Wren winged over the white valley. Everywhere she looked, the snowfall of the evening before lay untrampled on the ground. She hadn’t had much hope of finding a trail near the burned out husk of the Cotter farm, because it had been clear that the fire had been set - and the family hanged - hours before. If the raiders were smart, they’d come in the midst of the snowstorm, when low visibility would have shielded their bloody work from sight of the guards on Whitehill’s walls.

Then, once they’d finished their killing and set the buildings alight, they would have set out back to their camp and trusted in the steady accumulation throughout the dark hours before morning to mask their trail.

Hoping to pick up a trail that had been blazed through the snow toward the end of the storm, Wren spiralled outward in deformed circles of ever-increasing size. She could safely eliminate the city of Whitehill itself from her search: the guards would have hesitated to open the gates for anyone they didn’t recognize in the middle of the night, nevermind during a snowstorm. As a result, she didn’t feel the need to check the base of the city walls for tracks.

As she flew, scanning the snow with her eyes and regularly sending out pulses of sound to map her surroundings, Wren had plenty of time to wish for a form more suited to the cold northern winters. An owl perhaps, or one of those falcons that Liv liked to shape from raw mana. Or even a wolf, to bound through the snow with the scent of her prey in her nostrils.

Without a blood-letter, however, Wren didn’t have the slightest clue how to gain another form. She could hunt down a wolf and drink its heartsblood, that was simple enough, or bring down an owl on the wing with an arrow, but the ritual itself was something she couldn’t perform.

The blood-letters of her tribe - priests and priestesses of Ractia - weren’t very likely to ever help her again, now that Wren had turned aside from the goddess. A second animal form had always been held out not only as a reward for exceptional service to the tribe, but for faith and devotion to the great mother.

And yet - if the blood rites of the goddess’ servants could grant another form, perhaps a mage with the proper words could do the same. Arjun had learned Ract while he was in Al’Fenthia, in the hopes of combining three words of power into a comprehensive healing spell. If he succeeded, it would be the mark of an archmage, by the guild’s measuring. But finding a way to stand in for a blood-letter might be possible with only the single word, Wren thought.

The priests didn’t actually work magic themselves; all of her people were devoid of mana, having been designed by Ractia to draw their power from blood. When she’d been a child, Wren had been taught that the blood-letters only channeled the power of the goddess through prayers.

Wren was pretty confident that, given time, Liv could figure out how to do just about anything that Celris had done. Each of the Vædim seemed to be at least partially defined by the word they embodied, though Wren wasn’t even going to try to understand the specifics of how it all worked. But it seemed at least possible that Arjun could help her, and she resolved to speak with the boy from the east as soon as he’d arrived at Whitehill.

Ghveris had once been able to change into a veritable host of bodies. The thought came as Wren climbed on an updraft, skimming over a grove of aspen trees on the eastern slope of one of the mountains that surrounded the valley. Liv would have known the name of the place, no doubt. The girl seemed to know every rock and stem and stream of her home.

Around the camp-fires of the Red Shield tribe, a much younger Wren had adored stories of the General of Ractia, the Great Beast who had ripped the goddess’s enemies limb from limb in the form of a bear or of a jaguar; who had dived down upon his foes on the wings of an eagle, or crushed enemies spells from their throats in the shape of a great constricting serpent.

She’d also heard the story of how he’d died in battle. Discovering that the Vædim hadn’t been satisfied with that, and that they’d put whatever was left of his body inside the shell of an Antrian war-machine - well, Wren hadn’t thought she could be any more disillusioned with Ractia than she already was, after what happened with her father, but it turned out she was wrong. The Lady of Blood saw her people as nothing more than convenient tools, to be used up and discarded.

Having Ghveris back in Whitehill did make Wren feel a bit better about leaving Liv behind. Not that the girl couldn’t take care of herself but - she had a tendency to drive herself to exhaustion. And when the ridiculous things she’d pulled off finally caught up with her, someone needed to be waiting close by to make sure nothing happened while she recovered. But if anyone could keep her safe until Wren got back, it would be Ghveris.

Wren spotted another burned out farm, nestled against the slope of the mountain where it would be in the lee of a rock face rising above, shielded from the worst of the storm. This place had been attacked days ago - that much was clear even before Wren had landed and set her enchanted boots down into the snow.

No embers glowed, the scent of smoke had long since been swept away by the wind. Drifts of snow buried the bulk of the ruins, but Wren could tell there had once been a farmhouse, a small barn, and a few other outbuildings. The raiders hadn’t bothered to make certain the chicken coop had burned. She suspected that if she dug through the snow long enough, she would find the bodies.

Wren pulled her furred winter cloak tight about her shoulders, and shivered. She’d spent her life tracking in the jungles of Varuna, not in snow-covered mountains. Perhaps Liv would have been better off waiting to reach Whitehill, and sending someone who actually knew these lands. Still, she unslung her bow from her back, and used the length of wood to push aside some of the powder that coated the burnt ruins, stirring about the remnants of charred beams and the cooled ashes beneath the snow.

Her bowstaff caught against something in the ashes. Wren almost didn’t bother to look: it was cold, and she was already beginning to shiver. It was probably just a tea-kettle or a cauldron. But she didn’t want to go back to Whitehill empty-handed and disappoint her friends.

With the bowstaff and her boots, Wren cleared away snow and embers until she uncovered a chunk of white stone, with Vædic sigils carved all along its surface. She poked it about with her bowstaff a few times, to make certain the thing didn’t explode, before she finally picked it up.

Wren held her breath, but nothing happened. There were no sparks of lightning, no bursts of flame, no spikes of bone or ice. It was just a white rock. Or, rather, it was a hunk of mana stone carved with Vædic sigils, which almost certainly meant it was enchanted, but it didn’t seem likely to do anything right away. She slung her pack down off her shoulders onto the snow, stuffed the rock inside, and pulled the drawstrings tight again.

What were the chances some random farming family had an enchanted stone just lying around? Perhaps hidden under their floorboards by an ancestor, or put up on the mantel as an ornament, a family heirloom, with not the slightest idea what it did?

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Wren didn’t think those were very good odds, at all.

No, it was far more likely, to her mind, that the raiders had planted some sort of enchantment here, hidden it in the ruins of the burned farmhouse. To what purpose, she couldn’t say - but Wren resolved to make certain that someone rooted through the ashes of the Cotter farmhouse, to find out whether there was a matching rock there.

This was enough to go back. She hadn’t found the raiders themselves, but she’d found something, and it was the sort of information that needed to go to actual mages, who could examine the stone and figure out what it was meant to do. Depending on what the enemy was planning, getting back to Whitehill quickly might even be the most important thing Wren could do at the moment.

She dissolved into blood, then spread her wings when she returned to her bat-form, beating up furiously to gain altitude. Wren circled as she ascended, coming around to face the direction of the city again, and was just about to set off when she saw the oddest thing: a thin trail of smoke, hanging in the morning air between two mountains. She tried to follow it back down to the ground with her eyes, but couldn’t for the life of her find a source. As far as Wren could tell, the smoke came from nowhere, appeared in the sky, and then gradually faded and dissipated on the breeze.

With a choice selection of unspoken curses, Wren turned aside from Whitehill and flew in the direction of the smoke.

☙

The raiders had chosen their campsite well. The shoulder of one mountain lay directly between them and Whitehill, so that smoke from a fire wouldn’t be visible from the city - or most of the surrounding farms - at all.

Between the two peaks ran a sort of gorge, into which a tall cascade plummeted down over piled boulders and slabs of granite before running down into the valley itself as an ice-encrusted river. It was secluded, with access to fresh water, and the roar and crash of the falls would mask the sound of the encampment. If it hadn’t been for a chance glimpse of the smoke, Wren would never have seen it at all.

Even following that clue, the discovery hadn’t been an easy one to make. She’d circled the strange grey ribbon hanging in the air half a dozen times, scanning the surrounding terrain with absolutely no luck. It had only been, again, by chance, that Wren had veered through just the right patch of sky while trying to find the fire itself.

One moment, she saw nothing; the next, there was a military encampment laid out along the banks of the river beneath her. Wren had just enough time to catch a glimpse of it before her flight carried her past again, and when she came back around, there was nothing.

Magic.

Wren had seen Liv’s wards, though her friend hadn’t had much cause to use them out in the open for a while now. But as far back as when Wren had approached her during the Bald Peak eruption, Liv had used mana stone dust to encircle the encampment of Whitehill knights at the base of the mountain, protecting them with a ward that would freeze anything that crossed the line.

It took her two tries to fly back over the ward again, but when the enemy camp bloomed into her awareness this time, Wren was ready. She checked her speed and fluttered down into the bough of a tree with a twisted trunk and branches that reminded her of the things she’d seen in the high desert. She got a grip with her feet, tucked her wings in to shield herself from the bitter wind, and hung there, upside down, to get a good view of the place.

The first thing that was clear was that she was looking at soldiers, organized and disciplined, not highwaymen or opportunistic bandits. It only confirmed what Wren had already suspected, but confirmation was good. Tents were set up in rows, and there were lines of horses, latrines dug into the frozen soil, and sentries set to keep guard. All told, Wren counted perhaps forty men and women.

She saw no jack of plate, chain, or steel plate among them, but every one wore padded gambesons with boiled leather bracers on their arms. Their boots were of leather also, and high - the kind that could be turned down below the knee, or worn well up the thigh, to keep the snow out. There were great cloaks of heavy wool, lined with fur, and gloves.

Their weapons were hunters weapons: longbows rather than crossbows, skinning knives, hatchets for chopping wood. And they must have known how to go about their business, because there was a dead buck hanging to dry, and a brace of rabbits turning over one fire on a spit.

Two men stood out from the group, however, and Wren recognized one of them on sight. He was the only one wearing a proper doublet, though it was of leather rather than cloth, and a fine rapier hung from his belt. Somehow, he’d found time to keep his fashionably shaped mustache and triangle of a beard trimmed neatly, and the rest of his face shaved, even camping out in the mountains.

Since the last time Wren had gotten a good, close look at Galleron Erskine, Baron of the Strand, however, the king’s spymaster had managed to acquire a rather horrible burn scar on the right side of his face. It rather ruined the elegant impression he must have been going for, which she took a certain amount of satisfaction in. She couldn’t have sworn whether he’d had the scars when he chased them into the mountains north of Valegard - he’d been too far away at the time. Privately, Wren hoped it had been Jurian who’d done it, during his fight with Genevieve Arundell.

The younger man at Galleron’s side was familiar, as well, though Wren had to search her memories for the name. Rowan, a boy who’d been just enough older than Liv at Coral Bay that they hadn’t interacted much. He was wearing a rapier as well.

Once she’d identified the leader of the raiders - no, best to start thinking of them as what they were: the scouts in advance of Benedict’s army - Wren understood why she’d had such difficulty finding them. She’d been in the room, after all, when Sidonie had explained to Liv their family’s word of power: a word of concealment. Rather than lay down a ward that would harm anyone attempting to enter the camp, the Baron of the Strand had used magic to prevent those on the outside from noticing that there was a camp, at all. No wonder Julianne and Henry’s forces hadn’t been able to find the raiders.

“- four of them are sick, now,” Rowan Erskine was saying, as Wren watched the two men warm their hands above the fire where the rabbits were cooking. “We can’t stay out here forever, or we’re going to lose good scouts from the cold and the wet.”

“We were never meant to remain forever,” the boy’s father said, untroubled. “If we were still here come the spring and the floods, we’d be simply begging to be hunted down. No, once we’ve placed all Mistress Arundell’s stones, we’ll make our way back over the mountains to Courland. We want all our scouts fresh and recovered before Lord Commander Bennet gives the order for the army to march.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t want one of us at the wedding,” Rowan complained.

“This is more important. Your mother and sisters will be there.”

“Burning a few farms -” the younger man began, but his father cut him off.

“It isn’t about the farms themselves; no one’s growing food during the winter, anyway,” Galleron explained. “It’s about spreading the impression that Henry and Julianne can’t even keep their own people safe. That will shake the confidence of their subjects, damage their morale. And then Mistress Arundell’s magic will exacerbate the problem.”

“You can’t share with me what the stones actually do?” Rowan asked. “I’d feel a lot better about the risks we’re taking if I understood.”

“Your duty is not to understand, but to obey,” the baron chastised his son. “You’ll know what you need to know, when you need to know it. Don’t ask for more. We have two more stones to hide. Take five scouts - five healthy scouts! - and find us our next target.”

Rowan Erskine looked, for just a moment, as if he might argue with his father. Then, while Wren watched, he sketched a bow, turned with his hand on the hilt of his own rapier, and marched away from the cook fire.

Wren remained in her perch long enough to watch Rowan ride out with his picked men and women, and then she took to the air again. She followed them from above and behind, where they were least likely to notice her, as they descended along the bank of the mountain stream.

A bell or more later, when the raiders had left their horses behind and crept up on a farm along the road between Whitehill and Fairford, Wren watched them. She watched the farm children - two boys and a girl - throwing snowballs at each other and shrieking with glee, completely unaware of the rough men observing them.

Wren banked north and followed the road to Whitehill. Whatever happened after the sun set, she was going to be absolutely certain those children weren’t harmed.