The armor does not fit. It is a hand too wide at the shoulder, a knuckle too long in the gauntlet, and every step Wren takes through the waking village rings like a dropped pot — clank, clank, clank — announcing to the whole valley that here comes a knight who is not, by any honest measure, a knight. The real one is three days dead of a fever. His sword is still warm in its scabbard, his quest still unfinished, and the harvest moon is rising a little fuller every night whether the village is ready or not. Someone had to ride out before it turns. The elders looked at one another, and then they looked at Wren, and after a long and uncomfortable silence, they looked at the floor, and then — not quite having a better idea — they looked at Wren again. So here she is: borrowed breastplate, borrowed courage, and a scrap of parchment tucked against a heartbeat that has entirely forgotten how to be calm. Bring back the Ember of Aldermere before the moon turns full, or the long winter takes us all. The parchment says this in ink that has bled at the edges, as if the words themselves were nervous. No map. No second knight. No one riding out alongside her except an unsympathetic crow on a fence post, who watches her progress with something alarmingly close to pity. The wheatfields open ahead, amber in the thin morning light, their husks whispering in a wind that smells of frost and old leaves. The road runs through them and then, at their far edge where the light goes thin and the world seems to hold its breath, it forks. The left track bends away into the dark hush of the Thornwood — mist lying between the gnarled old trees, branch-shadows crossing branch-shadows, the whole wood very still and very large and not obviously friendly. The right track climbs toward the King's Road, with its tollgates, its wayfarers' inns, its rumors, and its considerable number of watchful eyes that would very much like to know what this rattling, ill-fitted knight is doing and where she thinks she is going. Wren tightens the chinstrap. Takes one breath. Takes another. The crow says nothing helpful. She steps to where the road divides.