"Where did the two of you disappear to," Aim said. "When the creatures were chasing us."
The empty white space did not echo. The words just sat where he left them.
"W-Well, a lot of unexpected things have been happening lately—"
"It reminded me of something," Vine interrupted. "Strategy used in 1000s during god selection war. Restructuring an animal so that it chases magic the way a moth chases light." She tilted his head slightly. "Someone has been watching how we move."
A short silence.
"That's sharp of you to figure out," Vine said. "Genuinely."
Aim opened his mouth to push further — and stopped, because Vine had moved.
She crossed the empty space and sat down. Not apart from them, the way she usually placed herself. With them — close enough that the three of them made something like a circle.
"A coward's method, that," she said. "Outsourcing your hunting to something else, watching from a safe distance. I have only ever known one person willing to fight that way." She paused. "It is not a compliment to be on that list."
"Then if it was that one people," Aim asked carefully, "what can we you do about them?"
Vine was quiet for a moment.
But it was not the flat, closed silence she had given him on the road. It was the silence of someone deciding how much to say — and choosing, this time, to say something.
"I would not face them now.. sometime things just.."
sigh
"There is more," Vine said. "About the sky. About what is following us. About why Sancturia." She brought her hands together in front of her, fingertips touching, a slow deliberate steeple. "I will tell you the rest of it when we arrive. Not to keep it from you — I have decided you should know. But it is long, and I would rather say it once, somewhere I can fully believe you aren't a threat."
It was, Aim realized, a promise. An actual one. From Vine.
"Trust for trust, then," she said. "I have promised. Now you tell me about him." Her eyes moved, just barely, toward Const. "Const, was it."
"Um — I don't know if he'd allow—"
"I don't mind in the slightest!" Const said pleasantly, from where he sat.
"...you've been listening the whole time."
"Of course."
"Well, then."
Aim and Isolde exchanged a look. And then, between them, in pieces, they told her — the night the assassins came, and how Const had arrived at the exact moment they were needed, not a second early, not a second late. The way he behaved as though he had known them far longer than he had. The folder of documents that had appeared on Aim's locked dining table in the night, and how, when they had finally traced it, the trail led to Const having borrowed it from the Exchequer's people and simply never returned it.
Vine listened to all of it without interrupting.
"I see," she said, when they finished.
She looked across the small circle at Const, who looked back with the mild untroubled expression of a man being discussed and finding it unremarkable.
"I'd advise the two of you to be careful with him," Vine said. "He may have some connection to Agares." A pause. "I am not saying this to frighten you."
Another pause.
"And the truest thing I know is this. There is no god in this world worth trusting." Her eyes flicked, once, to Const. "Not one."
---
The snowstorm broke sometime before midday.
The four of them walked on through banked drifts, the wind down to something survivable. The land here was patchwork — stretches of ordinary frozen soil interrupted by veins of the corrupted ground, dark and faintly wrong, the snow above it refusing to lie flat.
But it was what lay ahead that had changed.
"Two more hours and we should reach Sancturia," Vine said. "Pick up the pace."
She did not wait for agreement. Her own pace lengthened sharply — faster than the terrain or her build had any right to allow.
"What exactly are we hurrying toward?" Isolde called after her.
"I told you. Something is following us. Move."
"Who is following us?" Aim said.
"Something that wants what Sancturia holds. The same as me."
"And what is that — what's actually there?"
"Everything," Vine said, and did not slow down.
---
The room had no light worth the name.
It was the kind of dark that did not feel empty — the kind that felt occupied, the way a held breath occupies a chest. And in it stood a figure in a white mask, featureless, pale as bone against the black, and the air around the figure had the heavy stillness of a space that something far too large had folded itself into.
"Seer." The voice came without weight and without warmth. "You."
The Seer stood before it with his head slightly bowed.
"Go to Sancturia. Take everything it holds. Bring everyone there to me." A pause. "Your god is there."
"But—"
"There is no but." The voice did not rise. It did not need to. "I can end you, or end Agares, whenever I choose."
The Seer was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful — not afraid for himself, but for something else entirely.
"Then — you have not harmed Lord Agares. Is that right?"
A silence.
"Lord Terminus."
"Why is it that you and Lord Agares's fate can't be seen.."
The masked figure did not answer.
The dark held the silence for a long time.
---
The Seer stepped out of that room with the careful posture of a man who had been somewhere cold.
Mivelle was waiting in the corridor.
"Oh, poor Seer." Her voice was soft, immediate, full of sympathy. "Terminus was unkind to you again, wasn't he."
"Lady Mivelle." The Seer's voice changed — soften, worried. "You went to Sancturia yesterday. You saw him." He took a step toward her. "Lord Agares — how is he? How is he? I have wanted to stand before him again more than I have wanted anything—"
"He is — " Mivelle paused, and let the pause do its own work. "He is enduring, Seer. He is still enduring. But he is not as he was."
The Seer's hands closed.
"Then I have to go."
"I know." Mivelle reached out and rested her fingers, light as falling feathers, against his shoulder. "I know you do. And I won't pretend the road is safe — Lord Terminus has asked something terrible of you, and Sancturia will not give up what it holds without a price." Her voice stayed gentle, stayed kind, stayed perfectly weighted. "But you would walk through worse than this for him, wouldn't you. For the one who looked down and saw you, when no other god would."
"...I would."
"Then take these with you."
From inside her robe she produced, one after another, a small set of objects and laid them across her palm: a pale stone ring banded with a thin line of gold, a folded silk cloth that did not lie flat the way silk should, a small pendant in the shape of a closed eye, and a single feather that gave off the faintest cool light against her skin.
The Seer's eyes widened.
"Lady Mivelle, these are—"
"Holy artifacts. Yes. From my own collection." She gathered his hand in both of hers and pressed them into it carefully. "I will not let you walk into Sancturia carrying only faith. Faith does not stop a blade. These will."
"I cannot accept—"
"You can. And you will." Her voice did not lift, but it did not bend either. "There are people in Sancturia who would prefer that Lord Agares be forgotten. Some of them are quite dangerous — there is a woman with white hair you may encounter, who carries far more artifacts than anyone in this land. If she stands between you and him, you will need these to make her step aside." She closed his fingers gently around the pile. "Promise me you will use them. Promise me you will not let her stop you."
The Seer looked down at his closed hand.
"...I promise."
"Then I'll walk the road with you." A small, warm, devastating smile. "You should not have to go to him alone."
The Seer bowed his head, grateful.
He did not see the thing that crossed Mivelle's face above his lowered eyes — there and gone, the way it always was.
"Thank you, Lady Mivelle."
"Of course," she said. "What are goddess for if not giving a saint like you a salvation."