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"Wrong way," Sona said, and put him into the wall.
Stone took the back of his skull. Her forearm crossed his chest, blade flat and cold under his jaw, and she wasn't even breathing hard.
"Bell tower's behind you. Ethlin's still up there shaking. You said something about winter and then you ran." She leaned in. "So run at me instead. Say it again."
"Sona. Let go."
"Say it."
"North yard," Rhys said. "The grain hoist. Right now."
"What about it?"
"Main rope's rotten at the drum. Snaps at fifth bell and drops nine hundred pounds of barley on the stones." He got his hand around her wrist. She let him, which was worse than if she'd fought. "There's a kid under it."
"There's forty kids in this keep."
"Deri Ograne."
Her eyes changed. Just a fraction. "The commander's boy."
"Nine years old. Steals barley to feed a dog nobody's supposed to have. Goes in through the tally door because it doesn't latch." Fourth bell was still ringing somewhere behind his teeth. "Move your arm or come with me, I don't care which, but pick now."
"How do you know the rope's rotten?"
"Sona."
"How."
"Because I watched it kill him," he said, and hated the taste of it.
She pulled the blade off his throat. Didn't sheathe it. "If you're lying, I open you up in front of witnesses."
"Fine. Run."
They ran.
Down the mural stair two steps at a time, past a pikeman who shouted something about curfew, out into the north yard where the cold hit like a slap. The hoist stood black against the wall — four stories of frame and rope and a barley net swinging slow in the wind.
"Tally door," Rhys said. "There—"
"I see it." She was already faster than him. She always was. "Boy! Get out here!"
Nothing. Then a scrabble of feet inside, the kind kids make when they think running's the smart move.
"He's bolting," Rhys said. "He'll come out under the net, he always—"
The drum groaned.
He knew that sound. He'd heard it eight times. Came in two parts — groan, then a dry crack like a tree giving up. Between them you had about a breath and a half.
Deri Ograne came out of the tally door with his arms full of stolen barley, face already guilty.
"Kid—" Rhys hit him at a dead sprint, wrapped him, threw them both sideways.
The crack came. The net dropped.
Something caught Rhys across the shoulder on the way down — edge of the load, the frame, he never got a good look — and turned his left arm into hot white noise. Barley burst across the yard. Dust went up like smoke. The frame kept shrieking above them for a long second, deciding whether to come too.
It didn't.
"Off. Off, you're crushing me," Deri said, muffled.
"Good," Rhys said. "Means you're breathing."
"You're bleeding on my neck."
"Also good."
Sona hauled the boy out from under him by the collar, set him on his feet like a sack she was checking for holes. "Look at me. Both arms. Both legs. Turn."
"I'm fine—"
"Turn."
He turned. She let out a breath through her nose and shoved him behind her.
Then boots. A lot of them. Lantern light swinging wild across the barley, and Vittal Ograne came through it without his helmet, without his gorget, coat unbuckled like he'd left a table mid-meal.
"Deri."
"Papa, I didn't—"
Vittal went down on one knee in the grain and pulled the boy in so hard the kid's feet came off the ground. He didn't say anything for a while. His hand kept moving on the back of Deri's head, over and over, same short stroke, like he was checking the boy was still there each time.
When he looked up, he looked at Rhys.
And Rhys had seen a lot of faces in nine loops, but that one — grateful and terrified in the same breath, a man doing arithmetic he didn't want the answer to — that one was new.
"You were under it," Vittal said.
"Sort of."
"Before it fell."
"About a second before. Not a talent, just luck."
"Don't." Vittal stood, kept one hand on his son's shoulder. "I've commanded this keep eleven years. Nobody's that lucky. How did you know?"
"The rope was frayed at the drum," Rhys said. "I saw it yesterday and forgot to report it. That's on me."
Behind Vittal, Sona's head turned. Slow.
Rhys felt it land. He kept his face flat and let it land.
"Yesterday," Vittal repeated.
"Yesterday."
The commander looked at him a moment longer. Then he did something worse than accuse him. He lowered his voice, stepped in close, so the lantern men wouldn't hear.
"Ask me for something," Vittal said. "Now. While I'm still like this. Tomorrow I'll be a commander again and I'll say no."
"The west gate detail," Rhys said. "Don't send it out tonight."
Vittal's face shut like a window.
"That's not a favor," he said. "That's an order I already gave."
"Then un-give it."
"Who told you about the west gate?"
"Nobody."
"Nobody," Vittal said, and there it was again — the fear, sitting right next to the gratitude, neither one winning. He pulled his son against his hip. "Get that shoulder looked at, swordsman. And stay out of my yards."
He walked off through the spilled barley with the boy under his arm. Didn't look back once.
"Sona," Rhys said.
"Stairwell," she said. "Now."
"I can explain—"
"Stairwell, or I say it out loud in front of nine soldiers."
The stairwell off the north yard was two men wide, smelled of wet rope. She got him in there, kicked the door shut with her heel, pushed him down onto the third step so hard his teeth clicked.
"Coat off."
"It's a bruise—"
"It's through your sleeve." She was already pulling the leather back off his shoulder, fingers quick, not gentle. Her knuckles were freezing. Everything else about her was warm — he could feel it through the ruined shirt, the heat coming off her forearm where it braced against his collarbone to hold him still. "You were with me yesterday. From second bell to dark. You were with me and then you were locked in the bell tower with Ethlin, and you have never once in your life been near the north yard, so tell me — when exactly did you inspect that rope?"
"Sona."
"Say the lie again. I want to hear how you do it." She tore a strip off her own under-sleeve with her teeth, started binding his shoulder, and she was so close he could feel her breath break against his jaw with every word. "You do it well. That's the part I hate. You lied to a commander holding his living son and you didn't even blink."
"He needed a reason he could live with."
"I needed one first!" Her hand stopped. Just stopped, flat against his shoulder, thumb over the bandage knot. "You knew that boy was going to die. You knew the hour. You had time to grab my arm in the tower and say *Sona, come with me.* Instead you ran and let me chase you like a thief."
"You wouldn't have believed me."
"I came anyway," she said. "Didn't I. I came anyway."
The stairwell was very quiet. Somewhere above them somebody was still ringing the fourth bell wrong.
She was too close. He could count the freckle over her lip, the wet on her lashes from the cold, the small shake in the hand still resting on him. She noticed him noticing and didn't move back, which was its own kind of threat.
"Look at me," she said.
"I am."
"No. *Look* at me." She lifted her blade — slowly, no anger in it — and laid the flat of it against her own shoulder instead of his throat. Then she lowered it all the way down. Point to the step. Hand off the grip.
"Next time you hide something like this from me," Sona said, "I kill you. Not a threat. Not a soldier thing. I will put this through you myself and I won't be sorry."
Her hand was shaking. Her eyes were not.
"Understood," Rhys said.
"Then start now." She caught his wrist, turned it over. "Because that's the third time tonight your sleeve's gone black and it isn't blood."
He looked down.
Under the linen, on the skin of his forearm, a line of ink was writing itself. Warm. Moving. A name coming through letter by letter, and he could read it, and she couldn't, and he'd have given both arms to trade places.
"Rhys." Her grip tightened. "What is that. What does it say."
"Let go of my arm."
"*What does it say—*"