Page 9 of Orc’s Harvest

Her hands quiet on the last stitch for a long moment after that, resting light against my ribs like she’s forgotten they’re supposed to keep working, and when I look down at her — really look, not the sideways glances I’ve been rationing myself all night — her stare comes up to meet mine and doesn’t retreat.

I reach for her face before I decide to. Stop myself a breath short of touching, near enough to feel the heat coming off her skin without making contact, and backing off now costs more than the fight in the wheat field did. Every instinct built into me wants to close the distance—wants her mouth, wants to know exactly what sound she makes when she stops holding herself so carefully still.

Not tonight.

Not with a target painted on this farm because I put my command inside its walls. Not while a war still stands between us, deciding things before either of us gets a real say in them.

I let my hand drop before it finishes the distance. She doesn’t ask why, though her stare tracks the movement all the way down. For one more breath neither of us moves at all — her fingers still resting light against my ribs, my whole body angled toward her like there’s nowhere else in the room worth facing.

Then every wardstone on the property flares at once, hard enough that the windows rattle in their frames.

We’re both moving before the light fades, her grabbing a knife off the counter mid-step, me pulling my axe off the wall by the door where I left it for exactly this. Rain hits us the second we clear the porch, cold and coming sideways, and the eastern wardline is glowing wrong even through the downpour — not the clean gold of a working ward but something darker, sickly, bleeding light instead of holding it.

Black sap runs down the cracked face of the nearest stone in slow, thick ropes, closer to a wound weeping than water finding a path. Past the boundary, just far enough back that the ward can’t reach it, stands a figure I’d know anywhere, soaked through and half-shadowed by rain.

Koira Bouchier. Every detail exact — the stoop in her shoulders, the way she always stood with her weight already shifted toward whatever needed her next. Beside me, Zalie goes rigid, her breath catching hard enough that I hear it over the rain.

“That’s not her.” Zalie’s voice comes out low, half to herself, the knife in her hand shaking despite how steady the rest of her is holding. “That’s not her voice. I know her voice.”

It doesn’t move toward the wardline. Doesn’t try to cross. It simply watches us, entirely too pleased with itself, until my axe is already rising, already swinging for the space where it stood, every ounce of fury I can’t aim anywhere useful poured into a strike that connects with nothing but rain.

It dissolves the way smoke gives up in a hard wind, gone before the blade finishes its arc, and for one held breath the wardline goes quiet again — black sap still running, rain still coming down sideways across empty ground, my knuckles white around the haft with nothing left in front of me to kill.

Then the wheat beyond the boundary starts moving.

Not with the wind.

Dozens of them rise from the black stalks at once, identical down to the last detail, each wearing Koira Bouchier’s face, and every one turns toward the farmhouse in the same heartbeat.

SIX

KALTHOR

Two mornings after the wheat gave up its dead in her own front yard, I’ve got Zalie three steps behind me in a dead orchard, and I haven’t let more than an arm’s length open up between us since we crossed the tree line.

Ashcroft’s pickers stopped sending word to the Keep eleven days back, and the last messenger we sent to check on them never came home either. Four ward sites sit marked on the map Zalie built from her grandmother’s journals, and this one’s the closest, near enough that riding past it without looking meant inviting whatever’s happening here straight to Bouchier Farm’s front door instead.

She’s noticed the arm’s length. Of course she’s noticed — she notices everything, which is half the problem.

“You’re doing it again.” She catches my sleeve as I angle myself between her and a row of black-blossomed trees thick enough to hide six Hollow Men apiece. “Walking like I’m a parcel you’re personally responsible for delivering.”

“You’re the only person alive who can read what’s left of Koira’s research.” I don’t slow down. “I’m protecting an asset.”

Varok’s snort carries from two rows over, where he’s supposed to be watching the Keep’s archivist instead of listening to us. “Didn’t hold the archivist’s waist crossing that last ditch, my lord. Held my own longer than I’d have liked, but not his.”

I don’t dignify that with an answer. Zalie’s mouth twitches like she’s fighting the same urge.

“He’s got a point.” She falls into step beside me instead of behind, which I notice and don’t correct. “Assets don’t usually rate a hand at the small of their back.”

I don’t have a good answer for that. We both already know my reasons stopped being professional days ago — somewhere around the second night she fed my whole command out of her own larder without being asked, refusing every offer of coin for it. Keeping her in arm’s reach isn’t caution anymore. It’s a compulsion I’ve stopped bothering to fight. My hand finds the small of her back again without my permission less than two minutes later, and she doesn’t pull away this time either, which tells me everything I need to know about how much either of us actually minds.

“For the record,” Varok calls again, near enough now that I catch the grin in it even through the fog, “I’m keeping a full accounting of every time you do that thing with your jaw when she’s not looking. Ashmoor’s going to want the record when this is finally over.”

“Ashmoor is going to want you back on point instead of running your mouth.”

He falls back into formation laughing, and Zalie’s the one fighting a smile now, which does nothing for my composure at all.

“Speaking of accounting,” Varok calls again, not remotely done needling either of us, “the Harvest Steward’s already asking why I’ve requisitioned double rations for a patrol that’s supposedly still twelve men strong. Man tracks every sack of grain in this valley like it’s leaving his own body. I’d almost respect the thoroughness if it weren’t so exhausting to argue with.”