He looked at her as if he wondered about her sanity, but answered. “Normally, long robes, either red or black. But they’re passing as us, remember? They’ll be dressed normally, probably in clothing they bought somewhere around here.”

“Or stole from someone they murdered,” Abi muttered.

“Bloody hell. So they can come across country without getting tangled up, which means instead of coming up the road, they could come from any direction—”

That was when Abi noticed something as she finally went to sheath her dagger. While it wasn’t glowing—the point was blood-red.

That’s . . . odd. Experimentally, she moved it around. The further away from south-southeast she pointed it, the less of the point was red.

“They could—but they won’t,” she said, as sure of that as she was of her own name. “Look.”

She held up her dagger. Jicks blinked, then lifted the second, temporarily forgotten dagger and repeated the experiment.

And grinned.

“Now we can set up an ambush.”

But to Abi’s bewilderment, the first thing she did was go to the wagon. “Abi, make us something to eat, please,” she said, handing out supplies. “Korlak, start cleaning up the bits. Your crow—”

“—is already eating them,” Korlak said. “I think we can leave him to it, there are not that many bits left. I think the demons must have eaten most of them.”

“Good, then come here, please.” As Abi portioned out traveler’s biscuits and dried meat, Korlak went to the back of the wagon and came away burdened with the grain sacks Jicks had thriftily stowed away as they used them for the entire trip. He staggered over to where Abi was eating and resolutely ignoring the crow, who, having stuffed himself, was now carrying more bits off to hide in the grass, bracken, and gorse.

“Oh! Grass suits!” exclaimed Stev, who evidently recognized immediately what she was about to do.

“If those bastards stay passed out long enough, we can have ourselves four sets by noon,” Jicks said, with a grim smile. “You show Korlak what to collect. Bring a big pile--I want these things done right.” She sat down with a traveler’s biscuit between her teeth and began unpicking the seams of the bags. Well, I can do that, Abi thought, and joined her.

When they had twelve bags unpicked, Jicks started sewing them together. “Three bags per suit should be enough,” Jicks said. “Make it like a burlap blanket.”

Meanwhile, Korlak and Stev went out into the area around them and began selectively harvesting long grass, branches of brush that were not gorse, and bracken fronds, making three separate piles. By the time Abi and Jicks got done sewing together four burlap “blankets,” they had three tall piles.