"That's a hard thing to ask of her," she said. "After everything."
"I know," I said. "I'll ask her myself, and if she says no, it's no, and we find another way. But I think she might say yes. I think some part of her wants those men to see exactly what they're guarding people toward."
Luxy had already gone to wake Merit gently, and the conversation that followed happened low and private between the two of them, out of earshot of the rest of us by unspoken agreement, and when Luxy came back her face had gone soft and careful in a way that told me the answer before she said it out loud.
"She says yes," Luxy said. "She says, and I'm repeating this exactly because she was very particular about the wording, she says she'd rather be a warning than a secret for once in her life."
The defile Josef led us to was every bit as narrow as he'd promised, a cut of dark rock rising close on both sides of the road, barely wide enough for a wagon and team to pass through without scraping either flank, and we split up along its upper lip with maybe twenty minutes to spare before the sound of hooves and wheel-creak finally reached us from the west.
"Four guards," Savage murmured, flat on her stomach beside me at the rim, watching the wagon come on at an easy, unsuspecting pace. "One driving, three walking escort, plus whoever that is riding point on the horse."
"That's Marsh," Josef said, low, from Namey's other side, his voice gone tight at the sight of the man. "Same one who came to the house last night. Same one who told me to my face that Milo's reassignment was, and I'm quoting him exact, a reasonable price for continued employment."
The wagon slowed as the road narrowed into the cut, the way it had to, and I caught a glimpse through the slats of the back panel of a smaller shape huddled inside, wrists bound, head down, and something in my chest went cold and clear and entirely certain in a way that made the next several minutes feel less like a decision and more like a debt already owed.
Luxy dropped first, silent, landing behind the rearmost guard before he'd fully processed the shadow crossing overhead, a gloved hand over his mouth and a whispered word that put him down without so much as a grunt, more sedative dart than blade, the specific mercy Luxy reserved for men she'd already decided weren't worth killing over a job they hadn't chosen.
That was the signal. I stood, bow already drawn, and let my voice carry down into the cut before anyone below had finished startling at the first guard going down.
"Nobody else has to fall today," I said, and heard my own voice come out steadier than I expected it to. "Marsh. Your men. Look up here first, before anybody reaches for a weapon."
Merit stood at the rim beside me, pale in the morning light, ash grey skin catching it strange and wrong, and I watched every one of the remaining three guards below go still at the sight of her, weapons half raised and forgotten, the specific stillness of men looking at their own possible future standing eight feet above them with nowhere left to hide from it.
"That's what's waiting at the end of this job," I said. "Not coin. Not a good word from Threnody. That. I've seen the cages myself. I've seen what's left of people who thought this was just a paycheck same as you're all telling yourselves it is right now."
"Don't listen to him," Marsh barked, wheeling his horse hard, sword already clearing its sheath. "That's a trick, a costume, adventurer nonsense, get your eyes back on the wagon."
But the damage had already landed, and I watched it land, one guard's grip loosening on his spear, another's eyes flicking sideways toward the rock wall like he was already calculating the fastest way out of this cut that didn't involve dying in it, and Josef stepped forward into the open at that same moment, hands raised, voice cracking with everything he'd been carrying since the night before.
"Tomas," he said, to the nearest guard, and something in the man's face flinched at hearing his own name used soft instead of barked. "You've got a girl of your own, same age as my boy. I've watched you walk past my house every morning for six years. Look at what you're escorting him toward, and then tell me you're still walking that wagon the rest of the way to Cinder Ford."
Tomas didn't answer, but his spear point dropped, slow, and that was answer enough.
Marsh saw it too, and whatever calculation he'd been running behind his own eyes finished fast and ugly, because he spurred his horse straight for the wagon instead of at any of us, clearly deciding the boy inside it was worth more as a hostage than the fight itself was worth continuing.
"Not happening," Savage said, and dropped from the rim in a controlled fall that put her between Marsh's horse and the wagon's back panel before he'd covered half the distance, shield already up, boots planted.
He didn't slow for her. Horse and rider came on at a full charge, and I understood, watching it, that this was the difference Namey had already named for us back at the camp, the difference between men who'd break and a man who couldn't afford to.
Luxy's shout carried down into the cut a half second before impact, a warning meant for Savage rather than a spell of her own, and Savage angled her shield at the last possible instant, catching the horse's shoulder rather than taking the strike head on, absorbing enough of the force to stay upright while horse and rider both stumbled hard sideways into the defile's rock wall.