The portal took my lunch first.
The heel of bread in my coat pocket tore free in the white current and vanished somewhere between one place and the next. I had just enough time to feel offended before the ground hit me.
I landed on my left shoulder. The bag of swords came down beside my head with a crash, and a potion bottle bounced off my back without breaking.
Small mercies.
"Count!" Roxxy shouted.
Boots scraped over stone. Someone coughed hard enough to lose an organ. Behind us, the portal shrank from a doorway to a bright oval, snapping at the edges like cloth in a storm.
Captain Halden counted six knights, one mage, one princess, and me. He counted me separately, which felt accurate.
"All through," he said.
Magister Pell sat on the ground with both hands clamped over his mouth. He was a narrow man with a beard that had been trimmed into an exact point before the journey. It was less exact now.
"Do not vomit inside the return circle," he warned himself.
One of the knights looked down. "Isn't the circle gone?"
Pell lowered his hands and stared at the fading portal.
Then he vomited beside it.
Roxxy turned on me. "Why are you lying down?"
"I arrived poorly."
"Get up."
I rolled onto my knees, keeping my right arm close to my body. The bandages beneath my sleeve had survived the crossing. Whether the arm had was a different question. I could feel four of my fingers.
I had five.
The princess had already moved away. Her unpolished armor looked almost black under the strange light, though the metal was royal silver. She stood at the edge of the road, staring down into the valley.
I followed her gaze and forgot about my missing lunch.
An orchard covered the slope below us.
At least, it had once been an orchard. Rows of low stone walls still cut across the hillside, and hundreds of bent trees grew between them. Some were bare. Some carried flowers. Others sagged under red fruit swollen almost to bursting.
The seasons changed every few breaths.
On the nearest tree, a blossom opened, browned, folded into itself, and became a hard green apple. The apple ripened in seconds. It dropped, struck the road, and split apart.
Then the pieces jumped.
Seeds, flesh, and skin pulled together. The whole fruit sprang from the stone and fixed itself back onto the branch. Green returned to its skin. It shrank into a bud.
Nobody spoke for a while.
Above the valley, the Barrier arched across the sky.
I had seen it from the city every day of my life: a faint gold curve, easy to ignore unless the sun caught it. Here it filled half the world. Lines of light ran through it in slow, uneven pulses.
A crack stretched from the western ridge to somewhere beyond the clouds.
It wasn't wide. A finger could have covered it at arm's length.
That did not make me feel better.
Pell wiped his mouth with his sleeve and joined us. He held a brass instrument with three trembling needles.
"Localized temporal collapse," he said.
Captain Halden adjusted the shield on his arm. "Words soldiers use."
"Things are getting older and younger when they shouldn't."
"Better."
A grinding sound rolled across the valley. Half the orchard lost its leaves at once. The branches remained bare for three seconds, then white flowers raced back across them.
Pell watched the needles. "We have twelve minutes before the gate reopens."
One needle spun completely around.
"Seven," he corrected.
"Anchor station?" Roxxy asked.
Pell pointed to a round stone building in the middle of the orchard. Its copper roof had gone green with age. The road ran directly to it.
"Two hundred and forty yards. Install the reserve core, ignite it, and the station should close the breach enough for the central array to recover."
"Should?" Halden asked.
Pell tucked the instrument against his chest. "If you require certainty, Captain, I recommend a different profession."
Roxxy faced the group. Whatever she had brought with her from the Throne Room was still there, pressed flat beneath discipline.
"Shields at front and rear. Pell stays with me. Nobody leaves the road. Ren in the center."
"The center sounds safe," I said.
"It is where we put the things we cannot afford to lose."
For one brief, embarrassing moment, I felt touched.
Then she pointed at the heavy case strapped to my bag.
"The core, Ren. I meant the core."
"Of course. I also care deeply for it."
"Walk."
We walked.
The old road was wide enough for a wagon, though grass had broken through it in pale clumps. Each patch moved according to its own season. One went from green to brown as we passed. Another sank into the soil and returned as new shoots.
The air smelled wrong. Sweet fruit, frost, damp leaves, and hot dust came and went too quickly for my nose to settle on any of them.
My left eye began to burn.
I lowered my head so my bangs fell across it.
The Lens did not like this place. Even closed, it showed me scraps: thin currents moving under the road, pale gold mixed with an oily black. They ran through the roots of the orchard and climbed toward the crack in the Barrier.
Everything was feeding it.
A thread had attached itself to every person in our group.
It was faint on the knights, brighter on Pell, and thick as wire around Roxxy's throat. She walked without noticing, one hand on her sword.
The case on my back was wrapped in so many threads that I could barely see its shape.
"Your Highness," I said.
"Not now."
"The case is humming."
Pell glanced around. "No, it isn't."
"Maybe I'm humming."
"Are you?"
I listened. "No."
Roxxy stopped so abruptly that the knight behind her nearly walked into her back.
"What are you trying to say?" she asked.
I shifted the weight of the bag. The movement sent a hot pulse from my wrist to my shoulder.
"The trees lean toward water. Flowers lean toward sunlight. Everything here is leaning toward that crack."
"They're trees."
"Yes. I work with them."
Her gaze moved to the orchard. "You are a gardener?"
"At the Academy."
"And Duke Valerius selected an Academy gardener for a Barrier expedition."
"When you say it like that, it sounds poorly managed."
Captain Halden made a noise that might have been a cough.
Roxxy heard it. "You find this amusing, Captain?"
"No, Your Highness."
"You do."
"Not enough to delay the mission."
She looked back at me. "If the case changes, you tell Pell. No riddles."
"I didn't know I was being mysterious."
"That is the worst part."
She turned and resumed walking.
I had taken three steps when a potion bottle slipped from the side of my bag.
It rolled across the road, struck a stone, and came to rest in the grass.
Sir Tobin moved before anyone could stop him. He was the youngest of the knights and had spent the march glancing at Roxxy whenever he thought she wasn't looking.
"I have it."
His boot left the road.
The grass around his ankle flashed white.
Tobin stopped.
For a moment nothing else happened. Then the leather of his boot cracked. Rust spread over his greave in branching stains. His leg jerked, but he could not pull it free.
"Tobin!"
Roxxy caught his arm. Captain Halden seized the back of her armor and hauled her away as the white patch widened.
Tobin screamed.
Age climbed him from the ground up. The plate over his shin dulled, split, and began to shed flakes. His knee buckled. By the time the change reached his sword belt, grey had appeared in his hair.
Pell dropped beside the road and drove two silver rods between the stones. Both blackened at once.
"Chronal sink," he said. "Don't touch the edge."
"Get him out," Roxxy ordered.
"I'm trying."
"Try faster."
"That is not how—Captain, rope. Around his chest, not the leg."
Halden uncoiled a line from his belt. The sink had spread between us and Tobin, leaving him less than six feet away and completely unreachable.
Through the Lens, I saw the cause.
Something like a root curled beneath the broken edge of the road. It was not part of the orchard. It was too smooth, too black, and pulsed with the same rhythm as the crack overhead. Fine strands had wrapped around Tobin's trapped leg and were drawing the years out of him one at a time.
"I can reach him," I said.
Roxxy did not look at me. "No."
"I'm lighter than the knights."
"You have no armor."
"I was told that made me expendable."
"Valerius said that." She rounded on me. "I did not."
It came out louder than she intended.
Tobin cried out again. His sword belt fell apart. The grass had reached his chest.
Roxxy snatched the rope from Halden and shoved it against me.
"Under your arms. You stay on the stones. If the road changes color, we pull you back."
"And Tobin?"
"We pull harder."
That was not a plan. It was, however, the best one we had.
Halden tied the rope while Pell hammered a third rod into the road. I lay flat and pushed myself toward the edge.
The world smelled of apples.
Tobin's face had gone loose with age. He reached for me, but his arm shook too badly to cross the gap.
"Don't grab yet," I told him.
"What?"
"You'll pull me in."
"I'm dying!"
"I noticed. Give me a second."
I stretched my left hand toward him. Two feet short.
Behind me, Roxxy said, "Ren."
"I have short arms."
"Move back."
I slid my right hand between two paving stones.
The black root waited below.
The instant my fingers touched it, cold punched through the bandages. The thing was not alive, but it remembered being alive. That was enough.
I buried my face against my sleeve and whispered one word into the cloth.
"Rot."
Pain opened inside my arm.
Not the clean pain of a cut. It crawled. The veins beneath my skin tightened as the curse forced its way through my palm and into the root. The black surface wrinkled, hardened, and began to crumble.
Something pulled back from the other end.
It pulled hard.
For a second, the Touch stopped moving outward.
Then the decay turned on me.
Heat raced past my wrist. I bit down on my sleeve before the sound could get out. Beneath the cloth, fresh wetness spread through the bandage.
The root broke.
The white grass collapsed into ordinary brown weeds.
"Now!" Pell shouted.
Tobin fell forward. I caught his wrist with my left hand, and Halden dragged us both across the stones. My chin bounced off the road twice. The second impact improved nothing.
When we stopped, Tobin lay on his back staring at the sky.
He was still young, mostly. Grey ran through the hair above his ears, and the skin of his trapped leg had thinned around the knee.
Pell pressed two fingers to his throat.
"How much?" Roxxy asked.
"Eight years. Ten, perhaps."
"Can you restore them?"
Pell did not answer.
Roxxy asked again, quieter this time. "Can you restore them?"
"No."
Tobin laughed once. It came out broken. "My mother is going to kill me."
Halden sat beside him and checked the straps of his ruined armor. "Get in line."
Roxxy stood over them with her hands closed at her sides.
I pushed myself upright. My right sleeve had gone dark from the wrist to the elbow.
Her attention shifted to it.
"You're bleeding."
"Old injury."
"From what?"
"A rosebush with political connections."
She stared at me.
I tried a small smile. It did not help.
Pell's instrument began to scream.
The sound scattered everyone's thoughts more effectively than an order.
"Four minutes," he said. "Perhaps less."
Halden helped Tobin stand. The knight could put weight on his leg, though not much.
Roxxy looked at the distant anchor station, then at the fading mark of the portal behind us.
"We finish," she said.
Nobody argued.
The orchard accelerated as we moved. Fruit burst on the branches. Leaves flashed from green to gold and vanished. The road cracked, repaired itself, and cracked again beneath our boots.
By the time we reached the station, frost covered half the copper roof and summer rain ran from the other half.
Halden struck the swollen door with his shoulder. It held.
He struck it again.
"Captain," I said, "there is a handle."
He looked down.
The door opened inward.
"Not a word."
"I value my position."
Inside, the station was barely larger than a chapel. Gold lines covered the round walls, all of them leading to a waist-high pedestal in the center. A hollow in its surface waited for the reserve core.
The crack in the Barrier was visible through an opening in the roof.
Pell pulled the brass case from my bag and broke the royal seal. He lifted out a crystal the size of a fist.
It should have been gold.
It was grey.
Pell turned it over. Pressed it between his palms. Held it to his ear, as though the missing Time might be hiding quietly inside.
"Well?" Roxxy demanded.
"It's empty."
"Check again."
"There is no second kind of empty, Your Highness."
Her face changed.
Only slightly. Her mouth went still, and she looked at the unbroken strips of red wax hanging from the case.
Halden understood at the same time. "That was packed in the palace."
"Yes," Roxxy said.
Pell lowered the dead core. "Without a charge, the station cannot close the breach."
The building shuddered. Dust fell from the roof.
Outside, the entire orchard bent toward the western sky.
Roxxy took the core from Pell and placed it into the pedestal anyway.
"Start the array."
"It has nothing to burn."
"Start it."
Pell opened his mouth, thought better of it, and moved to the nearest wall.
I let the Lens open.
Crimson light washed across my vision. The gold lines in the station appeared hollow, their remaining power being dragged downward rather than toward the Barrier. Beneath the pedestal, a thick black strand passed through the floor.
It was feeding on the station.
The core had not been empty when it left the palace. Something had drained it through the sealed case before we arrived.
"The floor," I said.
Pell was pressing his palms to the wall. "Not now."
"The moss around the pedestal is dead."
"There is no moss."
"There used to be."
Roxxy looked down. A thin black stain ringed the pedestal's base.
"Halden."
The captain drove the edge of his shield into the floor. Stone cracked. A second blow split the slab, exposing the same smooth root I had destroyed beneath the road.
Pell recoiled. "That is not part of the array."
"Can you remove it?" Roxxy asked.
Halden drew his sword and cut down.
The blade touched the root.
A hundred years passed through the steel in a breath. The sword sagged, red with rust, and snapped near the hilt.
Halden looked at what remained in his hand. "No."
The crack overhead brightened.
Wind plunged through the roof, carrying leaves, grit, and the smell of ripe fruit. The knights raised their shields. Pell shouted something about the core, but the station swallowed half his words.
I crouched beside the broken floor.
My right hand had stopped shaking.
That worried me more than the pain.
I pressed it to the root.
The thing recognized me.
The station vanished.
For a heartbeat, I stood somewhere without sky or ground. Vast shapes moved at a distance. I could not tell whether they were walking toward me or away, only that each step took centuries.
Something turned.
I felt its attention settle on my hand.
There you are.
The voice did not enter through my ears.
I tore at the curse before the thing could pull me closer.
"Wither."
The root fought me.
Decay crawled across it in patches, stopped, then spread again. Every inch cost me. The pain crossed my elbow. I felt skin split beneath my sleeve and something colder sink toward the bone.
I thought of Luna in the Clock Tower, tying the bandage too tight because she was afraid.
I thought of Aurelius peeling an apple while the city waited for the sky to break.
Mostly, I thought about how badly I wanted to keep my arm.
The root cracked.
Gold flooded back through the floor.
The dead core flared in Roxxy's hands. Pell shouted and slammed both palms against the wall. Lines of light raced around the station, climbed the broken roof, and struck the Barrier.
The crack did not close.
It narrowed.
Outside, the orchard stopped changing.
One last apple fell from a branch and remained on the ground.
For the first time since we arrived, the air held still.
Then something pressed against the far side of the Barrier.
A shape like a hand covered half the sky. Too many joints bent inside each finger.
The voice came again, no longer inside my head.
"Gardener."
Everyone heard it.
Roxxy turned.
I was kneeling beside a root that had become ash. Blood ran from my sleeve and dripped between my fingers.
She looked at the ruined root. Then at me.
"Ren," she said quietly. "Show me your hand."