The first arrow took Harven through the throat.
I saw it happen. The way his hand rose halfway to the fletching before his knees folded, the way the snow beneath him darkened too quickly to be shadow. We'd dismounted not ten minutes prior. First halt of the southern road, a flat stretch of packed earth where the pine breaks gave way to stone and the wind lost its teeth. Harven had been checking the horses.
I didn't shout. Shouting wastes breath.
"Joss."
"I see them." He was already moving, shield up, angling toward the ridgeline where the pines thickened. Three, no, five figures broke from the tree line, bows slung, blades drawn. Not bandits. Bandits don't move in formation.
I drew my sword and stepped over Harven's body. There wasn't time to close his eyes.
The first mercenary came at me low, testing. I turned his blade aside and drove my boot into his knee. He went down hard. The second was faster. Taller, broader, with a scar that split his lip and made his grin crooked. He swung wide, trying to push me back toward the horses where the ground was uneven. I didn't give it to him. I stepped inside his guard and opened his ribs.
He fell, and I saw it.
Gold, against the snow. A small disc, no larger than a copper mark, half-buried where his coat had torn open. I crouched, breath sharp in my chest, and pulled it free.
Warm. Too warm for something that should've been lying in the cold.
I turned it over. The metal was soft, worked smooth, with a pressed emblem on one side. An angular fox, mid-leap, encircled by a border of interlinked chains. Not a maker's mark. Not a mint stamp. Something else.
"Ryn!"
Joss's voice cut through the sound of steel and snow. I looked up. Two more mercenaries down, and the last was running, crashing back into the pines with all the grace of a panicked deer. Joss started after him, but I whistled once, sharp. He stopped.
"Let him go."
He turned back, breathing hard, blood on his knuckles. "He'll report."
"Good." I stood, pocketing the token. "Let whoever hired him know we're still coming."
Joss didn't argue. He knew better. He'd known me since we were children in Droupet, back when my uncle still thought I'd take up cartography and leave the Wardens to boys with steadier hands. Joss had steadier hands. He'd also followed me south when I took my oaths, and he'd never once asked me to explain why.
I walked back to Harven. His eyes were still open, frost already forming on his lashes. I closed them with two fingers, then knelt and pressed my palm flat against the frozen ground beside him.
"I'll finish it," I said.
It wasn't a prayer. The dead don't need prayers. But Harven had been a senior warden, fifteen years my elder, and he'd taught me how to sharpen a blade in the rain. He deserved the words.
Joss crouched beside me. "This wasn't random."
"No."
"You think it's the folio?"
The folio. The sealed report we were carrying south to Cerasis, the one that outlined three years of border raids, burned villages, and missing grain shipments. The one that named names. Merchants, brokers, minor lords who'd grown fat while the High North bled. My uncle had helped me compile it. He'd warned me it would make enemies.
I hadn't thought they'd move this fast.
"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe someone just doesn't want us reaching the capital."
Joss glanced at the bodies. "These weren't locals. Look at the boots."
I looked. Southern leather, oiled and fitted. The kind you bought in Cerasis, not scavenged from a frozen corpse.
"They were hired," I said.
"By who?"
I pulled the token from my pocket and held it up. The fox caught the light, dull gold against the grey sky.
Joss frowned. "You recognize it?"
"No. But someone will."
***
We buried Harven in a shallow cairn, stones pried loose from the roadside and stacked until the wolves wouldn't trouble him. It took an hour. My hands were numb by the time we finished, and the sky had gone the color of old iron.
Joss built a small fire while I checked the horses. None injured, though one of them, Harven's grey, kept stamping and snorting, ears pinned back. I stroked her neck until she settled, then pulled the saddlebags and inspected the folio.
Still sealed. Still whole.
I exhaled.
"Ryn."
I turned. Joss was standing by the fire, holding a scrap of cloth. I walked over.
"What is it?"
"Found it on one of the bodies." He handed it to me. "Look at the stitching."
I held it close to the flames. The fabric was coarse, undyed wool, but the stitching along the hem was tight and deliberate. A maker's mark, small enough you'd miss it if you weren't looking. Three parallel lines, crossed by a fourth.
I'd seen it before. Once, maybe twice, on trade manifests that passed through Droupet. A southern house. Mercantile, mostly. Rothera.
"Rothera," Joss said, echoing my thoughts. "They're out of Cerasis. Big family. Shipping, mostly. Some speculation."
"And hiring killers, apparently."
He didn't answer. He didn't need to.
I folded the cloth and tucked it into my coat beside the token. Two pieces. Not enough to build a case, but enough to ask questions.
"We keep moving," I said.
"Tonight?"
"No. We rest here, post watch, and leave at first light. If they wanted us dead, they'll know we survived. If they wanted the folio, they'll know we still have it. Either way, stopping won't make us safer."
Joss nodded. He fed the fire and set a pot of snow to melt while I pulled out my uncle's travel writing kit. Compact, oiled leather, with a sleeve for ink and a folding nib. I sat close to the flames and wrote quickly, the letters cramped but legible.
Uncle,
First halt. Harven dead. Ambush, five mercenaries, southern-equipped. Found Rothera token on one body, maker's mark on another. Coordinated, not opportunistic. Someone knows we're coming.
Folio intact. Continuing south. Will write again from the next waystation.
R.
I sealed it with wax, pressed my thumb into the seal, and handed it to Joss.
"Send it with the next courier we pass. If we don't pass one, leave it at the next post."
He took it without comment and slipped it into his pack.
We ate in silence. Dried meat, hard bread, snow-melt tea that tasted like smoke. The fire crackled and spat. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled, long and low.
I stared into the flames and thought about the token.
Gold, but wrong. Too soft. Too warm. The kind of thing you gave to someone you wanted to remember you by. The kind of thing you used to mark a transaction.
Or a contract.
I turned it over in my pocket, feeling the edges, the pressed fox, the chains.
Rothera.
I didn't know the name well, but I'd know more by the time we reached Cerasis. And if they were the ones who'd sent men to kill us on the road, if they were the ones tangled up in the raids and the burned villages and the missing grain, then I'd make sure they knew I was coming.
I closed my hand around the token and felt the metal warm against my palm.
"Get some sleep," I told Joss.
"You first."
I didn't argue. I pulled my cloak tighter and settled against the stones, sword across my lap, and watched the fire burn low.
The dead don't need prayers.
But I said one anyway.