Elder Sibley arrived last and slowest, which was her right. She was seventy and kept her hair in a single iron braid and her opinions sharper than her knives. She took in Miren, the dark-scaled passenger, the crimson scrap, Tobin's heaving horse, and the distant glitter of spears in one long inventory.
"Inside the mill," she said. "All of you who can walk. Bring water and the tally sticks. Leave the chickens; chickens have survived worse kings than this one."
They packed what could be carried without admitting panic: bread, bandages, the sealed jar of last year's honey, the children Pip and Nessa holding hands so tightly their knuckles matched. Ralla came running from the upper pasture with Tobin's younger sheepdog at her heels and slapped her brother's boot as if affection and fury shared a wrist.
"You ride toward armies now?"
"I ride away from them and toward you," Tobin said. "There's a difference. Small."
In the mill's cool stone belly, with the great wheel silent for once, Miren set the creature on an empty grain sack. It did not bolt. It arranged the crimson cloth with fussiness, then looked up at the circle of human faces as if tallying them the way Sibley had tallied the threat.
"Wellscale," Sibley said softly. Surprise was rare on her; it sat oddly. "I have not seen one since the year the castle burned. They nested in Veyne's cisterns. Carried messages between the deep waters when the lords still believed water had a memory."
"It has a name?" Edric asked, practical even in wonder.
The creature clicked its tongue against the roof of its mouth—three times, deliberate—and then made a sound like wet stone struck by a stick: Vetch. Or close enough that Miren's mouth shaped it that way.
"Vetch," she said.
Vetch lifted the cloth again and shook it once. Dust of dried dye drifted. On the frayed edge, half a royal mark still showed: the crowned wheatsheaf of King Osric's house, the same mark stamped on levy notices that arrived each autumn and were argued over like weather.
"It's a warning," Miren said. "Not a theft for theft's sake."
"Or both," Corin muttered. "Creatures have reasons. So do kings. Neither always kindly."