“Thank you,” Forlin said. “Last time we had a horse here, we fed winterwards.”

The rangers filled their packs and left, their footprints showing clearly on the snow-covered trail. Arian packed her own gear, tied her mount outside the lean-to horse shelter, and cleaned that, leaving a shovel of manure under each of the trees on the summerwards side of the clearing. The others had already raked the coals out and dumped snow on them. She scoured the pot they’d made porridge in, gathered more wood and stacked it with the rest in the hut, and brought in a bucket of water from the spring. By then the coals were cool; she ran her hand over the fire-pit and found no warmth that could kindle into dangerous flame.

With the camp tidy and ready for the next visitor, she had nothing more to do, but felt reluctant to leave. She leaned against a yellowwood tree, ungloved hands open on its broad-furrowed bark, hoping the taig would open to her. That tree responded, but when she tried to reach the larger taig, once more she could not. Tears filled her eyes; she thanked the tree, then stood back. No doubt now that she had been right to leave Chaya, if the taig still refused her.

She decided then to go to Tsaia, where she’d never been, and find Dorrin Verrakai. Dorrin had known Kieri for years … she would understand his actions, perhaps even his thoughts, as Arian could not yet. Though that would not matter, so long as the taig would not open for her and Kieri.

Two days later, she crossed the border on a trail Brek and Taris had told her of. “The Verrakaien use it to come here. No reason you can’t use it the other way; you’re a Squire, after all.” The forest on the other side of the invisible line looked the same, smelled the same. It had a taig, of sorts—she could sense it, unlike the taig of Lyonya. She sensed damage in it, but recent healing. Even so much connection eased her heart, and strengthened her belief that she had been right to come this way.

She rode cautiously, aware that some in Tsaia might think her an invader. Once more she wished she had not left her Squire’s tabard back in Chaya; it would have given her legitimacy. For most of a day she saw no sign of human habitation other than stumps of trees someone had cut—here five or six, there a single one. Toward evening, she smelled smoke and halted. Foresters? A farmstead tucked into the woods? Or—far more dangerous—brigands, even fugitive Verrakai?

Dismounting, she slipped the bit from her mount’s mouth and tied on a nosebag with a few oats to occupy his mind while she went scouting. The low winter sun, this late, barely lighted the forest, though a few gleams picked out a lichen here, a tuft of moss there, far up on the tree trunks. Now she could hear voices—male voices—and she moved ever more carefully, alert to every hint the forest could provide. Smoke from an open fire: dried wood, not green. Oak and cedar, she thought. The breeze, moving toward her, brought a whiff of horse and some kind of meat cooking.