She reached the gate and paused outside it. The scene within was much as she had last seen it. Vincent lay with his hands tied to the trellis. She hazarded a guess that they were afraid he would attempt to vanish, and so wanted him in plain sight at all times. A single sentinel patrolled in front of the trellis. Around the farmyard, other French soldiers lounged and diced.

Steeling herself, Jane waited until the sentinel faced away from her, then undid the latch and let it swing open. She slipped through quickly, and stood within the yard of Gemioncourt.

Her path to the trellis could not follow a straight line, as she had to avoid the shadows of out buildings and trees at intervals throughout the property. Instead, she followed a circuitous route which reminded her of the shrubbery maze at her parents’ home. By creeping along and pausing to let soldiers pass before her, Jane managed to reach the trellis without incident.

She went to the back side of it rather than the front, and knelt in the sun by the lattice. So close to her husband, Jane caught her breath at the sight of him. Vincent’s head lolled against the upright post of the trellis. Bruises mottled his exposed skin. The flesh above his right eye had split open, and a fly buzzed around the dried blood that caked there. His hair lay matted against his scalp. Jane had thought she had taken the wounds on her manikin too far, but none of it matched the horror of what they had done to her husband.

The emotions which she had struggled to govern during the course of the past week now threatened to overwhelm her. Though she longed to let Vincent know she was there, she dared not risk the sound of her voice carrying. She could not even approach too closely without the Sphère obscuring him too soon. Lowering her bag from her shoulder, Jane settled as quietly as she could in the sunlit space by the trellis. She placed the Sphère Obscurcie on the ground next to her, careful not to let her own shadow fall upon it.

Positioned close to the wall as it was, she was in no danger of a soldier walking through the spot she occupied. Jane withdrew a leather case, unfolding it to reveal the slender glass rod she had commissioned. The rod had been ground down to dull its sheen, and bent at an angle a few inches from the end.

She slid the rod forward until its tip was in the loose dirt under the trellis in what she hoped was Vincent’s line of sight. As black and swollen as his eye was, she was not entirely certain that he could open it.

Carefully, she wrote in the dirt:

VINCENT. IT IS JANE.