Now the Bayars knew he was a wizard, and that he was heading south. At least they wouldn’t know what he was up to or where he was going. Han rather liked the notion of the Bayars wondering and worrying about where he’d surface next, and what he’d do when he did.

C H A P T E R  T H R E E

IN THE
AUTUMN DAMPS

Raisa shivered and pulled her wool cloak more closely around her shoulders. Soggy with rain and glazed with ice, it probably weighed more than she did. She scooted closer to the fire, extending her frozen hands. Steam rose from the sodden fabric.

Maybe if she actually sat in the flames, she’d be warm again. She already smelled like a wet sheep toasted over a wood fire.

It had taken a week to cross the high country between Demonai Camp and the West Wall. A week of freezing weather and early autumn snows, of huddling together in tents while the wind howled outside. Raisa had foolishly assumed that the weather would improve as they descended toward Leewater, the ocean to the west she’d never seen.

In that she’d been mistaken. The early high country snows turned to sleet and icy rains—relentless storms that rendered the trails treacherous. They’d been camped for a week in this miserable between-place. They’d pitched their tents in a small box canyon that blocked the worst of the winds, and waited for the weather to clear.

It would have been easier traveling by way of the Dyrnnewater Valley, which ran through a break in the Spirits from Fellsmarch to the West Wall. But there was too great a chance they’d be intercepted on the easy road.

“Lady Rebecca?”

It took Raisa a moment to realize she was being addressed. When she looked up, the cadet Hallie Talbot loomed over her, extending a mug of hot tea.

“Call me Morley,” Raisa said automatically, accepting the tea and sipping the hot liquid. She shouldn’t allow Hallie to wait on her, but it took more strength than she possessed to say no.

Rebecca Morley was her alias, meant to hide her from those hunting the runaway princess heir of the Fells. The other Gray Wolves believed she was a daughter of the minor nobility whose parents had bribed her way into the military academy at Oden’s Ford. Nobody knew who she really was but her friend Amon Byrne.

Early on, Raisa had asked Hallie to cut her hair, to alter her looks. The cadet had obliged using her belt knife. Hallie’s skills as a barber were dubious. The result was a ragged cap that reached to Raisa’s earlobe on one side and her chin on the other.