As your captain, it is my duty . . . The satisfaction of your own desires has preceded the needs of our company . . . You only ever give us part of the story . . . your flagrant neglect of our mission . . . some doltish boy entirely beneath you . . . just as bloody obdurate as ever . . . Have you nothing to say?

“That bastard,” she told Trig.

Wind whistled in her ears. She drew her hood up, but it just blew off again. She left it.

You once told me I could be counted on to do what is right. That was true: she had told him so, but she never dreamed he would use it against her.

You insult us, Dunvehran, Kien, and especially Alon Maer with your flagrant neglect of our mission. Blood churned through her body so that she had to remind herself to breathe. Sharp, chilly air sucked into her lungs when she did.

A good league after taking off, she came to a sparsely wooded area. There was no path to speak of, so she dismounted to lead Trig through the stands of pines and balsams. Layer upon layer of needles cushioned her footfalls. The ground was springy beneath her boots, which crunched with the occasional pinecone. The cold, clear light of Frog moon peeked down between the branches, its pure white shafts ghostly and unnatural. Kyer inhaled deeply of the aromatic trees, and only after several such breaths did she realize she had been stomping through the woods. Fury still coursed through her.

“Hold a while, Trig.” She dropped the reins to the ground with a soft plop. She drew her sword—steal a sword from a dead body—and stepped away from her horse into a more or less open space. Swinging her weapon a hard left and right, she parried an unseen enemy’s slashes. Up and overhead, then it crashed down into the spongy ground, and up again, horizontally, to block. An imaginary enemy screamed in agony as she cut him to ribbons. She hacked its head off. Kyer dismembered several orcs in this manner, and with a long, deep exhale, she flopped to the needle-strewn earth, only now remembering that she’d left her bedroll back at the camp. At least the ground isn’t so wet now. Lying on her back she glared up at the shadows of tree tops.

Her body was shattered with fatigue, and though it still vibrated with anger, her mind had cleared a bit. She had never felt such rage. Certainly not aimed at someone who was supposed to be her friend. Friends were supposed to give each other the benefit of the doubt, weren’t they? Somewhere along the way, Derry had stopped doing so. He had started reading into her actions, looking for things to find fault with. If you trust somebody completely, that doesn’t happen. So what was his problem?

Two months ago, Derry would have known there was some reason she was late for breakfast, some important thing that she couldn’t share. He would not have questioned it. She truly had not expected him to believe that she’d slept with—what had he called Tod? Some doltish boy entirely beneath you. And honestly, she didn’t ever say that’s what she had done. She simply didn’t deny that she had. Necessary repression of the full truth.

But could she really blame Derry for his anger at her lateness? You gave no other explanation, he said. That was true. Should she at least have explained that she could not tell him and asked him to trust her?

That was the trouble. She didn’t like to have to ask. Kyer pursed her lips in a stubborn pout.

Alon Maer is on her deathbed, waiting for us to save her life, and where are you? Off physically indulging yourself . . . Well, yes, she couldn’t deny that she’d had her own pleasure in mind, but by the gods, she was doing it for a reason. She wouldn’t have gone at all if it hadn’t been for the runes. But she hadn’t explained why she was walking out on them. Sure, she’d told herself she couldn’t tell them or they’d not let her go, but how much of it was just a tiny bit of enjoyment at needling Derry?

The stars, peering out from the clouds that wisped across them, blinked down at her through the open-armed pines. She had been obdurate; there was no denying it. But did he have to be such a prig? She snorted.

And he’d accused her of neglecting Alon. She couldn’t believe his nerve. I was the first one to volunteer for this mission, and she’s never left my mind.

A sharp pain prodded her in the back of the head, and she sat up. That’s not true.

Kyer felt like sinking into the chill-hardened ground, glad no one was there to witness the flush that passed across her face. She had denied Alon, in those brief moments of weakness after her encounter with Fredric. She had chosen to follow Fredric. Her own personal mission had taken precedence. Even when they’d found her, it took her quite some time to decide whether she was happy about it or not. She recalled her jumbled mixture of relief at being discovered and longing to be left on her own.

Derry couldn’t possibly know that. Could he? And she’d made up for it. Hadn’t she? She’d tried to. She pulled her knees up to her chest and dropped her forehead on them.

Even if Derry didn’t know, Kyer did. How could she blame him for thinking she had deserted the mission when that’s exactly what she had done? Her eyes stung.

So long she had worked to prove herself as a swordfighter, as a vital addition to the group. She thought she had achieved acceptance, finally. And now it had come to this. How many others in the party shared Derry’s opinion? Kyer wished she’d spoken to Valrayker before she’d come away. You already have a reputation for disobeying direct orders. The dark elf would have dismissed her, and then none of this would have happened.

An unfamiliar sensation gnawed at her. It stabbed at her heart, forming an ache in her chest and throat, something she didn’t remember feeling for years.

The woman whom Kyer called mother, Della, was highly regarded for her knitting. She raised the sheep, sheared them, cleaned and carded the wool. She dyed the soft, lanolin-smelling fibres all sorts of rich colours and spun it into beautiful yarn. After all the preparation, Della either sold the wool or neighbours chose their yarn and she would knit it for them. Kyer remembered being thirteen. Della had knitted her a sweater from a deep red soft wool. It was a yarn that had just won Della first prize at the fair for its quality and fine texture. Kyer wore the sweater to school, not trying to impress, which was not her way, but because she loved it. And wearing it, she felt proud to display Della’s superb product and just a bit smug. Her sweater could be compared to those worn by her classmates without coming up short. There was no way anyone could make a sneering comment this time.

Sheska Bolen proved Kyer wrong. The pretty and popular blonde girl took one look at the sweater and sniffed. “Too bad. Even in that sweater, you still just look like a big mistake. Why don’t you go back to your cornfield?”

Kyer had had enough experience with Sheska to not really be surprised. Her pride had been ripped away and trampled on, and her throat and chest ached. Kyer hadn’t thought of that event for years, but the similarity to her current situation had reawakened those emotions. Her satisfaction at procuring the runes had turned to dust.

Derry’s unjust words had quashed the triumph she ought to have felt as she placed the pouch in his hand. His just words pierced her with their truth and reason. He’d called her negligent. He’d all but called her a whore. She was terribly angry at Derry for saying those things. Still, there was something else.

Hurt? Dreadful hurt. An unusual emotion for Kyer. Why could she not just let it go, as she had in the past? Sheska Bolen had tried to hurt Kyer countless times, and Kyer couldn’t be bothered to spare any emotion for her. Probably because she could so easily take revenge on Sheska. Two days after the incident, she’d sneaked into Sheska’s yard and shredded all her dresses hanging on the clothesline with her knife. But Kyer hated Sheska; it was easy to take revenge on her. This was different. This time there would be no such purging of feeling.

She had begun to see Derry’s point of view, to understand why he’d thought those things about her. No, she couldn’t bring herself to hate Derry.

Moreover, she didn’t want to hate Derry. Her final words to him echoed in her head, and she knew she’d hurt him as much as he’d hurt her. Possibly more.

He was right about one more point. Something that hadn’t occurred to her until he’d said it. Why don’t you trust me? She’d accused him of the same thing more than once in these past few weeks. When—how had it broken down? Derry had been, not all that long ago, the one person in whom she had complete faith. Somehow her trust of him had eroded. As had his of her. Was one the result of the other? Which had come first?

Kyer cupped her chin in her hands and wondered what to do now.

She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t, and didn’t want to, go back to a group of people who were preoccupied with watching her every move, waiting for every little mistake. She could give up. Go home.

Not a chance.

Kyer straightened. Memory carried her back to Gilvray’s cabin, sitting at his desk, carefully cutting the rune pattern into her pouch. Etching it into her mind at the same time. The pattern stood out in her memory, vivid as if it were in the palm of her hand.

You’re a fool, Kyer, if you let this go. It was time she took her share of the blame for the terrible misunderstanding that had arisen between her and her friend. It was not too late to make it up. Swinging up onto Trig’s back, she nudged him west. The Indyn Caves lay somewhere in that direction.

Plus, her fatigue-crazed mind had come up with an interesting thought about red lights.

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