The shutter bar trembled under his hands, and then his hands didn't. Rook stepped back from the window, tasted the word he'd just spoken as if it had teeth.
"I'm coming, Iria."
He turned to what a man turns to when the night writes MINE on his house: things he could carry. The spear leaned against the wall like a friend. He took it, weighed it, and listened to the wood say the things wood says—I will not split if you do not lie to me. He slipped the house knife into his belt because knives solved problems spears made. He reached for the old lantern on the peg, lifted it, and set it down again. Light argued with the moon; light lost.
By the door, the pebble he'd dropped by the ditch pulsed its attention again—not light exactly; a small, selfish heartbeat in stone. He crouched, put his palm to it. Cold ran up the tendons like wet thread. It felt like a promise from the wrong mouth. He tucked it into his pocket anyway. If it wants to come, let it work for me.
He took one breath to speak a sentence he would keep. "I go out; I come back with you." He said it to the stove, to the bed, to the ordinary chair that had never had to witness this much night, and then he opened the door and walked into the lane.
The wolves were already there. They didn't show themselves first; they let his body admit that it wasn't alone and then came forward as the proof. One brushed his leg with a shoulder heavy as a sack of grain and lighter than grief. The other padded the ditch, a gray thought with teeth.
"Stay near," he said. Not a command; a request to old ideas.
They stayed.
The moon was only half and yet it had opinions—cool ones about the shape of his road. It climbed as he walked, making a low rim of silver along the fences. Wind moved the apple trees the way a tired mother moves children from one room to another: firmly and without apology. The taste in his mouth returned, the metal that wasn't metal, like a coin he hadn't earned. He swallowed and it didn't leave. It liked him too much.
Do not go fast, he told his legs. Go like a man who knows what walks beside him.
He passed old Harg's place, where the mirror sat on the step to catch the morning, and didn't look into it. If a mirror told him he looked brave, he would have to punish the mirror for lying, and he wasn't in the mood to make new enemies.
The orchard held darkness different from the lane's—striped with trunks, holed by leaves, sharper in places where the ground remembered spring. Rook stepped off the road and into it and the orchard accepted him with a small formal silence. The wolves dissolved into rows as if bark had learned to breathe.
At the third tree, he stopped. The crystal in his pocket woke, a tiny throb that timed itself to his pulse like a thief who'd learned a house. He took it out. In the moon-wash it showed its color—wrong red, meat-soft in the center, glass-cruel at the edge. When he turned it, it winked at the world like an impolite ring.
"What are you to me, then?" he asked it under his breath.
The pebble didn't answer, but the wolves did. The ditch-runner whined—a small, embarrassed thread of sound—and pushed its nose toward the shard, then away, then toward again, as if torn between the desire to own and the desire to live.
"Not for you," Rook said. "Not for me either, if I can help it."
He put it back and went on.
The clearing found him like a memory—sudden and where it had always been. Moonlight made a low white coin of its center. The grass in that coin lay flatter than it should, as if people had asked it to listen and the grass had, against its better nature.
They were there.
The night-blue figure stood poised at the circle's rim, long coat learning the wind in ways cloth shouldn't. Iria hung in those arms, not limp, not fighting; held like something precious and inconvenient. Her hair fell over the figure's elbow, heavy with what had been done to it—nothing obvious and everything. Her feet were bare. He hated that detail more than he hated the rest.
"Rook," the figure said. The name moved like a hand smoothing cloth. "You came as if the moon had asked you personally."
"I'm here because you said moon-rise, not because I like your voice," he said. He planted the spear butt outside the white coin, iron tip pointing toward the figure's stomach. "Set her down."
The figure glanced at the spear and then at the wolves quartering the dark like polite drunks. "Iron. Clean. Useful." The mouth curled into a small satisfaction that did not belong to any face Rook trusted. "Set your spear down," it said lightly, "and I will teach you how not to be afraid of the night."
"I prefer fear," Rook said. "It keeps me from making friends I don't need."
He heard Iria's breath, controlled and thin. "Rook," she said, and the calm in the word sheared through him. "Be smart."
"I am being smart." He shifted the point of the spear an inch. The tip kissed moonlight. "Rule: you say her name."
The figure's head tipped, amused. "Iria." It said the name very carefully, as if it had found it written on a door and liked the handwriting. "Rule: you do not say mine."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Another rule," it said, as if they were playing with sticks in dust. "You do not step into the coin unless you mean to pay for being allowed to stand there."
"Price?"
"One knee," the figure said, bright as a tutor. "On the ground. The left. And the spear laid to your right like a good dog."
Rook felt the tug—not on his legs, not on his arms, on the part of him that tells legs and arms what stories to believe. The command slid along whatever the night had already put in him and looked for purchase. He let it try. He let it scrape its teeth and whistle its old tune. He even bent the left knee an inch and then—stopped.
"No," he said.
The smile flickered. Not much. Enough to count as weather.
"Stand," the figure said, idly, as if it had only been checking equipment. "It pleases me when tools behave."
Rook stood because he had been standing. He took one slow step back, just enough to tell the world which direction was his.
"Talk," he said. "You came to talk."
"I came to take," the figure corrected, gently. "Talking is a generosity I serve when it suits me." It shifted Iria higher; he hated the competence of the hold. "You impressed me when you did not ask. Men ask. They enjoy the misery of the word please." The figure leaned its cheek briefly to Iria's hair in a motion that could have been tenderness if the world had allowed tenderness to live here. "You like to earn. Good. Earn a closer look."
It stepped forward, slow; Rook stepped to match, keeping the spear point a polite distance from the coat. The figure stopped at the rim. "Do not test my cloth again," it said mildly. "It has opinions."
"Mine are louder."
The wolves took that as permission to show their teeth. The figure looked at them and their teeth learned to be shy again. The ditch-runner's hackles rippled; Rook reached back with his off hand and brushed the ruff once. "Stay."
"All right," the figure said, as if granting a small child a fair turn. "Terms. You want her free. I want to see what bell rings in you when I pull the rope." It pinned him with not-quite-eyes. "Step into the moon's coin alone. Leave the spear outside. Bring what hums in your pocket." It nodded toward Rook's coat. "I will let you leave with the woman on your first try. I may take something else." The smile was small and beautifully made. "Nothing you will miss now."
"What else?" he asked.
"A habit," it said. "A certainty. A neat lie you tell the day to make it feel brave." It tilted its head. "Or a finger. We will see."
Rook thought of Iria's mouth shaping be smart, of the ring catching the low house-light, of how cleverly the night had written the word on his shutter. He thought of the crystal's smooth pulse against his ribs. He thought of iron.
"You have my terms," the figure said. "The wolves can count to one. So can the moon. Choose."
Rook looked at Iria. Her eyes weren't visible; the coat held them. But her left hand lay along the figure's sleeve. He watched the ring. It didn't move. Then—one tap from her middle finger. A small, precise knock. The signal they used at the market when he had to turn and bargain and she had to pretend she wasn't laughing: I'm here. Don't rush. Don't lie for me. Do notkneel.
He exhaled the breath he'd been hiding from himself. "New rule," he said. "If I stand in the coin, you say what you want from my pocket before you take it."
"So careful," the figure purred. "So deliciously slow. Yes."
Rook slid the spear out of his grip, not letting go yet, feeling the grain tell him he was a better man with it than without. He set the butt down at the rim. The iron point hovered over the moon-white and cast a thin, strict shadow.
"One more," he said, voice even. "You do not take anything from her tonight. Nothing that leaves a mark she can count in the morning."
The figure looked briefly bored. Then it performed a courtly sigh. "Very well. I will leave your wife as she is."
A muscle in Rook's jaw jumped. "Say wife," he said.
The smile came back, bright and unkind. "Wife."
The crystal in his pocket thrummed, greedy at the syllable. He reached inside, let his fingers sit around it, and felt the wrong heartbeat try to bully his own. Not yours. Not yet. He took his hand out empty.
He set the spear down.
The sound it made on the grass was small and private. He already missed it.
"Brave," the figure said. "Now show me clever."
Rook lifted his foot. The coin waited.
His leg did not shake. The wolves whined—one wounded, one warning. He looked at Iria. The ring flashed. Her finger tapped once more against the sleeve in a tiny tempo a man could live inside for a lifetime.
Do not kneel.
"I won't," he thought, and the thought was iron.
He stepped over the moon-line.
Cold climbed his ankle like a hand that had belonged to a lover and had been taught new manners. The clearing changed its breath. The night made room, not like a host, but like a dentist.
The figure's face turned toward him with genuine interest for the first time. "Good," it said softly, almost to itself. "I do like a bargain when the fool understands it."
Rook kept his hands open and away from his belt. He did not look down at the crystal's bulge in his pocket; he did not look away from the not-quite eyes. "Terms," he reminded. "Name the thing before you take it."
"Very well," the figure said. It leaned forward, and the coat made the quiet of a knife being admired. "I will take the part of you that thinks bells are arguments. You will still hear them. You will simply decline to be persuaded. In exchange—" It tipped Iria toward him an inch, a beautiful cruelty. "—you will walk two paces, and I will hand her to you."
Rook swallowed against the metal in his mouth. Would that make me braver or stupid? He didn't ask. He watched Iria's hand. No tap now. No plea. She held the sleeve as if holding a rope on a ferry between banks.
If I step, if I take her, will the night come into my house every morning and never have to knock?
He lifted his other foot to commit.
The wolves sang one short note, a cut cry, and bit it off as if the world had warned them about music.
Rook stepped—and the white coin swallowed his shadow.