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"Never had the chance. Two hours doesn't get you far enough to find out, and I was never willing to risk more than that."

I knew a little something about counting your freedom in hours, about weighing whether the good thing was worth whatever came after if you got caught enjoying it. I didn't say any of that. I just filed it next to everything else I already knew better than to bring up before she was ready.

"You snuck out here as a kid."

"Regularly. Just never this far."

"Nobody caught you?"

"Once."

"And?"

"I was very convincing about needing air."

I decided not to ask what that meant for the number of locks she'd apparently never picked either.

Corian let the horses rest a few minutes longer than strictly necessary, and I noticed him watching Jade the way he watched a shield hold under pressure, waiting to see if it would, quiet and a little caught off guard by how different she looked here, lighter around the eyes, less like a woman keeping constant count of every person's position in a room. Whatever Gledhi meant to her, this particular stretch of it was as new to her as it was to the rest of us, and there was something almost private about watching her see it for the first time in company instead of alone after dark, the way she'd clearly always planned to eventually.

By midafternoon the forest had thinned into scattered stands of trees around long meadows, and the ground had started sloping down toward the coast in slow, even steps. We reached the old station a little before dusk, a squat stone building with a collapsed second story and a dock running out into still, dark water. The whole place had the particular kind of quiet that settled over somewhere that had once mattered, but no longer did.

"Terra Battalion used to run supply through here," Corian said, dismounting. "Before the newer road went in further west. Nobody's been stationed here for years."

"Looks like it," Nykos said, glancing up at the broken roofline.

The inside told the same story in smaller details. A rusted duty roster still hung on one wall, the ink long faded past reading. Someone's forgotten mug sat on a shelf, cracked clean through, and the hearth still held the shape of a fire nobody had lit in longer than any of us had been alive. Jade ran her fingers along the doorframe on the way in.

We made camp inside the station's outer walls rather than on the open dock, out of habit more than necessity, and Halver went straight for the tree line the moment the horses were settled, coming back an hour later on four legs instead of two.

I watched him circle Jade's tent once, nose the flap open, and disappear inside without asking anyone's opinion on the matter.

"Think that's going to be a regular thing now?" I asked Corian.

"Maybe, but it's not for us to decide or question." We might not question it, but my eyes weren't the only ones that kept sliding to her tent.

Ashter followed a minute after, smoke thinning through the gap in the canvas, and that settled it as far as the rest of us were concerned. Nobody said anything else about it.

Nykos took first watch alone that night, sitting against the broken doorframe with a cup of something that had gone cold an hour before he finished it, and I noticed he'd brought the same battered tin cup he used every morning at the house, packed specially for a trip where hot tea wasn't exactly guaranteed. Small habits traveled with people whether the road made room for them or not.

The boat waiting at the dock the next morning was smaller than the one from the Water Rift, flat-bottomed and built for cargo more than comfort, and Jade looked at it the way most people looked at a debt coming due.

"You remember the last one," I said, mostly to see her face.

"I remember you laughing at me."

"I remember you repositioning your feet four times in ten minutes."

"That never happened."

"Dannian counted."

"Dannian lies."

She climbed aboard anyway, spine straight, jaw set, and took up a position near the center of the boat like standing exactly in the middle might trick her body into believing the water wasn't moving. The two ferrymen running the crossing eyed our horses with more concern than they showed the actual passengers, and Corian spent a solid five minutes ensuring the animals were tied secure enough not to panic once the boat cleared the dock.

He needn't have worried. Once we cleared the harbor wall, the horses settled almost immediately, heads low, weight shifting easy with the roll of the boat like they'd done this every week of their lives. Jade did not settle. She gripped the rail hard enough that her knuckles went pale, jaw locked, spine so straight I half expected it to give before the crossing did.

"You do know the horses are handling this better than you," I teased.