Ayla curled up by the window with the notebook open on her lap. At first she practiced writing out her letters and symbols, writing out different combinations in concentric circles, like she’d seen on the door to the alchemy library back in the queen’s palace. After a while, she found herself letting the charcoal trace across the page, forming not letters but . . . shapes, swirling lines. One line for the horizon, charcoal scraped horizontally to shade in the sky, tiny marks for the shrubs that covered the hills like spores. Black tangles of tree and brush. The final result was messy and childlike, all the lines shaky; Ayla’s hand wasn’t used to holding charcoal; she did not write. But it was recognizable as a drawing of her surroundings.

She turned to a new page and kept going.

She drew the Bone Tree. As best she could remember it.

She drew the sun apple orchards from the sovereign’s palace, the low outbuildings where the servants lived and worked. She drew flowers: apple blossoms and salt lavender and roses. She drew, and the hours fell away like curtains to reveal the purple dusk. Outside the carriage window, darkness swallowed the shrubland, but Ayla kept drawing, the page lit only by the single lantern dangling from the carriage ceiling, a flickering yellow light. They’d be nearing the first border village by now, a small outpost a couple miles off the shores of Lake Thea. The plan was to stop there overnight; a traveler’s inn was the perfect place to overhear whispers from all corners of Zulla.

As they veered back toward the River Merra, the scrubby trees became bigger, the space between them smaller, until they were bumping along a muddy road through what could generously be called a forest, a thick green lining both sides of the river. Ayla drew the river, picturing a map of Zulla in her mind and trying to get all the curves and bends right. It began in the Far North as snowmelt, cut down through the heart of Zulla, fed into by Lake Thea and continuing down into Varn, merging at last with the Steorran Sea. . . . Ayla dropped her eyes to look at her own drawing and tried to pinpoint where she was right now. How close to the river were they? She strained her ears, listening for the sound of rushing water, of the riverbank frogs that sang even in winter—

“TURN BACK!”

The nub of charcoal skittered across the page, a rough black scar. All four guards tensed, hands flying to their weapons.

“TURN BACK,” the voice of their scout came again, and with the crack of a whip the carriage shuddered to a stop. “GO, GO,” the scout yelled from outside, somewhere in the dark. “TURN BACK NOW—BANDITS UP AHEAD—JUST OFF THE RIVER—THEY’VE SPOTTED THE CARR—”

A whistling noise, an odd thnk, a wordless cry of pain.

Then, the sound a body made when it fell from a horse.