CHAPTER 105: CHAPTER 104: HER WARNING

Leonard turned and began issuing orders. Tents. Rotations. Fires small and low. The guards moved with a practiced rhythm. Red Band and Sand Hunters set quiet snares, not for meat but for warning. They had done this before.

Kael pulled Seris aside. "We go now."

She nodded. "Here or somewhere quiet?"

"Quiet," he said.

They walked beyond the ring of campfires until the trees swallowed everyone. The smell of sap and wet bark filled the air. Kael held out his hand, and the ring on his finger pulsed once, soft blue. The portal line opened like a slit of clear water in the air and widened.

Seris didn’t flinch. She never did. Together they stepped through.

Basement darkness wrapped around them at once. The cool, clean smell of sawdust and new varnish replaced forest damp. Kael closed the portal and exhaled.

He climbed the basement steps and opened the door to the hall. Afternoon light angled across the floorboards.

They went back down.

The metal door waited in the back corridor—wrong in an old house, set into the stone like a square of steel night. The keypad’s small screen glowed a lazy blue.

Kael stood in front of it for three heartbeats. He heard the Witch again: "Use his hand."

He lifted his left hand and pressed his palm against the cool panel beside the keypad. Nothing. He tried the right. Nothing.

He looked at the ring, then at the seam between panel and lock. He turned the ring slowly on his finger.

The blue stone brightened. The keypad flickered.

He didn’t punch numbers. He tapped the stone face of the ring lightly against the edge of the keypad—once, twice, three times. Not a rhythm he made up. A rhythm that sat in his bones. Bedtime knocks when he was little and his grandfather came back late from a trip. Three soft taps, a pause, two taps, a pause, one.

Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

The panel gave a quiet sound like a cork easing out of a bottle. The blue light narrowed to a line, then spread. The lock thunked. The door eased back a hair.

Seris let out a breath she hadn’t noticed she was holding.

Kael pushed. The door moved like a bank vault, slow and heavy.

The room beyond was small and cold. A short rack of long, narrow boxes. A single table with a glass display that held a brass compass with no letters on it.

And on the wall, twelve hooks. Eleven empty. One held a black wooden case the length of Kael’s forearm. Brass corners. A ring of small squares on the lid. A crescent inside.

Kael felt something in his throat ease and tighten at once. He reached up and took it down. It was heavier than wood should be.

He set it on the table. The lid had no hinge. It didn’t seem to open. He didn’t try. It wasn’t his to open.

Seris studied the other things. "He traveled far," she said, quiet.

"He did," Kael said.

He looked around once more. There were etchings in the base of the empty hooks—small marks, almost worn away.

"We should go," Seris said.

Kael lifted the box and cradled it under his arm. Before he turned, his eye fell on a thin leather folder on the bottom shelf. No dust. Placed recently. He slid it free and opened it.

Inside lay a single photograph, old and clear. His grandfather stood in front of the same small house in the forest. Beside him stood the Witch. Younger—

A note in his grandfather’s quick hand lay under the photo.

"Return when she asks."

Kael put the folder back where it was. He didn’t take the picture. He didn’t need to. It was already burned into him.

They closed the steel door. It locked with the same soft thunk.

"Ready?" he asked.

Seris nodded.

They went back to the basement room, and the air opened for them again.

The sky above the trees had begun to thin toward evening, gray turning into slate-blue.

Kael didn’t stop there. He carried the box straight to the Witch’s house.

The Witch stood there, hair loose down her back.

"You found the hand," she said.

"I found his knock," Kael said.

She stepped aside. They entered. The air inside held a new smell now—sharp resin and a thin sweet note, like flowers that bloom only at night.

"Set it there," she said, pointing to the center table.

He did. The box made a small, heavy sound on the wood.

The Witch placed both palms on the lid. She didn’t force it. She just stood very still. The brass corners warmed to a deep amber color. The ring of little squares on the lid brightened one by one around the crescent.

"Old debt," she said to the box, or to someone else. "Paid."

A seam appeared where there had been none. The lid lifted a fraction, on its own, and stopped. She didn’t open it further. She tied a red thread around it, once, twice. She breathed on the knot. It darkened and held.

She looked up. "The lady will live. I will go when the moon lifts a finger above the trees. Not before."

"Thank you," Kael said.

"Don’t thank me," she said. "Thank the man who taught you to knock."

Outside, a long, low howl rolled through the trees. Not menace. Warning.

The Witch’s eyes flicked toward the door. "Tell the stag-boy to keep his men inside the circle tonight. The old ones are walking."

Kael nodded. "I’ll tell him."

She looked back at him. "And you. Stop feeding the rats in the tunnels of your other house."

He went very still. "What?"

"The hands that touched your metal door before you," she said. "They belong to men who don’t believe in doors. They believe in cages. When you sleep there, sleep with your eyes open."

Kael didn’t ask how she knew. He just nodded, once.

Seris’s gaze was hard and flat now. "We’ll clean it."

"You will if you are smart," the Witch said. "Go."

They left the cottage. The evening light had turned the moss almost silver. Kael stood a moment and listened to the forest breathe.

At the circle, Leonard watched him come. "Well?"

"She has what she asked for," Kael said. "She’ll come at moonrise tomorrow."

Leonard let out a breath that sounded like he had been holding it all day. Some of the ice left his face. "You move fast."

"I had help," Kael said.

Leonard didn’t ask what that meant. He turned and began mapping out the next night’s watch lines. "No one leaves the stones after dark," he called. "If you need to piss, you piss in a bucket."

Red Band laughed under their breath. Sand Hunters didn’t.

Seris leaned closer. "You okay?"

"I will be," Kael said.

"Her warning," Seris said quietly. "About the house."

"I heard it," he said. "We’ll deal with it."

When full dark fell, mist crept in thin rivers between the stones. The guards’ spears made narrow shadows. Somewhere far away, something large moved through trees, slow and patient, like a mountain shifting in its sleep.