That only made her think about where that bed was going to be. In the middle of winter. In the wilderness. Would it be in the dubious shelter of this ruined tower? Or in a tent? In the snow?

Had Jonaton even thought about any of this? Or was he just concentrating on the tasks at hand? Hakkon probably wouldn’t mind beds on cold, hard ground, but surely Jonaton would be as miserable as she was going to be!

And what about the Circle? They were all old men—

But they seemed made of whipcord and tanned sinew, and surely they already knew how awful this was going to be, and they didn’t seem to care. They even seemed to be happier, as if going from an easy life in a manor to swatting waterbugs in a wilderness, until they finished mummifying, was an invigorating playtime! Even their endless banter, swatting at each other, and quibbling, had tilted lately into increasingly absurd accusations of behavior she was probably too young to know about.

The mages—who still looked exhausted—lined up on their packs in front of what would be the horse Gate. She sat behind the Gate uprights where Jonaton put her and worried over it all without paying any attention to what Jonaton was doing. Besides, it wasn’t as if this was the cellar, where the whole place was alight with glowing diagrams and sigils. This was out in the open and broad daylight, and frankly it just looked like Jonaton was doing some sort of absurd dance. Her mind just kept going around and around in an endless, bleak play of how horrible it was all going to be, and how she couldn’t do anything about it.

She only looked up when the waiting mages broke out into weary applause, picked up their packs, and started filing through the Gate in groups of two and three, because there was plenty of room for that between those uprights. It was . . . unsettling, to watch them walking toward her, then suddenly disappearing.

Finally there was no one left on the round peninsula but her, Jonaton, and Alberdina. Jonaton staggered a little; Alberdina jumped to her feet and caught him. She handed him a leather bottle, and he drank everything in it down in several long gulps.

“Better?” she asked.

He nodded, as strangers suddenly started appearing between the Gate uprights, laden with all manner of boxes, bundles, and packs. They headed straight for the ruins as if they knew exactly what they were doing—which they probably did. There was a plan, after all. Just because she didn’t know what was in it, it didn’t follow that Isla had neglected to attend to the least little detail.