Yesterday's spent ashes had been raked into the cooling bin, and Isander was building a new cone of hickory logs inside the furnace hearth when Rhoa stumbled through the door to the Sifting Room.

He took one look at her and dropped what he was doing, coming straight for her.

"I'm fine, just cold," she got out through chattering teeth. "I could use some help in the loading bay," she added, then turned and went back through the door to the lean-to, leading the way around the corner and into the stable yard.

The mare stood at the hitching rail, the man's body hanging in a great lump across her back, a potato sack with arms and legs.

Isander came to a stop. "What in all –"

"He was left for dead in the ditch," she said, going around to the far side. "Grab his head?"

Frowning, Isander gave her a skeptical glance, but moved to take the mudman's top end. "This is a really, really bad idea," he muttered as they carried the man, still wrapped in Rhoa's cloak, around the corner into the lean-to, then through the Sifting Room and up the stairs into the kitchen.

They laid him out on the hearthstone, and Rhoa straightened, rubbing her aching spine, only to snap back around at Isander's low, "Go get Father. Now."

Isander had pulled the cloak away and was staring down at the mudman as if a fire serpent were coiled up on the hearth rug.

"What's wrong?"

"Just do as I said," Isander barked, his tone uncharacteristically harsh. He turned to give her a fierce glare. "He's up in the armory. Move! Now!"

Wide-eyed, Rhoa nodded, lurching for the door to the stairwell, her brother's fear jolting her into action. Isander wasn't one to scare easily.

What on earth had she done?

"Father, can you come down?" She called as she made her frozen feet carry her up the stairs.

Her father stepped out onto the second-floor landing, but his smile died when he saw her. "What's wrong?"

"There's a man in the kitchen," she said, the clacking of her teeth making it difficult to get words out.

Strongcastle was already descending the stairs at a run, although he paused as he reached the ground floor. "Any aid from Greenfall?"

Rhoa gave a tiny shake of her head.

Her father frowned but didn't look at all surprised. He pulled the door curtain open. "Get yourself some dry clothes. I'll send Orla to draw water for a bath."

She nodded shakily, but after he ducked through the curtain and into the kitchen, she stayed there, poised halfway to the landing, worry mingling with her headache and the awful, throbbing hum of the tower. Slowly, she crept back down to the bottom of the stairs, her stomach tightening as she drew the edge of the curtain aside just far enough to see what sort of a problem she had caused.

Her father and brother were standing over the mudman, who was visibly beginning to tremble as his body warmed. Then her father said something, the sound of his voice muffled by the curtain. His intention was clear when Isander left in the direction of the pantry and came back with several roughspun rags.

The two of them worked quickly to strip the stranger of his soaked tunic and leather breeches, drying him off as best they could. Then her father fetched a pile of blankets from the linen cupboard, Isander wrapped several bedstones in rags, and they set about bundling the man up, wrapping him in a cocoon of wool and hot bricks.

Even with the kind treatment, though, Rhoa could read an ulterior motive in the intense expression on her father's face, and the wary grip her brother had on his dagger. They were reviving the man for a reason, and it wasn't entirely human decency.

She was shaking so hard, now, that she couldn't keep her hand from moving the curtain. She let it fall closed again and took a step back to peer up the stairs.

Orla must have used the south corner stairwell of the Keep; she was obviously up in the washing room on the second floor, industriously drawing the required bath. There was quite a lot of clanging and splashing going on, and much squeaking of the water winch as the bucket was repeatedly drawn up from the hot water cistern behind the kitchen fireplace.

With a sigh, Rhoa turned and began climbing the stairs again, doing what her father had ordered before Orla managed to accidentally upset the tub, or – there was a clatter, and a distant, hollow splash, followed by Orla's soft, "Oh no," – drop the water bucket into the cistern without the chain. Again.

Rhoa shot a dull glare in the direction of the washing room and Radier's very-pretty-but-fairly-brainless bedmate and trudged the rest of the way up to her bedchamber, grimly accepting the probability that she would not be having a hot bath.

°°°°°ººººº°°°°°

Washed and dressed in her warmest, thickest, fluffiest knitted tunic, her favorite woven-leather jerkin, a pair of thick woolen hose, and with her hair pulled back into a neat braid, Rhoa surveyed her reflection in the copper mirror propped up against the washing chamber wall. She looked just the same as always: far too serious. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary about her. She had the typical Strongcastle hazel-green eyes and cleft chin, and her mother's upturned Greycliff nose and straight black hair. No weird birthmarks.

Nothing to set her apart from any other human being, or to suggest that she wasn't her father's natural daughter.

The only mark on her was the ugly, jagged white line of scar tissue running from the inside of her elbow to her wrist, but that had been put there by a man.

Rolling her eyes, Rhoa turned away, then stopped, her attention caught by the mirror itself.

She knew the stories the villagers told about her – that on the night she was born, her grandmother had summoned an evil being from another plane and Rhoa was the result, switched with some sort of demon child. It was foolish to even consider.

Her father and her brothers had been working like mad to mud the tower, and only her grandmother had tended her mother. Her whole family knew how hard that labor had been, though. They had seen the bloodied rags, heard her mother's screams and Gran's words of encouragement. Both she and her mother had nearly died that night. How could anyone really believe her grandmother would have been wandering about the Keep with a cup and a candle, standing in front of mirrors, summoning the Dark One while all of that was going on?

The truth didn't matter, though. There was a mirror, there were cups, so there had been opportunity, and opportunity created doubts, and doubts stirred rumors. When the Rot began spreading south from the mountains and people began dying, Reinosh had invented his own version of events: Rhoa had been sent to curse the land, and only draining her foundling demon blood could undo it.

On bad nights, she could still hear the drums and the women chanting incantations to the full moon, still smell the stench of burning witchwood as Reinosh cut her arm open with the blade he had used to flay and gut a black goat.

Now Diviner Rokstag was holding that same fear over her, twisting it in a different direction.

What would the village do if the Rot didn't go away when this new Warmoon was over?

A fortnight. She chewed her lower lip. Her father wasn't one to push his children into taking a partner. In fact, quite the opposite, he urged caution. As Keepers, their lovers and spouses either had to be valuable members of the family, like Tettony with her medical knowledge, or, like Sedir and Orla, remain part of the village and only come to the fortress for visits or to help with housekeeping. If he was going to insist she make a match, it would be with an experienced Keeper from another house, not with someone from the village. Still, Rokstag was powerful and Rhoa was a weak point in the Strongcastle armor.

Rhoa took a deep breath. The new weight on her shoulders didn't get any lighter, her head didn't throb any less, and the cold knot of worry in the pit of her stomach didn't get any smaller.

Letting her breath out, she about-faced and strode out of the washing room. She would tackle the Rokstag problem when her father came back from the hunt. There was a more immediate problem in the kitchen.

°°°°°ººººº°°°°°

The sound of her father's voice brought Rhoa up short in the doorway.

"What's your name?"

The mudman had improved somewhat. He was sitting upright on a chair in front of the kitchen fire, although he was still bundled in blankets and his words came out heavily slurred: "I already told you."

He was definitely from one of the southern districts, with the way he rounded out his vowels. Far south, she thought. Possibly even the First Sector.

"What are you doing here?" her father demanded, bending to put his hands on the arms of the chair, looming over the stranger.

Dragging his eyelids apart, the man focused bleary brown eyes on Strongcastle's face, then one corner of his mouth ticked up in what might have been a devilish grin. "Talkin' to you."

"Did you come here to spy on us? How many of you are there?"

The man gave her father a long look, his grin disappearing, then closed his eyes again.

Isander shook his head. "He's not going to tell us anything. We don't have the time for this."

Strongcastle stared at the man for a moment, then straightened, his jaw tight. "We still need answers. We'll have to put him in a cell until we can get information out of him," he said. Then he looked at Kennon, who was leaning against the mantelpiece. "Come on, let's get him downstairs."

Rhoa watched her father and Kennon muscle the stranger up out of the chair, then half-carry, half-prod the man out of the kitchen and into the Great Hall, apparently heading for the south corner staircase.

Isander turned when she came all the way into the kitchen, his mouth set in a stern line.

She got herself a dish and scooped a ladleful of lentil stew out of the cooking pot, grabbed a round of the bread her mother had made that morning, then sat at the kitchen table to eat. She might not run from her problems, but she didn't also have to face them on an empty stomach, and she was starving.

"You could have picked a better charity case to drag home," Isander said, breaking the silence.

Rhoa looked at him and swallowed a bite of bread, then lowered her gaze. " I'm sorry. I ah... I just thought –"

Strongcastle and Kennon returned from the Great Hall, then, and Rhoa got quickly to her feet.

"You just thought what?" her father asked quietly, coming to a stop at the end of the kitchen table, eyebrows raised expectantly.

Rhoa licked her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. "I thought... he's obviously not from around here, so he's been traveling... he might be able to tell us something useful. Maybe he knows of a sprak nest somewhere... I didn't know he was dangerous. He didn't have anything more than a staff and a knapsack, I didn't find any weapons –"

Isander started shaking his head as she spoke, muttering, "Their kind never looks dangerous."

Her father regarded her steadily, coming to a decision as a parent. "You have a kind heart, Rhoa, and I would never want you to change... But... That man is a Vanguard."

Stunned, Rhoa felt the blood rush from her face. "A Vanguard," she parroted, then brought her hand up to cover her mouth.

"He's not of a clan that I recognize," her father went on. "They're usually clean-shaven and close-cut. You couldn't have known unless you saw the copper on his wrists, but he's definitely Vanguard. Worse, he's a Mage. I won't pretend that his presence here is anything less than a threat."

"He's not just a Vanguard mage, though, is he," Isander chimed in, green eyes flashing. "You saw the skull on his shoulder. He's been branded for murder."

Kennon grunted, then muttered, "That would explain the prison galley tattoos, then."

Strongcastle's mouth firmed into a stern line almost identical to the one on Isander's face. "Those are worrisome, I'll grant you, but what concerns me most is that Vanguard shield over his heart. They only get those if they've been in battle. And there's a hole punched through his ear. He was born a slave, which means he's from the desert borderlands... which means he's quite possibly a rebel as well as a fanatic, with nothing to lose. And where there is one Vanguard –"

"There are probably more," Kennon and Isander finished with him.

"I don't like the timing," her father announced. "But thanks to Rhoa, at least we know they're here." He paused, his brow knitting in thought. "This doesn't change anything. With no help from Eleven, we still need the hunt, and we still need three teams. We can't spare anyone." He glanced at Rhoa, his gaze thoughtful. "The Vanguard won't attack until the moon is full and the monster's power is at it's peak, but they will be watching the fortress. You, your mother, and Tettony will have to make it look like we're still here until we get back. Think you can manage that?"

Rhoa nodded, her shoulders tensing.

"Good." He turned to Isander and Kennon. "We'll have to take the west passage, come up through the cover of the woods before turning north. Pack light. We can't take the wagon."

Silently, Rhoa sank back down on the bench as her father and brothers began gathering the supplies they had been readying before she arrived, preparing to leave.

Her soup had gone cold, and she pushed her spoon around in it. The weight dragging at her had grown subtly heavier, and her appetite had fled. Her headache was flaring up again. Ever-so-slightly, the hum of the tower had changed. Now it felt more like some unseen hand had dropped two stones next to each other in a pool, ripples responding to ripples, resonating and reacting to each other.

°°°°°ººººº°°°°°