The white-barked trees thin and the smell reaches her first — woodsmoke and something that might be broth, or might be medicine, or might simply be Old Maret. The fire on the rise is still going. Of course it is. Wren crests the rise with armor clanking and the Ember still closed in her fist, and Old Maret looks up from her clay pot without any particular surprise — the look of someone who expected this return, and perhaps hadn't been entirely certain until this very moment. "Still alive," the old woman says. "Still alive," Wren agrees. She opens her hand a fraction. The Ember glows amber in the early light, warm as a hearthstone. Old Maret is quiet a beat. Then, carefully: "The Watcher." "Let me pass." The ladle comes to rest against the pot's rim. Old Maret studies her the way you study an unexpected answer to a sum you were sure you'd got right. "Did it now," she says. "Sit down, girl. There's something you should know before you carry that thing back to your village."