The road out of the city never felt like leaving. It felt like sliding off a picture frame and into a place the artist had sketched but never finished. Fields rolled by, gray and patient, and the sky sat low like a lid. Ash walked with the ledger at his side as if it were a sleeping animal that might wake and preen. The wound along his ribs throbbed with each step. The bandage reeked faintly of iron and smoke.
Lys talked too much to keep the silence honest. She catalogued the colors of the sky, the number of wagons they passed, the best ways to pick a pocket if the need ever returned. Her voice was a warm river of nonsense that steadied Ash the way a familiar tune steadies a sword arm.
"Tell me again about the juggler," she said. "Tell me how you made a man forget his punch line and how you looked very smug about it."
"I do not look smug," Ash said. He could feel Rook under his hand like heat beneath cloth. "I look pragmatic."
"You look smug," Lys insisted. "In a culinary way. Like someone proud to have stolen a pie and then complaining about the crust."
Ash let himself smile. The smile fit strangely. A small void lived where a laugh had once curled and settled. He could not summon the exact memory of that laugh, but he could feel its absence like the draft from an open window. That absence made him more careful with his teeth.
Rook turned a page gently. "You will find practice in the fields," it said. "Practice in the dark is costly. Practice in the open teaches speed."
"Are you offering a walking seminar," Lys asked, making a face at the pack.
"Consider it guidance," Rook said. "And a ledger entry. Record it."
They had gone south because the map in Ash's boot, folded and frayed, pointed toward Thornwood. The map was more dream than sheet. It smelled faintly of smoke and something like mint. Ash had not given up hope that somewhere there would be a place that fit into his chest the way a shoe fits a foot. After the attack he felt that hope recede like a tide.
A bell tolled at noon and a fog lifted from the river. Two wagons ambled past with children perched on the crates, shrieking at clouds. From the next rise the road narrowed and turned to dirt. The trees leaned inward like a long corridor.
Lys slowed. Her hand went to the small knives at her belt with the same casual motion she used to yawn. "This is nice," she said. "I like corridors. They make people predictable."
Ash watched the treeline. The air felt denser here, as if the world were listening. He felt the ledger count the moments like beads slipping through a string.
They did not expect the scream.
It broke out from the trees before they could see the source. The sound was ragged and animal and full of wrongness. Birds scattered. The wagon children fell silent and howled.
Lys moved first. She sprinted into the trees, boots thudding on moss. Ash followed with Rook finding shadows along the path and drawing them like thread. The ledger hummed like a worked loom.
They found the wagon turned on its side. A mare lay still with its eyes clouded. Two figures crouched over a child, trying to shield him from something that smelled like earth and old iron.
Then the Thornspawn came up from the roots.
It was not solid in the way a man is solid. It was a thing made of damp soil and old leaves and a dark that sucked light instead of reflecting it. Its mouth was a hollow lined with root teeth. It moved with a deliberate intelligence. At its center, set like a rot of old coin, a small sigil glowed faintly, pulsing with a color that was almost memory.
Lys let out a sound that was more readiness than fear. She flung knives, each one finding a seam in the creature. The Thornspawn howled, an open wound of sound that made a child cover his ears. Ash reached for the shadow like a rope.
"Bind to the ground," Rook said. "Anchor the thing to dirt. Make its feet forget the road."
Ash threaded darkness through his palms, colder now, tighter. He sent it down like vine. The Thornspawn slammed into the earth as if roots had suddenly claimed it. It staggered and then tore itself free, turning to hiss at the intruders.
Lys darted forward, blade catching a leaf that was too like flesh. She ducked under a lashing tendril and drove her knife into the creature's flank. Bloodless sap spurted, and the scarlet looked obscene against the pale moss.
The Thornspawn lunged. It was faster than it looked. It wrapped a root around Lys before anyone could react. She twisted and fought, but the root squeezed like thought and pulled her off her feet.
"No," Ash said. He did not plan the next move. He felt Rook keen, the ledger hungry with loud calculation.
"Small nocte offered," Rook whispered. "High risk. Anchor to the vine and sever its memory of growth. The effect will be sharp."
Ash felt the ledger's words like cold coins on his tongue. He knew the payment schemes. He knew the ledger would select the associative node that most cheaply paid for the effect. He also knew Lys could not be left in waiting things.
"Do it," he said, and he did not taste the words the way he normally tasted choice. He tasted only the ledger and the night.
He reached out and let the shadow flow. He did not bind it gently this time. He forced it into the creature with a kind of violence Ash had not used before. The darkness wrapped the Thornspawn's root like a chain. For an instant the thing's eyes cleared, confused and bright like glass.
Rook took the cost in a gut twist that felt like a stone falling away from the world. Ash felt something ancient slide out of him. He remembered roads and maps and names of inns. The memory of where his first coin had come from left like steam from a kettle. It was not a laugh this time. It was a small, precise thing, the fact that a certain innkeeper carved his spoons from a certain tree. He could know the spoons existed and not remember the face that handed them to him.
The Thornspawn convulsed and collapsed. The sigil at its core blinked out. Lys lay on the ground, breathing hard, a smear of leaf dust across her cheek. She laughed like a person who had escaped drowning and then cried because she was not sure why she had laughed.
"You idiot," she said, voice squeaking. "You beautiful, terrible idiot."
Ash sat back on his heels. He felt the ledger's friction in his head like teeth. "Are you all right," he asked.
Lys wiped dirt on her sleeve and grinned with the feral joy of someone who prefers scars as proof of honesty. "I am all right. My knee hates me. My pride is bruised. You are ridiculous."
Rook hummed a soft satisfied note. "Value extracted. Effect achieved. Recommend immediate retreat."
They helped the wagon right. The mare was alive but weak. The child's father, hands tremulous, thanked them with a voice so thick with gratitude that Ash wanted to bargain for the sound and keep it like a coin.
"We should head to Thornwood," Lys said once the wagon rolled again. "There is a tavern at the crossroad. We can patch you up and move on. And if we meet Bren there I will not be surprised. Bren likes such places."
At the mention of the name Ash felt a small steady glow. He had met Bren years before in a city that had forgotten both of them. Bren was a man with a scarred face and hands that understood how to keep a blade honest. He owed Ash a life or a debt with interest. The thought of Bren was like a small lamp in a fog.
They walked slower after that. The loss had weight. It was the kind of depletion you could measure in minutes. A map no longer felt like a map. Roads were just things you walked on. That loss was raw and funny in a way that made the thought of going back to the garret feel like an idea someone else might have.
They reached a crossroads as the sun lowered. A tavern squatted at the corner like an old dog. Smoke curled from its chimney and a sign creaked with a painted thorn.
The door swung open and a voice called, "If it is profit you seek, leave before supper. If it is trouble you bring, come in and be honest."
Bren stood in the doorway, paper cups in his hands and an expression that suggested he had been counting guests and decided to gamble on them. He had the look of a man who had once been given command and refused to hand it back. His laugh was a chain of low notes and when his eyes found Ash's they warmed.
"Well met," Bren said. "You look like you wrestled the road and lost dress code."
Ash felt the ledger warm like an answering hearth. He had a companion to meet. He had a tavern to warm his wounded ribs. The road had cost him something. It had also, helpfully and dangerously, brought him closer to allies.