“You wanna put that away?” Ayla said from off to the left. “We’re not doing anything. We’re just travelers.”

The boy’s eyes were fixed on Crier. “No such thing as just travelers in these woods. You’re coming with me.”

“To where?” Ayla said.

“We mean no harm,” Crier managed.

He shook his head, bolt still aimed at Crier’s chest. “Can’t trust nobody snooping around a spot like this. You’re coming with me.”

Crier and Ayla exchanged a look. Crier’s look was, Let’s cooperate. He might know something about the blue smoke. Ayla’s mostly involved wide eyes and dark, angry eyebrows, but Crier chose to interpret it as, Yes, good plan.

The boy made Crier and Ayla circle around to walk in front of him. “Don’t try anything,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon. You run off now, you’re Shade bait for sure. You’re good as dead.”

“You know, I think you attract trouble,” Ayla whispered to Crier, ducking under a low, thorny branch.

Do I, though? Crier almost asked.

Another half hour of tense, silent hiking, the sun sinking beneath the tree line, and they reached their destination. The boy with the crossbow had led them to a heartstone keep: a stone silo where heartstone dust was stored before traders picked it up and sold it throughout Zulla. A hundred-odd heartstone keeps dotted the foothills of the Aderos Mountains, always heavily guarded by the Watchers of the Heart. But this one had clearly been abandoned for years. The outer walls were more green than gray from soft, springy moss between the stones, tendrils of ivy snaking up the outer walls, patches of pale lichen everywhere. The roof was less of a roof and more a blanket of moss, a deep green fur speckled with tiny white stardrops.

“Inside,” said the boy, gesturing at the thick wooden door.

Crier’s eyes adjusted, and she saw she’d stepped into a big circular room with a low ceiling. The keep was dark and cool. Stone steps curved up one wall, leading to an upper floor. The only other notable feature was a hearth big enough to comfortably roast a boar. And, of course, the keep wasn’t empty. Half a dozen humans were milling around, polishing weapons or resting on mats on the floor. They’d all looked up when the door opened, heads turning in unison like startled deer.

“Fen? What’s going on?” one asked.

“Found ’em skulking around the last camp. Taking ’em to Dinara,” said the boy, Fen. To Crier and Ayla, he said, “Up the stairs. Go.”

They climbed the stone steps single file, Crier in the lead. At the top, another wooden door opened into a room small enough that it must have been where the Watchers used to sleep; it would have held three or four cots and not much else. The wall was lined with slit-like windows, wide enough only to aim an arrow through. Late-afternoon sunlight, warm and honey-colored, fell in narrow strips across the dusty floor. There was a doorway in one corner, a blanket acting as a curtain.