Dawn came gray through the leaves.
Kairito woke with a mouth full of copper and a neck that wouldn't turn right. He'd slept on roots. His body told him about each one. Shoulder. Hip. The knob of his spine where something had pressed all night.
Sera was already awake.
She sat at the mouth of the hollow, back against the fallen trunk, watching the light change. Her hair was a nest. The swollen eye had opened enough to see, just a slit, red-veined, but tracking.
She'd found his sandals.
They sat beside her. Cleaned. The leather was cracked, the soles worn through in places, but they were his. He hadn't noticed her go back for them.
"You slept," she said.
"Yeah."
"I didn't."
He crawled out. The cold hit him. Morning cold. The kind that lives in shadows and waits for skin. His tunic was stiff with dried mud. The scar on his chest pulled when he straightened.
He put the sandals on. They were cold. They fit the same as always. That was something.
Sera stood. Her wool dress was torn at the shoulder, the sleeve hanging loose. She'd tied it with a strip torn from somewhere, hem, maybe. The knot was neat. A princess who knew how to tie knots.
"There's a road," she said. "East. Maybe two miles."
"How do you know?"
She pointed. Through the trees, a break in the canopy. The sky there was lighter. Not sunrise. Clear-cut.
"I climbed before you woke. Old logging trail. There's a pilgrim road beyond it. Goes to the monastery at Graywell."
He looked at her. "You know this forest?"
"I've seen maps." She pulled a burr from her hair. Winced. Her fingers came away with blood. "The Graywell monks keep the northern passes. They'll have food. Shelter."
"They'll also have questions."
"Let them ask."
She started walking. Didn't look back to see if he followed.
He followed.
The forest was quiet. Not the quiet of nothing, the quiet of things watching. Birds held their songs. Squirrels froze on branches. Every step he took sounded too loud. His own breathing. The scrape of sandals on wet leaves.
He kept waiting for the ground to change. For the trees to twist. For the wrong colors to bleed through the light.
Nothing did.
They hit the logging trail after an hour. Maybe two. He'd lost his sense of time. The trail was mud and wheel ruts, overgrown but straight. Someone had cut the trees back fifty feet on either side. Stumps. Old ones, moss-eaten. A few had new growth, saplings thin as switches, fighting for light.
The pilgrim road was cobblestone.
It came out of nowhere. The logging trail ended at a stone arch, half-collapsed, and beyond it, the road. Flat stones laid tight, edged with moss. Old. The kind of road that had been there before the forest grew around it.
Sera stepped onto it. Her boots made a different sound. Solid.
Kairito followed.
The cobbles were cold through his sandals. Smooth. Worn by a thousand feet. He could feel the shape of each stone through the leather. The gaps between them. The way they'd settled over centuries.
"Which way?" he asked.
She pointed south. The road curved into the trees, following a slope. He could see a rise in the distance. A ridge. Something on top of it. Stone. Square.
"Graywell's that way."
"How far?"
"Maps don't tell you that."
They walked.
The road was easier than the forest. No roots to trip him. No branches grabbing. Just the stones and the trees on either side and the gray sky overhead. His legs were tired. His chest hurt. The scar felt tight, like it was shrinking, pulling the skin around it.
Sera walked beside him. She was limping. He noticed it around the third mile. A hitch in her step, favoring the right leg. She didn't say anything.
Neither did he.
They passed a shrine.
It was small, a stone box set into the road's edge, the roof caved in. Inside, a statue. Or what was left of one. The face was worn smooth. The hands were gone. At its feet, offerings. A dried flower. A coin so green he couldn't tell the metal. A child's shoe.
Sera stopped. Looked at it.
"My grandmother used to leave things at shrines," she said. "Buttons. Ribbons. Things she'd found."
"For what?"
"Luck." She touched the stone box. Her fingers traced a crack running from the roof to the base. "She said the old gods don't need gold. They need things people touched."
Kairito looked at the child's shoe. Small. The leather was cracked. The laces were gone.
"Did it work?"
Sera pulled her hand back. Kept walking.
"She died when I was six. So. No."
He followed. The road curved. The trees thinned. The ridge was closer now. He could see the walls, gray stone, slate roof, a tower at the corner. Smoke from a chimney. Thin. White.
"They have a bell," Sera said. "The Graywell bell. It rings when pilgrims come. They say you can hear it for ten miles."
No bell rang.
They came to a gate. Wood. Iron bands. The wood was wet, swollen, the gate closed. No one stood guard. No one came to meet them.
Sera knocked.
The sound was dull. Soft. The wood ate it.
She knocked again. Harder. The sound carried this time. A hollow thud that echoed off the stone walls.
They waited.
Kairito looked at the ground. At the stones beneath the gate. They were worn. But not all the same. Some were smooth, pilgrim feet. Others were sharp. New. Someone had replaced stones recently. A section of the road, right at the gate, had been dug up and relaid.
He crouched. Touched the stones.
They were warm.
"Don't."
Sera's voice. Tight.
He looked up. Her face was pale. Her good eye was fixed on the gate. On the wood. On the iron bands that held it closed.
He stood. Slow.
The gate opened.
A man stood there. Monks' robes. Gray wool, hood up. His face was thin. Hollow-cheeked. His hands were wrapped in cloth, stained yellow at the fingers.
"Travelers," he said. Not a question.
"Pilgrims," Sera said. "We need shelter."
The monk looked at them. At her torn dress. At his bare legs. At the scar visible through the torn tunic. At their faces, dirty, bruised, exhausted.
"The road is closed," he said.
"The road is the road."
The monk's eyes moved past them. Down the cobblestones. To the curve where the forest closed in. Back.
"Where did you come from?"
"South," Sera said.
The monk's mouth twitched. A smile that wasn't a smile.
"No one comes from the south. The road doesn't go south. It ends at the arch."
Sera didn't answer.
Kairito looked at the man's hands. The wrappings. Yellow at the fingers. Burn salve. He'd seen it before. On soldiers who'd handled things they shouldn't have handled.
"Your hands," Kairito said. "What burned them?"
The monk looked at him. Really looked. The eyes under the hood were gray. Old. They'd seen things.
"The bell," he said. "We rang it."
He stepped back. The gate opened wider.
"You'd better come in."