"Fever," Wren says, and the word comes out steadier than she has any right to expect. "He's two days behind — horse slowed when it came on. Sir Aldric sent me ahead to keep the quest moving." She says it the way she has decided knights must say things: not loudly, not with the wobble of someone inventing as they go, but with the mild irritation of someone recounting a minor inconvenience. The fever part is even true. She holds onto that fact like a handhold on a cliff face. The guard looks at her boots again. Then at the sigil. Then — the part that stretches — at the lower half of her face beneath the visor, for one long and measuring moment. "Fever," he says, tasting it. Wren produces two copper coins from the gauntlet where she has kept them since the road fork, already damp with nerves. The guard takes them. Taps them once against his palm. Then he steps aside and waves her through with the pike — the gesture of a man who is not fully satisfied but has decided it is not his problem today. "Two days," he says after her. "I'll remember that." Wren does not turn around. The gate at her back feels like a held breath slowly releasing, and the King's Road stretches ahead: wide, unfamiliar, and entirely without a signpost for Aldermere.