The snow at the summit of Bald Peak would linger well into flood season, Liv knew, but at the base of the mountain, every icicle was dripping, and patches of wet ground were growing between the remaining drifts.

By the time the last of the Elden forces came through the waypoint, she hadn’t slept in the same bed as Rosamund for nearly a week. Though Rose had done her best with the Elden techniques for taming mana from a rift, Arjun had eventually put his foot down and forced her to sleep outside the shoal, in the new buildings she’d raised. Liv tried not to think about what that meant for the future.

Liv, on the other hand, found her headaches not only coming more quickly, but occasional spells of dizziness and nausea, as well, when she remained outside the shoal for too long. If they hadn’t been about to march off to battle, she would have toughed it out: but she wanted to be at her best when the fighting at the pass began. She felt like she was back in the High Desert, rationing water.

“Which house is this, again?” Vivek Sharma asked, from Liv’s left side. The old priest looked nearly comical, the way he was swaddled in a heavy wool cloak, lined with fur. The sight didn’t match her memories of their time in Lendh ka Dakruim at all.

She looked down from the stone walls that surrounded the waystone, and frowned when she recognized the man who led the final troop. “The Unconquered House of Bælris,” Liv answered. “And I need to be certain they aren’t going to cause trouble.” She turned on her heel, her own cloak flaring behind her, and hurried down the stairs. Sharma followed her, and both Arjun and Rose came striding through the sucking mud to join them as they made their way to the gate.

The Eld, armored in enchanted steel and carrying polearms, marched off the waystone and out of the enclosure onto the bluff overlooking the river, where they assembled into ranks. Their leader strode back and forth in front of them, occasionally giving a curt nod or a short command, until everything seemed to his satisfaction. Finally, he turned to greet Liv and her companions.

“Livara tär Valtteri; Lady Rosamund; and Magus Arjun - it is a pleasure to see you all again. I look forward to standing beside you all on the field of battle.”

“Sohvis.” Liv couldn’t help but allow a frown to cross her face. The man was entirely too pretty, and he wasn’t even wearing a helm yet. His ridiculously long hair, pale as sunlight glinting off the river, was tossed gracefully around his head when the mountain breeze blew by them. Still, she had to think like Matthew: it would be bad for morale for the soldiers to see any conflict between their leaders. Liv was certainly that was what her adopted brother would say. “This is Vivek Sharma, a priest of the Trinity who’s come to join us from the fortress of Akela Kila, in Lendh ka Dakruim.”

“It is an honor to meet a man dedicated to the gods,” Sohvis said, and extended his hand in the Elden fashion.

Liv risked a glance sideways at Sharma’s face, while the two men clasped arms. She wondered whether the priest was already weighing what he saw in Sohvis’s heart, and resolved to ask him for his insights once they had a moment alone.

“How soon can your men march?” she asked, in the meanwhile.

“Immediately,” Sohvis said. “They are fresh out of the barracks at Mountain Home.”

“Good.” Liv nodded. “You’re the last, and the road is already six inches of mud. We’ll head south within the hour. Your healers can be ready in that time, Pandit Sharma?”

The old priest nodded. “A third to remain here, a third to be stationed at Whitehill Castle, and a third to come with us south to the pass. They already know their assignments, and I expect those who will accompany us are eager to get somewhere with a proper hearth.”

“It’ll be warm soon enough,” Liv reminded him. Sharma nodded, and headed off to prepare the Dakruiman healers for departure. Liv, on the other hand, led Rose and Arjun over to where their horses were stabled. As soon as they were out of earshot from the new arrivals, Arjun was the first to speak.

“He’s going to be trouble. Did Keri have any idea he’d be coming?”

“I doubt it,” Liv answered. When she reached Steria, the mare nudged her nose forward, and Liv pulled one glove off so that she could caress the northern horse’s soft face. It felt like half of the things they’d done since Coral Bay had meant leaving her behind, but at least they’d be able to bring the mare to the south pass.

“I hope Keri hauls off and punches him right in that stupid face,” Rose grumbled. “Break his nose so it heals crooked.”

Liv blinked, and turned to regard her lover. “I didn’t realize you were quite that invested.”

“I can’t respect people who aren’t loyal,” the dark-haired woman said, shooting a glance back to where Sohvis was speaking with several of his warriors. “And if he can’t be loyal to his friends, I don’t trust him in a fight.”

“If we had more time, I’d try to send someone to warn Keri before we got to him,” Liv admitted, with a grimace. She had a sudden intuition that Sohvis’s presence was going to put a lot of frowns on her face. “But there’s no time. I was only willing to wait this long because the mud should slow Benedict’s troops down.”

“But not us,” Rose assured her, with a grin. She held up her left arm and wiggled her fingers; though Liv couldn’t see it, she knew that Rose was wearing the set of bracelet and rings won from Princess Milisant beneath her glove.

☙

With Rosamund riding beside Liv at the head of the march, the sucking mud of the mine road solidified into hard packed, dry earth, easily capable of bearing the weight of the horses, wagons, and rank upon rank of marching boots. Arjun and Liv kept a careful eye on their friend; though Rose had plenty of mana to draw on, between the loaned jewelry, the Coral Bay pearl she wore in one ear, and the guild ring on her finger, they both worried about exhausting her.

If it had been warmer, Liv would have insisted her lover keep at least one glove off, so they could keep an eye on her veins for signs of darkening. As it was, she had simply agreed with Arjun that they would make certain Rose was inspected when they paused at Whitehill.

Everything went more slowly, Liv was learning, when it came to organizing an army. Between the Bælris troops - two hundred men and women, evenly split between archers and infantry - forty Dakruiman healers, led by Vivek Sharma; the most recent supply wagons from Al’Fenthia; and Kaija’s insistence that she would bring at least a portion of the warriors from Kelthelis to guard Liv, the head of the column was a half mile down the road before the tail began moving.

Though they’d left in the morning, as soon as they could, the sun was setting by the time the city walls surrounding Whitehill finally came into view. Liv had permitted only a brief stop for a midday meal, and though the crown raiders had theoretically been chased off, she made certain that half a dozen of the Syvän riders were out at all times, watching along their flanks and ahead of the march for any trouble.

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The guards atop the city walls must have seen them coming a long way off, for Matthew was waiting just inside the gate, and brought his horse in to ride beside Liv as they set up the road through The Lower Banks.

“We’ve cleared the market square for making camp,” Matthew explained. “We should have just enough room to squeeze everyone in next to the Ashford troops.”

In truth, the market was hardly even recognizable. In Liv’s youth, every market day had been an adventure. When the castle servants were released for the afternoon, she’d drag her mother down from The Hill and gleefully scamper between street food vendors, market stalls, and the regular games and competitions that bound the people of the valley together.

Liv had been there the first time Emma entered an archery competition; she’d dragged her heels following around Matthew and the horde of young girls who wanted nothing more than to catch the eye of the heir to the barony. She’d watched the year Big White Cotter was finally dethroned by his own son, during the bare-knuckled fighting. That memory brought another one, far less pleasant: the smoking ruins of the Cotter farm, and the corpses hung from the tree.

Now, in the golden, slanted light of early evening, there were no market stalls to be seen, no fighting rings, no wooden stage dragged out for dancing. Instead, row upon row of tents had been arranged in orderly lines, with scores of cook fires, lines of horses, and trenches dug for latrines.

“How many ended up being fit to fight?” Liv asked, unable to look away from the great mass of humanity. She pulled Steria off to one side, following Matthew’s lead, and Rosamund and Arjun trailed along to make room for the column coming up at their heels to disgorge itself into the market-grounds.

“Twenty knights, and about a hundred each of crossbowmen and what’s left of the Ashford garrison,” Matthew explained. “Most of their actual soldiers are wounded or dead, but it seems Isaac Grenfell had been recruiting and drilling troops for quite some time. If he’d actually been there when they attacked, or if it hadn’t been a surprise...” he trailed off.

“There’s a lot more than two hundred people camped here,” Rose pointed out.

“Every man of fighting age who survived the trip volunteered,” Matthew told them. “And not a few of the women, too. Two hundred of them, and you should see the look in their eyes, Liv. A whole troop of footmen, cobblers, barkeeps and maids. We’ve had Emma’s husband, and every other blacksmith in town, working around the clock just to make them polearms and helmets.”

Liv scanned the faces of the people from Ashford; they paused in cooking their evening meals, oiling the steel heads of their pikes, or hanging their clothes out to dry, in order to watch the Elden troops march into the encampment. Liv couldn’t help compare the enchanted steel worn by the Elden infantry to the padded gambesons worn by most of the Ashford troops. Half of the garments looked brand new, and the other half like they’d been dug out of an attic where moths had gotten at them.

She saw boys who didn’t look old enough to shave, and men with more salt in their hair than pepper. There were women who’d chopped their hair as short as Rosamund’s, and her eyes lingered on one group of four young men who, by their resemblance to each other, must have all been brothers. Liv thought she even might have recognized a few faces from the rush of the evacuation at Ashford, or from driving herself to exhaustion moving refugees through the waystone to Al’Fenthia, after, but most of that day was little more than a blur in her mind.

“How many of these people are going to survive?” she asked Matthew, quietly. Rose, hearing her words, reached out to grip Liv’s gloved hand in her own.

“Now that we have healers from Lendh ka Dakruim, more than would have otherwise,” her adopted brother told her. It wasn’t an answer, but Liv didn’t press him. “We’ll march in the morning, and you three have been on the move all day. I can see to things here; why don’t you go up to the castle and get some rest.”

Matthew clapped Liv on the shoulder, and rode into the chaos toward Sohvis.

☙

At Castle Whitehill, the tables in the great hall had been loaded with so much food that Liv wondered the wood didn’t groan and break beneath the weight. She rode into the courtyard with not only Rose and Arjun accompanying her, but Vivek Sharma and Kaija, as well, and twenty House Syvä riders who seemed determined to keep their bodies between Liv and the slightest hint of danger.

Her mother was waiting at the doors to the hall, in a surprisingly clean apron, and was the first one to embrace Liv. “I didn’t expect you to stay at Bald Peak so long,” Margaret Brodbeck said, leaning back just enough to examine Liv’s face.

“There was a lot to do there,” Liv said, feeling an immediate surge of guilt at giving her mother an excuse rather than telling her the truth. But she didn’t want to discuss her problems leaving the rift behind where everyone could hear, and there was already a small crowd of people pressing in to greet her.

Triss was there, and Duchess Julianne, Mistress Trafford and Master Grenfell, Guildmistress Every and so many faces that Liv could hardly keep track who she was hugging or whose hand was clasping her arm. Thankfully, she had introductions to make, which made it certain the attention would not be on her.

“Kaija is in command of the warriors who’ve come from Kelthelis,” Liv explained, guiding the armorer forward, while the rest of the Syvän Eld began to remove their helmets and gloves at two of the long tables. “And Vivek Sharma is a priest of the Trinity I first met in Lendh ka Dakruim. The proper form of address is Pandit Sharma.”

“Intent is more important than form,” Sharma said, with a friendly smile.

“I want to thank you personally for bringing so many healers from your homeland,” Duchess Julianne said, taking the old man’s arm and guiding him up to the high table. “It means more than we can ever possibly say.”

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t get out to Bald Peak like I promised,” Lia Every said, the moment Liv managed to escape the press of friends and family.

“I did my best to practice out there myself, once I could see you wouldn’t make it,” Liv told her.

“It’s only, between drawing up a new charter with Her Grace, and teaching classes -” Every shrugged apologetically. “We’ve been testing all the refugee children who come in, whether from Ashford, or whatever part of Lucania they’re fleeing. You wouldn’t believe how many we’re finding, Liv.”

“A dozen?” Rose asked. She stuck right by Liv’s side, along with Kaija, who hadn’t relaxed a bit even now they’d arrived. Arjun, on the other hand, seemed to have been drawn along in Vivek Sharma’s wake, up to the high table, to act as a sort of bridge between the Lucanians and the Dakruiman priest.

“Twenty students so far,” Every replied, with a grin and a twinkle in her eye. “Nearly a third of a good first year crop at Coral Bay.”

“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” Liv said. “Most common folk are never even tested - only nobles, and merchants with the gold to pay a court mage. I think if we make a practice of testing everyone - no matter what family they were born to - then in twenty years, we’re going to have more mages than anyone would ever expect.” She raised a hand to rub her temple without even thinking about what she was doing, and knew she’d made a mistake the moment the guildmistress frowned.

“Are you alright?” Every asked.

“We’re all just exhausted from the march,” Rose said, taking Liv by the arm. “In fact, I don’t think I’m feeling well enough to stay down here. Do you think it's possible we could go up to your rooms, Liv, and have a platter brought up?”

“Rose spent the entire march turning mud into something we could move the wagons on,” Liv explained, jumping on the excuse she’d been provided. “I think I really do need to get her upstairs.”

That excuse seemed to be exactly what they needed, and Liv could have kissed Rose for it. In fact, she did, the moment, the moment they were alone in her sitting room - alone save for Kaija, Thora, and Liv’s mother, who would allow no one else to carry her daughter’s meal up. Margaret Brodbeck fussed over the platters as she laid them out on a table which had been carried up by two footmen.

“I had them make separate dishes for both you and Rose,” Liv’s mother explained. “Lady Kaija, you don’t need to worry - I’ve been cooking for Eld since my daughter was just a girl.”

“I’m surprised you’re not down in the kitchens now, with so many people here,” Liv admitted, standing still while Thora helped her get her gloves and cloak off.

Maggie Brodbeck grinned. “I’ve been promoted, my dear,” she explained. “With so many mouths to feed, Her Grace has hired every cook, scullion, and kitchen maid she could find from among the refugees, and they’re all my responsibility now. I don’t think I’ve so much as got my hands dusted with flour in weeks.”

“That’s wonderful,” Liv said. “I’m proud of you, mama.” But it was all she could do to make herself eat, and not simply collapse into her bed. The headache was coming on stronger now, and it made her eyes hurt. Thankfully, no one expected her and Rose to be anything but exhausted from the march south, and the moment she could get away with it, she retired to her bedchamber, stripped down to her shift, and threw herself back into the pillows.

When Liv opened her eyes, she was sitting in Genevieve Arundell’s office at Coral Bay. The room looked precisely as it had the night it was destroyed during the battle between Arundell and Master Jurian.

Liv turned to the desk, and came face to face with a woman wearing a mask.