"We ration," she said.
"We ration," Torven agreed.
Callen produced, from somewhere in his polished packing, a small hard cake of dried fruit and divided it into three without commentary. The sweetness was almost shocking after days of meat and mint. Serenya ate her third slowly, as if speed might offend the rarity.
"Tell me something true that is not about the geas," she said to Torven, because hard honesty could also be small.
Torven stared at the cracked bowl as if it were a report. "I wanted to be a miller when I was twelve. Grain. Predictable failures. My father laughed until he coughed. My mother did not laugh. She put a practice sword in my hand the next morning and said the ridge does not let Ashmark children choose soft work while the holds still burn. I have been useful ever since. I am trying to learn the difference between useful and right."
Callen whistled softly. "That is more confession than I got out of you in three campaigns."
"You never asked while my blood was hosting an insect seal," Torven said.
Serenya nodded once. "I wanted to leave the bow on a shelf after my sister came home. The wardens smiled and said the bracer did not come off for wishes. I learned to love the yellow feathers because loving the tool made the cage look like craft. I am unlearning that love. It is slower than cutting a thread."
No one rushed to comfort anyone. Comfort would have been a shortcut, and the lattice liked shortcuts.
Rain returned in the night, harder. They slept poorly. Twice Serenya woke with her hand halfway toward Torven's and pulled it back as if from a stove. Once Torven woke speaking a fragment of sure hit into the dark and bit the words off hard enough that Callen sat up with a knife before realizing the enemy was inside the captain's mouth.
"Still here," Serenya said to the dark, to Torven, to herself.
"Still refusing," Torven answered.
By morning the trail smelled washed. They packed again. The Highmarsh road, such as it was, began to show old cart ruts filled with water.
By the fifth day the Highmarsh ruin showed itself ahead: broken towers, a seal-stone half buried in grass, concentric circles worn by weather and old ceremonies. It was not salvation visible as architecture. It was a place where work could continue. Serenya felt the geas shift in her blood as if sniffing a familiar door. Torven felt it too and grimaced.
"Not yet," Orlaeth had said of endings. The season had barely begun.