“That’s a fine figure of speech, Your Highness,” said Luviara. “If a curious one.”

“I am a curious fellow,” he said with a mocking lift of his eyebrows.

The wardens looked at each other and looked at him. He was getting too relaxed.

Elen said, “What do you mean, Your Highness?”

“This is a route smugglers would take if they were going to or from the crossing, yes. But what about bandits who might lurk in this area, meaning to prey on passing wagons?”

“Something’s off,” said Jirvy.

At his quiet words, everyone peered around as if expecting a crowd of bandits to jump out of thin air.

Simo rearranged the order of march. He and Elen walked at the front, with Jirvy and Xilsi bringing up the rear, and the others in the middle. They moved cautiously, pausing often to make little side trips to check out places where people might be hiding. Many signs indicated that they were coming closer to the road: an area where small-scale logging had left stumps, an old charcoal-making site, the marks of recent grazing in a meadow. There was a crude shelter for shepherd and sheep, which was ringed by a hallow-wood-lined ditch that could be filled with water but whose bottom was only a slimy mess of mud. The shelter’s gate was secured, and the interior was tidy, but empty of everything except a neat pile of firewood stacked beside a crude stone hearth. Jirvy thought the place hadn’t been used for several months.

Soon after, Elen and the captain saw, farther off, the remains of overgrown gardens around an old village foundation, surely abandoned. Simo pointed toward the tumbledown buildings, some lacking roofs. Was that a thread of smoke winding heavenward from out of a broken window of one of the still-roofed cottages?

“How many?” she whispered, thinking of the spirit Simo had used to see swalters when they were in the hill country.

He held up three fingers.

Coming up beside Simo, the haunt followed the captain’s gaze, and smiled in a predatory fashion. He indicated himself, Simo, Jirvy, and Xilsi.

Simo said to Elen, “You and the others take cover back behind those trees.”

Elen did not argue. The wardens had training and weapons she lacked. Deputy couriers relied on their connections, familiarity, and the threat of the intendant’s authority to avoid trouble. None of those would work here. She, Luviara, Fulmo, Ipis, and Kem retreated in silence. Ipis set up Kem and herself as guards, keeping an eye on the other directions in case there were other hostile people prowling about. Elen wedged herself up a tree, trying to get a better look.

For a long time she saw only glimpses of the haunt and the three wardens circling in from different directions toward the cluster of buildings. There, Jirvy at the outer edge of the village. Simo, crouched by the well.