Corvin's legs gave out twice on the walk to the treeline.
The first time Marcus caught him by the arm without breaking stride. The second time Liz got there first, pulling his weight onto her shoulder with the practiced ease of someone who had carried injured people before and hadn't enjoyed it either time.
"I can walk," Corvin said.
"Says the man who almost fell twice ," Liz stared at him reluctantly .
He didn't argue after that.
They pushed east for an hour, off the main road and into the tree cover, until the pass was well behind them and the forest had swallowed enough of the daylight that stopping made more sense than continuing.
Marcus found a spot between two thick roots where the ground was flat and the canopy above was dense enough to kill the firelight before it climbed too high.
He got the fire going. Liz got Corvin sitting upright against one of the roots with her water skin in his hands.
"Drink slowly," she said.
"You keep saying that like I'm going to chug it."
"You look like you might."
Corvin almost smiled. Almost. Whatever was sitting behind his eyes was too heavy to let it land fully.
Marcus sat across the fire and looked at him. Not the way people looked when they were being polite. The way he looked at things he was trying to read.
"Three weeks," he said.
Corvin looked up. "What?"
"You were with them three weeks."
A pause. "Yeah."
"And they kept you alive because of the maps."
"Every supply road in the eastern corridor. Paths that don't show up on any official chart." He turned the water skin in his hands. "I've made that crossing more times than I can count.
They needed that knowledge and I was faster than figuring it out themselves." His jaw tightened.
"When they had everything they needed from me I was going to be a loose end."
"But you posted the notice in Redmere before they grabbed you," Liz said.
"Six days before." He nodded slowly. "I saw what they were loading through the pass. It wasn't just food and weapons.
There were sealed crates moving with a different escort. Quieter guards. No eye contact, no conversation, just walking and watching." He stopped.
"The crates felt wrong. I've transported enough cargo in my life to know the difference between a box that's locked and a box that's sealed because whatever is inside shouldn't get out."
The fire crackled between them.
Marcus said nothing and let the silence do the work.
Corvin kept talking.
"I posted the notice and three days later four of them showed up at my campsite before dawn. I didn't even hear them coming.
" He set the water skin down. "Three weeks of descripting maps and answering questions and sleeping with my hands tied to a cart rail."
"The garrison," Marcus said. "Tell me about the layout."
Corvin looked at him. The look of a man deciding how much trust he had left and whether the two people sitting across this fire had earned any of it.
He decided they had.
"It's not a raiding base," he said. "I've seen raiding bases. Wrong layout. Too permanent, too much storage, walls reinforced like they plan to hold that ground for decades." He picked up a stick and drew quick lines in the dirt between his boots.
"Three levels. Top two are soldiers and supplies, normal enough. The bottom level is sealed off completely. Different locks on the stairs, different guards posted, and the ones who rotated up from down there never talked to anyone from the upper floors."
Liz leaned forward slightly. "The sealed crates.
Where did they go inside the garrison."
Corvin pointed at the ground.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
"Varak Duskhollow," Marcus said.
Corvin's hands went still.
"You know the name," Marcus said.
"I know what it used to mean." He stared at the lines he'd drawn. "Eight years ago Varak Duskhollow was a minor noble. Not powerful, not famous, just legitimate.
He had land, a house, soldiers who served him properly. Then Crestmere expanded and absorbed his territory through paperwork rather than war.
His house dissolved, his title erased, everything he had redistributed to administrators who'd never set foot in his lands.
" He was quiet for a moment. "He fought it through every legal channel available. Lost every single one. Then he disappeared."
"And two years later a garrison appeared in the eastern corridor," Marcus said.
"Brick by brick. Year by year." Corvin looked up.
"Someone is funding him. Someone with enough resources to build a small army in a gap between two kingdoms without either of them noticing.
I spent six months trying to trace where the money comes from and hit a wall every time."
Liz glanced at Marcus. He was watching the fire with the particular stillness he wore when things were clicking into place behind his eyes.
"The lower level," he said. "Did you ever see inside it."
Corvin's expression shifted. Something tightened around his eyes.
"Once," he said. "By accident. Wrong corridor, door was open." He stopped there for a second like he was choosing his words carefully. "There was something inside.
Not a creature. Not a crate. Just a thing sitting in the middle of the room in the dark and it knew I was there before I even pushed the door open." His voice had dropped without him seeming to notice.
"I could feel it waiting. Like it had been sitting in that room for a very long time and it was completely fine with waiting longer. It just wanted someone to look at it."
"Did you?" Liz asked.
"I closed the door," Corvin said. "And I never went near that corridor again."
The forest outside the camp had gone fully quiet.
Not the natural quiet of night settling in. The other kind.
Marcus looked east through the trees toward where the garrison sat two days away.
The thing in the room that had been waiting to be looked at.
"How many soldiers," he said.
"Two hundred inside the garrison. More coming from a northern outpost before the week is out."
"Location of the outpost."
"Half a day north of the pass. Old watchtower.
They've been expanding it for months." Corvin looked between them. "You're going in aren't you."
Marcus picked up a branch and added it to the fire without answering.
"Get some sleep," he said. "Both of you."
Liz looked at him across the flames with an expression that said she had questions and had decided to save them for morning.
She handed Corvin the dried provisions from her pack, told him to eat, and settled back against her saddle.
Corvin ate in silence.
Marcus kept watch and let the fire burn low with different thought schemering through he's mind.
"Interesting"