Fawn dipped her knees. “How de’ do?”

“And she is…?” said the man dubiously.

“She’s with me.” Something distinctly firm in Dag’s voice discouraged further questions, and the two patrollers, after civil if still curious nods at Fawn, led the way inside.

Fawn had only a glimpse of the entry hall, featuring a tall wooden counter and archways leading off to some big rooms, before she followed the patrollers up a staircase with a time-polished banister, cool and smooth under her hesitant fingertips. One flight up, they turned into a hallway lined with doors on either side and a glass window set in the end for light.

“You partner’s mostly lucid today, although he still keeps claiming you brought him back from the dead,” said the man over his shoulder.

“He wasn’t dead,” said Dag.

The man shot a look at the woman. “Told you.”

“His heart had stopped and he’d quit breathing, was all.”

Fawn blinked in bafflement. And, she was heartened to see, she wasn’t the only one.

“Er…’’ The man stopped outside a door with a brass number 6 on it. “Pardon, sir? I’d always been taught it was too risky to match grounds with someone mortally injured, and unworkable to block the pain at speed.”

“Likely.” Dag shrugged. “I just skipped the extras and went in and out fast.”

“Oh,” said the woman in a voice of enlightenment that Fawn did not share.

The man blurted, “Didn’t it hurt?”

Dag gave him a long, slow look. Fawn was very glad it wasn’t her at the focus, because that look could surely reduce people to grease spots on the floor. Dag gave the other patroller a moment more to melt—precisely timed, she was suddenly certain—then nodded at the door. The woman hastened to open it.

Dag passed in. If the two patrollers had been respectful before, the look they now exchanged behind his back was downright daunted. The woman glanced at Fawn doubtfully but did not attempt to exclude her as she slipped through the door in Dag’s wake.

The room had cutwork linen curtains, pushed open and moving gently in the summer air, and flanking the window two beds with feather ticks atop straw ticks. One was empty, though it had gear and saddlebags piled on the floor at its foot. So did the other, but in it lay an—inevitably—tall young man. His hair was light brown, unbraided, and spread out upon his pillow. A rumpled sheet was pulled up to his chest, where his torso was wrapped around with bandages. He stared listlessly at the ceiling, his pale brow wrinkled. When he turned his head at the sound of steps and recognized his visitor, the pain in his face transformed to joy so fast it looked like a flash flood washing over him.

“Dag! You made it!” He laughed, coughed, grimaced, and moaned. “Ow. Knew you would!”