Dawn arrived in a murky suggestion of grey. It offered hardly enough light to see by, but it was still enough to wake the fortress rooster, who took it upon himself to begin crowing from the ridgepole of the kitchen roof.

The kitchen roof was directly below Rhoa's bedchamber window.

"Confounded bird," Rhoa growled under her pillow.

As if to prove a point, the rooster strutted onto the window ledge and let loose.

Rhoa flung her pillow in that general direction, then opened one eye and lay staring at the rafters for a moment. There was nothing for it. The whole house would be up shortly, whether she had a pounding headache or not.

Reaching one arm out of her warm lambswool-lined blankets, Rhoa swatted at the floor. Her fingers found her linen under-tunic and she pulled it quickly beneath the covers with her. She wriggled into it, keeping exposure to the unheated air of her bedchamber to the absolute minimum, doing the same with her knitted over-tunic and grey woolen hose. Then she ground her teeth, shoved her covers off and swung her feet over the side of the bed-box, her breath pluming pale in the hint of morning sun coming through the windowpanes.

She made quick, shivery work of buckling on her long boots in the near-dark, then left, taking the stairs down to the kitchen at a run.

Her mother looked up from the bread she was kneading at the table, her greeting turning into narrowed eyes of disapproval when Rhoa whipped through the door curtains, swiped two apples from the fruit bin and kept right on going.

"You should have a full meal and take a basket."

"If I leave now, the villagers will be inside eating breakfast," Rhoa called, already halfway down the stairs to the Sifting Room.

Her mother came to stand in the kitchen doorway, her floury hands on her hips. "They don't all hate you, you know."

Rhoa shot her a tight-lipped smile as she donned her leather riding doublet.

"What about young Mykian Greenfall?"

With a groan, Rhoa let her head fall forward.

"You could do worse. That boy has grown into quite a good looking young —"

"Yes, and he knows it, too," Rhoa muttered, slinging her Strongcastle cloak around her shoulders and fastening the clasp. "You like him so much, how about you talk to him for an hour about how he gets all his clothes tailored in Lubelin."

Her mother quirked an eyebrow. "You need friends. A friend. Any friend. You spend too much time alone. It's not good for you."

"Right." Rhoa nodded. "Thank you." She lifted the messenger bag down off its peg and made sure her father's document pouch was safely inside.

"Oh. Stop by the Storehouse on your way back, we're in need of our rations."

Rhoa pushed the door open.

"Be careful... And quit rolling your eyes or they'll freeze that way!"

With a snort – because she really had been rolling her eyes – Rhoa stepped out into the stable yard. A cold drizzle met her full on, wrapping her in its clammy embrace, promising a damp, miserable ride. "Wonderful," she sighed, and pulled her hood up.

°°°°°ººººº°°°°°

Headache and drizzle notwithstanding, her trip to Varisk was uneventful. Ardusk was quiet when she rode through. As predicted, the villagers were just beginning to rise, smoke skeining from chimney pots and candlelight in windows the only real signs of life. Even the livestock was subdued, and the market stalls were empty.

The road hugged the river for a mile outside the village, following the valley bottom, and she made good time, her mare's long legs eating up the ground as the sky overhead lightened to a dull, overcast silver. Near Ghaffig's Bog the road became little better than two lines of knee-deep mud, and she had to urge her mount up onto the shoulder and lead her, but they got through, and then wound their way up the side of a hill to travel the dry ground along the spine of White Ridge.

The valley broadened into a vast, sprawling marsh plain that spread away from the foothills like a brown, wrinkled quilt, and she spotted a herd of barrik deer foraging in the swamp rushes.

They were healthy. The Rot hadn't reached the valley, here. Grazing was still good. The buck's massive antlers were visible even from a distance, and there were a large number of does and yearlings. Rhoa made a note of them, but the size of the herd was only another indication that the spraknost weren't there to prey on them.

An hour later, she reached the Fivepoints Crossroads and cut wide around it, skirting the grizzly remains of executed criminals hanging from pole frames. The Eleventh Sector of the Divine Order had been busy, lately. There were fresh corpses, and she drew the edge of her cloak over her nose, her stomach turning at the sight and smell of them.

She took the road that ran east toward the coast, and after another hour she was on the last stretch, the walls of Varisk rising from the edge of the craggy cliff-top in front of her, the Eleventh Hold fortress and tower jutting from the middle of the town like a big grey hand with an over-large index finger.

Her mare broke into a trot, eager for the warmth of the Hold stable, and Rhoa let her have her head, cantering through the east city gates and across the market square to the front gates of the Hold, ignoring the annoyed shouts as a few townspeople scrambled to get out of her way. The faster she reached the keep, the faster she could deliver her father's message and leave.

°°°°°ººººº°°°°°

Rhoa glanced around the Keeper's office, taking in the bronze-bound sconces, the polished blackwood paneling carved in intricate arches, the tall peaked windows paned with colored glass. There were weapons mounted above the mantel, swords, axes and pikes crossing each other on pegs set in the wall, used only as decoration.

Her gaze fell from the display to the Eleventh's First Keeper, who sat on the other side of a massive marble-topped desk, his embroidered robes gleaming in the light of the fire in the hearth.

Arcan Greenfall's well-groomed brows drew closer and closer together as he reached the bottom of the message. Then he heaved a sigh and shook his head as he lowered the roll of parchment to the top of his desk and looked up at her from beneath a censorious frown. "I'm truly sorry that your father finds himself in this predicament, but we're unable to spare anything. The Rot has hit everyone hard, not just the Thirteenth."

Rhoa blinked. Her father had asked Greenfall for help. That was what the message had been. A plea. And now Greenfall was looking down his fine nose at her like she was the poor relation, hat in hand. She swallowed, then cleared her throat, looking away, a hot blush creeping up the back of her neck. "I understand. Thank you."

"You've came all this way in such dreary weather," Greenfall said, smiling kindly and getting to his feet. "Why don't you go on down to the Hall? Warm yourself, eat some of Gennadine's stew. I'm sure we can find you a room for the night –"

"My orders were to deliver the message, then bring back the reply. That's all I have time for." Rhoa bowed slightly and turned to leave.

"Are you sure? It's the least we can do."

His footsteps sounded on the floorboards behind her, and she froze, that old, stubborn fear of being cornered raising the hair at her nape. Then she snatched the door to his office open as if she hadn't heard him and went striding down the screens passage to the massive archway of the Hold's entrance porch, her right hand moving unbidden to cover the scars on her left arm.

The sight of Mykian Greenfall coming up the Great Hall steps only made her move faster.

"Oh, Rhoa, you are here," Mykian began, smiling. "I just saw your horse, when did you get ­– you're leaving already?"

Rhoa rushed past him, her only goal getting across the bailey. The dull headache she had been dealing with all day was rapidly blossoming into a jagged throb in her skull. The hum in the ground was definitely stronger than it had been when she went inside, and her vision kept blurring, glittering along the edges with tiny pops and flashes of wild, blazing scarlet. She blinked rapidly and shook her head as she made a beeline for the stables.

"Are you alright? Rhoa?" Mykian called, jogging after her.

"I'm fine," she snapped, then relented. He was annoyingly vain and a little shallow, but he wasn't responsible for the weird urge to run that was coiling through her chest. Neither was his father, really. She hadn't had a spell in years, but lately she seemed to be constantly teetering on the brink of one. "This wasn't a social visit. I need to get back."

He faltered in the stable archway. "Oh. That's too bad. I was hoping you might be here for a while longer. Are you sure you can't stay?"

She swallowed hard and shot a glance across the bailey at the Eleventh tower, with its scaffold neatly in place, ready for the many loads of saltpeter clay it would take to block any cracks or chinks in the stone. It looked tidy and well built, but something was off about it. As she watched, she could swear fractures appeared in the tower walls, rippling and disappearing as if something huge were moving inside it, flexing and growing.

She whipped around to face her mare's stall, her heart pounding. "I can't," she blurted. "We have too much left to do." What was wrong with her? Her hands were even shaking so much that she fumbled with the latch of the stall door before getting the thing free.

Mykian stood there for a moment, observing her in silence, concern on his pretty face as she proceeded to rub down and re-saddle her horse. "If you're worried you won't pass the Trial, don't be," he murmured. "You'll do fine."

Rhoa let out her breath on a short, mirthless cough of a laugh, and led her mare out of the stall and into the stable yard. "That's very sweet, thank you." She swung up into the saddle and set off without a backwards glance, leaving the Greenfalls and their tower behind.

The Trials weren't very high on her list of worries at the moment. They were a moot point if she was going insane. Maybe the Diviners and the villagers were right. Maybe being born on a Warmoon really was some sort of bad omen.

°°°°°ººººº°°°°°