There was a chill in the air, despite the season.

Finn shivered. He looked around for a patch of sun to warm himself in, but everything seemed suddenly shrouded in shadow. The cobblestone beneath his feet seemed cold and wet.

He began to walk.

He heard footsteps behind him, a voice calling out after him—Omri or Tarik, he assumed. He couldn’t be sure. He had closed his mind to his tether.

The Bastion was nestled in the shade of the city ramparts, one of many such establishments clinging to and dwarfed by the walls like clumps of moss.

You could not escape the shade of Aonenbridge unless you went far.

He’d been six years old the first time he’d climbed to the highest parapet, and nine years old before he’d been brave enough to open his eyes. The great height and the expanse stretching as far as the eye could see had terrified him at first, but he’d stood there, heart racing, arms wide and defiant with his back against the wind, and let himself be subsumed by the rolling hills and streets of Aonenbridge and the Great Marsh beyond.

The feeling of giving oneself up to enormity was exhilarating. And that was just Aonenbridge. It was many years before he was able to grasp that there was anything beyond the Marsh, any town or city bigger than his own.

From up close, the true size of a thing could never be appreciated. A forest was a single tree at a time, a street a series of cobblestones, its proportions swallowed up by densely packed walls and winding alleys. Only from far above would the grandeur of something truly open itself up.

Driven by a desire to see more of the world, to understand, he’d begun studying Wendell’s maps. He’d loved the dizzying images, the constant uncovering of something bigger, and then something bigger, and then again, and again, and again. He’d visited Blackwater and Carmore, cities twice the size of Aonenbridge, which, according to the maps, were both only half the size of Illd’Or. The entire province of Emelandra was smaller than the largest city in Varonos, which itself was dwarfed by Ortomalle. Finn had been particularly interested in the layout of the Ortomallean province, especially when Wendell had explained to him how difficult it had been to draw those maps to scale. There were dozens of Ortomallean cities, with barren stretches of land between them so vast and impenetrable that it was said a man leaving his city on foot as a child would reach the gates of the next city old and frail.

And, if the holy fools were to be believed, there were more continents, distant and largely unexplored, some of which dwarfed even Ortomalle.

And beyond that, across all of Terraveth, everything from the Great Marsh, to Varonos, Ortomalle, to the unexplored territories beyond, existed under one sky. And beyond the sky were the moons, and beyond the moons, the sun and stars.

For a long time, Finn had been unable to let these ideas go. Wendell would often find him sitting, pondering for hours on end, and would have to pull him by the ear to bring him down from the clouds.

Only the Celestial can bound the boundless, Wendell had told him. We are not meant to follow.

There’d been something approaching sacrilege in Finn’s study, Wendell decided, a strange mixture of reverence and vanity in his ambition to comprehend the ends of the endless, the belief that he could.

Such self-importance had come to an abrupt end.

These days, Finn could barely recognize the boy he had been. He had feared so little—fear had always turned to exhilaration in his chest. But, with time, exhilaration had turned to ash.

He continued his walk, a futile attempt to escape from the shadow of the city walls, and the weight of the words he had just overheard in the Bastion.

He may look like his brother, but I fear the boy has the cowardice of his father.

The cowardice of his father.

It had not always been like that.

Finn remembered the day it had all come crashing down. The day when, after years of looking up and beyond, he’d been forced to look down, and within.

The day he had visited his mother’s grave.

***

There had been no moon that night, Finn seemed to recall. He’d been just fourteen years old at the time, four winters past. He remembered the grogginess he’d felt after being torn from sleep by the sudden crash of his shutters, the way they’d swung open and collided against the stone walls of his chamber. A cold mist streamed into the room, and a sudden gust of wintry air shocked him awake, the contours of the night sharpening in an instant.

An intruder stood at the end of his bed, watching him.

Large, cloaked, a blade in his scabbard.

Finn sat up and yawned.

“You know, you really should learn how to use a door.”

Zendar grinned. “Never. Now get up.”

Finn looked outside. It was still a few hours before dawn. He sat up and yawned, somewhat theatrically. Zendar chuckled, removed his cloak, and hung it near the hearth to warm. His face was flushed, his hair tousled, his sleeves rolled up with nonchalance.

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“You’re drunk,” Finn noted, rubbing at an eye with the back of his hand.

“I am,” Zendar said. “Get dressed.”

Finn didn’t move. “You smell,” he said.

“We went for a swim. The lake behind—”

“No,” Finn said. “You smell like a chimney.”

Zendar shrugged. “We may have… indulged. Blame Ells. Come on, little brother, let’s go.”

“Look at your eyes,” Finn said, groaning. He sat up further and tucked his hair behind his ears. “Ellsworth and I are both getting blamed if you don’t get some sleep. Bella will kill us. You do realize you’re getting married in five hours?”

Zendar’s smile faded. He paled. Finn scratched at his mouth to cover a grin.

Your brother doesn’t fear war, but he fears a woman, Ellsworth liked to tease.

Although, for all his teasing, it was Ellsworth who was more likely to flinch if Arabella stood up too quickly, who seemed to lose his ability to make wisecracks whenever she was near. Finn didn’t blame him. She had locked both Ellsworth and Zendar in her father’s dungeons for ten days when they first met, and threatened to have them flayed if they ever returned to Varonos.

Bygones.

Less than a day later, Zendar had returned. For her.

The courtship had not been easy. There’d been other suitors, many of whom had taken it as a slight that the son of a lowly Emelandran lord would even presume to call on a daughter of High Lord Ranar of Varonos. There’d been challenges, duels, a hanging, and loss of life.

She’d decided within a week, he’d decided within a moment, but it had taken ten years for the Varoni to accept that the foreign lord Zendarus would be their lady’s husband. Ten years of waiting during which neither of them had even looked at another.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Zendar said, raising a hand to massage his throat. “But we have something to do first. We’re going to see her.”

Finn chuckled. “You couldn’t wait until morning? You’re afraid Bella’s forgotten you? Zen, it’s been ten years, I think she can wait another—”

“I’m not talking about Arabella,” Zendar said. His voice was uncharacteristically rough, and his words hung, suspended in the silence.

Finn stared for a moment, confused, then sucked in air as realization hit him. “Tonight?” he managed.

Zendar nodded. “I promised you, didn’t I?”

“Tonight?” Finn repeated. He felt as if his insides were suddenly quivering. “Are you sure you want to do this tonight?” He watched his brother closely. Zendar was staring at him, but Finn wondered if he was seeing him at all.

“It’s for me as much as you,” Zendar said. “I need to speak to her.”

Finn blinked. “Speak to her? She’s—”

Finn caught himself before saying the word. Dead.

Zendar grimaced nonetheless, then waved a hand dismissively. “I may have found a way. Alright, let’s go.”

They went alone. They notified no one, even left their tethers behind. Finn and Zendar did not see a soul as they snuck out of the back entrance of Aonen Keep, nor were they seen as they approached and pierced through the city walls and into the Great Marsh beyond. The [Guardsmen] on duty were not inattentive, but these were the sons of Aonenbridge, who had grown up in the Keep, who had, as boys, frolicked in the surrounding wetland others feared and become intimately familiar with each and every individual marsh, river, bog, and swamp, with every tangled root, with every possible rustle in the underbrush, with the clinging mud and the shadows cast. Roots others tripped over were footholds for them, anchors. The eyes that followed them in the darkness and the shapes that darted across the flooring were familiar fauna. In the shadows they saw the faces of their forefathers, and in the clinging of the mud they felt the grounding grip of home, like a mother’s embrace.

For nearly an hour, they walked in silence. The earliest showings of dawn began unfurling across the sky in strokes of red and gold.

They walked on. Zendar went ahead, and Finn followed.

He had no memories of their mother. She’d died when he was four. Sometimes, when he tried, he could imagine a feeling, an emotion, but it was like trying to hold on to smoke. It would pass before he could ever really be sure that it had been there in the first place. In the end, all he had of her was what other people told him.

And they told him nothing.

They came to an open stretch of marsh, a small clearing with an emerald pool nestled between the reeds. The water was knee-deep at first, with a soft incline sloping towards the center into dark and obscure depths. Finn caught sight of slow-moving dragonflies in the early morning air, water striders skirting the surface of the pool, and the occasional splash of movement, but the area seemed largely untouched by people, claimed entirely by the wilderness.

“There she is. Lady Manon of Aonenbridge. Our mother.”

Finn crouched, the leather of his jerkin creaked. Zendar followed him and traced a hand across the surface of the pool. The ripples extended from his fingers and carried with them a gentle hush, a sigh, a release. Finn did the same. His fingers touched cool water, and he heard a whisper.

He looked up at Zendar, startled, and found his brother was watching him closely.

Finn fixed his eyes back on the water. The ripples continued to swell until the first of them reached the center of the pool, the deep. There they seemed to pause, hesitate, then continue until they dwindled and were gone. Finn watched the center of the pool, tried and failed to discern a shape in the depths.

She’s right there, he found himself thinking. After all this time.

It was an old Aonen practice for the dead to be returned to the Marsh. Many families still observed these earliest traditions. The deceased would be laid to rest on a platform made primarily of densely packed reedmace and bulrush and left to the elements. The platform would break apart within a few days, and the body would begin to sink, to be claimed by the water. It was a familial practice to visit the sinking site, to touch the water and thus honor the dead, but Finn had never come here. He had never been allowed. Nobody would tell him where his mother had sunk. Until now.

Finn rose. Zendar was still watching him closely.

“Thank you,” Finn murmured. His words were scarcely audible; they caught in his throat.

Zendar placed a hand on his shoulder. Finn saw him nod.

“If you had told me I would be trudging through the mud a day and a night, I would have asked for more gold.”

The stillness of the morning seemed to burst. Finn spun around. Two men stood watching them from a few paces away. One of them stood solemnly, head bowed, with eyes white as snow. The other—small, dirty—emerged from behind the reeds, smiled a toothless grin at them, then sat into a crouch and reached out a hand to touch the water. Finn felt a sudden rush of anger. His hands seized his belt and—

“Stop,” Zendar said. He hadn’t turned, was still looking at the water. “Finn, this is Elder Edrys of the Host of the Hallowhoods. I asked him to meet us here.”

Finn stared at Zendar. He remembered his brother’s words.

I have to speak to her. I may have found a way.

He looked back at Elder Edrys, who had hesitated before his fingers broke the surface of the pool.

Don’t you dare, Finn wanted to say, but, outwardly, remained silent.

The man leaned forward, touched the water, then drew his hand back quickly as if burned. The tether, still half-hidden behind the reeds, stiffened for a moment, then relaxed.

Edrys rose, flexed his fingers, then approached them. He was smiling again, and Finn noticed his mouth was not entirely toothless. There was still at least one stubby yellowing nub on the far right of his jaw.

Edrys held out a hand. “As Lord Zendarus said,” he began, “I am Elder Edrys of the Host of the Hallowhoods. You must be Lord Finric.”

Finn nodded and stared at the man’s hand. He noticed the skin had been burned black in places, marked by an insignia. He recognized the patterns suddenly.

“The Host of the Hallowhoods,” Finn repeated, unbelieving. He turned to Zendar, anger rising in his chest. “You brought a [Grave Robber] to our mother’s grave?”