But you had to shit. She squatted, strained, and finished her business as quickly as she could, cleaning herself with a handful of grass.

Today was misty but not as ferociously cold as it had been, and the marsh might be unfrozen at the center. So, carefully, she walked down to its rough shore and picked her way over frozen mud and puddles of sheer ice. She came to a patch of open, slushy water, where dead reeds, brown and lank, floated like hair. She bent and reached into the ice-cold water to pull the reeds aside. But she felt a sharp pain.

She pulled back her arm. Her palm had been gashed, and bright red blood, the brightest color in a landscape of gray and green-brown, dripped down her arm, mingling with the water that clung to her skin.

Marina came to her nervously. “What is it?”

“I think I’ve been bitten. Perhaps a pike—”

Marina inspected her hand. “That looks like no bite to me. You need to wash that off . . .”

“Yes.” Regina bent to peer into the water. Through the layer of reeds she could see no fish. But she did make out a bright gleam, like a coin in a well. More cautiously, with her good hand, she reached down and explored. It was hard to judge the depth of the murky water. She quickly found something hard and flat—a blade. Carefully she took hold of it between thumb and forefinger, and pulled it out.

It was a knife. Its iron blade was heavily rusted, but its hilt, of bright yellow metal engraved with swooping circular designs, seemed unmarked. “I think this is gold,” she said, wondering.

Marina was unimpressed. “Old Exsuperius would probably give you a bag of beans for the iron, nothing for the gold,” she said, businesslike.

“I wonder how it got here.”

“An offering,” said Marina unexpectedly. “To the river. When you die—you give it your armor, your weapons, your treasure. It’s what they always did, away from the towns. Like they did before . . . We probably pulled it up when we tugged on the reeds.”

A dead man’s hoard. It was an eerie thought, and Regina glanced around uneasily at the mist-laden, murky landscape.