Morning came to Vaelun warm and breathing, mist lifting off the water. The wyrm beneath the earth shifted once as Mallow stepped onto the path with the wrapped egg cradled against his chest. A pressure like a hand laid briefly at his spine, then withdrew again. He did not look back. He knew better than to mistake permission for farewell.

  Harka walked beside him, light-footed, quiet in a way that was not fear. His antlers were still short, velvet-dark, the points barely begun. Freckles dusted his cheeks and nose, clear against his pale skin, and the wool at his lower legs was tightly curled, black as wet stone. He wore his weapons neatly, as if they were part of him rather than something taken up in response to danger.

  They spoke little at first. The path out of Vaelun wound narrow and green, the air thick enough to taste. When they reached the exit through the cave, Harka took Mallow’s hand, and guided him through the darkness.

  They emerged much more easily on the other side. Mallow adjusted his grip on the bundle when the ground dipped, aware of how carefully the egg rested against him, aware too of how his scales responded, a low ache in his ribs that felt less like pain than attention.

  After a while, he noticed Harka watching him.

  “You carry it as if it knows you,” Harka said.

  Mallow huffed. “I’m trying not to drop it.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  They met Tanel at noon. The Elder stood where Mallow had left him the previous day, near the old chapel path, hands folded. He had the look of a man who had not slept much, whose thoughts had moved in circles he could not step out of.

  “When I said stay there, I didn’t mean literally,” Mallow called. “I hope you’ve not been standing there all night.”

  Tanel looked up when they approached. Relief crossed his face, brief and unguarded, then caught when he saw the bundle in Mallow’s arms.

  “Who is this? And what is that?” he asked.

  “I found what I was sent to find,” Mallow replied. He shifted his weight slightly. “This is Harka.”

  Harka inclined his head, formal without stiffness. “Warden in training,” he said.

  Tanel returned the gesture. His gaze lingered on Harka a fraction longer than it required, then slid back to the egg. “And you are… bringing this egg with us.”

  “Yes.”

  Tanel smiled. “Then we will revive Ivath.”

  “We will save the Underveins,” Mallow corrected.

  They made camp away from the path. Mallow set the egg down carefully, cushioning it between his pack and a fold of spare wool, and only then allowed himself to sit.

  His ribs ached. His lungs burned. The wyrm under his skin had gone quiet again, withdrawing into a listening stillness that made him feel more exposed rather than less.

  Tanel lingered at the edge of the firelight, his posture loose, hands folded. He had not said a word about pursuit, but Mallow suspected he knew more than he was sharing. And Mallow had sensed someone.

  Harka crouched opposite the fire, tending it with careful hands. He worked with an eager attentiveness, coaxing flame without waste, adjusting stone by stone until it burned steady. When he glanced up, his eyes went briefly to the dark beyond the fire, then back again, as if noting a sound only to set it aside.

  Mallow followed his gaze. “You feel it too,” he said.

  Harka nodded. “I don’t know what it is.”

  “Neither do I.” He glanced at Tanel, who was digging in his pack for his flask. “But I have my suspicions.”

  When the food was finished and the fire reduced to embers, Harka rose first. “I’ll take the early watch,” he said. “You should lie down.”

  Mallow almost argued. The refusal sat ready on his tongue, sharpened by the weight in his chest and the knowledge of what he carried. But exhaustion had a way of lying convincingly, and he had learned, bitterly, that pride was not the same thing as preparedness.

  “Wake me if you need me,” he said instead.

  Harka inclined his head and moved to the edge of the hollow, light on his feet, his attention already stretched outward. Tanel settled a little farther back, half in shadow, eyes closed in a posture that suggested rest and promised none of it.

  Mallow lay with his hand resting near the egg, the ground cool through the blanket. He did not sleep. He drifted in near-sleep instead, suspended in loops of thought, the sounds threading themselves through his body before his mind could name them.

  Mallow woke the way he’d been waking since his death, which is to say before he was meant to. There came a change in the air, the thin shift of pressure at the edge of the hollow where they slept, the sense of a presence arranging itself around them with the confidence of someone who had already measured the distance from throat to ground.

  He lay still, one hand splayed over the blanket, the other resting close to the bundle where the egg slept. The fire had burned down to a low red eye. Harka’s silhouette was a little farther out, barely more than a darker smear against darker night.

  Mallow listened.

  A footstep would have been clumsy. This person was too controlled for that. Whoever was out there understood how to move without borrowing attention from the world.

  Harka moved first. His stronger Kelthi ears flicked as his head turned.

  The figure was already behind him. Mallow saw it as a blur at the edge of the fire’s glow: a hand, a blade that caught and returned the ember-light, a motion that was almost gentle in its economy. Harka’s own knife came up too late. The stranger’s wrist rolled, and Harka’s weapon went skittering into the grass. Before Harka could even step back he was on his knees, his arms pinned behind him, his throat bared to a narrow line of steel. His eyes went still and wide in the way that many Kelthi seemed to do when faced with a blade, freezing the way deer froze at the sight of the hunter’s bow.

  Mallow rose slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. His leg wanted to refuse him, and his ribs attempted to take their tithe of pain. He rose anyway.

  The man at Harka’s back looked up. Everything about him read as calculated. His traveling cloak was plain, his hair bound back. His attention never landed in one place long enough to be caught there. A thin gleam ran along his knife, veined faintly with a light that did not come from fire. Veinwrought.

  “Stay down,” the man said to Harka, without looking at him.

  Harka’s jaw clenched. His gaze flicked once toward Mallow, then back to the knife, his ears dropped.

  Mallow’s hand closed around the spear leaning against the rock at his side.

  The Veinwrought metal felt cold through his palm, iron-black with its muted red seams pulsing as if it had its own heart. It always looked unnatural, even in daylight, and in this half-light it looked like a scab that had crawled off of a wounded giant.

  The man saw it, and his eyes narrowed.

  Mallow let himself lean on his crutch as if the spear were an afterthought.

  “Evening,” he said. “If you’ve come to rob us, I’m afraid all you’ll find is a few pieces of brass and maybe a bit of sheep jerky.”

  The man’s mouth barely moved. “You’re carrying an object of Dagorlind interest.”

  “Is that what we’re calling it?”

  The knife pressed a fraction more firmly to Harka’s throat. Harka swallowed, careful, and did not move.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Mallow’s grip tightened on the spear despite himself. He felt the egg behind him, small and warm and terribly exposed.

  “You’ll take your blade off him,” Mallow said.

  “I will take the egg,” the man replied. “And I will leave you alive if you don’t make this tedious.”

  Tanel’s bells chimed softly behind Mallow as he rose from the edge of the hollow. He had not said a word yet. His face, caught in the ember-glow, looked older than it had that morning, the strain of waiting carved into it.

  The tracker glanced at him and gave the faintest nod, as if confirming what he had already known.

  “Elder,” the man said. There was no reverence in it, only acknowledgement. “You’re far from the city.”

  Tanel’s eyes flicked to Harka, then to the blade at his throat. “Let him go,” he said.

  The tracker didn’t even pretend to consider it.

  Mallow took a single sidestep, careful, shifting his body so he blocked the bundle from view. The tracker’s gaze followed the motion anyway, apparently too practiced.

  “You’re from Ivath,” Mallow said. “I can smell the myrrh stink on you.”

  The tracker’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes sharpened in interest at the insult, as if he’d just been handed a piece of information without asking for it.

  “Poe,” Tanel said quietly, recognition in the name, and something else under it that irritated Mallow.

  So Elder Tanel knew him. Enough to have a name ready.

  “Elder,” Mallow said, without looking back, “if you’ve kept more secrets, now might be the time to start bleeding them.”

  Tanel frowned. “I did not know they would send a tracker.”

  Mallow believed him and still didn’t forgive the shape it took, and was furious at his own stupidity. Lain had told him that Ivath had trackers trained on Glinnel blood, to hunt them down through scent should they defect. He should have considered they would send a tracker after Tanel. But Tanel should have considered it, too.

  Poe’s knife shifted minutely, and Harka hissed through his teeth, terrified.

  Mallow’s temper rose in him. He lifted the spear, letting the point catch what little light there was. Poe’s gaze dropped to it again, with a flicker of unease.

  “Where did you get that?” Poe asked. It was less command, more curiosity, and it surprised Mallow to hear it.

  Mallow smiled. “Stole it off a saint.”

  Poe’s eyes narrowed. “That is Veincraft.”

  “Ask the saint about that..”

  Poe’s knife hand held steady, but the other shifted, palm opening slightly as if preparing something unseen. His skin prickled with that same wrongness he’d felt near Morgan’s work, the air made tense by craft that treated bodies as instruments. It wasn’t directed at him; it was meant for the spear, sussing out its making, perhaps.

  “Give me the egg,” Poe said.

  Mallow stepped forward instead.

  “I’d rather give you the spear.”

  He wasn’t trying to be brave. But he couldn’t stand still with Harka kneeling there and the egg behind him and the knife at a throat too young to have earned that kind of ending.

  Poe moved fast enough that Mallow’s mind barely kept up: he released Harka and shoved him sideways into the dark, hard enough that Harka went down with a thud. At the same time, Poe lunged for the bundle with the other hand, knife still up, using Harka’s collapse as a shield.

  Mallow’s spear came across in a sweeping arc to bar his path. The black iron haft met Poe’s wrist with a dull thud. Poe’s fingers spasmed and his reach faltered. He swore, low and furious, and struck at Mallow’s injured side with the knife.

  Mallow flinched, his vision flashing white. He let his body fold as if he were collapsing, as if the pain had won. Poe’s eyes tracked the dip of his shoulder, the weakness, the moment he thought he had. Mallow’s crutch slid from under him.

  He swung it wide and caught Poe’s ankle.

  Poe’s foot flew out, his balance stolen in the most humiliating way possible. For a moment his body went weightless, and in that moment Mallow drove the butt of the spear into the ground and used it to lever himself up and forward.

  The spear point rose. Poe twisted, quick enough to avoid being impaled cleanly, not quick enough to avoid the gash. The Veinwrought edge kissed his shoulder, and the red seams in the metal brightened with joy as they drew blood. Poe staggered back with a strange sound, one hand flying to the wound.

  Harka was up again in an instant, knife retrieved, and flanked Poe without hesitation.

  Tanel hovered at the edge of the firelight, hands half-raised as if he might intervene and still couldn’t decide which prayer to use.

  Poe’s breath came hard now, his composure cracking. His eyes darted to the bundle again, and in them Mallow saw the decision form. He would kill them, take the egg, and bring it back to the Dagorlind.

  Poe lunged again, not for the egg this time, but for Harka, who was closer and easier, and anyway killing a Kelthi would be a message as much as a tactic.

  Harka met him blade to blade, but Poe was better. He drove Harka back in three quick strikes, each movement clean and brutal. Harka’s hock caught on a root and Poe’s knife snapped up toward his throat in a line that would have ended it.

  Mallow stepped into the strike and took it on the spear, the Veinwrought metal ringing in the dark. The impact shuddered up his arms. He shoved forward, forcing Poe off balance, forcing Poe to give ground.

  Poe tried to slip past. Mallow hooked the spear under Poe’s forearm and yanked.

  Poe’s knife flew from his hand and vanished into the grass.

  The next moment was ugly. Mallow drove Poe down with the haft, put his weight where his leg screamed at him not to, and pinned Poe hard enough that the man’s breath came out in a wet and furious rasp.

  He brought the spearpoint to Poe’s throat and held it there.

  Poe lay on his back, cloak spread in the dirt, eyes bright with fury and disbelief. Blood seeped dark from his shoulder where the spear had opened him.

  Harka stood a pace back, breathing hard, his own hand shaking slightly around his blade from his near death.

  Mallow leaned closer, sweat cold on his skin. “I’ve killed better fighters than you, Tracker Poe. Take this rare chance, and reconsider your options.”

  Poe bared his teeth. “You have no right to touch that egg.”

  “Actually, I got permission,” Mallow said, lazily. “From the little wyrm’s mother, in fact.”

  Poe’s gaze slid to Tanel. “Elder,” he hissed. “You let this happen.”

  Tanel shrugged. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  Poe laughed. “You never know anything,” he said. “You keep your hands clean and act surprised when blood shows up anyway.”

  Mallow pressed the spear a fraction closer. Poe went still.

  “Blood. Is that how you found us?”

  Poe’s throat worked. His eyes flicked once, calculating. He was losing blood. He knew it. He was choosing what to spend his words on.

  “Trackers are given blood,” Poe said. His voice was tight with pain now, stripped of its earlier smoothness. “A drop from every Dagorlind sworn in the city. Elders, Glinnel, Sisters. It’s cataloged. Kept. Blessed, if you like lies. We take it into ourselves and we follow when we’re commanded.”

  Mallow felt something cold slide down his spine.

  “I know this bit already,” he said. “It’s obvious you weren’t guessing at our route. You were pulling on Tanel like a thread.”

  Poe’s eyes glittered. “He’s loud,” he said. “Elders always are. They don’t know how to stop singing.”

  “And the Glinnel,” Mallow said, keeping his voice level by force. “Let’s say, oh I don’t know. Singer Lain. Do you have her blood, too?”

  Poe’s expression faltered for the first time, and Mallow realized it was because of the way he’d said the name – the way he’d always said it, as if it had weight.

  “The Bellborn,” Poe said, and the word came out like a curse. “Of course I have hers. Every Veinwright in Ivath has hers. Or had.”

  “Had? What do you mean, had?”

  “I mean her scent changed,” Poe said. “Something happened to her. Maybe she was Veinbound, or maybe something else. But her blood has changed. None of us were able to scent her after she killed our Tracker on the Cloudspine.”

  Mallow blinked. “What would you need, to track her again?”

  “Blood,” he said. “From after she changed.”

  The wyrm stirred, sudden and immense. A guide, it had promised him. A messenger. Someone that would find him when he needed it.

  Mallow stared down at Poe’s bloodied shoulder, at the rage and certainty in his eyes, and understood with a kind of bitter awe that made his stomach turn.

  Poe swallowed, eyes narrowing. “Do it,” he said hoarsely. “Kill me. Show how righteous you are, spilling Veinwright blood with Veinwright iron. Make me the messenger of your blasphemous quest.”

  Mallow almost laughed.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mumbled. He gave a long, shaking exhale. He looked up at Harka, then at Tanel, and finally down at the man beneath his spear.

  He thought of Lain’s face when she laughed. He thought of her hand steady on her bell. He thought of her vanishing into a world that kept taking pieces of her and calling her a saint.

  “Touch the spear,” Mallow commanded.

  “What?”

  “Go on,” Mallow said. “It’s got Lain’s blood on it. I can guarantee that.”

  Poe met his eye, then stared at the spear, as if looking for the trick in it. Then he brought two fingers up to touch the blade.

  He paused, blinking.

  Then he slathered his entire hand with his tongue and wiped the blade with it. Mallow would have pulled the blade back if it hadn’t been so shocking and strange a thing to see. Poe licked his hand from palm to fingertips. His eyes widened, his nostrils flaring.

  Mallow waited.

  The Tacker’s eyes flicked to the distance – south, east.

  “Ah,” Mallow said. “There we are.” He lowered his spear an inch, not enough to free Poe, but enough to show his decision.

  “You’re going to live,” Mallow said. “You’re going to walk with us.”

  Poe’s mouth twisted. “You think you can command me?”

  “I think I can kill you,” Mallow replied. “And I think you can choose which version of tomorrow you want.”

  Harka stepped closer, blade angled down, an unspoken agreement offered in steel.

  Tanel’s bells chimed faintly as he moved nearer, his face open with realization, his eyes fixed on Poe as if seeing him for the first time.

  Then Poe laughed again, small and without humor. “You’re mad,” he said.

  Mallow’s eyes drifted back toward the bundle where the egg rested, warm through cloth, innocent as anything in this world ever was.

  “Probably,” he said. “But I’m not blind. And you’re the only hound outside of Ivath who can smell the trail we need.”

  Poe’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to Ivath,” he said, as if trying to make it a warning.

  Mallow met his gaze. “We are,” he said. “And you’re going to help me find her on the way.”

  The night pressed close around them. Somewhere beneath it all, the wyrm inside Mallow shifted, pleased and restless, as if it had gotten exactly what it promised.