The holystone post also marked a crossroads where a secondary path headed east up a notch, into the surrounding hills. The main path swung southeast along the base of the valley, toward a pass farther south. Elen took the secondary path.

For an hour, they walked at a brisk pace, keeping the party close together. She listened for telltale signs that someone was following but heard no voices, no tramp of feet. The path unfolded with its familiar landmarks: the foundation of a brick oven where a house had once stood, the bricks long since carried away to build other structures; stone steps set into a steep slope and, at the top, beneath a rocky outcrop, an overhang where a person could shelter in the event of a storm; beyond it, a path through dense forest.

They passed an ancient spruce so large its carpet of decaying needles kept the ground clear of new growth in a circle around it. Without a word, she led them around to the back of the spruce and showed them where to duck through its scratchy branches, into a gap of space where one of the lower branches was missing. Here she had once waited out a blizzard. She left them beneath the pungent branches. After checking the ground around the tree to make sure they’d not dropped anything, she scuffed the path ahead for a ways before circling back.

Just in time. As she slid beneath the branches into where the others hunkered in silence, they heard the tramp of feet, a big party approaching. By feel, she climbed to a spot where she could see over the path without being seen. As far as she knew, no one else had ever sussed out this shelter.

A group of twenty-two people passed in a file. They were armed with long bows, crossbows, swords, spears, and one brutish-looking halberd. About half had faces she recognized from the archon’s household. The others wore stylish heartland caps and less elaborate approximations of the fly-whisk braids that looked so handsome on the prince. One wore the yellow headband of an official palace messenger, as well as a brass ring around their upper arm to mark their service to the palace. She scanned them closely, thinking she might see Duenn’s militia captain or maybe the man she thought of as Gloves. But she saw no one she recognized from Lord Duenn’s entourage. She was stamping her own fears, her own history, onto something that had nothing to do with her and Kem’s past.