Morning came in grey layers. The window leaked a thin, pewter light that turned the room into a charcoal sketch. Miri woke to the rattle of the kettle lid and the small, practical sounds Mora made when she expected trouble. Cloth on wood. The soft clink of ceramic. The click of a lock being tested and then tested again.
Her body wanted five more minutes. Her mind was already upright, boots laced, and counting possibilities. She lay still and listened. The cooper's shop below creaked as the building settled into its morning shape. Somewhere in the alley a cat announced it had found something that belonged to it. The air smelled like damp oak and old smoke, with the sweet edge of tea that had not quite decided to be fragrant.
Thimble crouched on the windowsill. He was a silhouette with a beak and an attitude. He had one claw hooked into the bent nail that kept the sash from rattling, as if he were part of the hardware.
"No hunters nearby," he said.
Mora did not turn. She poured a little water into the kettle and studied the way the flame reached for it. "It is Tuesday."
"Correct," Thimble said. He fluffed his neck with dignity. "Which is why you can trust me to lie about it effectively. No hunters nearby."
Miri pushed up on her elbows. "You are telling us the opposite of what is true."
"Always on time," Thimble said. "An artist keeps a schedule."
Mora lifted the kettle and held it for a breath, listening to how the metal sang. "What did you see."
Thimble tapped the nail. "Fence posts with boots. Hats with the idea of authority. A piece of paper that believes it is a sword. Three, perhaps four. The fourth walked like a person who writes instructions for other people to follow."
"Inquisitors," Mora said. She said it the way someone identifies a fungus on bread. She did not raise her voice. The word did not need volume to fill a room.
Miri sat up all the way and felt for the thong at her neck. The ring hung warm on her skin. She thumbed the soldered seam and waited for the flinch to pass. "How close."
Thimble angled his head, a slow pivot, calm because he was teasing danger and danger liked to be teased. "Near the square. They bought bread. They asked the baker if he had seen a mother and a girl. He said no. He also said he hates paperwork. This impressed them."
Mora set the kettle on the stove and watched the first thread of steam find itself. "We leave in fifteen minutes."
Miri swung her feet to the floor. It was cold. She made a sound that was not a complaint and not a brave silence either. She crossed to the small table and began to do what her hands always did when Mora said leave. Pack, count, tuck, tighten. Chalk wrapped in cloth. Thread and needle in a tin. A folded scrap of paper with the knot pattern for a rain ward. Two biscuits, stale and sure. The tea tin. She paused, then tucked a single extra leaf into the crease of her pocket. Foolish. Comforting. She did it anyway.
"Can I say goodbye to Maela," she asked, and knew the answer.
Mora did not look up. "If you want her questioned, yes."
"I know," Miri said. She did not say that not saying goodbye was a different kind of questioning. She pulled her coat on and rolled the cuffs once. The sleeves were a little short. She had grown again without asking permission.
The kettle found its voice. Mora lifted it before it could whistle. Steam rose with a soft, steady breath that made the room feel briefly like a place where normal mornings could live. She measured tea without needing to look. Three pinches for strength. One more because it had been a hard night. The leaves were dark and curled like secret handwriting. The scent lifted and made a small light in the air.
Miri watched the cups as if watching could keep them whole. "Are we actually drinking," she asked, "or is this a spell."
"Both," Mora said.
Thimble hopped down to the table and leaned over one cup until steam slicked his beak. "I can confirm the quality with a sip. For science."
Mora slid the cup out of his reach with a fingertip. "No."
He sighed and produced a button from somewhere that was not physical. He spun it like a coin and caught it on a claw. "You are very tense for someone about to drink tea."
Mora's mouth tilted. It was not a smile. It was a thought that looked like one. "Pour."
Miri poured. Her hands were steady now that they had something to do that was not running. She gave Mora the heavier cup and kept the one with the shallow chip on the rim. She settled on the stool that folded or did not depending on its mood.
For a minute they let the small things be loud. The clink of porcelain. The first sip. The way hot water tells the throat that the day's work can be done in a shape that looks like survival. A strand of hair slid out of Mora's knot and found her shoulder. She did not tuck it back. She rested her palm on the table with the fingers spread like a map.
"It wrote to the bells," Miri said, not as a question.
"It did," Mora said. "We will not be here when the bells decide what to do with that."
Thimble leaned into the window seam and pried up a splinter. He had a talent for finding the small flaws in things. "The baker told them you were tall. Which, while accurate, is rude."
"They already knew," Mora said.
Miri tried another sip. The heat steadied her, but not all the way. "Do we always leave like this."
Mora looked at her and then past her, at the door, and then down at the satchel. "Often."
"Is there a day when we stay instead."
"Yes," Mora said. She did not add when. She did not add where. The word was allowed to be a promise without a shape.
Boots sounded in the lane below. Not the cooper. He wore soft soles. These were heavier and walked as if the ground belonged to them by statute. A man coughed, then tried to make his cough sound like he had not coughed. A second voice said something that was to do with procedure and position and the dignity of a tabard.
Miri's shoulders rose without her permission. She set her cup down before her hand could show it. "Do they always cough like that."
"They always pretend to be less frightened than they are," Mora said. "Coughing is one method."
Thimble tilted his head. "Four," he said softly. "Two at the front. One by the alley. One who cannot decide what to do with the back stair. He is considering knocking. He is practicing the speech in his head. He wants it to sound reasonable."
The back stair was theirs. It was also very narrow. It smelled like flour and old varnish. Miri pictured herself halfway down, hearing boots, hearing the inhale before a man speaks the kind of sentence that makes a day tilt. Her stomach did something small and tight.
Mora stood. The movement was clean and final. "Finish your tea."
Miri obeyed. It scalded her tongue and she did not care. She felt the heat hit her belly and spread. She wanted to keep the heat with her. She wished she could pack it.
Mora took two folded slips from the inner pocket of her coat. One was the paper with the weather stitch she always kept near her heart. The other was a tag written in a clear, sharp hand that made the ink look like small, obedient soldiers. She attached the tag to the tea tin with a twist of string.
"What is that," Miri asked.
"A favor," Mora said. "In case we do not return. For Maela. You will put it under the hall door when we pass it. Do not let anyone see."
Miri nodded. She wanted to ask what the favor cost. She did not, because life with Mora had taught her that the price comes whether you name it or not.
Knuckles rapped the front door below. Three even knocks. Then a pause. Then two more. The cadence of a man who had practiced.
"Warden Pike," a voice called. It was friendly. It had court manners dressed in travel dust. "A word."
Mora's mouth flattened. Thimble clucked. "The man with the speech has chosen the front," he said. "The alley man is now alone with his thoughts, and his thoughts are made of rope."
"We go over the roof," Mora said.
Miri was already moving. She laced her boots tighter and tucked the extra length of lace inside. She slung the satchel crosswise and made sure it did not bump her hip where it would bruise later. She pulled her hair into a side tie and used a scrap of string to anchor it. Thimble hopped to her shoulder and then to Mora's. He could never decide whose balance he trusted more.
Mora crossed to the window. The frame stuttered when she raised it. Cold air came in like a polite thief. The roofs beyond were a page of slates and angles, silvered by dew. The sky rested heavy on the village as if it had slept there and woken without enthusiasm.
"Quick," Mora said gently. "Careful," she added, because gentle did not mean foolish.
Miri swung a leg over the sill and felt for the ledge with her boot. She found it with the heel. The edge was mossy. She imagined the line of her body as a hinge that could close safely. Her hands were damp on the wood. She shifted weight, found the slate with her toe, and slid outward until she was wholly in the morning, with the drop below and the rest of the town arranged like thinking she could step on.
The roof gave a small groan. It was the sound of a building that has held many secrets and will continue to hold them if people keep their feet light. Miri kept hers light. Her knees remembered the flex they had learned from other roofs and other mornings. She lowered to a crouch beside the window and waited for Mora.
Mora came through in one movement. Nothing snagged on her, not hair, not coat hem, not any of the charms that rode hidden in her seams. She did not look down. She looked outward, along the roofline to the next gable and the rain barrel beyond that, then farther to the alley that cut like a vein down to the square. She was already building a map that had never existed before and would never exist again.
"Go," she said, and Miri went.
They moved along the ridge. Slate chattered softly under them. Miri set her hands sometimes, then pulled them back, aware of the dew that made the surface treacherous. Her breath came cold at first, then warmer as the effort made a heat of its own. The village smelled like wet rope and old yeast. Smoke lifted in early, uncertain lines from a few chimneys.
Voices rose from the street. Miri risked a glance. Two men in pale tabards stood at the cooper's door. The tabards bore a hand with a mirror in the palm. The mirror did its best to reflect something useful and failed. One man read from a document. The other examined a knot in the doorframe with exaggerated interest. Warden Pike stood inside the threshold, shoulders rounded as if his coat weighed more than cloth.
"By order of the Choir of Glass," the reader said, and then continued in a tone that wanted to be soothing and authoritative, and landed somewhere in the cabbage patch between them. Miri did not catch the whole list. She heard mother. She heard girl. She heard safety protocols, and immediate custody, and quarantine of malign influence.
Mora touched Miri's elbow and pointed toward the hall. They crossed the angle of the roof and dropped into the shallow between two pitches. There was a gutter here that did not expect feet. It complained. Miri winced and kept moving. They reached the corner where the hall roof met the cooper's, then the low outbuilding that housed firewood. The woodpile was damp, but the roof over it made a dry slot where a person could hide if she chose to be small and still.
Mora did not choose small. She chose fast.
They slid down the last pitch and landed in a crouch behind the hall. The door sat a handspan above a stone step. The crack beneath it breathed out the smell of beeswax and last night's fear. Miri took the tag from the tea tin and eased it under. Her fingers shook with care. The paper disappeared like a good secret.
Footsteps sounded in the alley beyond. Not heavy. Thoughtful. Rope-thoughts had bought boots. Miri flattened herself against the wall and held her breath. Mora did not flatten. She swiveled her head slightly, the way a hawk sets its angle before it moves.
The inquisitor reached the corner and paused. Miri could see the leather of his gauntlet. The back of his hand had the mirror sigil sewn there in smart, tidy stitches. He was not young, but he moved like someone who had trained his body not to show what it had learned to fear. He waited. He listened. Miri could hear his breath. He had the steady rhythm of a man who shorelines his nerves with counting.
Mora raised two fingers, small, a fraction. Wait, she meant, and also listen, and also not yet.
The inquisitor stepped forward and cleared his throat. His voice was the friendly one Thimble had described, sized down for an alley. "If there is anyone behind the hall," he said, "I do not mean harm. We want to ensure the safety of the community. We can help the child. We have doctors."
Miri felt the words land on her like dry leaves. They did not weigh much. They still made a sound.
Mora looked at Miri. Her eyes were calm. They said, very clearly, no.
She reached into her coat and touched the place where the weather stitch sat. The thread there knew her skin. She pinched a corner and drew it out like a woman drawing a narrow scarf from a sleeve. It was not fabric. It was a line of intent that had decided to look like thread for now.
"Tithe," Miri whispered.
"A small one," Mora said. "An hour of warmth. Yours or mine."
"Mine," Miri said, before she could think.
Mora paused. She almost said no. Then she did not. "All right," she said. "Give me your hands."
Miri set her palms against Mora's. The contact steadied her. Mora's skin was cool, with the faint grain of old burns and ink that had not washed away. The thread hummed in a voice that was not sound. Mora spoke into the space between their hands, quiet and precise.
"Go as mist," she said.
The world tilted. The air collected against Miri's skin and then stepped inside it. Cold ran along her bones like water. Her breath hitched. The alley seemed to draw a veil across itself. The inquisitor tilted his head and frowned. He took two steps forward and looked right through them, then past them, then at his own doubt.
Miri held very still. The cold climbed her wrists and laid its cheek along her forearms. Her teeth did not chatter because she told them not to. Mora lowered her hands and let the thread slacken. The air changed back. The inquisitor's eyes moved on. He exhaled and made a small sound that said he would prefer a different job. He continued down the alley.
Mora touched Miri's shoulder. "Move."
They slipped along the back wall and reached the lane. The morning had opened more of its eye. People had started to do the things people do when trouble walks politely into town. They stood near their doors and held brooms and pretended the brooms were tools for sweeping. A dog with an old injury watched them carefully and then decided not to tell.
They cut through a yard where cabbages squatted like men at a fire. The dew made Miri's boots shine. The cold had taken up residence in her fingers. It reached into her sleeves and investigated her elbows. She hugged herself once and then let her arms fall. She did not want to look like a child who needed her mother's coat.
"Later," Mora said, not unkind. "You will be warm. Later."
"I am fine," Miri said.
"You are cold," Mora said. "That is the cost. Costs end. Keep moving."
At the edge of the yard a low stone wall guarded a lane that fell away toward the river. Beyond the lane, the first of the Wound's ribs lifted out of the landscape like the idea of an ark. The bone arches would give them cover if they reached them. Between here and there, the square spread itself with the false openness of a place that wanted to witness something.
They reached the corner and slowed.
The two inquisitors at the cooper's door had turned to face the square. A third moved across the open space with the careful posture of a man who has practised being unthreatening and finds it a difficult art. He had a net on his shoulder. It looked like rope, but the knots had a geometry Miri recognized from Mora's books. Cord Choir work. It was not built to catch fish.
The friendly voice spoke again. He stood on the step with his paper and his belief in how mornings should go. "We know you are frightened," he called. "We know last night confused the bells. We know the witch used words you find difficult. She is dangerous. The girl is in danger near her. Let us help."
"I would like to help him swallow that page," Thimble said near Miri's ear. "Fold it twice. Apply patience."
Mora scanned the square, then the alleys that touched it. She measured distances in a way that had nothing to do with steps. She tapped her thumb against the satchel twice. Miri saw it and knew it for the tell.
"The west alley," Mora said quietly. "We do not run. We drift as if we belong."
Miri straightened, then forced herself to bend her knees a little so she did not look like a person who had just straightened. She set her face in a look she had practiced. It said, someone sent me for bread and I will argue about crusts later. Mora stepped out first and Miri matched her stride. Thimble slid into the deeper part of bad light and became decorative absence.
They walked into the square. The friendly inquisitor glanced their way, the way people glance at movement when they believe they are watching something else. His eyes moved on. The net man moved as well, not toward them, not away. He had a hunter's pause in him, the one that happens when a scent becomes an idea.
Mora did not change pace. She had a way of walking that made other people correct themselves to match her path. It worked on soldiers and saints. It had limited effect on gods. It worked on men with nets.
They reached the mouth of the west alley. It had the hard smell of trash and old meat that had reconsidered its life and chosen a smell anyway. A cat stared at them with one eye, then the other. The alley bent once and then offered a choice. The lower path went under an arch. The higher path went along a wall and required confidence.
Mora chose confidence. Miri followed. A crate made a step. A windowsill made another. She reached the top of the wall and crouched. She could see the river now in a strip of dull silver. It moved with an even, stubborn rhythm as if time could not fuss it.
"Do not look back," Mora said.
Miri did not. Not with her eyes. Her ears tracked the square. A man spoke. A child asked a mother if witches drank tea like ordinary people. The mother said something about ordinary that tried to be kind. There was a scrape of boot on stone, too fast. Miri's heart sped and then had to be taught how to slow.
They crossed the wall and dropped into a yard where someone had left a pile of broken chairs to consider their history. Mora touched one once, a light pass of fingers. Miri felt the air shift. A simple ward, easy to miss, would make a footstep sound like three footfalls and send anyone following the wrong way.
They reached the last hedge. Beyond it the ribs rose, white and colossal, with shadows stacked like roads. The air changed under them. Even the birds went around that space instead of through it, as if the world were asking permission in that direction and had not yet received it.
Mira shivered. The cold obligation was wearing thin now. Her fingers began to ache less. She breathed in and tasted the mineral tang that the ribs always fed to the wind.
"We should keep going," she said.
"We will," Mora said. She stopped beneath the first arch and set her satchel down. "We drink first."
Miri blinked. "Here."
"Yes."
"I am not arguing," Miri said. "It is just. Here."
"Tea before we run," Mora said. "We keep ourselves the same shape in small ways, or we come apart in large ones."
Thimble landed on the satchel and peered into the cup that had somehow survived the climb. He looked deeply wounded by the lack of crumbs.
Mori set the small spirit-stove on a flat stone that looked as if it had been waiting for a task. She coaxed a flame, then opened the remaining water skin. The ribs made a quiet of their own. It was not silence. It was the sound of something enormous remembering it used to breathe.
Miri knelt and rubbed her palms together. The feeling crept back, prickly and ordinary. She watched the water begin to quiver. She watched Mora's profile become a clean line against bone and sky.
"What happens if they find us," she asked.
"They will ask nicely for a while," Mora said. "Then they will convince themselves they have been kind enough."
"Do we hurt them."
"We leave them," Mora said. "If we cannot leave them, we stop them from taking you. I do not prefer hurt as a tool."
Miri nodded. She pressed her thumb against the ring and remembered the look on the friendly man's face when he said doctors. He had believed himself. It would be easier if he had not.
The water boiled. Mora poured and handed a cup to Miri. The steam lifted and looked like thought. They drank. The warmth settled in and made the world tolerable for one more span of minutes.
Miri looked toward the village. The roofs watched them with the small eyes of windows. Somewhere a bell rang once, and then again, careful, as if it were trying a word on its tongue.
"Maela," Miri said softly.
"She will keep them sleeping," Mora said.
Miri nodded. She reached for her satchel and cinched it tight. She stood and turned toward the line of ribs that led away, each arch a promise of shade and a hint of echo.
Thimble hopped to her shoulder and leaned in. "Correction," he said. "There are hunters nearby."
Miri snorted, then covered her mouth, then let the laugh out because holding it down would turn it into something else.
"Yes," she said. "Thank you."
Mora lifted the satchel and set it on her hip. She scanned the horizon, then the path under their feet. The morning had opened. The day had chosen to be a day in which they kept moving.
"Ready," Mora asked.
Miri breathed in. The air was cold, but it did not bite. The tea sat warm in her chest. The ring rested against her skin like a word that meant patience.
"Ready," she said.
They stepped into the shadow of the next rib and let the village become something that existed behind them, at exactly the distance that allowed love and caution to share a bench. The path narrowed, then widened, then braided itself into three choices. Mora took the middle without explaining. Miri went with her. Thimble sang a quiet, tuneless line that might have been a lullaby or a list of things he had stolen.
They did not look back. They did not have to. The bells would hold. The ward would sit like a hinge that refused to open. The inquisitors would go away with their papers, or they would not, and either way the road now held the shape of two small figures and a black bird, and that shape was not yet catalogued.
Tea before we run, Miri thought. Keep the shape. Keep going.