point.
From the edge of the yard, Sigrid cleared her throat. "Young Master."
It was her polite voice. Her polite voice means I can have this person on the ground in one second, just say the word.
"It's fine, Sigrid." I turned back to the guard. "Who are you?"
The helmet tilted. The pause went on just a little too long.
"Beth," she said. "Just Beth."
"Just Beth?"
"My mother picked out a very long name. I picked a short one."
"Is that allowed?"
"I didn't ask."
I liked her immediately.
"I'm Fabian," I said.
"I know." She nodded toward town. "Everyone in Greymark told me. Some of them twice."
Then she unhooked her wrists, spun the practice spear once, lazily, and let its blunted head come to rest pointing at my sword.
"So. Saint. Do you spar?"
My heart did a thing it usually only does when Marika shoves a present at me and runs away.
Nobody spars with me. Not really. My sisters do, because they're my sisters. The guards won't, because of Naomi. Something about laps. The guards never finish that sentence.
"Yes," I said. "Yes. Absolutely. Yes."
"After the five hundred," said Naomi.
She was standing right behind me. I have no idea how long she'd been there. With Naomi, you never know.
Beth's helmet jerked. "Countess."
Naomi looked at her for a long moment. At the tabard. At the spear. At the light armor, a little longer than at anything else.
"One bout," Naomi said. "Blunted."
"Yes, Countess."
I have never finished two hundred and fifty swings faster in my life. Naomi made me redo the last twenty, because they were "enthusiastic, not correct."
Then I faced Beth across the yard.
Under 「Eyes of Elysia」, her light was clean, bright white. Not a speck of yellow anywhere. Like she'd never been tired a day in her life.
"Ready?" she asked.
"Ready."
I was not ready.
I'd spent seven years learning to fight swords. I'd never fought a spear. Every time I stepped in, the blunted head was already there, tapping my wrist, my shoulder, my knee, my other knee. She didn't even look like she was trying. She looked like she was enjoying it.
Tap. "Too slow."
Tap. "Too obvious."
Tap. "You keep looking at my feet. Look at my hips."
"Why your hips?"
"Because my feet lie."
So I tried the feint. The one that almost worked on Naomi the morning of my blessing. The one Father would have laughed at.
It almost worked.
Beth's spear went the wrong way for half a heartbeat, and she laughed out loud, delighted, like I'd given her a present.
Then she swept my legs.
Thump.
I lay on my back and looked at the sky. It was a nice sky. Very blue. I'd seen a lot of it from this angle.
Beth leaned over me, upside down. "That was a really good feint."
"It didn't work."
"It almost worked. Almost is how it starts."
The kitchen door banged open.
Hana came across the yard at a run, flour up to her elbows, her tin of salve already open in one hand.
"Where does it hurt?"
"Nowhere. I'm fine. It was a sweep."
"Your back."
"My back is fine."
She salved my back anyway, through my shirt.
Beth looked at Hana. Then at the kitchen door, all the way across the yard, firmly closed behind her. Then at me.
"How did she know you fell?" Beth asked. "You only just hit the ground."
"She has very good ears."
The helmet tilted slowly to one side.
"...Very good ears," Beth repeated.
Naomi held out a hand and pulled me up. "Swings."
"I already did my swings."
"Then do them again."
Beth slung the spear back across her shoulders. "Same time tomorrow, Saint?"
"Yes," I said, before anyone could stop me.
"We'll see," said Naomi.
Beth walked off toward the barracks. Halfway there, her helmet turned to look back at us, just once.
Not at me, though.
At Hana.
After lunch, Naomi caught me at the foot of the stairs.
"Half," she said.
"Half what?"
"Healing hour. Half today."
"But the line—"
"The princess will be watching." She kept her voice low. "Father never cast more than ten in a day. On his best day. You did seventeen on Saturday."
I saw it then. "If she counts..."
"She counts."
"...she'll know the well's deeper than it's supposed to be."
"Better a short day than a deep well."
I did the math. "Half of seventeen is eight and a half."
"Eight."
"What about the half a person?"
"Tomorrow."
I opened my mouth. Then I thought about the princess at the parlor door, saying everything in this house seems to happen tomorrow, and closed it again.
"When you reach eight," Naomi said, "you get tired."
"I won't be tired."
"You'll look tired."
"I don't know how to look tired."
Hana leaned over the banister from the landing above. "I'll help."
That was what worried me.
The line at the gate was long, the way it always was. Farm women with their sleeves rolled up. A baker with a burned wrist. Mothers holding coughing children. Sigrid sat at her little table with her count and her basket, which already held eleven eggs and one very confused-looking cabbage.
The princess arrived just as I sat down.
She'd brought one guard. Out of twenty-one, she'd picked the small one with the spear.
Beth's helmet faced straight ahead, very stiffly, like it was trying hard not to look at anything in particular.
The princess took a place at the side of the gate, one hand on her sword hilt, chin level. She didn't say a word. She didn't have to. I could feel her watching the way you feel the sun on the back of your neck.
"Ignore her," Hana whispered.
"How?"
"I don't know. I can't either."
I looked down the line instead.
Usually, I take people in order. Today I only had eight. So I let 「Eyes of Elysia」 do the choosing. White, white, a little yellow, white... and there, halfway back, a farm woman with a rag wrapped around her calf, her light a deep, sour yellow.
"You," I said. "Please. You first."
The line murmured. The farm woman limped forward, looking startled. Under the rag was a scythe cut, long and angry, but fresh.
I put my hand over it and reached for 「Heal」.
Splash. A plain White circle bloomed on the cobbles.
The cut closed. Her light cleared back to white. She burst into tears and tried to give Sigrid a chicken, which Sigrid accepted.
Out of the corner of my eye, the princess hadn't moved at all. But I knew she'd seen that circle. I knew she'd seen its color.
White. Plain, ordinary White. Just like the report said.
Two. A child with a fever, 「Cure」. Three. The baker's burned wrist. Four. Five. A coughing toddler who sneezed on me in thanks. Six. Seven.
"Seven, Young Master," Sigrid said.
Eight. A girl with a gashed knee from falling off a wall she wasn't supposed to be on.
White. Splash. Done.
"Eight," said Sigrid.
Hana's hand landed on my shoulder like it had been waiting there all along. "That's enough for today."
That was my cue.
I swayed.
From somewhere behind me came Marika's voice, low and furious. "Less."
I hadn't even heard her ride in. She was still in her riding leathers, dust to the knees.
I swayed less.
The line did not like it.
"Eight?"
"He did seventeen on Saturday!"
"Is the Young Master sick?"
Sigrid stood. "The Young Master was in the Gloamwood yesterday," she announced. "He's resting."
Which was true. It was just true about yesterday instead of today.
The line grumbled, the way people grumble about weather they secretly don't mind, and began to break up. Half of them left their eggs with Sigrid anyway.
I didn't look at the princess. I didn't need to.
She'd heard seventeen. She'd watched me stop at eight. And she hadn't said a single word.
「Eyes of Elysia」 could tell me if someone was hurt. It couldn't tell me what she was thinking. I'd never wished it could more.
Marika crossed to Naomi, who'd been standing in the gateway the whole time.
"East road," Marika said.
"And?"
"Silent." Marika's jaw was tight. "All the way out. Not one bird."
On her way past Beth, Marika's eyes dropped to Beth's light armor. And stayed there for a step longer than they needed to.
Naomi was quiet for a moment. Then she turned to the princess.
"Your Highness. Would you join us in the war room? There's something you need to hear."
The princess raised one eyebrow. "Today?"
"Today."
The war room looked different with a princess in it.
Smaller, somehow. Like the room itself was standing up straighter.
Beth took the spot beside the door, spear upright. Hana and Marika sat. I sat. The princess didn't, and neither did Naomi. They stood on opposite sides of the painted map like two generals about to argue over it.
Naomi put one finger on the dark green edge at the top of the table.
"The Gloamwood," she said. "I've swept it once a month for ten years. Entrance to mid. Never the core."
The princess nodded once.
"Yesterday, it was silent. No birds. No insects. Nothing." Naomi's finger moved down, toward the fields. "Ten Gloamwolves were hunting at the entrance. Starving. Wolves never hunt at the entrance."
"Never?"
"Never. Something pushed them out." Her finger slid back up, into the mid. "Here, the trees are full of webs. Gloamweaver young, hundreds of them. They walled off the way deeper, and drove us out."
"And today, the east road's silent too," said Marika. "All the way out."
The princess studied the map for a long moment. "Gloamweavers belong at the edge of the core."
"They do."
"Then something in the core is pushing everything outward."
"An elite," said Naomi. "I think so."
The room went very quiet.
I knew that word. Everyone in Greymark knew that word. It was the word under every story nobody told out loud.
"A tide," said the princess.
"A tide. Soon. Weeks, maybe." Naomi paused. "Maybe days."
"How sure are you?"
"Sure enough to have doubled my watch and sent riders to every farm past the last fields this morning."
"And if it's a Gloamweaver," Naomi went on. Her finger slid down from the dark green, across the painted fields, and stopped at the little painted wall. "Then there's one thing in our favor. No trees out here. Away from the trees, without her webs, a Gloamweaver can barely move."
"Then you'd fight it on the fields," said the princess.
"On the fields. Where it's slowest."
The princess's green eyes moved over the map, over the little painted wall and the little painted town, like she was already placing pieces on it.
"What can Greymark field?"
"My household guards. The town watch." Naomi didn't blink. "And every woman in Greymark who can lift a pitchfork."
"Which is every woman in Greymark," Marika added.
"And the Saint?"
Everyone looked at me.
"Behind the wall," said Naomi.
I opened my mouth.
"Behind. The. Wall."
I closed it.
Naomi turned back to the princess. For a second, I saw something in my sister's face I'd only ever seen once before: on the day of my blessing, when she'd bowed her head to Odile and said please.
"Ten years ago, an elite-led tide came out of that forest," Naomi said. "Greymark held for days before help came."
"I know," said the princess quietly. "Your mother and father."
"Yes."
In my chest, Naomi's lantern burned very steady. Too steady. The way it does when she's holding it still on purpose.
"So I'm asking, Your Highness," Naomi said. "Your knights. All twenty-one, until it's over. And a rider to Sanctara, tonight."
The princess looked at the map.
Then she looked at me.
I didn't know what she saw. A short boy in a navy doublet who'd stopped at eight. A Saint whose well might be deeper than it should be. Somebody's little brother.
She opened her mouth.
"Countess—"
The bell started.
Not the slow, heavy toll for a fire. The fast one. Clang-clang-clang-clang, over and over, so quick the notes ran into each other.
I'd only heard that bell once in my life.
I was seven. My sisters held me at the gate while it rang, and Mother and Father rode out under it, and they didn't come back.
Beth's spear came off her shoulder in one motion. The princess's hand was on her sword. Hana was on her feet with both hands pressed over her mouth, and Marika was already halfway to the door.
Naomi was at the window before the third ring.
I was right behind her, because nobody had told me not to be.
Out past the last fields, the Gloamwood's dark line sat where it always sat. The sun was going down behind us, and the trees were turning from green to black.
And the tree line was moving.
Shapes were pouring out from under the branches, low and fast and dark, too many to count. Even from here, I could hear it. A howl. Then another. Then a hundred, all at once, rolling across the fields like thunder.
I reached for the pitcher in my chest without meaning to.
I'd woken up full. Eight splashes at the gate this afternoon. A few hours of refilling since.
Eleven, maybe.
Not full. Not even close.
"Tide," said Naomi.
And for the first time in days, the Gloamwood wasn't silent anymore.