Wren reaches for the cup. It is, she decides, better than answering. The broth is hot — root vegetable and something bitter and good — and it buys her roughly four seconds of useful silence. "He's dead," she says, when she must speak. "Three days ago. Fever." She turns the cup in her palms. "He rode through our village and didn't make it out the other side. I never knew his name." She doesn't say the rest: that she was the only one fool enough not to argue when the headwoman asked. Old Maret is quiet a moment. The pot bubbles. "I knew him," she says at last. "Called himself Cael. Few sun-sworn keep their birth names." She takes back the cup, refills it, sets it down again. "The sigil — those were guardians of the Ember, before the order fell apart. Caretakers, not conquerors." A pause. "If he's truly gone, girl, you're not borrowing his purpose. You're inheriting it."