Days later, dusty curtains at the wagon's mouth fluttered in the thin north wind of morning.
The woods on either side had thinned to gray pillars and stumps, old trees standing like the last teeth in a dead jaw.
Each time a man took this way, another trunk seemed to lie broken, roots up and bark split. No birds. No fresh ruts but their own.
The road ran pale and powder-dry toward the distant encampment, safe only because whatever had emptied these woods had not come back.
Radeon took in every view they passed, yet no word went between them. He was not a man who ever lacked for talk with women.
He only kept his tongue now. Silence could be a trellis if you wanted another voice to climb.
Fay pinched the hem of her robe and smoothed it flat again. Her gaze strayed to the gray mark on his wrist, then to the rumps of the horses ahead.
Her mouth opened on a question and shut on it just as quick.
Radeon did not waste time waiting. He pulled out oil pastels and a small canvas board and set to work.
Dust and oil clung to his skin. The brush rasped soft as he blended the edges, a low rough sound over the canvas.
The faces came quick. Eyes like swords. Brows like sabers.
Men he had seen in passing, rebuilt from memory and sharpened a little, made a touch braver than they had looked in life.
Fay leaned in, curious as a cat. Their eyes met.
Color rose in her cheeks and she tucked herself back onto her bench.
When Fay did not recover, Radeon scumbled the fourth portrait, roughening the face into shadow, then set it down with care like it could still bruise. He rummaged in his rucksack and found what he had come for.
A tight leather bundle, bound hard, stained ink dark from that night.
"Yours."
The wind worried at the curtain. She looked at the parcel, then at him. Her hand hovered above it, as if the thing might bite.
"May I ask... what does it do?"
Radeon worried at the knots until the rope gave. The bundle sagged open. A fold of dark leather slid out, then another, until a cloak lay across the carriage floorboards, long enough to swallow a grown man from throat to heel.
"Drip your blood into the three stones. Break a spirit stone and say disappear. The cloak does the rest," Radeon said, light as idle talk.
Fay did as she was told and let the letter opener kiss her thumb. Her blood fizzed on the spirit stones, turning them a dull red.
"Put it on."
She drew the cloak around her shoulders. Blade still in hand, she scored a spirit stone between her palms. Pale energy leaked from the cut and crept along the leather.
"Disappear," she whispered, the word catching in her throat.
He fetched a small mirror and held it so she could see what the word had done.
The color left her hands first. Her skin went thin and milk pale, then hazy, as if the light could pass straight through.
The golden wheat of her hair blurred and faded until the carriage wall showed faint behind it.
The leather creaked as it tightened and settled to her shape, then it too began to thin and dull until cloak and girl together smudged into the carriage wall.
"S-Senior Radeon! Radeon, help me!" she cried, panic snatching at her breath. Her chest heaved faster and faster, until Radeon cut across it with his voice.
"When you have had enough, say appear. The cloak loosens its spell and the trick goes quiet."
"Appear! Appear! Appear!" Fay frantically shouted.
Color rushed back into her fingers. The cloak loosened, leather settling heavy and ordinary on her shoulders.
Radeon caught her by the arms, took a water skin and let her calm her nerves.
"Listen well, Fay. This isn't some divine item. It has strict limits. You need to be very careful with it."
Radeon laid out each capability in turn. How long a stone would feed the weave. How frail the leather was against steel. How fire would still find her.
She nodded every time and even repeated it a few times just to make sure she got it.
"And for us to finally disappear," he said at last.
He turned the scroll in his palm. Her name and his, scratched side by side in a hard hand. Ink had bound them to the sect, to safety, to rules.
Radeon drew a long breath and held it tight. Heat flushed his fingers as he called up his inner qi and wove it into fire.
The scroll blackened, curled, then went up in a thin, hungry flame.
Fay could only stare as the fire took their names. Smoke stung her eyes. Yet she did not blink.
A grey curl of ash landed on her knee. When she reached for it, it broke apart and vanished. The sight left troubling questions sparking in her mind.
What if the road broke her bones and no healer would claim her without the sect's mark?
What if she died nameless in some ditch before they reached this so-called great path?
Or if Radeon decided halfway through that she wasn't worth the trouble after all?
He gave those doubts no room. He slid a blank canvas across the table, white and unmarked.
Fay took it, her fingers closed around the brush without thinking.
The strokes came quick and uneven, white paint dragging past the lines she had meant to follow.
"Fay. Do you think I'll just leave you after all this?" Radeon said.
"I just..." she began.
"If you let your feelings run you like this, turn back now."
"No, I'm all right. I'll listen properly. I'm sorry, it will not happen again," she said quickly.
Radeon said no more. He let the silence do the work.
Her own words sounded thin in her ears. She had sat there with her mouth half open and her thoughts wandering.
The clash left her clearer, not calmer. She bent to the work instead, stroke after stroke, until diligence pressed the storm in her chest down where it could not be seen.
By evening, her hand ached and the worst of the shaking had gone.
In the days after, the same pattern held. Nights blurred into mornings as they packed ready-made portraits, fingers cramping, eyes burning.
"Smile. Pass them around. Take the stones. Not a word more."
"I understand. I'll do it just as you said," Fay replied.
Radeon had seen often enough how Fay leaned on her looks when nothing else felt steady beneath her.
'Walk her through that camp in her own face and they'll take it for an invitation. We can't afford what comes after.'
He mixed a dulling paint and worked mustard and tan through it until her shine lay buried. Fay did not complain.
She sat in the cramped heat and let him turn her bright face into a flat, forgettable one.
The light had not softened yet. The horses clopped to a halt.
Radeon capped the oil pastels, wiped the smeared pigment from his fingers on a rag, and pushed the carriage door open into the white glare.
Heat rolled up to meet them, along with the ring and crash of forges at work.
"Remember. Your name is Froy now. A man," he murmured once more.
"Froy," she repeated softly. "Yes... I am Froy."
Radeon took a spot in plain view, noticeable at a glance and forgettable moments later.
A sentry's gaze snagged on him a heartbeat too long, then slid off when Radeon lifted a roll and showed a merchant's easy grin.
He brushed varnish over the rolled portraits. As the shine caught the sun, men began to drift closer, one after another.
'Sweaty. Tired. Movements neither eager nor slack. A man in the crowd clearly out for spirit stone,' Radeon thought.
"You from a forging family?" Radeon asked.
"What of it?"
Radeon brought out two spirit stones, heavy in his palm, and gave a tight smile that said he expected no refusal.
"Short walk. You talk. Half an hour, this is yours."
"You could have led with that," the smith apprentice said.
"Describe each place like you mean it and I make it three."
"Sir, what are you waiting for?" The man bobbed his head. "Let me show you round proper then."
Radeon flicked Fay a look that told her to stay put. She waved him off with one hand while the other moved across her leather-bound book, eyes fixed on the page.
The very picture of someone far too busy to notice the world.
"Watch for customers," he said.
"Understood," she said, giving the square a quick glance before bending back over her work the moment he turned away.
He walked with the apprentice and listened as the man babbled on. Planning center. Logistics division. Training yards.
The boy only knew the surface layout, yet the paths and turns were what Radeon cared for.
When they came to a quieter run of wall, the smith edged closer, voice dropping low.
"Sir, I heard folk whispering. Tongues loose about some kind of array."
"What kind? Who sits at the core?"
"My ears are but mortal. I am only a smith's whelp. All I heard is there will be teams. A whole pack of them."
"That'll do." Radeon pressed the stones into his hand. "Here's your pay."
He watched the man go, back straight with his small fortune.
'Teams, he said. I need to know what kind of operation this is. Their motive's a mess, pointing everywhere. I just need one crack in their real plan. What's the play here?'