Wren takes a breath and decides the truth is probably easier to keep straight than a lie, especially in borrowed armor. "He's dead," she says. "Fever, three days past. The village needed the Ember before the moon turns full or the winter kills them all, and nobody else was going, so." She spreads her gauntlets at herself — the tilted helmet, the too-wide breastplate, the general improbability. "Here I am." The guard studies her with the practiced look of a man who has spent twenty years deciding who is lying and who is merely ridiculous. Then he says: "You don't have a copper penny, do you." "No." From across the road, the old woman by the clay pot says — without looking up — "Order of the Amber Sun has road-right on the King's Road. Has for forty years, Fen." The guard's mouth tightens. He steps aside. The bridge planks thump under Wren's boots. She nearly reaches the far bank before the old woman speaks again: "Sit a moment, girl. You'll want help finding what you're after."