Sabine saw women counting.
Not numbers. Dresses. faces. which daughters looked calm, which mothers rode behind in separate vehicles, which houses could still afford matching grooms. The kingdom was not the only thing auditing bloodlines that day.
At the second village, a small girl broke from her mother long enough to run toward the road with a cluster of pale blossoms in both fists. A guard checked his horse sideways across her path before she reached the wheel line. Not rough. Efficient. The child stopped, startled, and let the flowers fall into the mud.
Brinna made a small sound.
“There,” Sabine said quietly.
Both women looked at her.
“The guard line. Watch where they sit when the road narrows.”
Tavi’s eyes went to the window again, following the pattern immediately. “Containment.”
“Yes.”
Brinna swallowed. “Protection.”
Sabine did not argue. Not because Brinna was right. Because the distinction no longer mattered much to the body inside the ring.
They traveled through noon beneath the same metallic sky. The coach warmed slowly from breath and cramped proximity. Tavi kept one shoulder near the glass and tracked the escort as if memorizing weak points by instinct. Brinna folded and unfolded the edge of her glove when she thought no one saw. Sabine kept her case braced under one hand and let the silence build and break in useful measures.
When it broke, Tavi usually did it.
“So,” she said at one point as the procession slowed for a bridge crossing, “which version brought each of us here. Ambition, piety, or household insolvency.”
Brinna looked horrified enough to be almost childlike. “You cannot ask that.”
“I just did.”
Sabine said, “Survival.”
Tavi’s mouth tilted. “Mine too.”
Brinna stared at her lap. “My mother says one does not speak of such things.”
“Your mother sent you,” Tavi said.
The words landed too hard. Brinna’s hands began shaking again.
Sabine intervened before the damage became useless. “And yours.”
Tavi looked at her. Then gave a short breath through her nose. “Yes. Mine too.”
That equalized the space a little.
Brinna lifted her head. “House Sere is not ruined.”
“No house in this procession is untouched,” Sabine said.
Brinna opened her mouth, then shut it. Her gaze flicked to Sabine’s sleeve, to the carefully mended seam near the cuff, and away again. Good, Sabine thought. Let her understand that pressure recognizes itself even when cut from different cloth.
At the midday halt, no candidate was permitted to step onto open ground. Water and food were brought to the coach doors by attendants under supervision. Curtains remained half-latched. A temple official moved along the line repeating route protocol as if recitation itself produced consent.
Sister Naevra appeared at their door during that stop.
She was younger than Sabine had expected from the tone of the regulations, perhaps no more than twenty-four, her temple attire severe but less forbidding than Serast’s hall black.Dark robe for travel. Gold insignia at the throat. Clean hands, unjewelled, holding a tablet and a cup of diluted wine for Brinna, who had gone visibly pale after the last round of bells.
