He looked up. "We have a contact at the second checkpoint?"

Mira's eyes flicked to Caladwen. "Apparently, yes."

The Lady didn't elaborate. She watched the city, but her gaze tracked every movement inside the carriage as if she anticipated the possibility of violence from either direction.

Soren settled back, counting the rhythm of the wheels on the frozen road. He tried not to think about Meridian behind them, or the certainty that the further they got from the city, the less the rules would matter.

He opened a ration stick, bit off a piece, and let himself taste nothing.

By the time the sun had dropped, the city was just a smear of blue on the horizon. The world outside the carriage turned brittle, all wind and black trees and the distant, perpetual sound of bells, now so faint Soren could almost convince himself they were a memory.

The first checkpoint was a relay station, once a monastery, now staffed by a skeleton crew of guards who looked at Soren with the haunted eyes of men who knew too much about the world and too little about their own future. Mira handled the formalities, flashing a badge and exchanging three sentences with the officer in charge. Soren stayed inside, eyes on the Lady, who remained unreadable.

They stayed less than ten minutes. Back on the road, Caladwen finally deigned to speak.

"What do you know about the Autumn Tribunal?" she asked.

Soren shrugged. "Three days of negotiation. War memorial at the end. Politics, mostly."

She smiled, not kindly. "It's not about politics. It's about who gets to remember what happened, and who's forced to apologize for it."

He thought about that, the way the city erased and rewrote its history by the hour. "You think anything changes?"

She arched a brow. "You're young."

He let that pass. "What's your part in it?"

She looked out the window. "They want me to endorse a memory."

He didn't ask which one. He knew the flavor of that assignment.

Mira watched the road, arms folded, attention never drifting for more than a second. Soren wondered if she'd been briefed separately, or if she simply assumed that every mission ran a double current beneath the surface.

At the edge of midnight, they stopped at a river crossing. The bridge was cordoned, guards posted at both ends. Mira went forward to clear the way. Soren took the moment to check the underslung holster at his hip, empty, as per protocol, but he'd stashed a thin ceramic blade in his boot in case the world decided that protocol was less important than staying alive.

Lady Caladwen's breath frosted the glass. "You ever think about leaving Meridian, Vale?"

He hesitated. "Not often."

She leaned in, her voice soft. "It's easier to survive when you don't believe you're supposed to."

He thought about Jannek, about the runes in the ledger, about the way the bells had rung for him long before the city admitted he was gone.

The carriage moved again, slower now, as the road twisted into the hills. Soren slept with one eye open, and when he dreamed, it was of the blue light under the glass, and the crack that kept getting longer.

On the second morning, Mira woke Soren with a knock on the carriage frame.

"Up. We're on foot through the pass."

Soren blinked, checked the daylight, realized he'd lost a few hours. The wind was sharper than before, biting straight through the coat and into his ribs. He climbed out, boots crunching on frost. Lady Caladwen followed, cloak drawn tight, face unreadable in the dawn haze.

The pass was a narrow cut through the rock, half-choked with old snow and the skeletal remains of the last season's barricades. Mira took point, leading at a brisk pace. Soren kept the Lady between himself and the rock face, scanning every shadow for the possibility of an ambush, but nothing moved except the wind and the occasional bird, brave or desperate enough to linger this late in the year.

Halfway up the slope, Caladwen slowed, picking her steps with deliberate care.

"You're not like the others, Vale," she said, her breath misting in front of her lips.

He kept his eyes forward. "How so?"

"You don't want to be here."

He considered that. "Does anyone?"

She stopped, just for a second, and Soren stopped with her. Mira had gotten ahead, but not so far as to be out of sight.

Lady Caladwen looked at him, her eyes flat as stone. "Some people do. Some people like having the power to be remembered."

He said nothing. She started walking again, and he followed.

At the crest of the pass, Mira waited beside a stack of supply crates. She tossed Soren a water flask. "Checkpoint's manned by locals. We keep it quick."

Soren drank, wiped his mouth. "Anything I should know?"

Mira shrugged. "No one here's loyal to Meridian. Watch your tongue."

Soren watched her stride down to the checkpoint, the set of her body saying she didn't expect trouble, but that she was ready for it. He followed, Lady Caladwen just behind.

The guards at the post were young, faces scrubbed, weapons held too loose to be entirely professional. Mira handled the sign-in, while Soren counted exits, measured the distance to the nearest stand of trees, and tried to decide if the local accent was real or a learned behavior.

At the end of the exchange, one of the guards broke protocol and asked the Lady for an autograph. She obliged, penning her name and a short line in a script Soren didn't recognize. The guard looked at the signature, eyes wide, then tucked the slip into his vest as if it were a religious artifact.

Soren watched the whole thing, then turned away before anyone could read his face.

The next two hours passed in silence. Mira set a hard pace, and Lady Caladwen matched it without complaint.

At the base of the far slope, Soren felt the shift: the air heavier, the quiet less comfortable. Something in the landscape had changed, though he couldn't say what.

Mira noticed too. She signaled a halt, then pulled a coin from her pocket and set it spinning in her palm. "We're being watched," she said, voice low.

Soren glanced at the Lady, who looked entirely unruffled.

Mira grunted. "Could be nothing. Could be someone's early welcome party."

Soren flexed his wrist, felt the shard under the skin vibrate with the old, familiar ache. He wondered if it was warning or encouragement.

"Stay close," he told the Lady.

She smiled, thin and sharp. "You're good at this."

He didn't reply.

They started walking again, Mira now a pace behind. The road narrowed, then bent, and Soren saw the trap even before the first man stepped out from behind the copse.

There were three of them: not Academy, not Meridian security. Their boots were wrong, their coats piecemeal. Bandits, maybe, though Soren doubted any true freelance would risk crossing the Lady in daylight.

The first man lifted a hand, palm out, a show of no weapons. The other two flanked, eyes on Mira.

Soren stopped, let the Lady stand behind his right shoulder.

The lead man smiled. "You're a long way from the Tribunal, friends."

Soren shook his head. "We're expected."

The man grinned wider. "Not here, you're not."

Mira said nothing, just waited.

The man's smile faded. "You'll hand over the Lady. No blood, no story. This stays between us."

Soren said, "That's your pitch?"

The man looked at him, weighing his odds. Soren watched the hands for the signal.

It came: a flick, almost too fast to see, but Mira was already moving, closing on the first bandit in a blur. Soren pivoted left, caught the second at the wrist, twisted, snapped the bone with a clean, practiced motion. The third tried for a draw, but Soren swept his legs, sending him down hard on the gravel.

Mira finished hers with a single, surgical strike, then stepped back, breathing steady.

Soren checked the Lady. She hadn't moved. He noted her calm, the way she didn't flinch even when the first bandit's blood arced across the snow.

The remaining two were still alive, but not interested in fighting.

Soren eased his grip on the ceramic blade in his boot. He straightened and offered the third bandit, the one with the shattered wrist, a look that was more tired than angry.

"You should lie still," Soren said.

The man spat, then tried to push himself up. Failed. Mira nudged him back down with a boot, almost gentle compared to the bone snap from before.

Soren turned to the Lady. "You alright?"

Caladwen regarded the carnage as if reviewing the aftermath of a mediocre dinner. "I assume this was the easy part?"

He shrugged, then looked up at the trees. The air had that expectant, spring-loaded stillness, the kind that fell right before a second act, or a message. Soren waited. The wind cut the back of his neck, sharp as a blade.

Behind him, Mira knelt over the first bandit, now groaning into the snow. "Best leave them as warning," she said, voice flat.

"Or as evidence," Soren added.

The Lady smiled, not at him, but at the way the scene had crystallized: three bodies, no more threat, and a spotless road ahead. She stepped around the heap on the ground, not bothering to lift her hem, and continued up the pass.

They reached the next checkpoint late in the afternoon, the path sloping down into a shallow valley where the snow gave way to frozen mud. The checkpoint, really just two shacks with a bell post between, looked abandoned, but Soren caught the thread of smoke from the right cabin's chimney.

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