Frits sat on the other side of the fire beside Milora on a broad, flat stone. "We all thought she was his daughter, Warney," Krawg whispered. "But now I know different." He wished he could shine the shadows from Milora's downcast face.

"Did I hear a button wren?" mused Frits. "We must be close to home."

"Button wren, button wren, sing us back home." On the ground by Frits's feet, his granddaughter Obrey leaned back against Milora's shins. "When we get back, we'll have to make something for the forest. Something to, I don't know ... brighten it up."

"Why bother?" Milora's question had a bitter tone, and she stripped the seeds from a reed. Frits looked as if he'd been stung. His shoulders sank, and he looked very old.

"Well ..." Obrey scowled, searching for a reply. "Button wrens don't say *why bother.' "

Milora tied the reed in a knot. "A song like that makes no sense in this dead place."

Obrey didn't want to have this argument. She started whistling to herself, playing with silvery vawn scales, poking holes in them with pins, and threading her long yellow hair through them so that her braids sparkled.

"So like Auralia, Warney. In some ways. But she's too young." Instead of sitting down in the space others had cleared for him, Krawg half circled the fire, lifted his shoulder bag, and scattered some scraps he'd pulled from the knuckle-nut tree on the blanket draped across Obrey's lap.

The girl stared at the nutshells, moss-ribbons, and lace-leaves, then looked up. "What're these for?"

He shrugged. "Thought they looked like pieces to a puzzle."

"She's not a trained monkey," Milora muttered. "Obrey plays when she's inspired."

"I'm not givin' her a job," he said. "But if she can make Fraughtenwood look a little better ... Well, it's such a grim and shivery place. Maybe a spot of beauty would do everybody some good."

Obrey jumped up and set about bouncing. "Make something with me, Milora!"

"Beauty," said Milora, "is very laborious." Krawg leaned in close. "It'll come back to you." Milora's eyes narrowed. "Is this some kind of test?" Yes, Krawg thought. "Never," he said.

As Obrey offered her some of the nutshells, Milora's hands tightened into fists. "I'm not a child," she murmured, looking away so that he was left studying the short silverbrown hair on the back of her head.

Maybe I'm imagining things, he thought. Maybe I just miss Auralia too much. "Obrey," said Frits, "come here. I'll play with you."

"Nah." Obrey dropped the pieces on the flickering dust. "Now I'm not in the mood."

"Brevolo's here," somebody whispered. And there she was at the edge of the light, holding the leash for King Cal-raven's woodsnout, Hagah, who panted and whimpered anxiously.

"Story time," said Obrey, and in her eager gaze he could sense how badly she wanted to escape all of this tension.

Relieved that Brevolo had emerged from the trees, Tabor Jan stepped into the fireside circle.

He addressed the travelers with feigned confidence, encouraging them to retreat to their tents as soon as sleep seemed possible. The next day's road through Fraughtenwood would tax them. They'd push through the dense undergrowth that had given these woods such a troubling name. There would be leech-bogs. Tree-trolls were very rare, but thieving rat-monkeys might pester them from hanging mosses. "If the chatterflies buzz in your ears," he said, "Say-ressa can give you oil to discourage them."

Even as he spoke, he was mightily distracted. He'd assigned Brevolo to the team that would sneak back along the trail to ensure they hadn't been followed. She'd gone farther than he'd intended, perhaps tempted to return to Bel Amica.

"If we make good ground," he continued, "we'll be free of Fraughtenwood in just a few days. We will be walking where no one from House Abascar has walked in generations."

He bowed to Krawg, backed out of the circle, and sat down against a fallen tree. Brevolo bound Hagah's leash to a low tree branch, then leaned against Tabor Jan. He draped his arm around her.

As Krawg began his story, Tabor Jan gazed at Brevolo's fire-lit face and then down to the freckles at the base of her throat. She looked beautiful and dangerous, her dark, wild mane typically strewn with leaves and scraps from the forest. He traced her thick eyebrows with his fingertip. She did not look at him. Her eyes flared with unspoken anger, as if she had hoped for a fight but found no opportunity.

"Remind me," she said softly. "What do we hope to find up there?"

"A house with King Cal-raven on the throne," he said without hesitation. "A house where these people can be safe enough to begin families again. A house with a solid wall that will keep out the troubles south of us."

"Yes."

"And a wall to the north to keep out any mysterious curse."

"Yes, again."

"I want to be safe, Brevolo. Safe so we can build without interruption. And I have plans of my own." He drew a slow spiral on her cheek.

She ran her fingertips down his arm. "Sometimes it seems all you think about is getting Cal-raven onto a new throne. Have you imagined the events that come after?"

He was surprised.

Brevolo had always loved a good fight and reveled in a wild gallop on a vawn or a horse. But since Deathweed had killed her sister, Bryndei, in the Blackstone Caves, she'd become more mercurial. She wanted to punish somebody. During their Bel Amican stay, Brevolo had joined the patrols of Captain Ryllion, whose charm and violence had distracted and inspired her.

Tabor Jan had begun to feel he was fading from her attention. He was a part of a world full of painful memories and loss. She might leave him behind.

As Krawg went on, telling the story of the strange magician who had sewn up dolls with minds and wills of their own, Tabor Jan traced lines around the ridges of Brevolo's knuckles, where Abascar tradition would require a marriage tattoo. She would not miss this suggestion.

"So you do have plans." Her voice sounded suddenly fragile. Fearful. "Can it still be possible?"

It had taken some persuasion to get her to come along on this journey. He wanted to find a way back to the feisty, stormy romance they had shared before she lost Bryndei. He hoped to ask for her hand in marriage and create a bond that would make them both stronger.

But did he want this for her good? Or his own? Did he want it because it was the best plan or because any plan seemed a comfort in this disappointing world? The king's disappearance had raised so many uncertainties. Tabor Jan had led this party along Cal-raven's charted course, as if by putting that plan in motion he would draw the king out of the darkness.

"I will not let fear rule my decisions," he said aloud, surprising himself.

Brevolo released a shuddering sigh. "I had wondered," she whispered, "if your eagerness to lead this mission came from fear."

"I feared what would become of us in Bel Amica," he murmured. "Abascar was dissolving like sugar in ... like salt in a ..." He had never been very good with poetic turns of phrase.

"I think you were afraid of more than what was happening to Abascar. Something unsettled you there."

He pressed his fingertip more determinedly against the back of her hand as if he could engrave the tattoo on her skin by sheer willpower. He would not let himself think of Queen Thesera's daughter. Cyndere lived in a different world, with different demands and responsibilities. She belonged to House Bel Amica. He had been a fool even to consider the possibility.

He closed his eyes.

"I feared," he said determinedly, "that we would not separate ourselves from the Bel Amicans. I feared we'd never see all that we had fought for. Consider what you and I might do for these people, Brevolo."

Our family could rise as a pillar of New Abascar.

"And you?" he asked hesitantly. "What would you hope to find up there?"

"Room to raise an army," she said. "The great army that you deserve to lead, Captain."

He looked at her, half expecting to find that she was joking. But before he could see her expression clearly, she was kissing him. Then she whispered, "Forgive me. I let myself become distracted by a liar. I feel like a fool. I've just been so ... so helpless since ..."

"I know." He touched her first tears as if they were rare gemstones.

"I wanted to be part of something strong. But when I saw you walking with the Bel Amican royals after you spoiled the conspiracy, I woke up. And when I heard you were planning this journey, I remembered how rare it is to find a principled man. A man faithful to his friends and to his house. A man who suffers so that others will be safe. A man who is everything my father failed to be. I saw that I still have something to lose. Someone I want to protect."

Krawg's story went on. He spoke of the girl sewn by the magician, the girl who came to life and flew. The listeners were enthralled.

Tabor Jan looked at the glassmakers. Obrey was grinning as if the story were coming true before her eyes. But as she listened, her hands were busy. She'd taken a branch and planted it in the ground. In each rising, coiling offshoot, she had set a stick of wax, making a candlestand out of materials she'd found in the Cragavar.

What would it take to bring these artists to Abascar? To give them enough peace that they could remember how to play?

Milora was distracted-transfixed-by Krawg's narrative. Her face seemed bruised, troubled as the old Gatherer went on. When Krawg spoke of the girl flying back into her maker's arms, she stood, face wet with tears, and slipped away. Frits watched her go, visibly worried.

Tabor Jan did not go after her. Brevolo was asleep on his arm, and she was warm. He decided to wait awhile and quietly pulled bits of bark and insect wings from her hair.

Just as Krawg reached the part where the disgruntled young boy rebelled, breaking away from his maker and taking a group of children with him beyond the border of safety, a sound began to spread through the boughs over their heads. Rain. In this thick cover of branches, no one had noticed clouds coming down from the north.

Brevolo awoke with a start, and Tabor Jan stood. "Time for the tents, everyone. You'll have to dream the rest of the story." At the rising chorus of complaints, he added, "And I've said it before-Krawg needs shorter stories. A few characters we like, a few we don't, and the bad ones are beaten at the end. That would help us sleep."

Krawg growled and groaned. "Ballyworms! I'll never finish this story. And I want to know how it ends!"

In his tent Krawg tossed and turned.

Every time sleep took hold, he saw Cal-raven fighting a monster in a cave, Warney strung up by his ankles in trouble, and Auralia locked in a prison, waiting for rescue.

"Auralia!" he shouted. That drew the attention of Jes-hawk, who was on patrol.

"Help me," the archer said, restraining the excited, slobbering Hagah on a leash. "Frits says Milora's wandered off again."

Krawg knew Jes-hawk's deep distrust of strangers and his rage against deserters.

Jes-hawk gave him a crooked torch, and they decided to walk a wide circle around the camp, going in opposite directions. Krawg hadn't gone far when something stopped him.

"Pssst."

It was Obrey, hiding just out of the light, huddled at the base of a tree. "Don't tell the soldier," she said, "but I'm looking for Milora."

"Oh no you're not," Krawg insisted. "You're goin' back to camp. Leave the lookin' to me. What's she doin', runnin' away again? What's got her rotten as a winter plum?"

Obrey crawled out on all fours, cautious as a fox. "It's her memory. Sometimes it starts coming back. It scares her."

"Is that why she wouldn't play?"

Obrey sighed as if she were carrying the burdens of an adult. "She says it hurts too much-makin' things no one's got time to see. It makes her feel ... invisible."

"I see."

Obrey stood, brushing off her hands. "And when somebody does slow down and really look, well ... they always say nice things. But then they start askin' for stuff. Gifts and favors."

Yes, yes, that's how it was for Auralia. Krawg felt trapped. He wanted to back away, wanted to lean in and ask questions.

"One woman asked her for a statue. She was a small, scowling, jealous woman, and when Milora made the sculpture, it looked just right. The woman smashed it."

Krawg nodded, amazed. It has to be Auralia, he thought.

"Most of the time, though, she says that people are just waiting for her to find a man. As if that's all that matters." Obrey crumpled her face as if trying to imitate Milora's expression. "Why is it that way? And who made it so?"

Those two questions, spoken in that particular tone, struck Krawg like a slap in the face. He staggered, and sparks rained down from the torch.

"There's no man alive who deserves her," Obrey sulked. "Nobody lets her be herself. Nobody sees her."

Krawg remembered Milora's confession about Cal-raven. "Surely there's somebody."

Obrey scowled forcefully and turned away. "If there was, I wouldn't tell."

Krawg looked off into the darkness. "You're a special kinda friend, that she'd feel safe to say such stuff to you. Have you watched her make things?"

"She only makes stuff in certain ... conditions."

"Like?"

"Quiet. No interruptions. Nobody payin' attention. Play, she says. It's hard to do."

"Is that why she wanders off?"

Obrey folded her arms. "You're just tryin' to spoil things, aren't you? I'm going back to my tent." She stomped away.

"I found her last time." Gripping the torch, he moved out into the dark.

At first all he heard was the occasional unsettling creak, like a door hinge, among the branches overhead. But then an unnatural clatter, like teeth shaken in a bowl, attracted his attention. He raised the torch and stalked through the tangled brush, cringing as his passage sent nocturnal crawlers-rabbit-sized crickets and hundred-legged serpents-scuttling and slithering through the ground cover. What he found made him forget his purpose.

Hanging from a low branch, a mobile of seven crisscrossing twigs, carefully balanced, spun slowly. Krawg's knuckle-nut half shells hovered from strings at the end of all fourteen spokes. They fluttered on leafy wings. The shells were hung with the cavities down, and inside their concave shape hung tiny pebbles. Each winged half shell clattered like a bell.

Just below that, at the end of a blunt, eight-fingered branch, hung a scrap of twisted, textured bark. Yellow flower petals were pressed into the bark's swirling grooves to create bright spirals and lines. At intervals along the winding yellow line, the wood was embedded with gemstones as if to mark treasure along a trail.

Krawg had no idea what it meant. But it all seemed to hum with meaning.

He reached out to take the bark from the branch. The eight fingers of the branch tightened their grip on it. Krawg scowled. He took the piece by the edge again.

The wooden fingers opened, releasing the bark. Then they lunged forward and caught Krawg's forearm in a piercing grip.

He yelped and threw himself backward. The branch, holding him fast, broke from the trunk like an arm tearing free at the shoulder. But its clutch of sharp twigs tightened.

Krawg clawed at the wooden hand, trying to tear it free. Its sharp fingertips pierced his skin. He roared and rolled toward the smoldering torch, then waved the torn end of the attacking arm into its flame. The claws came out of his wrist, and he scrambled free, clasping his hand over the bloodied punctures.

Back at the camp, there was a commotion. Someone had heard him. Hagah began to bark.

Krawg took the torch and scanned the ground for his attacker. He did not have to find it-it came running for him, its fingers sturdy as insect legs, dragging its broken-branch body along.

He thrust with the torch as if the flame were a dagger. The aggressor reared up, twig-legs flailing, as fire engulfed its spindly wooden spine. It tumbled onto its back, and from its kicking legs came a high-pitched whine like the sizzle of a roast as something within burned into clouds black as oil smoke. Then the twigs curled inward like a dead spider's legs. The creature crumbled into ash, leaving a stench in the air.