The guard's warning follows Wren up the King's Road for a quarter-mile before she stops. Ahead: Ashwick, a garrison, more scrutinizing eyes she isn't sure she can talk past. To her left the Thornwood's edge runs parallel — mist at the root-line, old trees very still. She thinks of what she's heard once, the way village children pick up scraps: that the Thornwood keeps counsel. That some of it can be bought. She leaves the road. The wood accepts her without ceremony. The mist closes in and softens the clanking of the armor to something almost dignified. She follows the sound of water — guides, in every story she's heard, tend to live near running water — and finds, kneeling beside a dark stream with a clay jar half-submerged, an old woman in a cloak the color of river-weed, a sun-clasped wooden box resting on a dry stone beside her. The woman does not look up. "You've lost something," she says quietly. "Or will, very soon."