There was more than enough wood, fish, and game aboard this afternoon, so Briada asked Delia to take a turn on the first barge to watch for Ivar. He had ranged far ahead on Manta with Bay ahead of him to sniff out danger. He usually did this right after luncheon, in part to hunt out a good spot to anchor the barges for the night, but there was a special urgency the last three days. The river was definitely running narrower and faster now, and there was concern from Ivar that this could mean they were about to find at least part of the river impassable by barge. And so far they had not found whatever it was that Kordas and his informal council of farmers and the Landwise considered to be a good place to call their new home.

Delia had no idea what they were looking for—but then, she hadn’t asked, either. Maybe it was just “somewhere with enough farmland for all our people where no one is living at the moment,” because Ivar mentioned nearly every day that he’d seen signs of settlement—several columns of rising smoke in thin streams, for instance—that told him there was a village, or at least a building or two, not that far from the river. Which only made perfect sense; with no roads to speak of, the only way to travel to other people would be by the river, and the most reliable source of water without a well would be the river. Endars, who was Landwise along with his other powers, would generally say something like, “We wouldn’t want to try and settle here anyway,” so that more or less settled anyone suggesting something like sending for Kordas and seeing if they couldn’t negotiate with the potential neighbors.

The wind had flinty teeth today, but at least the sunlight warmed her a little. The beautiful leaves were gone; carpeting the riverbank, floating along the river. Here and there evergreens stood out starkly among the bare branches. She spotted Ivar in the distance, long before the others did. “Ivar’s coming!” she called, but in a spirit of resignation. He didn’t leave all that long ago. So it’s not a good night-anchor site he’s found.

“Hakkon!” Sai called. “Time to pull in again.”

With the same resignation she felt, they tied the barges up to the shore, and by the time they were done, Ivar had dismounted. “Luck’s run out!” he called, sounding far more cheerful than he had any right to, in Delia’s estimation. “Rapids ahead. This stretch of river is better than anything I passed, so it might as well be here we make base camp. I’ll walk perimeter now, an’ around sunup we can scout out a place to put a Gate to get past it all.”

And with that, Sai began unloading camping materials, while some of the others went to their barges to pack their own rough-camping gear.

A “base camp” turned out not to be any more elaborate than the usual night camp, but with one exception. Six horses had their charms muted; as long as their riders directed otherwise, they wouldn’t automatically try to get back to their barges. But if something happened, where the rider was not with the horse, or was incapacitated, the charm would bring them back as long as they could move.

This was because, in the morning, three pairs of riders were going to go scouting in different directions; one pair would travel along the current riverbank to see if things smoothed out ahead, one would go to the northwest, and one would go to the north-northeast. Nobody really wanted to go so much as a furlong back in the direction of the Empire, but if that was what it would take to find another navigable river . . . then that was where they would go, and hope that the river either bent westward again, or they could find a third river that was going the direction they wanted.

The first team, following the course of the river they were currently on, would be Briada Fairweather and Jonaton. They wouldn’t need to be Woodswise and able to map as Ivar and Hakkon were; they just needed to follow the river—for two days, or however long it would take to get past the bad stretch, whichever came first. It was Jonaton going, because if they found smooth water straight ahead, Jonaton would be able to prepare the site for the exit Gate. The second team, going into the deep unknown to the west, was Ivar and Bart Fairweather. The third team was Hakkon and Bret Fairweather.

That left all the mages (except Jonaton), and Delia and Alberdina, to mind the base camp. Four days, perhaps five. That was how long they would be here, with all of the people with experience in fighting gone. But they knew there was no choice in the matter; better send those who were adept with weapons out. If those left behind had to, they could barricade themselves in the barges. And if they lost all the horses at the base camp, they could still go on with the six the others were riding, and get more when the convoy caught up with them.

The last several nights, the mages had been working out how to create devices called “shield pods,” which, when armed and broken, would put up a barrier against most things—for a time. They were fortunate to have two mages who were extremely good with shields (which only spoke of tragic pasts, in Delia’s romantic mind) to take the lead in inventing these improvised versions, using mainly local found materials. Delia admitted to being a bit in awe of what she was a part of. She knew the mages were smart, but seeing them in motion was remarkable. Apparently, this inventing task was something they’d expect to have a salon or laboratory for, and yet, they were going to create it from twigs and mud? On a boat? Surrounded by weird animals and unknown danger? There they were, not only working the problems, but laughing and enjoying the process. It helped with Delia’s anxiety, if all was said honestly. One couldn’t help but be uneasy out here where anything might try to digest or poison you. Hearing the mages fearlessly making things, and loving it, made her feel safer.

So far, they hadn’t had much luck in keeping the shield pods up for very long; it was as grueling for them to craft the prototypes as if they were doing hard labor, so they were pretty seriously immersed in the work.

But she certainly wished they’d been more successful as she eyed the rocky shore where they were now anchored. “Is there anything I can do to help prepare the camp?” she asked, as they all unharnessed and unsaddled the horses and rubbed them down before turning them loose to browse.

“Take your crossbow and Venidel, and the two of you do some scouting for browse you can cut and haul back here,” Ivar said, patting his horse on the neck as a sign that she was free to meander to a patch of still-green grass she’d been eyeing. “They’re going to eat this spot clean by noon tomorrow, and I want them kept right by the barges while we’re gone. Hells, if there was an easy way, I’d put them on the barges.”

Delia glanced up and down the bank again, and suddenly, as if a candle had been lit in her mind, she realized why Endars kept saying, “We wouldn’t want to settle here.” When her attention had been on hunting or target-shooting, she truly hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the land beyond the bank; that was just the backdrop to what she was doing. But now she got a good look at the land, and what she saw was not promising for farming. The soil seemed to be sandy clay. The trees were some sort of oak, but not as tall as the trees back “home,” as if they were stunted from lack of nourishment. The underbrush was weeds mixed with some kind of leathery-leafed evergreen, and the horses showed no interest in sampling it. The only thing that the horses showed any interest in were the tall grasses that grew where the forest ended and the riverbank began. Stones peeked through the soil . . . a lot. You could certainly raise goats here, and maybe sheep, but cattle would starve, and horses wouldn’t prosper.

And as for actual farming? Well, she was anything but an expert, but she didn’t think much of the seed the expedition carried with them would grow well here.

Endars let his eyes wander over the bank, though they had an unfocused look to them. He shook his head. “This area floods every spring when the snow melts. Not a good place to stop when that happens, much less a place to settle.”

“Good thing it’s not spring yet, then. Not waiting to see if he’s right,” Ivar replied agreeably, and jerked his head at Delia. “Don’t go out of sight. This kind of forest all looks alike once you get inside it, even to me.”

Delia went back to the barge for her weapons, and collected Venidel. He had a great many skills in a great many areas that had nothing to do with magic. Sadly, Venidel’s many skills didn’t include anything to do with combat, fighting, or hunting, but Delia sensed that Ivar intended for Venidel to be the one looking for suitable browse, while Delia watched for trouble.

Venidel had a pocketful of bits of colored yarn—imperial stringettes, often used by the Army for marking where a path was—and whenever he found something he was sure would be good for the horses, he marked it with a bit of yarn. “Let’s start here,” he said, stopping a couple of furlongs past the last barge. “I’ll go beat my way into the forest. You shout when you can’t see me.”

She nodded, and they worked their way downriver until the barges looked like toy boats, and the horses no taller than the first joint of her finger. By this time Venidel was covered in some kind of tiny burrs or seeds, there were twigs in his hair, and he’d ripped the right knee of his trews. And yet, he was uncommonly cheerful as they walked back along the riverbank, which here was just about wide enough for two horses side by side in harness. “How are you going to get those sticky seeds off?” she asked.

“Oh, I know a spell,” he replied, and stopped for a moment. He crossed his arms, furrowed his brow with concentration, and barked six unintelligible words.

The seeds all flared up, hundreds of tiny, instant flames, and disappeared. She gaped at him. He brushed the ash off, nonchalantly, and winked at her.

“Now, if I was to go home and look for a wife, that’s a trick that would impress the kind of girl I like, way more than hovering in midair would,” he grinned, in a reference to what Endars had said about “flying.” He motioned to her to come on.

She thought about saying something like “Well, it impressed me,” but that would imply she was Venidel’s kind of girl . . .

I don’t know how to act around a boy my age who isn’t a servant. Or a girl my age, for that matter. She suddenly felt awkward and tongue-tied. Not because she wanted to impress Venidel, but because she simply didn’t know what was the safe thing to reply.

So much of her life had been spent solely in the company of adults, usually ones old enough to be her father. And even when Kordas and Isla took her in, that really hadn’t changed. There weren’t any families of rank near enough to make casual visits, and Kordas hadn’t encouraged anyone to visit the manor except at Midwinter. Given how many mages he had been hosting and all the other secrets he had been hiding, that probably had been a good idea. She could handle herself in conversations with older people, even really elderly ones. But it left her feeling very awkward around someone like Venidel.

Would he take such an answer as flirting? Wary now, she just asked, “I take it that lady-mages are unimpressed by floating in midair?”

“The ones I know would laugh at the idiot who thought it would impress them,” he told her with a snort. They both were silent for a moment, navigating a patch of slippery stones with the potential to dump them in the cold, cold river. “I’ll be glad when we’re in one place at last again and have a home. We can even have a proper Mage Circle, and maybe a school where I can get formal lessons. We couldn’t have that back in the Duchy. The Emperor’s mages would have noticed that big a concentration of power.”

“How many of you are there in the convoy?” she asked curiously. “All I ever knew about were all the ones living at the manor.”

“Mages and apprentices together? Dozens. Way more than anyplace else in the Empire except the front lines of the wars, and the Imperial Palace.” He nodded at her start of surprise. “For three generations now, the Valdemarans have been hiding mages who were pacifists, just didn’t like the way the Empire works in general, or managed to get on the bad side of an Imperial mage and were hoping to find a place to disappear into.”

“I always thought most of them were living at the manor . . .” She faltered.

“No. Oh, no. Most of them were scattered in nice, comfortable little cottages around the Duchy, acting as hedge-wizards and herbalists. Now they’re scattered all through the convoy, with people they already knew.” He glanced over at her. “Once we’re settled, with this many mages? If we can find a nexus of ley-lines, we’re going to be able to do amazing things. We’re going to have a real city much faster than you’d ever believe is possible.”

She wrinkled her brow with a sudden thought. “Is that why you are all having such a hard time keeping up those shield-things? No nexus of ley-lines?”

“Not only no nexus—that’s where two or more ley-lines meet and cross—but no ley-line at all right now. This river meandered right off the ley-line that was where we planted the Gate, and none of us have been able to find one within easy reach.” He shrugged again. “Power is everywhere, but it’s like water. Back in Valdemar we were on a strong source, like a river, that bisected the Duchy, with a small nexus where three lines met under the manor itself. There was a big nexus of seven lines back at Crescent Lake, or we never would have been able to link Gates so far apart. Right now . . . the Power is there, it’s always all around us, but it’s like a misting rain. It’s hard to gather enough to get a good drink out of it, much less do anything that requires a lot of energy.”

Those words sent a chill down her back, and she glanced at him sharply. Because so much depended on being able to use Gates—

“But what if there’s no ley-line where we need to go?” she blurted, her voice tight with anxiety.

“We can store power in things, and we have, for just that reason,” he said reassuringly. “In the Gate uprights themselves, just for a start.”

Oh, idiot. This Plan has been decades in the making. If Kordas’s grandfather didn’t think of that, his father would have, and if he hadn’t, Kordas or one of the Six would have.

Venidel suddenly raised his head and sniffed. “Oh my word. I think I smell roast goose.”

So did she, and her mouth watered. No matter how many times she had it, she never got tired of goose. And if the footing had been any better she might have challenged him to a race.

But that would have been an exceptionally bad idea on these rocks. Best to save the bad ideas for when they really needed them.

“What do you like about all this the best?” she asked instead, which seemed a safe topic with no potential flirting traps embedded in it. And it proved to be, since he was still rattling off all the reasons he loved doing the scouting when they arrived back at the camp.

Delia deeply appreciated the presence of Bay on the roof of their barge. The soft sounds of him alerting and looking around, perhaps getting to his feet and lying down again when whatever had alerted him proved to be nothing, was one of the most comforting things she could think of. It reminded her that there were two beings, Bey and Amethyst, who could be relied on to call an alarm if anything approached that wasn’t a rat or an owl.

She just knew she wasn’t going to be able to sleep when the three teams left. She felt as if, even if Sai told her to go to bed, she’d need to stay wakeful, as if by not sleeping she could somehow detect danger outside the barge.

Which was utterly ridiculous, of course, but she was having no luck convincing her nerves of that.

There was a wind tonight, and it whipped up waves on the river that made the barge rock. The men’s barge is going to be half empty. I wonder if that is going to bother anyone. Not Sai, surely, but perhaps Venidel?

She tried to think of pleasant things. Sai had put bread dough to rise in the warmth of the barge, something he had not bothered to do until now because there would not have been time to bake it in the mornings before they needed to be on their way. She had thought of a clever way to gather fodder tomorrow, if Venidel agreed and had a way to help. It would even be possible that the convoy would catch up with them while they waited for the scouts to return, and she could astonish everyone with her prowess with Gift and crossbow.

But as she stared into the darkness, aware that the ceiling was within a hand-length of her nose even though she couldn’t see it, all she could think about was that the wind would make it hard to hear anything creeping up on them from the forest. All that was between them and danger were the senses of an air spirit trapped in a magical rag doll, and no one had any real idea how good or bad those senses were.

And as far as she knew, she was going to be the only one left here with any sort of skill at arms when the three teams went out. Maybe the mages had something offensive—but when, in their entire lives in the peaceful Duchy of Valdemar, would there ever have been an occasion to use such spells? Had they ever even practiced such things? And would they have the power to do so in the first place?

So the barge rocked, and she fretted, and she didn’t actually remember falling asleep, but the next thing she knew, gray dawn light glowed through the little window of her bunk.

She beat everyone to the morning chores. Not even Alberdina stirred as Delia wiped herself down, got her clean underthings from her towel, and dressed in double layers of knitted wool, followed by a sheepskin coat. It was cold this early in the morning, and there was a skin of ice on the buckets of water Sai had left to settle last night. She made it her business to rake the last of the coals and the ashes away from the cookpot where the morning stew was, and start a cookfire so that there would be nice hot coals for Sai to bake his bread in.

The morning fog wasn’t so thick as to be a danger, but it did limit visibility to a couple of barge-lengths. There was a quality to sound, when air was cold, that made every splash, thump, and clank very discrete. Sounds were more defined in morning cold; they started sharply, and ended abruptly without followup. Birdcalls pierced the fog’s thick silence, and echoes were absent. As far away from all she’d known as Delia was today, she had to admit there was such a stark beauty to this morning that she should take a few minutes’ time just to experience it. The earliest birdcalls were answered by more from another direction. Today’s avian audio war had begun.

We think they sound beautiful, but those songs are declarations and dares, warnings and challenges.

Ivar and Sai emerged from the men’s barge together, talking about something in voices too low to make out the words. Sai carried his precious risen dough in a covered bowl, and greeted her effort with a nod of approval. He didn’t have to tell her what he wanted; with her Gift, she raked a bed of hot coals a little apart from the fire, and placed a three-legged iron pot in the middle of them. Sai carefully rolled his lump of dough into it, and clapped the lid on it. Then she used her Gift to pile more hot coals on the lid.

I have to admit, I get smug about my Gift. Fortunate enough to have a Gift, and with it I can Fetch an object from one place to another instantly, and move it around once I have? It’s the best.

“You make a fine shovel!” Sai teased, then sobered. “This is much safer than mucking about with the fire the ordinary way. Heavy clothing makes us move clumsily, and I am afraid we are very flammable under these things.” He held up his arm; rather than a coat, he had a sort of cape, like a circle of very heavy wool with a hole in the middle and a hood sewn to the hole. Unlike a cape, this had no armholes.

“You stay away from poking the fire in that thing,” Alberdina scolded from the barge. “You let us play with the coals, or else find a sensible coat.”

“I have one, somewhere,” he replied vaguely, as he pulled the second pot out of the ashes and embers of last night’s fire. “Now, this should be good with fresh bread.” He took up a stout stick, threaded it through the two rings welded to the lid, and lifted the lid off. Apparently the savory aroma of goose-and-spiced-lentil stew penetrated the hulls of the barges, because shortly after that, everyone had gathered around the fire with their plates and spoons and looks of anticipation.

Alberdina always made the tea. Delia wasn’t sure what was in it, or if it had any purpose other than tasting good, but Alberdina had said that it was safer to drink the river water boiled, and that if she was going to boil water regardless, she was damned if she wasn’t going to make tea with it.

Those who were riding out ate quickly, then fetched their traveling kits from the barges. Delia didn’t envy them. Unless they got lucky and shot game, they’d be eating trail biscuits and tea for every meal they had out there. And sleeping on the ground, and hoping for clear weather. They had canvas shelters, but those were little more than rectangles of waxed canvas that would cover two people in a no-more-than-moderate rainstorm. She couldn’t imagine being in a thunderstorm and trying to keep dry under that scrap of fabric. For a moment, she had the mental image of someone sleeping under their horse while that tent barely draped over the horse’s back.

Breakfast was excellent with real bread, but no one talked about anything but their plans for the ride. No one lingered over breakfast or farewells. The three teams were in the process of mounting up when Sai handed Delia and Venidel a pair of hand-scythes, and made a shooing motion.

“Ah, fodder duty,” Venidel said, hanging the scythe on his belt. “Have you a plan? Because I don’t.”

“I do, actually.” She felt a little warm glow that he had deferred to her. “If you have some magic way of gathering what we cut into a kind of ball or bale, I can mark a spot among the horses to drop it with my Gift.”

“Oh!” He brightened. “So we needn’t carry the bulk of it at all! I should have thought of that. Well, it’ll surely take effort on both our parts, but I’d rather put in the effort with magic than manual labor in this case.”

“I feel the same,” she agreed. “I could do the gathering-up too, but I think it’d exhaust me to do both. So that’s on you. And I thought that we’d start parallel to yesterday’s trail, at the farthest place we marked, and work our way back. So instead of my having to move things farther and farther with each grass ball, I’ll be doing it shorter and shorter. Plus, we might find something good along the way.” She walked over to the horses, who greeted her with a glance and whicker. After some toeing about, she found a stone shaped a little like a rabbit. That would do. Just to be sure, Delia defined the rabbit’s appearance with pocket chalk, and set it upright against a larger stone.

Venidel made a fancy bow and waved her on. Together they scrambled over the rocky shoreline until they were both sure there were no more bits of yarn to be seen in the forest underbrush. Venidel sighed as he regarded the tangle of vines immediately in front of them. “Well,” he said with resignation, the wind whistling through the branches of the trees, and brown leaves flying, “this will still be work. We’ll still have to cut the damned stuff.”

“You mean this isn’t the glamor of magic?” Delia teased Venidel.

“It is exactly that! A ‘glamor’ is an illusion! All of us have learned these past few weeks that the daily utility of magic is what’s valuable. But it isn’t pretty! No, the great tales never speak of drying sewage or raising grass. Or razing grass. It’s always some monsters, or invasions, or demons. So many demons.”

What the horses would eat as fodder tended to be concentrated in lopsided circles, tiny meadows where the tree cover was interrupted. There was generally not too much for her to lift when Venidel muttered under his breath and twirled his finger in the palm of his hand, and the cut grasses and weeds swirled as if there was a whirlwind animating them, compacting in no time into a ball that weighed just about as much as a toddler, and was about the same size. As soon as the whirling stopped, Delia “grasped” the grass ball, pictured the rabbit-shaped stone she’d found among the horses, built up her power, took a deep, grass-scented breath, and pushed the volume of space the grass ball filled, and blinked.

The ball vanished. Venidel nodded approval, and even the rattling of branches above them sounded a bit like applause.

“And that is why we will never be employed as babysitters. Much better plan than mine,” he said. “Which involved my making grass balls, but then called for us to borrow one of the horses, hitch it to a basic sledge, and haul it that way. It seemed a better plan than carrying the damned things two at a time.”

“Do we have a basic sledge?” she asked in surprise, because surely something like that would have been hard to hide—

“Well, no,” he admitted, “we’d have had to build one.”

“Still not a bad plan.” She stopped to rub her forehead. “When we go back to camp for luncheon, we can make a better guess how much more fodder we’ll need to cut today, because we’ll see how much the horses ate.”

“Hopefully they’ll still eat it, since the sky threw it at them,” he giggled. Delia trudged toward the next bit of yarn, a bright spot in the brown and muddy-green foliage. She had discovered those little sticky seeds he had been covered in yesterday, clinging to the sleeves of her coat even though she didn’t remember encountering anything that had seeds like that. There didn’t seem to be any way of avoiding them.

“I hope it’s not an issue,” Delia offered. He trudged behind her, having the good sense to follow a trail someone else was breaking. Well, she didn’t mind breaking the trail for him. “I’d forgotten how hand-cutting grass uses muscles you generally forget you have. I have the feeling that by luncheon I’m going to be as sore as the first day I ever rode a horse.”

“Hyah, I’m already there. We should stop a while a’fore Amethyst has to relay, ‘Two overconfident idiots are dead, after a tragic grass-cutting mission. Their bodies were found nowhere near their camp, obviously worn down to the bones. They worked too hard to keep the horses fed, and didn’t even stop for tea when they should have’,” Ivar confirmed. “‘When interviewed, the horses were indifferent to their demise, and then asked for more food.’”

With the last of the boats through, and the Gate uprights from Crescent Lake and the Gate on this river both taken down, the folk at the tail end of the convoy were treated to a—well—literally magical sight. The uprights got strapped to a pair of basic hulls, a Tow-Beast was harnessed to each, and a mage who was also clearly an experienced rider mounted up. Then the horses trotted across the river to the other bank, barges bobbing behind them. Spontaneous cheers and applause erupted once the spectacle was in clear view of everyone below.

The mages had created a surface that the horses could walk on, of course, because there was a good strong ley-line to draw on here, and these two horses had been trained to trust that the surface would be there when their riders urged them to cross the river. But this was necessary if the Gate uprights were going to catch up with the scouts; there was no other way to pass the convoy, except through tedious shuffling of transfer barges.

This was important. The scouts had two sets of Gate uprights with them already, but those would eventually be set up when the convoy needed to get past a difficult stretch. Once the new Gates that the scouts put in place to get around bad patches of water or jump to new rivers were up, they’d need to replace the two sets they’d carried with them.

This was probably the most dangerous task that any two people in the convoy could do right now. And the most uncomfortable. They would be moving at the best speed they could, and the Tow-Beasts were formidable enough to make an entire wolf pack decide to look for easier prey, but they would just be two people, all alone out there. Which was why Kordas had chosen two mages who had been combat mages before they sickened of slaughter and sought asylum with him.

It looked like a miracle, the two horses at a brisk trot in the bright sunlight, seemingly walking on water, a barge behind each of them. They clambered ashore, and were off at remarkable pace. The size of the Tow-Beasts meant long legs, and long legs ate up distance even when the horse was pulling a barge against the current. Moving with the current as they were, the barges were scarcely a burden to the strength of the massive horses.

“The river moves away from the ley-line today, Baron,” Rose reminded him as he mounted Arial.

I hope we can find another. Or better still, a nexus. A nexus would be ideal, of course; any reserves of power that had been depleted could be recharged. If anything, the available supply of magic would be as critical for them as any other supply. With magic and food, they could survive almost anything that nature, or the unnatural, could throw at them. At least, he thought so. In fact, if the dangers out here were no worse than that pack of snake-dogs, things would be fine.

The blacksmith and his two apparently constant companions showed up as the last of the barges with the Poomers in it lurched into motion. He said nothing to Kordas, nor did it appear that he was doing anything other than making sure they all left. Or perhaps that was ungenerous thinking; the man gave Kordas a grave salute. Kordas responded with a bow from the saddle, and urged Arial up through the ambling herds.

Ambling was the right term; it was a slow walk, allowing everyone but the horses to snatch whatever bites of anything edible they could see. Geese and ducks swam alongside the barges, mostly snatching at stuff along the bank where the footing was too uncertain for even the goats to venture. Chickens sat grumpily on every available surface of their coop-barges. Like the geese and ducks, they were fed in the morning when they were let out, and in the evening when they went back in, but they were not allowed to forage on the way, and their charms kept them right on their barges. It was clear they were tolerating this situation, but were not in the least happy about it.

The guards were in the forest, forming a living fence to ensure no sheep, goat, or pig went too far inland, working in concert with the herders. They also formed a barrier against wild things, weirdling or not, that might be tempted to risk an encounter with humans for a chance at all the tasty stock.

He couldn’t help but think of those things that had attacked the village. Whatever they were, he was certain of one thing that they were not, and that was natural. Unlikely they’re from a Change-Circle. They are mage-made, I’m certain of it, he thought, and the consensus among all the mages was the same. The question was, if they were made-things, then who had made them? And when? Recently? If not, how far in the past? And why? Such things were possible, although he did not personally know anyone who was capable of it. There was only one way to answer those questions, but he was not inclined to waste power they might not have to spare on it. Past-scrying. It would be easier to do with some bits of one of those things, and his curiosity had been aroused to the point that it was like an itch he wanted badly to scratch. But no. Not unless they met up with more of them. Indulging his own curiosity was no excuse for wasting magic. Two days ago, Kordas couldn’t have imagined such things existing. Two days later, and they not only existed, but outsmarted him, too. And they were met far away from where they should be, if the blacksmith’s information was true, which was also where the flotilla was now headed.

Morale was good, all things considered—and there was a lot to consider. They had lost three dozen barges to fire since massing at Crescent Lake. Twice as many as that had outright sunk once they’d reached the lake, though most slowly enough to unload in time. Collisions, bad landings, or simple breakage of equipment put sixty more out of commission, to be dismantled for spares or used as roofs for buildings. There had been over two hundred deaths—not an abnormal amount given the timespan, but since it was on this side of a Gate, it was taken as more ominous than if they’d just died on the other side. The number of fights and thefts had gone up steadily while the whole expedition was at Crescent Lake.

And that’s the hidden truth of why we’re on the move now, and I’m keeping it hidden. Putting everyone on barges in motion means each vessel is a container. People aren’t mixing at close quarters, they’re divided into little packets that aren’t meandering off or looking for fights. It makes census quicker, which makes rationing immensely easier. It keeps groups from forming factions against other groups, which prevents more confrontation. And, while on the boats, people are crafting, and learning new skills that will be useful when we do settle. Just . . .

Well, that only accounts for known issues, Kordas thought while riding for the front of the expedition. They were sailing into the unknown.

The end of the first day left Delia absolutely wrung out, and the muscles of her arms lamented that there would be more scything tomorrow. I thought I was in good shape! She was no stranger to hard work—not since the evacuation to Crescent Lake, at any rate—but Venidel had been right; this had used muscles she didn’t remember ever needing to use before.

Why? I seriously mean it, why? Why do I have muscles to pull my palms sideways or pull my shoulderblades down? Why are they so loud about being unhappy?

She gritted her teeth and fought through it during supper, comforted a little by more fresh bread, but was about to beg Alberdina for help when Venidel broke down first. Even in the flickering firelight, his expression was equal parts pained and begging. “My arms wish to part company with my body on the grounds of abuse,” he said firmly, as they all drank the last of the tea, and Sai buried tomorrow’s breakfast in the coals and ash—having found his coat, after all. “Please tell me, kind Healer, that there is something you can do, or I’ll be tempted to dis-arm myself.”

“Me too,” Delia spoke up quickly.

Alberdina had the grace not to laugh at them. Instead she went to the barge and back, and gave them pots of something that smelled suspiciously like the stuff Stablemaster Grim used on horses suffering from strained muscles.

It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, although it did make her and Alberdina sneeze when she smoothed it on in the shelter of their barge. But it was worth it! Whatever was in the stuff soothed the aches and numbed them. Although she had expected to spend a wakeful night, listening for any sort of suspicious sound, she dropped off immediately.

She woke to hear Alberdina stirring, and stifled a groan as her arms protested stiffly. Today was going to be hard . . . and she was not in the least looking forward to it.

But when she emerged for breakfast into a brighter, lighter fog than yesterday’s, she discovered that Endars was waiting for them with a hand-scythe at his belt. He shrugged when Delia looked at him quizzically, but said nothing, and when she and Venidel headed downstream, he came with them, leaving Alberdina and Sai to take care of camp chores.

“Thanks for coming with us,” Venidel said, though with a faint hint of a question, as if he wasn’t sure why Endars was with them either.

Endars shrugged again. “Might as well,” he said, and nothing else.

Frost coated every stem and twig with a thick, white fuzz, and although there was no wind, the air warned that there was no chance of warmer weather until spring.

Endars bent and worked with a will, cutting the time needed to clear the tiny meadow in half. When Venidel did his little grass-ball spell, Endars didn’t stop the young mage, but he did ask for Venidel to speak more clearly the next time, and every time after that, he stared so intently that his gaze seemed likely to burn a hole in Venidel’s hands. Endars was not someone that Delia knew at all, but Sai had picked the mages to scout, and Delia would have trusted Sai even if he’d told her to set her hair on fire. Endars didn’t speak much, and on the surface he seemed a little grumpy, so until this moment she had been hesitant to say much of anything at all to him.

“That’s a damned clever thing you’ve invented,” Endars finally said, after the eighth ball went off to the horses.

“Oh, I didn’t invent it,” Venidel corrected hastily.

And that was when Delia saw it. A tiny, approving little smile.

Endars was testing him!

“No, it’s just some hedge-witchery I learned, and Sai helped me turn it into something useful while we were at the Lake,” Venidel continued. “I figured it would be a good way to compact fleeces when we needed to shear and slaughter sheep on the way. But Delia said something yesterday that made me realize I could make grass bales that way too.”

Endar’s smile broadened. “Well, boy, you’re smart, to study every bit of mage-craft you come across, be it ever so lowly.”

Venidel showed just a flash of temper, but damped it down. “I am a farmer,” he just said.

“And my pa was the miller of Goverton,” Endars countered. “Not every mage is a Kordas Valdemar.”

“Ah!” was all that Venidel said, but he managed to pack a lot of meaning into that single syllable.

But things seemed a lot more companionable between them after that.

She was quickly coming to the end of her strength, though, at least physically. Her arms felt as if they were on fire, and her cutting got slower and slower as she forced herself on. Bend, gather, cut, drop, she told herself, wishing she could stop. Bend, gather, cut, drop. She was glad she was wearing gloves, as were the other two, because the leather of the palms was definitely getting scored by the sharp-edged grasses, and she hated to think what her hands would have looked like without protection.

Then she felt a hand on her shoulder. “Save yourself for what only you can do,” Endars said, as she started and looked up. “No point in cutting the damn grass if we have to walk it to the horses because you’re too tired to Fetch it there.”

Anger rose, but she quelled it, because he was right. It smarted, though, and she felt as if she was somehow letting Kordas down.

It made no sense to feel that way, but as she leaned against a tree, aching on the inside as well as the outside, she decided that “sense” really didn’t matter.

Feelings did not answer to any logic but their own.

If only they did . . .