"See that Lethan gets this," Rhoa's father murmured, handing her mother a small curl of parchment. "It's the route we're taking."

Her mother smiled, grey eyes somber in her pixie face.

Strongcastle brought his hands up to her shoulders, drawing her close and pressing a lingering kiss to her forehead. "Rhoa," he said, his voice gruff.

"Yes, Father?"

"I'm leaving you in charge of the prisoner till I get back." He gave her a long, even look over the top of her mother's head. "I want you to try to get him talking, however you can. Find out what he's doing here, and how many more there might be... Just, whatever you do, don't let him get inside your head. And keep the salt line unbroken to neutralize the charge in the air. I don't want him trying to pull any Mage tricks."

"Yes, Father."

"I'm counting on you."

Rhoa swallowed, nodding. She had brought the stray home. She would take care of it.

At the other end of the Great Hall, Isander was kneeling in front of his children, telling them to behave, while Tettony kept a brave smile pasted on her face.

Kennon and Sedir were talking quietly in the corner, telling jokes and making each other laugh.

There were no goodbyes before a hunt, no tears, only talk of returning or tasks that needed to be done. Goodbyes were bad luck.

Gran sidled over to stand next to her, then, and patted Rhoa's arm with bony fingers. "Your time will come soon enough, my girl, don't you worry," she murmured.

Distracted, Rhoa glanced down at her.

Gran's bead-bright eyes disappeared into her crow's-feet as she gave Rhoa a gap-toothed, wrinkly smile.

Rhoa grinned, although she wasn't quite sure if Gran meant her time would come to hunt again, or to have someone special to laugh with before leaving. Knowing Gran, it was probably both.

But Gran didn't know about Rokstag. Rhoa's grin drained away.

A moment later, Kennon, Isander, and their father gathered their saddlebags and strode out of the kitchen. Their horses were already saddled and waiting in the tunnel that led from the back end of the stables. From there, they would wind down through the caves beneath the fortress and out into the woods on the western side of Strongcastle Ridge.

"Well, that's that," Rhoa's mother announced, breaking the sudden quiet the men had left behind. "Who wants a cream tart?"

Rhoa hung back as the children trailed her mother into the kitchen, followed more slowly by Tettony and Sedir.

Gran patted Rhoa's arm again and hobbled after the others, never one to miss a chance at sweets.

Closing her eyes, Rhoa stood in the silence. 

Of the adults at the Keep, she and her mother were the only two trained in combat. Gran had been a fierce fighter in her day, but her bones had grown frail. Tettony could handle herself if she had to, but in a crisis she had the children to worry about. Orla was well-meaning, but next to useless. Sedir would be leaving shortly to go back to his forge; he was strong, but not a warrior. Beyond lighting a candle in Kennon's bedchamber, and doing extra patrols in her father's spare armor and cape, Rhoa and her mother were the only real defense the fortress had. Two women against a band of war trained and battle-tested Vanguards. 

Rhoa ground her teeth. The hum rippled around her, a wave lapping at a stone on the shore. It was becoming impossible to ignore it, anymore, or to pretend she wasn't the only one who could feel it. No one else had mentioned it, or even suggested they had a headache. She was the only one who felt the ominous grinding in the ground, or had nightmares about the Warmoon burning the world to cinders, and she was certainly the only one imagining there was a tide of weird energy washing around everything. 

She cast a glare through the arches of the screens passage, eyeing the low, iron-bound door nestled in the bottom curve of the south Keep stairwell. Through that door, the stairwell continued its downward spiral into the underbelly of the fortress foundations, with its hallways of long-unused and empty cells.

Empty, now, save one.

Firming her spine, Rhoa straightened. Then she turned on her heel and headed for the kitchen. She would not be the weak Strongcastle.

°°°°°ººººº°°°°°

The flickering light of her lantern sent her shadow dancing over the hewn-stone walls, dodging in and out of the pitch black before and behind her, never lingering long anywhere. It only made Rhoa more aware of how alone she was. That, and the echoing crunch of her boots in the layer of salt grit on the floor.

When she came to the archway at the mouth of the dungeon hallway, she stopped and lit the wall torches from the lantern candle, a little too glad that the darkness wouldn't follow quite so closely at her back.

The hum of the tower was definitely different, here. Focused. Intense. Purposeful in how it moved, somehow. She shivered, then kept going, carrying the basket of supplies she had collected.

The prisoner didn't move at all when she unlocked the door of his cell.

She peered through the bars at him. He was sitting propped up against the opposite wall, legs bent, head bowed, his arms locked into a shackle bar above him. He wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Warily, she pulled the door open and stepped inside, careful not to disturb the thick, crinkly line of Keeper's clay painted along the bottom of the bars. She kept her limbs loose and her right hand at her waist, ready to drop her basket and grab her dagger if she needed to, but the Vanguard didn't so much as open his eyes.

She placed the lantern on the floor, well beyond his reach, and eased closer.

He didn't look good. Her father and Isander hadn't taken the time to wash him or give him proper clothes, and he was still quite filthy, his braids matted with dirt and leaves. 

She put the basket down beside the lantern and began laying out the things she had brought: a jar of salve, several rags, and a pot of fresh water. Then she wet a rag and knelt next to him, wrinkling her nose at the smell. There had been blood on his shirt when she found him, and it didn't make sense to let any wounds fester if she wanted him alive to answer questions.

The source of the blood seemed to be a narrow gash in the hairline above his right temple, and she dabbed at it with deft fingers, gently scrubbing away the filth of the gulley. He didn't make a sound, so she kept going, checking for anything else.

He had been heavy for a reason, this Vanguard. He wasn't overlarge, but he certainly wasn't small. While she worked, the blanket her father had draped around his shoulders slipped down to his waist, revealing a muscled chest and torso, well-built arms, and broad shoulders. He didn't have the sleekness that came with being well-fed, though. There wasn't any fat anywhere on him, and he was rangy in the way of fighting men used to running hard.

Rhoa had grown up with five strapping warrior brothers, all of whom looked much the same after a long hunt. It wasn't his physical strength that sent a shiver of apprehension through her, it was the tattoos gleaming blue-black against his umber skin.

Her family all had the Strongcastle crest on their backs, a way of identifying their bodies on a battlefield.

This man had marks all over him, flowing lines that formed intricate patterns swirling over his chest and shoulders and continuing all the way down the length of both arms. Then there was that tell-tale winged Vanguard shield that covered his heart. The ones that set him apart as a Mage, though, were the coppery runes and symbols that began at his elbows, weaving in and out of the blue and ending in cuffs at his wrists. 

She should have seen it, even under the dirt. Should have guessed he wasn't just a stranger. Strangers didn't randomly show up in ditches in Ardusk, especially so close to the Warmoon. 

Her gaze caught on the puckered white scar on his right shoulder – a simplistic skull and crossed bones seared into his flesh with a branding iron – then rose to the hole punched through the top curve of his left ear where a slave's ring had been. How had a slave wanted for murder wound up as a leader in the Vanguard? 

Realizing that she was staring, Rhoa frowned, then went back to cleaning him up. She found two more shallow cuts on his ribs, washed them, and daubed all of his wounds with honey salve. She had just put the salve and the water-pot back in the basket when his broken whisper made her freeze.

"You know, you're not all bad, for a Keeper."

She made sure the lid was secure on the water-pot. Then she looked at him. "What were you expecting?"

He brought his head up and let it fall back against the wall, his eyes glittering obsidian in the warm light of the lantern. "Horns, honestly."

She blinked.

"I'm joking," he muttered when she didn't respond. Then he cracked a hint of a grin.

Don't let him get in your head. "Hungry?" she asked, lifting the pipkin of stew from the basket.

He raised an eyebrow and glanced up at the shackle bar clamped over his wrists.

She wasn't about to unlock it. Instead, she took the lid off the pipkin and spooned up a scoop of meat and vegetables, then offered it to him.

The Vanguard regarded her for a moment, a flash of something unreadable in his eyes. Then he took a breath, let it out on a disgruntled sigh, and opened his mouth.

"This is good," he mumbled around a chunk of mutton and onion. "Thank you."

Rhoa held out another spoonful.

"You could just let me go. I promise I won't try anything."

Another spoonful.

"You don't talk much, do you."

That got him a flat glare. "What are you doing here?"

"Mmh."

"Now who isn't talking," she observed.

The man pulled away from the spoonful in front of him. "My name is Kryphan," he said quietly.

She dropped the spoon back into the pipkin. "I don't care. You're a Vanguard. I need to know what you're doing here. How many of you there are. If you're planning to attack –"

"Is that what you think?" he demanded, suddenly not so docile, his brows lowering. "We're just a bunch of murdering thugs, rampaging around killing people? What do you people read?"

Rhoa stared at him, her jaw tightening. "I think that you've murdered someone, yes. I think you're willing to do whatever it takes to free the monster, even if it means killing anyone in your way. I think your kind have waged long, bloody wars on my people."

He went still, his eyes widening slightly. Then he looked down. "I have killed someone, yes – but I'm not here to attack you, or your family. I'm just here to ask a question."

Lips pursed, Rhoa put the pipkin in the basket and got to her feet.

"What happened the last time the monster got out?"

The hum flared, eddying and flowing over her again, as if it had gathered around him until that moment, and his words had set it loose. Her headache responded with a searing throb. "The monster has never gotten out," she snapped.

The Vanguard leaned forward, then, trying to catch her eye. "Yes. It did. Four Warmoons ago, the monster from this tower escaped. What happened that night?"

Rhoa picked up the basket and the lantern and carried them into the hallway, the scrape of the metal cell door echoing from the walls as she dragged it shut and locked it, careful of the salt.

"What if you shouldn't be protecting everyone from it?" The man called after her. "What if you're the monster?"

°°°°°ººººº°°°°°