Anji blinked, lowering her gaze to the cathedral’s altar, to a giant, shattered art-glass window and the tiny fire flickering at its base. She clenched her stiff fingers and stepped over the rotted remains of a pew, carpet squelching beneath her boots.

A lithe figure stood near the firelight’s rim, arms spread wide.

The Bear was one of the tallest women Anji had ever seen. She towered over the cluttered nave, her back to the fire, the flames casting her shadow toward Anji like a drawn blade, splitting the dying sun’s stained glow. Despite herself, Anji felt her feet inching closer, as though commanded to do so. As she approached, Anji could make out the strong lines of the mask, bone white, cut as if by a saw from one solid hunk of granite. Where the Lynx’s mask had been etched in a snarl, the Bear’s was stoic—thoughtful, even.

“Have a seat,” said the Bear, gesturing at the uncluttered floor around the altar. “I have prepared some food and a little to drink.” She looked sidelong at the Ox. “One knows I’ve had plenty of time to prepare for you.”

“We got held up—”

The Bear cut the air with her palm, silencing the Ox at once. She kept her mask fixed on Anji, who was now fully in the fire’s light.

Around the fire lay an assortment of pots and pans, rope, a cutting board made of burnished wood, and a cloth sack bulging at the sides. A sleeping roll and woolen blanket lay outside the fire’s ring, brown and homespun and thin, but it made Anji’s back ache at the thought of lying down.

“Sit,” the Bear said, her voice slapping against the inside of the mask. “I’ll not have it said we were inhospitable.”

Anji had no response to that—none she felt comfortable voicing—so with a final look at the Ox, whose mask betrayed no emotion, she sat.

The warmth spread to her torso and limbs like a salve the moment she crossed her legs over the dingy carpet. She held numb hands out to the popping flames, flexing and wincing at the pain in her fingers as blood began pumping into her veins once more.

“Better?” the Bear’s voice sounded, followed like a wraith by her body, which settled across Anji on the fire’s opposite side.

In the full light, Anji guessed the woman was of an age with the Hawk. Her jaw was wrinkled and liver-spotted, hair receding and streaked with wisps of gray mixed with jet black.

“You were admiring the fresco,” said the Bear. She pointed a gloved finger toward the ceiling.

“Yes,” Anji croaked.

The Bear clicked her tongue and gave her head a tiny shake before leaning to the fire’s side and picking up a polished brass pot. “The cup next to you, dear, if you please.”