Past the last of the rotting fences, about fifty paces downslope from the lane on a level terrace of abandoned field, lay a sprawl of giant bones. Kem glanced that way nervously and as quickly away, as if just looking at the bones could kill him. Everyone she had ever escorted on this route did the same. But with a youth’s impetuous change of heart, he grinned as he looked ahead along the path. He pointed toward the knob of rock atop the ridge that marked the lookout. She let him run ahead while she slowed her steps, studying the ground for any signs of disturbance between the lane and the bones. Nothing obvious marked the tough grass and clumps of scrubby bushes, but she’d been on edge since her encounter with the haunt. Instinct nudged her. Her skin prickled as if it sensed a texture in the air that wasn’t meant to be there. A bell’s reverberating tone. The rose-oil scent. Were they warnings of an imminent irruption, or just her imagination?

Couriers walked their routes every month. In their own way, couriers were as crucial to knitting together the empire as Manor-born administrators, wardens, and surveyors, even if, unlike these exalted officials, couriers were humbly born people who happened to be hardy, clever, and bold enough to do the work. The most dangerous part of a courier’s work was not walking alone on long, lonely routes, winter and summer—it was keeping an eye open for glimmers of Spore, whose caps and blooms could erupt anywhere, at any time. It was having the tools and the training to eradicate the first signs of an irruption before its tendrils took hold in living tissue and burst like seedpods to inundate a surrounding area.

She left the lane and walked toward the bone pile, careful where she set her feet. About twenty paces from the bones, she set down her pack on a flat slab of rock grown thick with lichen and pitted with water erosion. A flash of movement startled her, but it was just a field mouse that had taken shelter against the rock, equally surprised by her arrival. It scuttled off into the undergrowth, freezing in the shade to stare at her with black eyes. Its fur was a smooth golden-brown, untouched by any sign of sickly corruption. As she took off her jacket, the mouse vanished into the bushes.

She draped the jacket across the rock. Then she checked her goatskin gloves for signs of wear that might expose bare skin. That was the first lesson couriers-in-training learned: Never get sloppy. Sloppy meant you were dead, or worse than dead.