Merrowgate had vanished again before any of them were ready to leave Last Fires.
Darion decided cities should not be allowed to do that.
A man could misplace a knife. A boot. A name, if he was careful. An hour of sleep, if he was less careful. He could lose the better part of his life and discover only afterward that other people had been calling it survival.
But a city was meant to remain where men had built it.
Merrowgate had not.
The rain had thickened again during the night, and by dawn the valley north of Last Fires had filled with low white weather. The place they had glimpsed below the mountains—wall, tower, thread of dark water—was gone behind cloud and distance. The road ahead disappeared after twenty paces. Beyond that lay nothing but pale mist, black trees, and the steady sound of water moving somewhere out of sight.
The seven fires had burned down to red hollows by morning.
Edda stood among them with a rake of black iron, drawing ash inward from the rings. She moved slowly, not because she was weak, but because old things deserved neither haste nor drama.
Rusk was not coming farther.
Neither were the two remaining hired men. Rusk’s bite had reddened in the night, one of the others could barely put weight on his ankle, and the third had volunteered to see both men safely back when the road allowed it. Edda took them in without ceremony, which made the mercy easier to bear.
No one asked again whether Sava was coming farther.
Talia thanked her before they left.
Not formally. Not with a speech. She only took Sava’s forearm in both hands and held it for the length of one breath.
Sava looked at her. “If the road closes behind you, don’t argue with the lock.”
Talia nodded. “And if it closes behind you?”
“Then I was not on the road.”
Corin looked as if he wished to object to the structure of the sentence and the entire North with it. For once, he did neither.
Kellan stood near the dead northern fire, staring past the wall into the mist. His pack was already shouldered. His notebook was tucked away, which told Darion more than any question would have. The boy had not stopped looking north since waking.
Maeron noticed too.
“Staring will not make it reappear,” he said.
Kellan did not turn. “You said that about mountains yesterday.”
“And I was correct.”
“You said I had nearly walked into two trees.”
“You had.”
“I walked into one.”
“Ah.” Maeron nodded gravely. “Then I owe the other tree an apology.”
Kellan’s mouth moved, but the smile failed halfway.
Talia’s hand tightened on the reins.
Darion had already seen it too.
That was the trouble with fear in clever boys. They tried to think around it until it found a door they had not barred.
Edda came to the northernmost fire and scattered its last coals with the rake.
The glow broke apart.
“That’s that,” Maeron said softly.
Edda looked at him. “No. That is only fire finished.”
The old scholar inclined his head. “A distinction I will try to remember.”
“You won’t.”
“No,” Maeron admitted. “But I will speak as if I might.”
One of Edda’s boys brought them bread wrapped in cloth and a clay jar of something sour enough to defend itself. The girl who had shown Kellan how to split wood handed him a short piece of kindling with a notch cut into one side.
Kellan took it carefully, scraped fingers closing awkwardly around the notch. “What is this?”
“A stick,” she said.
“I see that.”
“Then why ask?”
Kellan blinked.
Darion looked away before his face betrayed him.
The girl pointed to the notch. “If you need fire and the wood is wet, cut there first. It opens easier.”
“Oh.” Kellan’s expression changed. Not wounded pride. Not excitement either. Something better. “Thank you.”
She shrugged as if gratitude were a southern weather pattern.
Then she vanished back toward the long house.
Talia gave the order to move.
What left Last Fires was scarcely an expedition now. Five at the center. Pell and Ness ahead. Riding horses enough if the road allowed it, and the remaining pack animals following light enough that every loss showed.
They left Last Fires in a narrow line, passing the seven rings one by one. Smoke still rose from them in thin grey threads. Behind the long house, the empty frame waited above the hearth. Ahead, Merrowgate waited somewhere below the mountains.
Between the two, the road went on.
For the first mile, it did not feel like a road into a city.
It felt like a road trying to remember one.