“Oh, no, no, no, not me, Deputy Courier. We never come up here, nor walk beyond our moat at night. But my granfa’ told me, he did. Said when he were young, he lost a friend to a haunt. The lad went to the Spires on a dare one moon-bright night. Came walking down at dawn with a different set to his face and a stranger’s eyes. Walked right past his family as if he didn’t know them and never returned home again.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about your granfa’s story.”

“You have?” he asked, startled.

“Indeed I have.” She hadn’t, but Elen was a cheerful liar. It wasn’t that she thought lying was good but that she’d learned when a certain kind of lie oiled a string that would otherwise ravel into a knot. Sometimes people simply would not listen. It wasn’t that she faulted them for closing their ears to answers they didn’t want to hear or couldn’t understand or were afraid of. But there were times it was pointless to argue or try to persuade, so she’d stopped trying. “After that incident, wardens set a warding circle inside the central courtyard to keep out the haunts, protected by a holystone pavement.”

The elder nodded wisely, although his eyes creased with uncertainty. “Yes, it’s true there is holystone inside. I’ve seen it.”

Urnesso smiled, an expression more desperate than cheerful. “But you would honor us with your presence, if we might host you overnight, Deputy Courier. It would be our honor and duty.”

“It’s just not possible, Tiller,” she replied in a pleasant tone, making sure to use his title instead of his name. “Inspecting the Spires is part of my rounds for the intendant. Each season I make sure the warding is still intact. It’s just turned autumn, so I must shelter there overnight and refuse your kind invitation.”

Studying Urnesso’s hopeful expression, she accepted that she was using lies to fend off a proposal he would keep pressing because he didn’t know what else to do, who else to ask, how else to manage when he had to toil in marginally yielding fields all day among a scatter of five households, none of whom could quite feed themselves on the valley’s agriculturally impoverished land. One of his children had died last winter of an illness the little one had been too malnourished to survive. Kem had forgotten, but Elen didn’t forget what she saw in this hamlet and in the hill villages. She did what she could, and she lied when she had to. Lies were how she and Aoving had survived. Truth was better. Truth was what you aimed for when you drew your bow in life. But truth could so swiftly kill people who had no one to protect them, and she was glad to be alive.