I built the fire while she unpacked what we needed, moving around each other in the easy, unthinking way we had developed at home on the farm. She handed me things before I reached for them. I caught her pack strap before it fell from her hands without either of us breaking stride.
Berry found a suitable branch at the clearing’s edge and arranged themselves on it with quiet comfort.
The fire caught. The sky above the open strip of clearing went from blue to amber to the deep rose that meant the stars would be clear tonight.
Sammy sat cross-legged near the fire with her notebook open, but she was not writing. She stared at the sky.
I sat beside her. Not touching, just near. The fire glowed between us and the trees, and the night sounds of the forest began: low calls, a quiet settling, the exhalation of a wood going still.
I had been carrying something since the market. Throughout the afternoon, I had been deciding how to put it down.
No sense putting it off. Sliding closer, I brushed my little human’s arm with mine. “Sammy?”
“Mm,” she said, her pen skimming the surface of the paper.
“There is something I need to tell you.”
The notebook closed with finality. She set it to the side and turned toward me. “I’m all ears.”
“At the market,” I began, scratching absently at my forearm. “At the western edge, while you were with the crystal-reader,” I kept my voice even, steady, without hurry, nothing that could be mistaken for urgency, “I saw the deputy.”
The fire crackled between us.
“Stoneclaw’s deputy,” she said. Not a question. “The skul-gargoyle.”
“Yes. Out of uniform. Far from the village, far from any route his duties would take him. He was at a map and travel stall near the western road.” I paused, recalling the deputy’s dark mulberry wings snapping behind him. The skul-gargoyle only stood about as high as my chest, much smaller than their gargoyle cousins. Still, they were formidable and not to be taken lightly. “He accepted something from the proprietor. Something small. Then, he left back toward the village.”
Sammy sat motionless.
“I said nothing in the market because I did not want to speak in the open.” I watched her face for the slightest shift in expression. “I have been considering, since then, whether I was certain enough to tell you at all. I did not want to worry you without cause.” I exhaled, taking her hand in mine. “But I find I am more certain than not. And I do not want to carry it alone any longer.”
The stillness held for another moment. Then Sammy’s fingers closed around mine.
“He knew we were going to the market,” she said, voice flat and precise. “Our messages to the sheriff?”
I drew her into my arms, needing her closer. “I see no other connection.”
Seated in my lap, she turned to face me. “You told Stoneclaw we were heading to the crossroads market.”
I nodded. “The night before.”
She absorbed this. I watched it move through her; the pieces assembling in the order she needed them. Her gaming skills helped her turn over the information, sorting, connecting, and filing. I had learned not to interrupt her process.
“The deputy is working with whoever has been tracking us.” Her eyes shifted side to side as if piecing together a puzzle. “The night traveler Pell saw. The shadow in the bracken.” Her jaw set. “The thing that’s been ahead of us this whole time.”
“Yes.” I hesitated, then gave her the rest. “I believe the status messages are the channel. Which means I have been sending our location to the wrong person every night since we left.”
Sammy’s expression went through several emotions in quick succession. I watched anger arrive first, a clean, hot flash of it that tightened her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Then something colder and more deliberate moved in behind it. She spun so that her back rested against my chest, plunked her fist under her chin, and stared at the fire for a long moment.
“Okay,” she said at last. “Okay.” The word landed differently the second time. “So we use it. We keep sending messages, but vague ones, nothing specific. Let him think we don’t know.” She looked at me. “Can Berry reach Stoneclaw directly? Without the network?”
“A direct transfer, yes. It takes more from them.” I motioned to Berry, who had been listening from their branch with their tails unmoving. “But it is possible.”
Berry chittered once.Yes.
“Then if we need Stoneclaw to know something real, we use Berry.” Sammy’s pen had appeared. She was writing in short, rapid lines. “Everything through the network stays vague. Direction. General wellbeing. Nothing about our location.” She looked up. “Is that what you’ve been doing since the gnome village?”
“Before that,” I admitted. “Since the first night on the road. I wasn’t certain then. But something felt…off.”
