Chapter Two Spring Road Rumors
Spring did not arrive kindly.
It came like a thief with wet boots.
Snow softened at the edges first, then turned treacherous underfoot.
Roof ice loosened in dangerous sheets. The yard became mud by noon and frozen ruts by dusk.
Every path around Pike Hollow learned how to swallow ankles.
The woodpile sagged. The lower gate complained. The horses developed opinions.
Pike Hollow hated spring with the steady devotion of a pack that understood winter and distrusted anything pretending to be relief.
Willa understood.
Winter had nearly killed her, but at least winter had been honest.
Spring hid things.
Tracks blurred. Blood washed thin. Old smells rose from thawing ground. Creeks broke free under ice and made crossing unpredictable. Roads that had been hard and silent for months began to remember they could carry wagons, riders, rumors, and men who called hunger infrastructure.
Varric Stone had withdrawn his offer until spring.
Spring, apparently, had accepted the invitation.
Willa stood at the edge of Pike Hollow’s lower yard and watched Jory try to free a cartwheel from mud while pretending the mud was a personal enemy and not a consequence of poor angle.
“Stop pulling straight,” she called.
He looked over his shoulder, hair falling into his eyes. “I know what I’m doing.”
The cart did not move.
“Do you?”
“In theory.”
“Pull left.”
“I was going to.”
“Before or after the mud won?”
Jory glared at the wheel, then shifted left and pulled.
The wheel came free with a sucking sound so vulgar that Bram, who was watching from a dry barrel, gasped in delight.
“The mud burped.”
Etta, carrying a basket near the back steps, said, “Do not repeat that at supper.”
Bram immediately opened his mouth.
“Especially not at supper,” she added.
Willa smiled.
The mark at her throat warmed.
Torren was near the east fence with Noll and two scouts, but his attention flicked toward her anyway.
Not alarm.
Not worry.
Simple awareness.
Willa felt it like a hand brushing the inside of her ribs.
She still startled sometimes.
Less than before.
The mark had become part of the day’s weather: present, changeable, sometimes inconvenient, often warm.
It pulsed when Torren came near. It ached faintly if he rode beyond the ridge.
It flared at desire, fear, anger, laughter, and once, unfortunately, when Riksa had asked if Willa’s digestion had normalized after the marking surge.
Willa had refused to answer.
The mark had answered by turning hot.
Riksa had nodded as if this were useful data.
Torren had left the room.
Not quickly enough to hide that he was laughing.
A month had passed since Red Creek’s fire.
Almost a month.
Pike Hollow had survived the immediate storm of witnesses, messages, accusations, denials, and the astonishing fact that Jory had managed to complete two useful errands without injury to himself or the concept of errands.
Frostmere denied everything with increasing elegance.
Oren had not come to the gate.
Davra had sent three letters, each colder than the last, demanding correction of slanderous accounts regarding Frostmere’s historical conduct, current intentions, and improper allegations against its alpha.
Hessa had used the first to light the hearth.
Willa had made her copy the second before she burned it.
The third had been kept because Davra had written one sentence too carefully:
Pike Hollow’s continuing instability threatens not only memory, but the safe passage of the north.
Safe passage.
Road words.
Varric words wearing Frostmere gloves.
Red Creek had sent word that Redjaw tokens had been found near two old pass markers.
Bluebank reported traders refusing to take the western route unless accompanied.
Northroad had begun telling at least five versions of everything.
In one version, Torren had personally torn crossbowmen apart.
In another, Willa had walked through fire untouched because the mark made her half-feral.
In a third, Selka Marr had killed four men with a bucket.
Selka had heard that one and said, with perfect dryness, “Only one, and not killed.”
Bram had begun calling it the war bucket again.
Anis had hidden it.
Poorly.
The bucket had become, despite everyone’s best efforts, Pike Hollow property.
Selka remained under shelter.
Not happily.
Not unhappily either, which might have been stranger.
She wrote statements, corrected Marr phrasing, sat with Anis, avoided Torren, argued with Riksa, and stood very still whenever riders came to the gate.
Marek had not appeared again.
Willa told herself this was good.
The old bond did not stir at his absence.
But the north had a way of making absence feel less like peace than a closed hand.
“Willa.”
Torren’s voice came from behind her.
She had felt him approach, of course.
That was another new rule of the world.
He could move like shadow through a hunting wood, and the mark still knew him before her ears did.
She turned.
He wore dark trousers, boots muddy to the knee, black shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled to the forearms. His hair was tied back badly. A streak of mud marked one jaw.
Willa looked at it.
His eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You are looking at me strangely.”
“You have mud on your face.”
His expression did not change.
“Spring is war.”
“The mud attacked?”
“Yes.”
The mark warmed with his amusement before his mouth betrayed him.
Willa lifted her hand and wiped the mud from his jaw with her thumb.
A simple touch.
It should have been simple.
The mark disagreed.
It pulsed, deep and hot, and Torren’s eyes dropped to her throat.
Jory, still near the cart, groaned.
“Not in the yard.”
Torren’s head turned slowly.
Jory immediately discovered a passionate interest in the wheel.
Bram whispered, “What in the yard?”
Etta said, “Nothing.”
“Is it the mark?”
“Bram.”
“I just wondered if marks do yard things.”
Willa put her face in one hand.
Torren’s mouth moved.
Almost.
Not enough.
She felt the laugh through the bond anyway.
“You enjoy this,” she muttered.
“Some of it.”
“Terrible man.”
“Marked man.”
Her breath caught.
He rarely called himself that.
Not because it was untrue.
Perhaps because the word reached into him too deeply. Willa knew that now. The mark had given her no right to his every thought, but it had made his silences easier to feel.
Marked man warmed him and frightened him.
Mine, the bond said.
Willa did not know whether it came from her, him, or both.
She was learning that some things did not require clean ownership.
“You came for a reason,” she said.
Torren’s face shifted.
There.
Spring returned.
So did roads.
“Trader at the gate.”
“Northroad?”
“Yes.”
“Letha?”
“No.”
“Thank gods.”
“She sent him.”
“Of course she did.”
Torren held out a folded scrap.
Willa took it.
The paper smelled faintly of smoke, travel grease, and Letha’s preferred ink, which had some sharp herb in it as if she wanted even her letters to seem expensive.
Willa unfolded it.
Spring brings generous men to hungry roads. Stonewatch pays for stories now. Frostmere pays for silence. Redjaw pays in old coins no one admits are still good. Ask why the missing scout had Pike mud on his boots before he went missing.
No signature.
Letha never signed anything she could later deny.
Willa read it again.
The missing scout.
“What missing scout?”
Torren’s jaw flexed.
“Red Creek runner says one of Bluebank’s western scouts has not returned.”
Willa looked up.
“When?”
“Two days.”
“And Letha says he had Pike mud on his boots.”
“Yes.”
She looked toward the yard.
Mud everywhere.
Pike Hollow mud did not seem, at first glance, distinct enough to become accusation.
Which probably meant someone had made sure it was.
“Could be real,” she said.
“Could be planted.”
“Could be both.”
His eyes warmed by a degree.
“You have been listening to Hessa.”
“Everyone listens to Hessa eventually.”
“Some under threat.”
“Most under threat.”
He took the note back when she offered it and tucked it into his belt.
“Noll is sending two to check lower crossings.”
“No one alone?”
“No one alone.”
“No one stepping over a border because a bootprint insulted them?”
His mouth almost moved.
“That rule was implied.”
“Good.”
The mark pulsed once.
Torren’s gaze sharpened.
“Fear?”
Willa considered.
Rule two had become useful enough to survive embarrassment.
“Not much. Anger more.”
“Yours?”
She looked at the note tucked at his belt.
“Mine.”
His shoulders settled.
“Mine too.”
She almost smiled.
Shared, not confused.
Progress.
Hessa called from the hall doorway, “If you two are done comparing feelings in the mud, the trader is inside and Letha’s handwriting makes me want to sharpen things.”
Willa looked at Torren.
“Does everyone know about the rules?”
“Hessa knows everything against my will.”
“And Riksa?”
“Riksa knows everything against nature’s will.”
Willa laughed.
The mark warmed.
Torren’s eyes darkened.
“Do not do that when I have to speak to traders.”
“Laugh?”
“Yes.”
“That seems unreasonable.”
“Many true things are.”
Hessa shouted, “Now.”
They went.
The trader in the hall was a narrow man with a long nose, quick hands, and the careful posture of someone accustomed to surviving by not being the most interesting person in a room.
Pike Hollow made that difficult.
He stood near the map table with Hessa on one side, Riksa on the other, and Selka seated nearby with Anis at her shoulder. Noll stood close enough to the door to block it without seeming to. Venn watched from the hearth. Jory tried to look official and only looked eager.
The trader looked relieved when Torren entered.
Then he looked at Willa’s mark and became less relieved.
Willa had grown used to that sequence.
Mostly.
“Name,” Torren said.
“Perrit,” the trader said quickly.
Willa blinked.
“Letha’s runner?”
“Sometimes.”
“You brought the first Frostmere rumor.”
He winced.
“I bring what is paid to be carried, mistress.”
Mistress.
That was new.
The mark warmed, but not pleasantly.
Torren felt it.
He glanced at her.
She gave the smallest shake of her head.
Not fear.
Not anger needing answer.
Dislike.
Manageable.
Torren looked back at Perrit.
“Speak.”