Days later, dusty curtains at the wagon mouth fluttered in the thin north wind of morning. The woods on either side had thinned to grey pillars and stumps, old trees standing like the last teeth in a dead jaw.
Each time a man took this way another trunk seemed to lie broken, roots up and bark split. No birds. No fresh ruts but their own. The road ran pale and powder-dry toward the distant encampment, safe only because whatever had emptied these woods had not come back.
Radeon took in every view they passed, yet no word went between them. He was not a man who lacked for talk with women. He only kept his tongue now. Silence could be a trellis if you wanted another voice to climb.
Fay pinched the hem of her robe and smoothed it flat again. Her gaze strayed to the gray mark on his wrist, then to the rumps of the horses ahead. Her mouth opened on a question and shut on it just as quick.
Hoofbeats beat a slow time in the dirt. The wagon smelled of hemp rope and old apples. Radeon took out the pastels and a board and let his fingers work. Powder clung to his skin. The sticks sang low on the parchment.
Eyes like swords. Brows like sabers. Common faces pulled from memory and made a touch too brave.
Fay leaned in, curious as a cat. Their eyes met. Color rose in her cheeks and she tucked herself back onto her bench.
When she didn't recover, he scumbled the fourth portrait and set it down with care. Rummaging in his rucksack, he fished out a tight leather bundle, stained ink-dark from that night.
"Yours."
The wind worried at the curtain. She looked at the parcel, then at him. Her hand hovered above it, as if the thing might bite.
"May I ask… what does it do?" she asked.
Radeon worried at the knots until the rope gave. The bundle sagged open. A fold of dark leather slid out, then another, until a cloak lay across the carriage floorboards, long enough to swallow a grown man from throat to heel.
"Drip your blood into the three stones. Break a spirit stone and say disappear. The cloak does the rest," Radeon said, light as idle talk.
Fay did as she was told and let the letter opener kiss her thumb. Her blood fizzed on the spirit stones, turning them a dull red.
"Put it on."
She drew the cloak around her shoulders. The leather creaked as it tightened and settled to her shape.
Blade still in hand, she scored one of the reddened stones. Pale energy leaked from the cut and crept along the leather.
"Disappear," she whispered, the word catching in her throat.
He fetched a small mirror and held it up so she could see what the word had done.
The color left her hands first. Her skin went thin and milk pale, then hazy, as if the light could pass through it. The golden wheat of her hair blurred and faded until the carriage wall showed faint behind it.
Her breath began to come fast. Radeon cut across it with his voice.
"When you have had enough, say appear. The cloak loosens its spell and the trick goes quiet."
He did not let her wonder ripen. He set the limits out plain.
How long a stone would feed the weave. How frail the leather was against steel. How fire would still find her.
"And for us to finally disappear," he said at last.
The scroll rolled in his palm. Her name and his, scratched side by side in a hard hand. The ink that had bound them to the sect, to safety, to rules.
Radeon drew a breath and seemed to tighten around it. Heat flushed his fingers. The scroll blackened, curled, then went up in a thin hungry flame. Ash flaked loose and drifted to the floor. The smell of burnt ink and old paper crowded the small space.
Fay could only stare as the fire ate their names. Smoke stung her eyes and she did not blink. A black curl of ash landed on her knee and vanished when she reached for it.
Fear crawled up after.
What if the road broke her bones and no healer would claim her without the sect's mark?
What if she died nameless in some ditch before they reached this so-called great path?
What if Radeon decided, halfway through, that she was not worth the trouble after all?
He gave those doubts no room. He slid a blank canvas across the table, its surface clean as fresh snow.
Her fingers closed around the brush without thinking. The strokes came quick and uneven, white paint dragging past the lines she had meant to follow.
"Fay. Do you think I'll just leave you after all this?" Radeon said.
"I just..." she began.
"If you let your feelings run you like this, turn back now."
"No, I'm all right. I'll listen properly. I'm sorry, it will not happen again," she said quickly.
Radeon said no more. He let the silence do the work.
Her own words sounded thin in her ears. She had sat there with her mouth half open and her thoughts wandering. In her place, he would have doubted him too.
The clash left her clearer, not calmer. She bent to the work instead, stroke after stroke, until diligence pressed the storm in her chest down where it could not be seen.
By evening, her hand ached and the worst of the shaking had gone.
In the days after, the pattern held, nights blurred into mornings as they packed ready-made portraits, fingers cramping, eyes burning.
"Smile. Pass them around. Take the stones. Not a word more."
"I understand. I'll do it just as you said," Fay replied.
The beauty Fay boasted of was buried under mustard and tan. Let her walk a camp full of men in her own face and it would be an open bid for trouble.
The horses clopped to a halt. Radeon pushed the carriage door open into the white glare of high noon and stepped down. Heat rolled up to meet him with the ring and crash of forges at work.
"Remember. Your name is Froy now. A man," he murmured once more.
"Froy," she repeated softly. "Yes… I am Froy."
Radeon took a spot in plain view, noticeable at a glance and forgettable moments later.
A sentry's gaze snagged on him a heartbeat too long, then slid off when Radeon lifted a roll and showed a merchant's easy grin.
He brushed varnish over the rolled portraits. As the shine caught the morning sun, men began to drift closer, one after another.
'Sweaty. Tired. Movements neither eager nor slack. A man in the crowd clearly out for coin.'
"Guessing you're forge-born?" Radeon asked.
"What of it?"
Radeon brought out two spirit stones, heavy in his palm, and gave a tight smile that said he expected no refusal.
"Short walk. You talk. Half an hour, this is yours."
"You could have led with that," the smith apprentice said.
"Describe each place like you mean it and I make it three."
"Sir, what are you waiting for?" The man bobbed his head. "Let me show you round proper then."
Radeon flicked Fay a look that told her to stay put. She waved him off with one hand while the other moved across her leather-bound book, eyes fixed on the page. The very picture of someone far too busy to notice the world.
"Watch for customers," he said.
"Understood," she said, giving the square a quick glance before bending back over her work the moment he turned away.
He walked with the apprentice and listened as the man babbled on. Planning center. Logistics division. Training yards.
The boy only knew the surface layout, yet the paths and turns were what Radeon cared for. When they came to a quieter run of wall the smith edged closer, voice dropping low.
"Sir. I heard folk whispering. Tongues loose about some kind of array."
"What kind? Who sits at the core?"
"My ears are but mortal. I am only a smith's whelp. All I heard is there will be teams. A whole pack of them."
"That'll do." Radeon pressed the stones into his hand. "Here's your pay."
He watched the man go, back straight with his small fortune.
'Second team meant more eyes on the field. More noise. More cracks to slip through.'
He tuned his ear to the scraps of talk around him. His eyes moved from knot to knot of men, weighing every careless word for use.