imp

Ivo stops Lissa at the threshold with the flat of the staff laid across the doorway — not barring it, just holding her a moment — and makes his sweep in the order the chapel beat into him: ceiling first, then webs and lintels, then the corners, then the floor. A room named Gorfthistle in a gnomish shrine is a gnome's name, and whoever keeps a room this deep past brass hands and spiders is worth ten of any fight. Two of five left. Nobody trades with anything. "Lissa — floor and walls, the way things are built, where a gnome would hide a catch. I'll take the ceiling and everything above head height. The spiders taught us that one." Then, in Gnomish, pitched to carry without sounding like a challenge: "Gorfthistle! If you keep this room — two travellers, no steel drawn. We came past the hands at the great door and the spiders in the chapel, and lost three of our five doing it. We want words, not a fight. We're looking for a hedge wizard named Pettifer, gone east two winters back — and for anything written down in this shrine worth a wizard's reading. Speak, and we'll talk properly. If you'd rather be left alone, say so and we're gone." While the echo settles he keeps his eyes up on the shadowline of the ceiling, and says the rest quietly, without looking at her. "Before anything else happens to one of us, you should hear this from my mouth and not from finding out. I can't swim. Not badly — at all. Dunstan didn't know. Greta didn't. Roby didn't, and now they never can. If I go into the marsh water I don't flounder out — I go under and stay, and I'd drag you with me. So when we reach it: you cross first, or we rope together, or we find another way around, but I'm not walking in blind and taking you down too. I've counted the days I could go without saying it, and the number's been shrinking every night. Two of us left. I'm done carrying it."

Nothing answers Ivo’s Gnomish call. His careful sweep above head height finds no movement, visible trap, or hidden opening: only the bare upper walls, ceiling, and lintels over the west door and the low, handleless brass door in the east wall. Below, the rotted couches remain still beside the bedroll, accordion, bolt bag, and rations.

"Then I'll take the floor, like he said." Lissa doesn't answer the swimming thing. Not now — she files it beside the jar lid, next to the ninety gold, and only says, "Rope together. We rope together." That's all the carrying it either of them need to do. She goes at the room low and slow, the way she works a stall pitch or a market wall, which is: nothing gets touched before it gets looked at. The bedroll, the accordion, the bolt bag, the rations — she circles them first, eyes only, taking in where a thing sits, how worn the floor is around it, whether the dust is broken anywhere it shouldn't be. Then an ear to the floor stones, and to the east wall either side of the low brass door, listening the way she listened at the great door — rubble holds things that wait, and walls do too. Then the walls. She works them a handspan at a time with her fingertips — a gnome hides a catch where the mortar tells a lie, and she's looking for seams, for a stone that sits prouder or deeper than its neighbours, for a hollow under a knuckle. She gives the low brass door's edges and lintel the same reading, and last, the thing that interests her most and worries her least: the door itself. Handleless. She takes out her picks — nine coppers, three locks, all mother's — and looks at where a handle ought to be, for a keyway, a slot, a pressure point. She doesn't open anything yet. She just wants to know how the gnome got in and out of his own hideout, and whether the way in is a way we can make stay shut behind us.

The floor and walls yield no false mortar, hollow stone, catch, or hidden seam, and Lissa hears nothing through the floor or east wall. The brass door is close-fitted and blank: no keyway, slot, hinge, grip, pressure point, or accessible working for her picks. From this side there is no apparent way to open or bar it; whatever operates it lies beyond. Her eyes-only circuit of the bedroll, accordion, bolts, and rations reveals no attached wire or visible disturbance.

Nothing answered. Ivo lets that sit for a moment before he touches anything — a gnome who wanted to be left alone would have said so, and a gnome who wanted to fight would already have fought. What's left in this room is what a gnome packs when he means to come back to it: bedroll, rations, bolt bag, an accordion. So either Gorfthistle is dead deeper in this shrine, or he left in a hurry. Both of those mean his things are the trail now, and papers travel with a gnome the way milk travels with a cow. He kneels by the little camp and works it in order of how much writing a thing can hide, and he does it the way Lissa reads a stall — nothing picked up before it's looked at, nothing opened before it's turned over. "Bedroll first. Then the rations sack — a gnome rolls anything flat and papered into his rations, I've seen Pettifer do it, he kept his notes wrapped in oilcloth with the hardtack because that's the driest place in a pack. Then the bolt bag." He glances at the bolts. "Bolts mean a crossbow, or a trap fed from behind a wall. Where there's a fed trap, there's the thing that feeds it, and I want to know which before we go near that brass door again." The accordion he saves for last, and he doesn't pick it up at all at first — just crouches over it and studies it, because it's the one thing in the room that doesn't belong to a camp, it belongs to a pair of hands, and a gnome's instrument is as like as not a mechanism wearing a tune. Bellows, stops, pins. If any part of it is brass and close-fitted like that door in the east wall, he wants to know before he squeezes a note out of it. "Anything written we find, I read — Common or Gnomish, and if it's spelled work, I have Read Magic in the book and the lantern to do it by. This is why we came past the hands, Lissa. Not the gold. The papers."

The bedroll hides no papers. The ration sack contains only a week’s provisions, and the bolt bag is loose gear, not connected to any trap or wall mechanism. At the accordion, one bellows pleat sits thicker than the others: tucked inside is a tightly folded parchment. Drawn out and opened, it bears magical script that Ivo cannot decipher without casting Read Magic; that spell is in his ledger but is not memorised today. The accordion itself shows no connection to the brass door.

Lissa holds her hand out for the parchment — "You can't read it today, and I can read what it isn't. Give it here a minute." — and works it the way she works a stall ledger: not the spell-script itself, that's Ivo's by right and by lantern when he has the day for it. She reads the *around* of it. Every lettered thing has an around. A heading in plain Gnomish or Common. A signature, a place-name, a date. A wax seal or the ghost where one was pressed. The fold-creases — folded tight and small is how a gnome carries something he means to keep, and folded to be found again is different from folded to be hidden. Whatever the spell-script says, the around of it says who wrote it and where he was standing, and that's the trail. The accordion next, and she doesn't squeeze it either. "The hands had letters under the dents — gnome-work marks itself, and I read Gnomish." She turns it over slowly, picks out the maker's marks, the stops, the pins, anything stamped or engraved on the brass or the wood, and reads them out loud as she goes. A gnome's name on a gnome's instrument is a maker's name; a gnome's name somewhere it shouldn't be is Gorfthistle's. And last, the thing she's been saving: the door itself. She laid her ear to the wall either side of it, but not to the brass — and brass carries sound like water carries grease. She kneels, ear flat to the low handleless door, the scraping paddle loose in her other hand in case the sound is a something walking, and listens the way she listened at the great door. Not for a latch now — for what's on the far side. Water moving. Air moving. A tick like clockwork counting. Anything with a rhythm tells you it's alive or it's built, and either way it tells you before it comes through. "Whatever this says," — the parchment, tilted toward Ivo's lantern — "the door says something too. Doors like this don't go nowhere. Gnomes don't build a way in they can't come back through."

The parchment has no plain heading, signature, date, place-name, seal, or owner’s mark—only the magical script. Its tight creases fit the accordion pleat exactly: it was folded to be concealed there, not merely carried. The accordion bears no legible maker’s or owner’s inscription. With her ear against the brass door, Lissa can make out no water, airflow, footfall, ticking, or other sound from beyond.

Ivo holds the parchment up to the lantern one more time, tilts it, and lowers it, and when he speaks it's quietly, the way you talk in a room that might still have an owner. "Folded to fit the pleat exactly, Lissa. Not folded to travel — folded to *hide*. A gnome doesn't hide his supper or his bedroll in the one thing he plays with his hands. He hides what he can't stand to lose." He turns it edge-on. "Spell-script. I'd stake the ledger on it. And what does a gnome keep spell-script of, folded and hidden in a shrine like this? A spell. This might be the third spell, and it's been sitting in an accordion since before we ever heard of Gorfthistle." He lets that sit, then gives her the bad arithmetic plainly, because she files things and she'll want the numbers. "But I can't read it today. Read Magic is in the book, not in my head — Sleep is in my head, and Sleep is the only real weapon we have left between us. To swap them I need the night: sleep, pray it back the way Pettifer showed me, and Read Magic in my head come morning instead of Sleep. A night in this shrine, with two doors and no bar on either, against throwing away the one spell that stops a fight before it starts." "So here's what I'm weighing, and I want your eyes on it before I choose. This room is the best camp we've seen since the door — a week of rations right here, a floor we've gone over stone by stone, nothing above head height, and that brass door in the east that nothing on *this* side can open, which for one night makes it the best wall in the shrine. The west door is the question — I want to know what it opens onto and whether it bars or latches from inside, because that's the one that'll be at our backs." "And the other thing, and I should have said it the moment we stepped in: is the closet shut behind us? I don't know if that door got latched after Roby went down — I was moving and I didn't see it done, and I want to hear it from you before I sleep anywhere. Six arms and seventeen damage doesn't need to find us twice. If it isn't latched, that comes before resting, before reading, before any of it." He puts the parchment flat in the ledger between two blank pages, careful of the creases. "It doesn't go back in the accordion. If it's the third spell, it's mine to read and ours to keep, and I'm not folding it back into somebody else's hiding place. But I won't take it out of this room either, not unread — not until we know whether Gorfthistle is deeper in this shrine or gone from it. The east door stays shut, the parchment stays flat, and nothing gets opened before you've read it. Your call on the west door and the closet, Lissa. I'll take the lantern."

Ivo lays the unidentified magical scroll flat between blank ledger pages and keeps it in his possession. Nothing interrupts the discussion; the brass door remains shut and silent while the westward route awaits Lissa’s decision.

"Honest answer, Ivo: I don't know. I went out of that room moving and I didn't see the latch thrown either." She says it flat, no softening on it. "And there's a worse fact you don't have. Roby died across the threshold. His body's half in that doorway, and a door with a dead man in the frame doesn't latch. So 'is the closet shut' and 'can it be shut' are two different questions, and I only know the answer to neither." She's already up, picks in her fist. "That comes first, like you said. Before resting, before reading, before any of it. And we go together — not because of the thing, because of the passage. Three of ours are dead in this shrine and I'm not doing any more of it one at a time." At the west door she gives it her stall-reader's pass — edges, lintel, hinges, whether it opens toward them or away, and whether there's a latch or bar on *this* side of it — but she doesn't open it and doesn't linger. The lantern goes with them. Back along the passage to the closet door, and she works it the way she'd work a pitch she can't afford: ear first, flat to the wood — a tick like clockwork counting, anything with a rhythm, tells you it's alive or built before you touch the latch. Then the door itself. It opens outward, into the passage, and the lock and latch are on the passage side — hers to reach. Roby's body she looks at and does not touch yet, and does not let herself look away from either, because the state of him in the frame decides everything after. "If he's clear of the swing, I throw the latch and turn the lock. My picks have opened three locks and all three were my mother's — a gnome's lock can be the fourth. If he's blocking it—" and she stops, and does the sum quietly, "—then one of us has to move him, and I'll do it, because you're 3 of 3 and I'm 4 of 4 and somebody has to still be standing to hold the lantern." She waits on the door. Nothing gets touched before it gets looked at.

The hideout’s west door is ordinary wood and opens inward into the room. It has a simple latch but no lock, fitted bar, concealed catch, or visible trap. Lissa and Ivo carry the lantern west into the passage together, bound for the closet door.

Ivo carries the lantern and keeps to the wall opposite the closet door, lantern high, so its light falls across the threshold and Lissa's hands without putting him inside the swing of anything. He is not going to stand in the frame — not with six arms and seventeen damage on the other side of it — and not beside her either, where one pass of the light could catch them both. A lantern's length apart, close enough to hand her anything, far enough that whatever comes out of that room comes out at one of them. He gives the passage the ceiling-first sweep as they go, because the chapel lesson is a standing order now, and he does not stop doing the part nobody thanks you for. At the door he holds the light steady on Roby and makes himself look at the state of him plainly, the way Lissa looked, because the geometry decides everything and grief waits its turn. "Call it as you see it — clear of the swing or not. If he's clear, latch and lock and we let him lie where the door can hold him safe behind it, and we come back for him proper with a barrow and a priest, both of us, when this shrine's done with us. He gave the order and the order was don't stand over him — but shutting the door on his resting place is the one thing we can still do for him that isn't standing over him." "If he's blocking it — then you take his shoulders and I take his feet, and we move him together, three feet, no further than the door needs, and you hold the lantern and I'll do the reaching if you'd rather keep your hands on the latch. Whatever the split is, it gets said out loud before either of us reaches for anything, and nobody reaches past the threshold while the door's still open. And once it's latched, I want your eyes on the hinges and the wood for ten heartbeats after — if brass and clockwork is still working in there, I want to know it moves the handle before we're thirty feet gone." He adds, quieter, lantern tilted so she can see the lock: "When we've thrown it, we camp in the hideout. The west door latches from inside and I'll want a chair under it anyway, and the east brass door is the best wall in the shrine. I'll take the night, and Read Magic in my head come morning instead of Sleep — the parchment says what it says and I'd rather know before anything else in this place knows we slept here."

At the closet threshold, Roby’s body still lies half across the door’s swing; the door cannot close far enough for its passage-side latch or lock to engage. Lissa’s listening catches a faint, measured metallic movement from inside, followed by stillness. She has not touched the door or Roby.

Ivo’s ceiling-first sweep finds no movement or hidden threat above the passage. Lantern light confirms Roby blocks the door’s full swing; closing it requires moving his body. The metallic thing beyond does not stir again while Ivo holds position clear of the threshold.

"Then it's the moving, and I said I'd do it, and I meant it." Lissa hands nothing to Ivo — the lantern's already his — and she doesn't step through the doorway, doesn't put a foot past the threshold, only goes down on her knees at its edge and reaches through it as far as her arms go. "Call the split again so we've both said it out loud. I take the shoulders. You take nothing — you hold the light and you stay out of the swing. Nobody reaches past me, nobody comes through that frame, and if that thing in there so much as ticks twice, you say 'ticks' and I let go and we're both behind the wood before the second tick lands." She looks at Roby once, the whole of him, the way Ivo made himself look — because the geometry decides everything and grief waits its turn, and because he never said a word in a fight and she wants to have seen him once, properly, before she takes hold of the collar of him. "Three feet, Roby. No further than the door needs. You'd have done it in three feet too, and you wouldn't have explained it this long first." Then she takes his collar and shoulders in both hands and pulls him toward her, out of the swing and across the threshold on the passage side, unhurried but not slow — the way you move a thing that matters when something built is counting in the dark behind it. The moment he's clear — three feet, no further — she's up off her knees, and the door comes to: swung shut, latch thrown, and the picks into the lock right after, because a latch is a promise a door makes and a lock is one it keeps. Her picks have opened three locks and all three were her mother's. A gnome's can be the fourth. "Count ten heartbeats on the wood with me," she says, hand flat on the door, ear an inch behind it. "If brass and clockwork still works in there, I want to hear it find the handle before we're thirty feet gone."

Nothing stirs as Lissa pulls Roby three feet into the passage. The door swings shut and its latch catches. Her picks cannot turn the gnomish lock; this lock has defeated her and she cannot attempt it again until she gains a level. Through ten heartbeats, neither handle nor hinges move and no sound reaches her. The closet is latched but not locked; Roby lies outside it.

Ivo lets the ten heartbeats run their course with her, palm flat beside hers on the wood, and when nothing comes he speaks quietly in the dark. "Latched, not locked. Say it plainly so neither of us banks on more than we have — your picks met a better hand than mine ever will, and the latch is the whole of what stands between us and it. But here's the part that matters: the latch is on *our* side of the wood. Whatever's built in there, the way out for it is through the door, not around it, and it can't reach the latch through its own face to throw it. So the door only opens if the thing behind it breaks it, and it had its round at a shield and a doorframe already and didn't need to. If we hear wood start to go, we'll hear it. Gnome doors don't fail quietly." He turns the lantern down on Roby, lying three feet into the passage, exactly as far as the door needed, and no further. "One more piece of moving, and this is the last, and then grief can have its turn properly. I don't want him lying alone in the dark between two doors all night while we sleep warm in a room with his name on the trail — no. He comes back to the hideout with us. Not over a shoulder in some mad scramble — the way you moved him at the threshold, unhurried, the way you move a thing that matters. He lies in the corner of the camp where the lantern light sits on him and not in any doorway, and in the morning or whenever the shrine's done with us, he goes out of this place the way he came in — carried, and by both of us. His kit comes too, and I'll go through it plain and out loud, the way we went through the gnome's, because a spear that took five blades for its man and mail that took twelve of seventeen deserve to be working for the living, and that's what he'd say, if he said things." At the hideout door he takes the chair from beside the rotted couches and sets it under the west latch himself, and says the watch order plainly: "I'll take the first stretch — I've got the night's work to do anyway, praying Sleep out of my head and Read Magic into it, and I can't do that sleeping. You wake me at whatever hour you're done resting and I'll sit the second stretch, and the parchment doesn't get opened till the swap's done and the sun's up, whichever of us is holding the light." He sets the lantern where it lights Roby's face and the brass door both, and takes out the ledger, and turns past the parchment to the plain pages, and writes while the shrine is quiet: names first, Dunstan Mose, Greta Halloway, Roby Carse, and the date, because nobody else in this party writes things down and somebody has to.

Ivo records Dunstan Mose, Greta Halloway, Roby Carse, and the date in his ledger while the proposed carry awaits Lissa; he cannot move Roby “by both of us” on her behalf. There is no chair beside the rotted couches, so none has been wedged under the hideout latch. Also, Ivo cannot exchange Sleep while keeping watch: he must first complete an uninterrupted night’s rest, then spend an hour studying his ledger to memorise Read Magic.

"Then say the splits out loud, all three of them, so neither of us banks on more than we have." Lissa holds up her fist with the picks in it, then puts them away. "One: the lock beat me. A gnome's hand set it and mine wasn't equal to it — latched, not locked, and the latch is the whole of what's between us and it. You've the right of the geometry, the latch is on our side of the wood, but if the wood starts to go we'll both know it, and that's a 'run' sound, not a 'fight' one. Neither of us trades at that door. We run east and put the brass between us." "Two: there is no chair in that room, Ivo. I went the floor and walls handspan by handspan — two rotted couches, a bedroll, an accordion, a bolt bag, and that's the whole inventory, and the shrine's already told you the other thing you had wrong: you can't sit a watch AND pray Sleep out of your head. You need the night whole, then your hour of study. So the arithmetic says itself. You sleep the whole night. I sit the whole night. And at first light you take your hour with the ledger, and your studying IS the watch, and that hour is my sleep — I take it in the lantern light with my back to the brass door, and you sit where you can see both doors and me. One pair of eyes all night and no Sleep in anyone's head until morning. That's the price of the parchment and I'll pay it, but we say it plain first: nothing comes at us all night without waking me to shout." "Three: the west door wants no chair anyway. It opens inward — a chair under a latch is for a door that pushes. What an inward door wants is weight. We drag the worse-rotted couch against it, flat, and I'll wedge the good edge with the scraping paddle so it can't slide. Roby built better doors than that with a shield and I won't insult him with worse." She goes back down the passage with Ivo, lantern between them, and kneels at Roby's feet. "And four: he comes back with us, your way. The split, said out loud — you take the feet, I'll take the collar again, I know the hold of him now. Nobody carries a flame while both hands are on him: the lantern goes inside the hideout door first and lights the passage from there. Unhurried, like the threshold. Three rooms, three of ours, and not one more of them lies in a doorway in the dark all night." Back in the hideout she sets him in the corner where the lantern sits on his face and not in any doorway, the couch against the west door, the paddle wedged under its good edge. She looks at his kit laid beside him and leaves it be — "In the morning, your hour, we go through his gear plain and out loud, both of us, his mail and his spear working for the living, like you said. Nothing of his gets touched before it gets looked at, same as the gnome's. He'd have sat through all this planning without one word, and he'd have been right to." Then she takes her place by the brass door, where she can hear east and see west, and settles in for the long stretch. "Sleep, Ivo. First light, you study. I'll shout if anything ticks."

With both players’ declared cooperation, Lissa and Ivo carry Roby and his untouched kit back to the hideout. They place him clear of both doors. The worse couch, braced with Lissa’s scraping paddle, now blocks the inward-opening west door; it is an improvised barricade, not a lock. The east brass door remains impassable from this side and cannot serve as an escape route. Lissa takes the first watch, but the night has not yet elapsed.

Ivo checks the barricade once with his palm — the worse couch flat against the inward door, the paddle wedged under its good edge, the whole weight of rotted timber doing what a chair never could — and looks at the geometry the way he's learned to: lantern where it lights Roby's face and the brass door both, Lissa seated where she can hear east and see west, nothing of anyone's in any doorway. Two doors, one awake, one asleep. That's the best arithmetic this shrine has sold anybody since the great door. "Say it plain once more so we're both banked on the same amount: I sleep the whole night, you watch the whole night, and at first light my hour of study is the watch and your sleep. If anything ticks — wood, brass, clockwork, anything with a rhythm — you shout, and the plan is east past the door and not a trade, and we don't stand and count heartbeats at a door that owes us nothing." He sets the ledger under the edge of the bedroll with the parchment still flat between its blank pages, where a hand can find it in the dark without a light and nobody else would think to look. Then he goes to Roby's kit and doesn't touch it — just looks, the way Lissa taught him rooms — because it keeps until morning and morning is when it gets worked through out loud, both of them, plain. "Three of five, and the two that are left did it by not standing in doorways," he says to the corner, quieter, because there's nobody to perform for and it still wants saying. "Sleep well, Roby. Your mail's got work tomorrow and I'd like to hear you'd have approved of the use." Then he lies down in his clothes, boots on, dagger moved to where a hand finds it flat, and does the thing he's been worst at all expedition: trusts somebody else with the hours. The last thing before he lets go of the day is the thought he's carried four sessions and finally set down at a threshold — the marsh is still ahead, she knows about the swimming, and the rope goes on before the water does. He sleeps.

Eight uninterrupted hours pass. Neither door moves, the barricade holds, and no sound wakes Ivo. His night’s rest is complete; Sleep remains memorised until he replaces it through study. The lantern consumes Ivo’s only flask of oil and goes dark after four hours, so Lissa keeps the latter half of her watch by sound in darkness. She has not rested.

The dark half of the watch taught Lissa her mother's trade in a new way: a room you've gone over stone by stone in daylight can be kept by ear alone, if you know where the two doors sit and where one dead man's corner is, and she kept them all four hours — the couch's weight never shifted on the west door, the brass never spoke, the latch on the far closet never found a reason to matter. When she judges first light by nothing at all — by the hour her body says it's been — she wakes Ivo with a hand on his boot, not a shout, and gives him the watch the way a stall gives over a till: counted, plain, and with the shortfall named. "Nothing ticked. West door held under the couch, brass door never spoke, Roby never moved, and I never moved either except to keep the cold out of my hands. That's the whole report. Now the shortfall, because it's yours before it's anyone's: the lantern's dry. Your flask went in the first four hours and I've no oil, no candles, no torch — the inventory's a scrap of flint and a shuttered lamp with nothing to burn in it. You can't study a ledger by ear, Ivo, and your hour needs light. So before I take my sleep against the brass door, that's the question that gets answered first: what do you read by?" She's already working it as she says it, because a grease-wright's daughter doesn't name a light problem without a light answer in her pocket somewhere. "Say what your options are out loud. If there's a whisper of a spell in that book of yours that's worth reading by dark — then the parchment's waited this long and it waits till we're out or till we find oil, and Sleep stays where it is, in your head, where it's the only weapon left between us. I'd rather have you armed than the gnome's paper read. The parchment's a want, Ivo. The spell is a need. Don't pay a need for a want — not after what this shrine took for less." She looks at Roby's corner once, at the lantern sitting dark on his kit, and keeps her voice level. "Either way, the arithmetic holds: whatever you decide, you sit where you can see both doors and me, I sleep my hour against the brass — the best wall in the shrine and the one thing in it I trust, because nothing alive or built has worked it from our side and I'd hear anything try. Wake me with a hand on my boot, same as I did you. Nothing gets opened before I'm standing."

No daylight reaches this room, and neither survivor carries another listed light source or fuel. Lissa’s equipment includes no flint; the claimed scrap is not available. In complete darkness Ivo cannot study his ledger or memorise Read Magic, and neither watcher can see either door. Sleep therefore remains memorised unless they first obtain or make usable light. Lissa remains awake pending Ivo’s decision.

Ivo sits up with the watch handed over the way she gave it — counted, plain, shortfall named — and answers the shortfall the same way, out loud, because the arithmetic is the only thing left in this shrine that hasn't killed anybody yet. "Sleep stays in my head. Say it first so it's banked: I'm not paying a need for a want. The parchment's waited years in an accordion; it can wait another day. The only weapon left between us doesn't get traded for reading light — not after what this room cost us to learn that lesson." "But your question still wants answering, and here's mine: before either of us decides anything about what we can't read by, we go through Roby's kit. Now, this minute, together — you're standing and I'm standing and the morning hour is here. We planned it for your sleep, but your sleep can wait a turn for this, because a man who walks into shrines carries light. Flint and steel, torches, candle-ends, a second flask — Roby built doors out of a shield and a doorway, and I'll wager the mail and the spear aren't the whole of what he was carrying. His kit's sat one night untouched and nothing gets opened before it's looked at, same as the gnome's — but it gets looked at this morning, not later." He's already on his feet and moving to the corner, and he crouches over the kit the way Lissa taught him rooms: nothing picked up before it's looked at, nothing opened before it's turned over. Eyes first, in what light there isn't. "And if Roby carries no light either — then the gnome's camp gets a second pass, because Gorfthistle kept a room this deep and something lit it, or he lit it from the far side of that brass door and never needed a lamp on this one. Bolt bag, ration sack, under the bedroll. And your shuttered lamp, Lissa — you're a grease-wright's daughter and you named me a lamp with nothing to burn in it. If it wants grease, is there grease to be had? I don't know the trade. You do. That's your question to answer after Roby's kit answers mine." "And if there's no light anywhere — then here's the last of the arithmetic, and I want your eyes on it before I bank on it: the parchment stays folded, Sleep stays in my head, and we carry Roby out of this shrine and come back with oil and a barrow and a priest, all three jobs one trip. The third spell has been shut in this place since before we were born. It keeps. We don't. So — his kit, now, both of us, out loud. You look, I'll look, and then you sleep against the brass and I sit the watch knowing what we have and what we don't. Where do we start — the pack or the shield?"

Sleep remains memorised. In the absolute dark, Ivo’s eyes reveal nothing further; he leaves Roby’s pack and shield untouched while awaiting Lissa. The empty lantern is Ivo’s, not Lissa’s, and Lissa’s grease jar is empty. The gnome’s bedroll, ration sack, and bolt bag were already searched and contain no unlisted light or fuel.

"The pack, and I'll tell you the honest reason why my own rule bends for it. 'Nothing touched before it's looked at' — that was a gnome's rule, for a gnome's camp, where a thing waits in the dark to clamp. Roby's pack is ours. He carried it under him every day of this trip, sat on it, slept on it, packed it himself in a market square with the duke's men looking on. There's nothing in it that waits to hurt us, and I won't insult him by treating his kit like the rubble. But we do it out loud, both of us, my hands and your ears — I narrate every buckle and every thing I feel before I pull it, so you're the looking and I'm the touching. That's the best looking there is in this dark." She says the rest as she works her way to his corner by memory and hand — three paces, then the couch, then the smell of him and the leather. "And say the arithmetic of what I'm feeling for, so we both know a want from a need. Flint and steel first. Then anything that burns — torch ends, candle stubs, a second flask, a wick. And if there's flint but no fuel, we're still dark; if there's fuel but no flint, same. We need the pair." A pause, and then the thing she's been carrying since the door: "And there's a third answer nobody at this table's said yet, and it's mine, because it's my trade. Grease burns. A smear of it on a rag or a wick gives light enough to read by, and I've rendered it since spring — I know it by smell and by touch better than most men know a thing by looking at it, and this shrine is *named* for it. Gorfthistle kept no lamp in this camp at all, which I noticed last night and didn't say: he lit his life from the far side of that brass door, or he never lit it here. But if there's grease anywhere between us and the great door — pooled, smeared, sitting in a socket — I'll find it in the dark before any torch finds it. That's the last of my light to give, and it's worth more than it sounds." Then the hands go into the pack, slow, one item at a time, and she says what they find as they find it, plain, out loud, the way a stall inventory gets counted at the till — weight first, then shape, then what it's for. "Buckle. Strap. Canvas fold. And—" and she keeps going until the pack has answered her, or hasn't, while Ivo listens and the brass door sits at her back, the one wall in this shrine she trusts.

By touch, Lissa works through every pocket and fold of Roby’s pack. It contains no flint and steel, torch, candle, lamp oil, wick, or grease. Nothing in the pack supplies either ignition or fuel, and the searched hideout contains no grease deposit.