“No, the horse did that,” Tier said as he helped her strip boots and dirty clothing off Lehr, who didn’t even twitch. “Jes is out tending the mare.”

When they were through, Tier helped Seraph tug the bedding around Lehr.

“I’ll go out and finish taking care of the horse,” Tier said. “Jes doesn’t look much better than Lehr—though he’s still on his feet—but he wouldn’t leave that damned mare to wait on me.”

“Someone taught him to be stubborn,” Seraph said coolly.

Tier grinned at her tiredly and touched her cheek. “They’re all right, Empress,” he told her. “Worn-out, not hurt. Relax.”

Seraph waited until Jes finished the stew and bread she’d warmed for him before she folded her arms, and said, “Tell me.”

Jes smiled faintly in her direction, the expression making him look even more exhausted. It made her feel guilty for pushing him. Guilt always made her angry. Even when she had no cause. She raised her eyebrows.

“Don’t know where to start,” he said, the smile dying more quickly than it had come. “Rongier’s clan is dead. So is the town of Colbern. Lehr sealed the walls so that no one will go in there until it’s safe again.”

Seraph sat down, careful to keep her back straight and her face controlled. Control was important.

“You found the entire city dead?” asked Tier. “Of plague? There aren’t many diseases that will kill that many.”

Lehr groaned from the bed, then sat up. “Gods take it,” he swore—a common Rederni oath, though Seraph had never heard him use it. “If I let Jes tell it, you’ll never figure out what happened—but when I’m finished I get to go back to sleep.”

He sat up cross-legged, put his elbows on his knees, and rested his head on his hands as if it ached. “Jes showed up before I was a full day out. We followed the map, and it was a shortcut to Colbern.”

In concise, tired sentences Lehr described what they had found. Seraph listened without interrupting as he told them about Brewydd and shadow plague.

“I think she thought she’d made us immune to it,” Lehr mumbled. “But we caught it right enough, both Jes and I. I don’t know why we didn’t die like everyone else.”

“The Guardian thinks that Brewydd saved us,” added Jes. “I’m not a healer, but I could drive the shadow away—he says that if—if it were buried in illness, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. So we got shadow-sick, but not the actual illness that the Shadowed used to carry the taint.” He took a bag off his belt and handed it to Seraph. “Brewydd told me to give you this.”

She could feel them though the leather of the bag. Mermori. Each one standing for death and more death. Benroln had had five, he’d said.

“Both of you go to sleep, now,” said Tier, his eyes on her face. “Your mother and I are going for a walk. Lehr, do you want food? Jes has put enough food away for any four men. You have to be hungry.”

Lehr shook his head, once, very firmly, rolled back flat, and pulled his bedding over his head.

Seraph left the bag on the table when she got up to go to the door. It wouldn’t matter. If she threw them in the sea, they would still come back to her. She couldn’t escape them. The symbols of her dying people and of her guilt.

Seraph let her grief-fed anger power her strides as she walked up the steep path that the boys had ridden down. As she walked, she remembered the faces of the people of Rongier’s clan. They were all dead, as her own clan was dead. As Tier would be dead. All her fault.

Control, she thought.

It was dangerous to be angry when you were a Raven. Ravens don’t cry. Tears don’t solve anything. Angrily, she wiped her eyes.

She was aware that Tier followed behind her, letting her set the pace, letting her keep a little distance between them.

If we hadn’t been in such a hurry to get home, she thought. If we’d gone with Benroln, then there would have been Jes and Lehr to see the shadow and Hennea and me to help fight it. A Traveler shouldn’t have a home—it was just one more distraction from their job of fighting the Stalker and his minions.

“What’s done is gone, lass,” said Tier. She didn’t know if she’d spoken her thoughts out loud, or if he just knew what she was thinking. “Your clan had Raven and Eagle and assorted other Orders, and no one was able to stop the plague that killed them. If we’d gone with Benroln, like as not, we’d only have died, too. Of all the people in the city, Brewydd managed only to save our sons. If I die from this problem with my Order, that won’t be your fault either. You didn’t put the spells on me—the Path’s wizards did.”

Seraph stopped. The thought of Tier’s possible danger had put an odd icy calm between her and her anger. It was soothing to feel nothing.

“You’re right,” she said. “The plagues that killed my clan and so many others—and allowed the Path to sew its minions amongst the Septs like poison weeds—it was all shadow-driven. The Shadowed is… has destroyed my people apurpose. Is trying to destroy you.”

Pain flared through her as she spoke the last sentence.

A pain that was buried behind ice, she reminded herself swiftly. She didn’t feel anything now. She was Raven. She was in control.

“That’s how I see it,” Tier said, his voice wary.

The tone surprised her: she was calm now, why was he worried? She turned but before her eyes fell upon him there was a loud crackling pop beside her.

A rock on the trail beside her exploded into powder. Bits sliced by her, leaving small cuts in her Rederni skirts and the skin within them. Had she done that? The shock of it broke through the ice.

“Emotion and magic don’t mix,” said Tier softly, taking her hand. “Burying the anger and grief just makes it worse—haven’t you learned that much from Jes?”

She closed her eyes. “I can’t be angry. I can’t grieve. I can’t—” She bit her lip. “Whining doesn’t seem to help either.”

Hard arms closed around her and surrounded her with his scent and his warmth. “Let me help,” he said. “And I’ll let you help me, too.”

He led her off the trail and through the trees to a small clearing with a small creek, soft grass, and shade. In that small private place he took her anger and his own, turning it to something else with touch and soft murmured words—something warm and alive and triumphant.

Afterward, naked, breathless, sweaty, and temporarily at peace, Seraph said, “We are going to Colossae to find the wizards’ great library. Brewydd thought that was the advice she’d stayed alive to give us—such things have their own power. We’ll find what we need to fix what the Path has done to you. We’ll find the means to combat this new Shadowed. Then we’ll destroy him so that he will cause no more harm.”

She didn’t tell him they didn’t know where Colossae was. She didn’t tell him that even if they managed to find the library, it was unlikely either she or Hennea would be able to find what they needed or even read it if they did. She didn’t tell him that even if they found everything Brewydd had told Lehr they might find, the chances that she could help Tier with it were poor. She didn’t tell him a Shadowed who had lived almost two centuries was unlikely to be easily dealt with. She didn’t have to—he already knew.

“All right,” said Tier, his voice a comforting rumble under her ear. “Where do we start?”

Jes was sitting on the bench on the porch when she and Tier returned. Although his face was still grey and drawn, he all but vibrated with repressed energy.

“They’re all here,” he said. “Hennea, Phoran, and his guardsmen. Lehr woke up long enough to tell them about Colbern and Benroln’s clan, but he went back to sleep.”

“Are you all right?” Tier asked. “Are you getting sick?”

Jes shook his head. “Lehr got it first, and the Guardian cleaned the shadow from me when he cared for Lehr. Just tired. Too many people inside.”