Chapter Six Blood at the Lower Pass #2
He looked away first.
Small victory.
Not enough to ease the knot in her chest as he prepared to leave.
Hessa arrived from Pike Hollow before the party set out, because apparently Hessa had heard “lower pass” through the earth itself and ridden with a face that convinced all sensible people to get out of her way.
Her bandage had been changed. Her mood had not improved.
“Show me,” she said.
Miri showed her the rubbing and coin.
Hessa did not sit this time.
But her face became older.
“That is his mark,” she said.
“Torren’s father?” Willa asked.
“Yes.”
“And the lower gate stamp?”
Hessa looked at the coin.
“Old Pike lower gate.”
Torren stood across from her.
“Why would it be on Redjaw coin?”
Hessa’s gaze rose to his.
“I do not know.”
“You never saw that side?”
“No.”
“Only the Redjaw face.”
“Yes.”
“In his box.”
“Yes.”
The words cut each other smaller and smaller.
Willa wanted to step between them.
Did not.
Hessa and Torren had old grief that predated her. The mark gave her a place beside him, not ownership of every wound in the room.
Hessa tucked the rubbing into waxed cloth.
“Then we look at the stone.”
Torren nodded.
They left under a sky heavy with wet cloud.
Willa remained at Red Creek with Miri, Riksa, Selka, Orla, and three women who knew how to record witness accounts without turning them into gossip. This, Willa decided after the first hour, was its own kind of battle and possibly more exhausting.
Miri wanted to rush.
Orla wanted precision.
Riksa wanted everyone to stop using words like “clearly” and “obviously” unless a wound, object, or idiot could be clearly and obviously pointed at.
Selka sat with a pen and made brutal suggestions.
“Do not say Arlen believed Pike Hollow innocent,” she said at one point.
Miri bristled. “He did.”
“No. Say Arlen suspected someone wished Pike Hollow to appear guilty. That is stronger.”
“Why?”
“Because belief sounds soft. Suspected sounds like he had reasons.”
Miri looked at Willa.
Willa nodded.
“She is right.”
Selka did not look pleased.
But her pen moved faster afterward.
They wrote what Arlen had found. What he had told Miri. What coin belonged to their father. When he went to Northroad. Whom he named. What boot was found. What Osa saw. What Osa kept. What could be sworn, what could be suspected, what must remain unnamed.
Willa’s hand cramped.
Her mark ached.
Torren was farther now.
Not terribly far.
Far enough that the bond stretched.
It did not hurt exactly. It pulled like a muscle unused to length. Every time danger brushed him—mud slide, branch crack, old grief—the mark tightened, and Willa had to decide whether to reach through it or let him have himself.
Harder than she expected.
Easier than being treated like glass.
Near dusk, while Miri repeated the story of Arlen leaving Bluebank for the third time, Willa felt Torren stop.
Not pause.
Stop.
The mark went silent.
Then black with rage.
Willa’s pen snapped in her hand.
Everyone looked at her.
Riksa stood immediately.
“Willa.”
Willa gripped the table.
She was in Red Creek’s witness hall.
Not the lower pass.
Not in Torren’s body.
Not a leash.
Not a voice in his skull.
But the bond was rooted now, and something had hit him hard enough that her own breath had gone thin.
“They found it,” she said.
Orla’s face sharpened.
“The marker?”
Willa swallowed.
“Something.”
Riksa came around the table and touched her wrist.
“Pain?”
Willa listened.
“No.”
“Blood?”
“Not his.”
“Fear?”
“No.”
“Then sit.”
“I am sitting.”
“Sit more intentionally.”
Miri stood. “Is he alive?”
Willa looked at her.
Torren’s rage still moved through the bond, but under it he was there.
Breathing.
Exact?
She could not tell.
She refused to grab at him just because fear wanted fingers.
“Yes,” she said.
“Can you ask him if Arlen is there?”
Willa’s stomach tightened.
Riksa’s hand remained on her wrist.
“That is not how the mark works,” Willa said.
Not quite true.
Not quite false.
She could send. Sometimes he felt the shape. Sometimes he answered in feeling.
But Miri’s terror wanted Willa to become a tool, and Willa could not begin there.
Miri’s face crumpled for half a breath before anger restored it.
“Then what good is it?”
Torren’s rage flared through the mark at the exact wrong time.
Willa closed her eyes.
Riksa’s grip tightened.
“Willa.”
Willa opened her eyes and looked at Miri.
“It is not good because it can fetch answers from him. It is good because he is not alone with whatever he found.”
Miri stared.
Willa’s throat hurt.
“And neither am I.”
The girl sank back onto the bench.
“I’m sorry.”
“No,” Willa said. “You are afraid for your brother. Be accurate, not sorry.”
Riksa huffed.
“Good.”
Selka’s gaze lingered on Willa.
“Does it always feel like that?”
“No.”
“Worse sometimes?”
Willa looked at her.
Selka touched the place where her own mark lay hidden under fabric.
Her sour completed bond.
Willa understood the real question.
Does a good mark still hurt?
“Yes,” Willa said.
Selka nodded once, as if the answer mattered.
Outside, a horn sounded.
Red Creek’s yard erupted.
One long.
One short.
One long again.
Orla went to the door.
“Return with evidence,” she said.
Not wounded.
Not chased.
Evidence.
Willa stood.
This time Riksa did not tell her to sit.
They reached the yard as Torren’s party rode in.
Hessa first.
Face like stone.
Noll beside her, carrying a wrapped object across his saddle.
Torren came behind them.
Blood marked his hands to the wrists.
Not his.
Willa knew before asking.
Still, her body moved.
He saw.
Stopped.
Let her come to him.
Good.
She reached him and caught his wrists.
“Not yours.”
“No.”
“Whose?”
His eyes went to Miri.
The yard changed.
Miri made a sound.
Not a word.
Torren’s face, for all its brutality, held more gentleness than the north deserved.
“We found Arlen.”
Miri went white.
“Alive?”
Torren’s throat moved.
“Yes.”
The word struck so hard Miri nearly fell.
Orla caught her.
“Alive,” Torren repeated. “Badly hurt. Hidden below Splitfall stones.”
Riksa was already moving.
“Where?”
Noll dismounted and lifted the wrapped shape from across his saddle.
It was not a body.
Too small.
A bundle of cloth.
Hessa answered. “He could not ride. Brann and the Red Creek men are bringing him by litter. Slow. He was left breathing with his own boot missing and another boot beside him.”
Willa looked at the wrapped object.
Hessa’s smile was terrible.
“A Pike boot.”
Torren opened his bloodied hand.
In his palm lay a strip of leather cut from a boot heel.
A maker’s stamp showed faintly.
Not Pike Hollow.
Stonewatch.
“They meant us to find him dead,” Torren said. “With our mud, our boot, Redjaw marks, and enough blood to make me stupid.”
Willa’s grip tightened on his wrists.
“But he was alive.”
“Yes.”
“And you were not stupid.”
His eyes burned.
The mark pulsed hard.
“No,” he said.
Hessa stepped down from her horse, holding a waxed packet.
“We found the marker too.”
Orla came forward.
Hessa unfolded the packet enough to show the rubbing they had taken.
Redjaw symbol.
Torren’s father’s mark.
And beneath both, newly scraped moss revealing a third line of cuts.
Frostmere tally marks.
Davra’s record hand had not carved them, perhaps.
But Frostmere had counted something there.
Hessa’s voice was low.
“Someone used that stone as a ledger.”
The yard went silent.
Then, from beyond the gate road, came another horn.
Distant.
Not Red Creek.
Not Pike Hollow.
A long, polished note.
Frostmere.
Selka turned sharply.
Her face drained.
“They came.”
Willa looked from Selka to Miri to Torren’s bloodied hands, to the hidden pass rubbing, to the road where Frostmere’s horn echoed again through wet spring air.
Of course.
Arlen alive meant the false trail was failing.
So the next story had arrived before he could speak.
Torren stepped beside Willa.
Blood on his hands.
Mark at her throat.
Rage under control.
Exact.
“Inside,” Orla ordered. “Witness hall. Now.”
And this time, when the road came calling, Red Creek shut its gate before answering.