---
They made one more ring around the field and then stepped away. Mia tapped her wrist once against the leather thong where the mirror leash wrapped. It tugged like a patient dog. She let it.
"Camp by the old basin," she said. "Night low. Day high. Two watches. No cooking. If we are seen we are seen by wind."
They moved.
Beneath a lip of beetle-black stone two hundred strides off their trail, a shape that had learned to be the absence of a shape eased its breath thin. Six other shapes eased theirs thinner. They were ants, but not the marching kind nor the shield kind — plates soot-lacquered, joints wrapped in ash silk, small antennae clipped short to keep them from speaking when they should be listening.
Each wore a dull bead the size of a millet grain in the hollow behind the jaw: tracking stone keyed to a single braid-scent and the salt of one woman's sweat. When Mia's hand brushed her mirror leash, six beads warmed the way a mouth warms on a lie.
