Selida walked the parapet, tray in one hand and lantern in the other, open door pointed squarely towards the inner baily. Aluna's coin bumped against her thigh, ocean cool even though the pocket of her split skirts. Her divinations had revealed its age—ancient—an impression of its maker, and a glimpse of its recent associates: her own vestments, Lydris's wooden toys, and a glittering assortment of goblets and jewelry. Atop one such pile sat a rune-inscribed pearl.

What is your will now, Tidemother?

Three days had passed since The Fox sent his missive. Each night, ever more guards stood at the walls, walked the halls, and watched even the larders. To assuage their growing anxiety, ever more faithful crowded the hall outside her chapel door. This morning, the line stretched down the stairs. Selida halted on an empty stretch where the wall turned away from the land and towards the half of the keep that jutted out over the ocean. She closed her eyes, and savored the silence.

Unfamiliar ships had appeared on the horizon earlier that day, scuttling the keep's plan to send fishermen out in boats to restock the larder. Now Selida saw only darkness. The air bit her cheeks and nose; she had left her wrap inside, hoping that the cold would preempt yet another night of sleeplessness.

Where were the campfires?

Selida had just a moment to consider the thought before defenders on the landward wall shouted alarm. She dropped the lantern, dumped the iron kettle off the tray, and ran toward the sound.

***

By the time Selida could see the chaos, most of the men had retreated under the shelter of one of the guard towers. Holding the tray like a shield, she sprinted the thirty feet across the stonework. An arrow sang through the air inches from her shoulder.

A panicked guardsman turned to her. "He's shot through the neck—of all the wave-cursed ill fortune—"

Selida shoved him aside. "Let me see."

A young man lay on the floor. He held an arrow pressed to his neck. His lips burbled red. Not Kahldar. Selida sank to the planks beside him. "Serpent of the Sea attend me," she called, as she wrapped one hand around the arrow shaft. The other, she placed over his slick skin such that the half-submerged arrowhead pricked between her first and second fingers. She could feel the snakes coiling in his blood thrash in panic.

As if her thoughts had summoned him, Kahldar appeared in the guardhouse. "A party with ladders approaches the south wall. They likely—" Upon seeing Selida with the wounded man on the floor, he knelt abruptly at her side.

"Hold his head still," she ordered. His hands, strong and steady, closed over the wounded man's temples. Selida drew a deep breath, and released the flood of prayer as she jerked the arrowhead free.

Blood — black in the torchlight — fountained everywhere: over her hands, over his face, over her blue robes. And then the young man took a deep, gasping breath.

Selida exhaled in relief. "Who else?"

Kahldar stood, with a bow of gratitude. "No more here." He directed his attention outwards. "Men, ready your swords, shields, and spears. We go to the south wall. Lady Selida, if you would return to the central bailey. There may be other wounded."

He was gone again, the rest of the soldiers clanking behind him.

The young man at her knee gave a grunt and made to push himself up to follow. Selida placed a hand on his chest. "You nearly perished," she said. "Rest a moment before you split your knit flesh."

He looked up at her in mingled awe and horror.

"You'll live, if you're careful." She rose. "Use a shield next time."

***

The night sortie ended minutes later. Amongst the keeps' guardsmen and their three captured assailants, Selida catalogued one concussion, one crushed hand, and several worrying lacerations. Kahldar bid her heal the worst two where they lay. The rest, his men carried to the chapel where she now boiled water and prepared salve, needles, and thread.

"But you're injured," she said to Kahldar. Blood darkened his leathers from an arrow that had pierced his mail just under his pauldron.

He winced, as if only now noticing how he favored his left arm. "It is nothing."

They had not spoken since breakfast, three days ago, but she had felt him watching her, whenever their paths intersected. Most of the time, he turned away before she could catch him at it. Now, her hand reached out as if she could feel the shape of the injury under the bandage. "Then be gentle until I can call upon more of Aluna's blessings tomorrow."

He let her hand rest on his arm for only a moment before taking a breath, and then a step back. "I— I appreciate your concern. Nonetheless, these men may be of aid to us. See to them first."

***

Selida tied off a thread. The oozing hole in her patient's side would not likely form a gangrene, but she would check again tomorrow to be sure.

Old Meg stood beside her, hands full of bandages. "You lost the lantern, I see."

Selida exhaled silently. "It was a waste of time."

The nurse sighed. "That was all I had, and there will be no more post, not with the roads closed. What do you mean to do next?"

Selida put the needle down and met the old woman's pale eyes. "Aluna guides me, Mistress. Rest your tired bones, and worry no more about it."

Relief flickered across the weathered face "You're a good girl, Selida."

"Father would not agree."

Old Meg snorted. "Begging your pardon, Lady, but he was an arse."

Ser Aegison's strident footsteps filled the hall outside. Selida swallowed her curse and reached for the linens as Lydris's nurse faded out the open door.

"Kahldar, do you have the prisoners?"

"I do." He bowed his superior into the chapel.

"By Exos, man, we hardly need her to minister to this scum. Their place is in the gaol."

"As you command, sir. But their wounds should not go untreated."

Selida looked up to find Ser Aegison glowering at her. "Clean up their wounds, if you wish, but I'll not have you wasting your scant prayers upon them. They chose to attack, and they can very well live—or not—with the consequences of their actions."

Alarm blared around Selida's chest. "Holding a man without healing him is a form of torture."

"We shall get to that too, in time."

The patient whimpered.

Selida straightened. "Aluna does not approve. Hold them whole, if you wish for leverage with the Fox, or let them go."

"No wonder your people have never managed to keep peace in these lands."

"And you have?"

"Enough." Ser Aegison turned his glower on Kahldar. "See these men taken below. Drag them there yourself if you must." He turned on his heel.

Kahldar stepped between Selida and his commander before she could surge to her feet. "Lady Cleric," he said, and gestured to the prisoners. "Once you are finished, I will accompany these men to the cellars."

Selida bit her lip, hard, and ducked her head so his expression would not make her want to claw at him. "I suppose you must do as you see fit."

"As do we all."

***

Kahldar stood at the parapet where he had captured the Fox's agents the night before. Morning mist rose off the water, turning Exos's light a soft golden rose.

"Excellent work." Ser Aegison paced up the wall beside him, staring out at the peninsula. Campfire smoke smudged the horizon. "Your watch flanked the miscreants before they could breach the bailey, despite the distraction of their archers."

Kahldar frowned. "Even so, it troubles me that the Fox's men came up on this stretch. I thought the loose boulders below would have foiled their ladders." His eyes lingered on the shattered remains of Selida's lantern. He had kicked it, along with her kettle, into a gutter during the fight. "I also wonder why they led with saps, instead of steel. Only after we cornered them, did they fight in earnest."

"Poverty? Overconfidence?" Ser Aegison shrugged. "We'll extract it from them."

Kahldar turned his head towards the ocean, and held his silence.

Ser Aegison spat over the edge. "I will not limit myself to half measures while the castle's safety is at stake."

Kahldar let the seconds pass. He counted five.

Ser Aegison sighed. "Very well. You need not concern yourself with it. You were up half the night, and injured. Take the morning. Go downstairs. Have a hot breakfast. Finch should see to your shoulder."

Kahldar acknowledged this with a nod. He let his commander's footsteps recede off the parapet. Then he reached down and pulled Selida's kettle out of the gutter.

In truth, Kahldar had slept little, even after the sergeant had cleaned and bound his shoulder. Instead, he saw Selida's stony glower as she walked him out of her chapel. His mind worried over what it meant, and what it might yet portend. He dreamed of it—and of more; of what might have happened, had he stayed, and let her treat his injury.

Balance in thought and deed. But even when Exoeras's words filled his mind, they could not quiet his body. Her presence made him ache with a turmoil he had thought he had outgrown, like she was the answer to a question he dared not even think.

Perhaps he would find her at breakfast. It would reassure him, to see her sitting beside Lady Magnus, entertaining the young lord with stories.

He turned for the great hall.

***

She was not yet there. The cavernous room was warm from the fire, and fragrant with eggs and porridge. Kahldar stepped into a stream of guardsmen and let himself disappear into their boisterous conversation.

"—another attack?"

Kahldar blinked. One of the younger knights had spoken to him. He replayed the last few moments of dialogue in his mind. Ah.

"If we increase our numbers on the wall this morning, we will not be rested should they launch an attack later in the day. Tell your men to keep to the schedule we've practiced, and let the Fox do the work of coming to us."

When he arrived at his usual seat, Kahldar found his eye drawn to the scone that sat on his plate.

"What is this?"

"Oh, do you not want it?" A young guardsman straightened hopefully. He was new to the keep this fall, one of the summer's conscripted recruits. "It is one of Lady Selida's blandishments. She left one on the table for each of us."

Kahldar felt his back teeth set. "What did you say?"

"That's what she called them. I'm not sure how she manages to bake them so tall, but they're quite fluffy." He pursed his lips wistfully.

"Aluna blesses us through Her clerics," an older Tidelander guardsman said. "As in the story of the loaves and eels, She extends our stores even as She fills the cisterns and heals our wounds."

The first young man was still staring at the scone on Kahldar's plate. "It's a divine blandishment?"

Kahldar scanned the hall again. Selida's place at the high table, by Lord Lydris and Lady Magnus, sat empty. Alarm sounded in the back of his mind. Dread filled his chest. "Excuse me," he said.

"Do you not want yours?" the younger man called after him.

"Her blandishments?" He strode for the cellar caves they had converted last night into an impromptu gaol. "No. You are welcome to them."