Mallow didn’t trust rope. Rope frayed. Rope made promises it couldn’t keep. If someone asked him, he would have told them he trusted iron, and he would have been lying, because iron had killed him once already.

  Still, rope was what they had, and what Poe had brought with him.

  The Tracker lay where he’d fallen, breathing in hard pulls that fogged the air. One hand was pressed to his wounded shoulder as if he could hold himself together by will. The other twitched, empty now of the blade that had been such a confident extension of him a few minutes ago. Mallow kept Morgan’s spear angled down at his throat, close enough that Poe wouldn’t forget what an inch would cost him.

  Harka hovered a few paces away, shoulders up, eyes too bright in the firelight. He had taken the disarming badly. Poe had done it with almost no effort. The shame of it sat on him like wet wool.

  Tanel stood behind Mallow, half in shadow, his hands folded as if he were watching a service rather than a man bleeding into the dirt. He looked calm, but Mallow knew better.

  Poe swallowed. His gaze fixed on the spear.

  Mallow let the silence stretch.

  “Give me your cord,” he said.

  Poe’s eyes narrowed. “No.”

  Mallow’s mouth quirked. “Adorable. Try again.”

  “I said –”

  The spear tip nudged the soft notch beneath Poe’s jaw. Poe went very still.

  Tanel’s voice came quiet from behind Mallow. “The ceremonial one on his belt is very strong.”

  Mallow didn’t bend. He nodded at Harka. “Take it.”

  Harka hesitated, then moved in a a swift line, keeping his body away from Poe’s legs. Poe watched him like a fox watches another, in a constant measuring of distance and timing. Harka’s fingers found the cord and drew it free with a single tug.

  It was thinner than ordinary rope, braided tight and waxed, with the small metal clasp stamped with the Dagorlind sun. It looked ceremonial in the way handcuffs looked ceremonial when you bothered to polish them. It smelled of the Brighthand anointing oil.

  Harka held it up as if it stank.

  Mallow nodded. “Good. Now come here.”

  Harka came closer. Mallow shifted his weight, sparing his bad leg, and lowered himself onto one knee beside Poe without ever letting the spear leave its place. The ground was cold through his trousers. The movement pulled at his ribs, and for a moment he had the vivid memory of that blade sinking in, the world going blue, the Underserpent’s impossible refusal to let him stay dead.

  He reached for Poe’s wrists. Poe jerked on reflex, then stilled, perhaps recognizing that resistance would only make him look like prey. His hands were warm with blood and sweat. Mallow caught the scent of a Veinwright, metallic and wrong, like a storm about to break.

  “You’re going to hold still,” Mallow said. “Because if you don’t I’m going to tighten this until your fingers go numb, and then you’ll have to piss with your elbows for the rest of the night.”

  Harka made a strangled sound that was almost a laugh.

  Poe’s lips curled. “Charming.”

  “Thank you,” Mallow said. “I’ve been working on my bedside manner.

  He looped the cord around Poe’s wrists, pulled it tight enough to bring the bones close, and tied it with a knot he’d learned as a child of a fishing community: fast, ugly, difficult to pick with numb fingers. He tugged once to test. Poe hissed through his teeth.

  “There,” Mallow said. “Now you can’t murder anyone.”

  Poe spat to the side. “You’re making a mistake.”

  Mallow leaned in just enough that Poe’s eyes had to meet his. “You made yours first.”

  He trussed Poe’s ankles enough to shorten his stride to something that would make running a humiliating exercise in failure. He clipped the last clasp closed, then looked at the stamped sun and felt something in his stomach turn over.

  “Beautiful work,” he murmured. “Blessed and everything.” He gave those knots a tug too. “You know, the last time I saw cord like this, it was around the ankles of the Bellborn. All trussed up for sacrifice. Looked prettier on her ankles than yours, Veinwright.”

  He felt more than saw Tanel’s flinch behind him.

  He took the last length and looped it around Poe’s waist, anchoring it like a lead. He wrapped it once around his own wrist, then looked up at Harka.

  “Knife,” he said.

  Harka handed him a small blade. Mallow shaved the end of the cord, tapered it, then re-waxed it with a quick pass near the fire so it wouldn’t fray. It was the sort of little detail that made a leash hold longer.

  Poe watched all of it with narrowed eyes.

  Mallow rose slowly, using the spear like a cane. His ribs protested again. His leg did too, offended to be reminded of its own existence. He ignored both.

  “Tanel, I take it you know how to bind a wound.”

  Tanel blinked. “Why would I –”

  “Because I’m not doing it,” Mallow continued. “And if you want your Veinservant to stop bleeding, you’ll have to do something about that shoulder.”

  Harka glared. “Why? He tried to take the egg. He was going to kill us.”

  “Correct,” Mallow said. “And now he’s our prisoner.”

  Harka’s ears flattened back. “We must kill him.”

  Tanel’s reaction was immediate. “No.”

  Harka turned on him, startled by the refusal. “Elder –”

  “If he dies, the other Trackers will know,” Tanel said. “They’re bound to one another just as I am bound to him. If he disappears, the Dagorlind will send another.”

  Poe’s gaze flicked to Tanel. There was a moment of recognition there, brief but undeniable. It was some shared language of institutions, of obedience, of being used.

  Harka’s jaw tightened. “So we keep him. A prisoner.”

  “Not a prisoner,” Tanel corrected. “A problem we move with.” Having been given a task, he fell to it, pulling out his rucksack for bandages. He brought them to Poe, who hissed then glanced aside as the Elder began to clean his oozing wound.

  Mallow dragged a hand over his face. The Underserpent’s mark under his shirt ached. The ugly weight of Morgan’s spear bore down on his hand, the monstrous thing seeming to drink the firelight. And nearby was the egg, his body sensing it, rearranging its priorities to protect it.

  He looked down at Poe.

  Poe looked up at him in return, breathing hard, refusing to plead.

  “Well,” Mallow said. “This is an unfortunate development. When I asked the Underserpent for a guide, I was hoping for a kindly woodsman. Perhaps a lost shepherd. Maybe a very handsome dog with good instincts.”

  Harka stared at him. “Mallow –”

  “I’m thinking,” Mallow said. Then, to Poe: “I don’t think you would have attacked us so readily if you understood our task. And I would like to explain that to you, but I’m not certain how well your kind listen after all that indoctrination they put you through. In any case, we need to find the Bellborn. You can Track her, can’t you?”

  Poe said nothing.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Mallow continued. “You’re not the first Veinwright I’ve followed who’s tried to kill me. So far, it hasn’t ended well for them, so I suggest you do as I say, and don’t lead us astray, or you’ll learn first-hand where I got this pretty thing.”

  He lifted the spear and the black metal felt suddenly colder. He didn’t allow himself to remember the moment it went in, the way Lain’s face had looked, the way the world had narrowed to pain and the dazzling, impossible thought that he might actually be dying.

  He kept his voice steady. “We keep you alive, and if you try to kill one of us, or run, or anything else I decide is stupid enough to warrant it, we won’t hesitate to put you down. Is everyone in agreement?”

  Mallow glanced around at the others. Harka’s ears flicked forward at that. He nodded once. Tanel exhaled, long and slow, as if he’d been holding his breath since the fight began.

  “I suppose we move,” Tanel said. “In case he was being followed.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Poe laughed under his breath. “No one follows me.”

  Mallow ignored him. He tugged once on the lead at Poe’s waist.

  “On your feet,” he said.

  Poe’s gaze flicked to the spear again, then to the cord around his wrists. Something hard moved through his features. Rage, certainly; humiliation, probably. There was also a kind of resignation that was its own violence, and the only emotion among the others that Mallow respected. Poe rolled to his knees, then to his feet with a grace that would have been impressive if Mallow hadn’t hated him for it.

  Harka secured the egg while Tanel moved through the camp with quiet efficiency, scattering their traces: kicking earth over the coals, wiping away the worst of their footprints with a branch, dragging a scrap of cloth through the ash to dull the scent of smoke. Mallow watched it with some surprise, then a small, sick turn of respect.

  “You knew,” Mallow said.

  Tanel didn’t look up. “No. I only suspected.”

  “You didn’t say.”

  Tanel frowned. “You would have forced me to stay behind.”

  Mallow laughed. “Of course I would have. You almost got Harka killed.”

  Tanel said nothing.

  They moved out. The night pressed close around them again, cold and indifferent. The stars looked like nails hammered into a tarry roof. Poe walked between Mallow and Tanel, the lead tugging at his waist with every step.

  In the dark it had felt possible to believe they were alone, three bodies and one bound enemy in a hollow of trees, the egg’s warmth pressed against Harka’s chest, the fire banked low enough to keep them from sight. With daylight came the proof that the world could care less that they had survived the night. The forest looked ordinary again. The birds returned. The wind moved through the branches. Even Poe’s blood had dried to a dull rust, as if violence could be filed away once the sun was up.

  They ate what they had, Harka offering Mallow a handful of dried berries he’d taken from Vaelun, small and dark and still fragrant with the valley’s sweetness. Mallow chewed them slowly and tried to ignore the way his heart ached for Lain at every burst of sweetness.

  Poe ate last.

  They started walking and the forest thinned into rougher land where the trees spaced out and the wind had more room to misbehave. The ground tilted to the east as they dismounted the Cloudspine. Somewhere south of them, the river cut through the mountains. Ivath sat at the river’s mouth, south and a little west of the range, the city built where water and mountain met and refused to compromise.

  But Poe led them southeast instead. They walked in the direction of the Cliffs of Noverell, where the air turned saltier and the wind learned a harder language.

  Mallow kept the lead short.

  He didn’t trust Poe’s pace or his silence, and certainly didn’t trust the way he watched the line of the land as if it were transparent. Trackers had that habit. They looked at empty spaces and found routes there. They listened to nothing and heard plenty.

  Harka carried the egg, mainly because Mallow’s ribs had finally won that argument. The bundle was strapped to Harka’s chest with a wide sling, held close enough that his breath warmed it. The careful tenderness of it made Mallow’s throat feel strange. Harka’s freckles stood out in the daylight, and his antlers, still small, still velvet dark, caught bits of leaf and light as he moved.

  “You keep looking at me like you’re deciding where to cut,” Poe said after an hour of trudging.

  Mallow shrugged. “I’m deciding whether you’re worth feeding.”

  Poe’s mouth twitched. “You fed me already.”

  “I’m a humanitarian.”

  Poe tilted his head slightly, as if listening to something none of them could hear. Then he glanced at Mallow, the movement casual, the tone too light for the question he asked.

  “Do you think he’s with her?”

  Mallow’s stomach dropped. He kept his face blank with effort.

  “Who?” he asked.

  Poe’s eyes slid away. “Lord Balthir.”

  Tanel’s pace did not change, but Mallow felt his attention sharpen behind them. Even Tanel, for all his secrets, had opinions about Morgan Balthir. Everyone did, once they’d met him. Morgan made sure of that.

  Mallow shrugged. “What does that matter?”

  “If he is with her, this becomes harder,” Poe replied.

  “Ah,” Mallow said. “Nice of you to care.”

  “I don’t,” Poe said with a shrug. “But you certainly seem to.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” Mallow said. “Does a true Veinwright frighten you, little Tracker?”

  Poe glared at him. “I know what Veinwrights do. You should count your blessings I’m not as true as Morgan Balthir. I know what he is.”

  “You mean you know what you are,” Mallow said.

  That earned him a small pause, Poe’s expression shifting as if Mallow had moved a piece on a board Poe hadn’t expected him to touch. Then Poe looked forward again.

  “We’re close to Noverell’s cut,” he said. “The air changes there. You’ll taste it before you see it.”

  Mallow didn’t let him off that easy. “What does Morgan have to do with Noverell?”

  Harka’s ears angled back. “The Veinwrights are from the cliffs,” he said.

  “The cliffs,” Poe confirmed. “And the aeries.” Poe’s gaze lifted, distant, toward where the peninsula curved on the map in Mallow’s mind, the long hook of land that reached down and around the sea like a hand half-closed. The inner curve of that peninsula held sheltered waters. It held islands too, scattered like broken fangs. If you stood above it, you could see why a creature with wings might choose it: updrafts off the cliffs, narrow ledges, salt air.

  “Before the Dagorlind wrote their histories and pretended otherwise, this was once the home of the Veinwrights. Their aeries were carved into the cliff faces where the wind would lift them. The old families held the inner curve, protected and hidden from storms. The islands belonged to the rest. Fisher aeries, watch aeries, ones that went quiet in winter when the sea got angry.”

  Harka looked at him with an expression that had too much wonder in it for Mallow’s comfort. Mallow didn’t blame him. Harka had grown up in Vaelun, where stories ended before they got ugly. The wider world still sounded like myth to him, even when the myth came with blood under its nails.

  “You speak like you’ve seen them,” Harka said.

  Poe’s expression was both prideful and bitter. “I have.” He went on, voice quieter, almost reluctant. “That is where I am from.”

  Harka blinked. “Noverell?”

  “The cliffs,” Poe said. “A village above the tideline. We were small. We had goats. We had a shrine that the Dagorlind would bless when they came through, and then they took what they wanted anyway.”

  Mallow felt his own suspicion deepen, laying itself over Poe’s words. “And yet you became this.”

  Poe’s eyes flicked to the cord around his wrists. “Yes.”

  Tanel explained. “They take the diluted.”

  Poe glanced back at him, something cold flashing in his gaze. “Do you disapprove, Elder Tanel?”

  Tanel said nothing.

  “Diluted,” Harka repeated. “What does that mean?”

  Poe gave him a looking over and seemed to decide Harka’s innocence gave him permission to ask such a pointed question.

  “It means the blood thins,” he said. “The old Veinwright lines still exist. Most of them are human now. Some can still do small things, like pulling power from living blood or Tracking. It’s not enough for the Dagorlind to call us Brighthand. It’s not enough for them to fear me like a Veinwright. It’s only enough for them to find it useful.”

  “And they take you,” Harka said.

  Poe’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “If you’re fortunate.”

  Mallow snorted. “Interesting definition of fortune.”

  “You’ve met full Veinwrights,” Poe said. “You’ve seen what they can be. What they can do.”

  Mallow thought of Morgan, the bloodwyrms, the hunger. He thought of the spear in his grip, black iron veined red as if the metal itself were bleeding.

  Poe continued, voice steady. “I was twelve when they came,” he said. “A Dagorlind caravan, passing through, a Sister and a Brother that talked like every word was a test. The Brothe wasn’t much older than I was, and he was handsome, and his accent was strange, and all that made me want badly to impress him. They did their blessings, took our offerings, and then they asked my mother if any of her children had ever made the candles flicker without touching them. If any of us had ever known someone was coming before we saw them. If any of us had a proclivity for… uncooked meat.”

  Harka’s face had gone pale. “What did your mother say?”

  “She lied.”

  Mallow couldn’t help it. “Good.”

  Poe’s eyes narrowed. “She lied badly.”

  The wind moved through the trees. Above them, a kestrel circled, released four cries, and tore off down the mountain.

  “They stayed three nights,” Poe went on. “They watched me. They watched my sister. They watched the way the goats bolted when I walked toward the pen.”

  Poe swallowed. “But it was really my dog, you see. Powder. I didn’t know what bloodbinding was. I just had this urge… this want. To bite. I was hungry all the time. Desperately hungry. And I bit him. And Powder bit back – he was right to, he was just protecting himself. But after that, things were… changed, between us.” He glanced down at his wrist, where Mallow spotted a few small white marks, perhaps even the scar where the dog had bitten him. “I always knew where Powder was. And Powder always obeyed. He obeyed no matter what.”

  And on the third night the young Brother asked if my dog knew any tricks, and I told him he did, that he’d do almost anything. He asked more questions. Mostly about the dog. And then I showed him.”

  Harka’s eyes went wide. “And then?”

  “And then,” Poe said, “they offered my mother a blessing she couldn’t refuse. They told her it was an honor. That I’d be trained, protected, fed better than any boy in a cliff village had a right to be. Told her I would serve the Order. That she should be proud.”

  A hot, unpleasant understanding crept up Mallow’s throat. He’d seen the way the Dagorlind dressed theft in ceremony.

  Poe’s mouth twisted. “And the alternative, of course, was that they could take all of the children, naturally. The Dagorlind are always in need of more Unsung Sisters and Brothers.My mother cried. My father didn’t. My father stood in the doorway and he watched them take me, because what else was he meant to do? Fight the Dagorlind? Fight the Brighthand they traveled with? Let them kill all of us out of principle?”

  Harka’s gaze dropped to the ground. “So you went with them.”

  “I went,” Poe said. “I did not volunteer.”

  Mallow kept his voice dry, because if he let it soften he might end up doing something stupid, like sympathising with the man who had tried to slit his throat last night. “So they train you on blood. And then… well, it seems you have plenty of opportunities for freedom, if you wanted it. What keeps you now?”

  Poe sneered. “How many Trackers does it take to hunt another, Captain?”

  “I’m not –” but then he looked once more at the clasp on his cloak, and sighed. “Oh, right. That.”

  “What happens if you refuse?” Harka asked.

  Poe smiled bitterly. “You don’t. Being kept like this is like being a knife. A knife doesn’t get to decide what it cuts. It doesn’t get to decide who holds it. It only gets to stay sharp enough that it isn’t thrown away.”

  They walked for a while with only the sound of boots and hooves on earth, the wind worrying the leaves. The land began to change under them – fewer trees, more stone, the ground rising and falling in long, uneven breaths. Somewhere ahead, the air did begin to taste different, salt bleeding into it.

  Mallow watched Poe’s back. He tried to imagine Poe at twelve, thin, wary, dragged from a cliff village because his blood had remembered some part of his history. He tried to picture Poe in the Dagorlind’s hands, being taught to follow and mill. But Mallow wasn’t one for imagination. All he could see was the man in front of him, bound and dangerous, moving like a predator on a leash. There was a weary, resigned awareness in his posture, as if he understood the shape of captivity well enough to recognize it in any form.

  Poe’s gaze went distant again, toward the invisible line of cliffs that waited ahead, toward the peninsula’s inner curve, toward old aeries carved into stone by people who used to fly.

  “You’re afraid,” Poe said.

  Mallow huffed. “Brilliant.”

  Poe’s eyes landed on him. “You’re afraid she’s with him.”

  Harka’s voice came low. “Why would you say that?”

  Poe shrugged. “Because if she’s with him, it means she chose to help him.”

  “She may be his prisoner,” Mallow suggested. “It wouldn’t be the first time the Veinwright Lord bound someone to him.”

  “We tell ourselves comforting stories all the time, scaleback,” Poe said.

  “Scaleback?” Mallow muttered. “That’s a new one.”

  They kept walking, the land turning harsh underfoot. Harka adjusted the egg’s sling again, his fingers gentle. Mallow walked with Morgan’s spear in his hand, Poe’s cord on his wrist, and the uncomfortable sense that the Underserpent had, in fact, kept its promise.