The Brook Woman sets the box on her knee, both hands resting flat on the wood. "An oath sworn on the sun clasp must be released by name," she says — not reluctantly, but in the way of someone reciting something they have had a long time to memorize. "The sworn must be called. The receiver must be named. The need must be spoken aloud, with the sigil as witness." Her eyes move to the emblem pressed into Wren's breastplate. "No living hand touches the Ember without that." The mist shifts. The stream makes its case to the stones. Wren looks down at the faded sun on the borrowed iron. She is wearing a dead man's armour, carrying a dead man's parchment, on a dead man's errand. She has his name — scratched on the back of the buckle, found while adjusting the strap. She has the village's need, bleeding at the ink-edges. She has, in some dubious and entirely unplanned sense, the sigil. "If I spoke the release," she says slowly. "In his name. Wearing this. Would that hold?"