Krix's hands were shaking badly enough that the thread-reading motions he usually made in the air came out jagged, half-formed, like a man trying to write his own name during an earthquake.
"One half," he managed, "matches the cavalry Vesha already reported. Ordinary. Mortal. It's converging on the salt road position same as before, nothing new about it." He swallowed. "The other half doesn't match anything, My Lord. It's cold in a way the church's threads never are. And it's coming from the same direction Threll came from last night."
Threll's obsidian eyes had already fixed on the tree line, its whole wrong-angled frame gone rigid in a way I hadn't seen through the entire duel — not fear, exactly, but something with fear's shape borrowed for the occasion.
