Bean perched on Olivia's shoulder as Hina and Olivia walked back to the campsite.

"—and you just... broke it?" Olivia asked with a note of disbelief in her voice.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. What else were you supposed to do with an evil statue of... "Who was the statue of, anyway?"

"That was Ezir of the Wandering Stones. One of the common representations."

"I don't know that one. It was horrifying." And somehow still compelling, even in memory. Hina shivered despite the warmth of the afternoon sun.

"Yes. One of the strange gods. You aren't supposed to say their names, especially when you're in one of their places, not unless you want to attract their attention," Olivia said. "But I think defacing one of their idols—well, I don't think saying its name is any worse than that." Her voice was light, but Hina could hear tension behind it. It wasn't surprising. "In any case, there are shrines and temples to all of them, all through the valley. I don't know that anybody really worships them now, but the temples are still there."

"There were a lot of bones. Most of them were old, but... not all of them."

"You think that people have been going there to... worship?"

"And there was the padlock."

"There was no dust. Not anywhere in that altar room. I remember thinking it when we walked in. I thought it was just because the place was... well, a place of power. But maybe it was people."

"Why would they do that?" Hina wondered. "Sacrifice to that thing?"

"The idol was... breathtaking. Even if it was just a statue, it was so beautiful. I've never seen anything like it. It was just..."

"It was trying to eat you."

"Y-yes."

"What does it offer in exchange?"

"Power. Always power, one kind or another. Usually as a fraction of what they take from the sacrifices. Like the Houses, it's poisoned, but it's there. For those who want to claim it."

"But they aren't as dangerous as the Houses?"

"They don't tend to be, no. They don't tend to operate on the same scale, it's usually limited to the area around the shrine or temple. Though as we've seen, they can be... dangerous enough. The compulsion that thing was sending out—it was much worse than I had expected, more dangerous than anything we should have been dealing with. I—I'm sorry. We should have left with just the bowl. I should have been more careful."

Hina shook her head. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Olivia didn't sound fine. "I took a tincture while we were in there, to help with... processing the stress—I only had the one. I'm better now, all I need is time and rest. I... I'm just glad you were there. Thank you."

"Anytime." Hina definitely wanted to know more about the tincture, but it didn't feel like the right time to ask. "I'm glad you're okay. Do you want to see what I found?"

"Oh, yes. We should split up the proceeds before we get back to camp," Olivia mused. "Better not to do that with a potential audience. My apologies, I got... distracted... by everything else."

"It's okay, I understand. It was—intense. You really think that was less dangerous—no, it's not important right now. I'm glad we got out of there in one piece."

Bean whistled agreeably.

"Yes." Olivia took a breath, and then continued in a more steady tone. "Let's see. I have one beast core, and the stone bowl—you already know about those. And this bracelet. It was on top of the altar." She picked it out of her pocket and held it up. "Here, have a look." She passed it over to Hina.

It was gold in twisted lines that faintly resembled tree branches. "It's pretty," Hina said, "but what does it do?" She passed it back.

"No idea! We'll have to ask someone, or experiment." Olivia sounded almost excited to talk about trinkets. "Trinkets from places like that temple are more frequently safe than the ones from the Houses, but it's always best to wait and ask a professional," she said. "I didn't find anything else—it's a bit of a small haul, I'm afraid, though at least we didn't come back empty-handed. What about you? Did you say you found something other than the token?"

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"This ring." Hina held it up. "Was in the room with all of the bones." It was a simple silver band with strange letters carved into it. "Here." She passed it over to Olivia.

Olivia took it and examined it. "No language that I recognise. Definitely a trinket, though. Anything else?"

"Just the token I showed you earlier, the beast core, and this." Hina held up the black knife. "You were holding it, when..." The knife had a simple triangular blade made from shiny black stone and a wooden handle. The stone was smooth and cool to the touch. She took the ring back, and passed over the knife.

"Creepy. You can see the marks where it was carved—knapped, I think they call it." Olivia turned it over in her hands, looking pensive.

In the distance, an animal howled. Hina stopped walking and looked around, but she couldn't see anything. Rolling hills and dead grass stretched out in every direction, broken up by the occasional copse of trees. The sun was low in the sky. She shook her head. They were a long way away from the Spire.

She started walking again, and caught up with Olivia before looking down at the knife again. "Is it special? You can tell, can't you?"

"I don't—I don't think so. It doesn't feel like a trinket to me."

"How can you tell, exactly?"

"Trinkets have a kind of depth to them, when they touch your ambit. And artifacts are often the same, though it depends on the artifact, of course. I'm not an expert, but you can feel the difference between a normal object and one that's special. Usually, anyway. Mother has several, of course, but there are a couple where I can't tell from touching them—there's a deck of playing cards that lets you influence the order of the deck when you shuffle it, and you can't feel anything at all when you touch that. And she has others that you can feel from all the way across the room."

Hina took the knife back and examined it. The blade looked wickedly sharp, and the surface was faceted. Within her ambit, it didn't register at all. "It does feel... ordinary."

The silver ring, in contrast, resting in the palm of her hand, felt faintly significant. And like it was tugging at her, ever so slightly.

"I think I see what you mean," Hina said slowly. There would be plenty of time to experiment later, she supposed.

"Yes," Olivia said, sounding distracted. "Anything else?"

"No, that's all I found," Hina said. "How do you want to split it up?"

"Let's see." Olivia paused for a moment. "We need to split everything as evenly as we can, of course. But we have wildly different items. Three likely trinkets, two beast cores, a knife that's probably just a knife, and that token, which is... well, I don't know what it is. Not as valuable as a trinket, that's for sure."

Hina nodded, though she wasn't sure Olivia could see it.

"So, I propose," Olivia continued, "that we group the knife, the token and the two beast cores as a set. All together I think they're about as good as an unidentified trinket—a known quantity rather than a gamble. And then we have four sets of items to pick from, which means two each."

"That sounds fair to me," Hina said. "We'll take it in turns to pick one?"

"We can... flip a coin to decide who goes first?"

Hina nodded. "I'll flip." The talk of rigged playing cards was enough that she was a little wary of letting Olivia do it. Though she didn't think that Olivia would try to cheat her, not really.

"All right."

Hina stopped walking and opened her coin purse—which was feeling pretty light—and took out a little copper half-penny. "Spear or sparrow? Ready?"

Olivia nodded.

Hina tossed the coin into the air.

"Spear," Olivia said.

Catching the coin, Hina flipped it on to her wrist to display the image of Llfandr, The Spear of Persted, the ancient hero standing with his arm back, ready to throw. "Spear it is."

"I'll take the bowl."

Hina nodded. "Okay, I'll take the ring." It felt better in her hand than the bracelet had, somehow.

"Bracelet."

"And that leaves me with the rest. Okay, that works for me."

"Are you sure?" Olivia sounded worried. "I don't want you to feel like you're getting the short end of the stick."

"Yeah. The process was fair, and I agreed to it. I'm happy with this little ring and the other bits and pieces. And we did this so you could find some trinkets, after all. I think we've done pretty well."

"Yes, I suppose we have. Here." Olivia handed over a beast core. She smiled faintly. "I'm glad that's dealt with."

They continued on.

"So, really no idea what any of this does?" Hina held the ring up to her eye as she walked. The strange letters were carved into the inside of the ring as well.

"I'm planning to find out about mine in Modmin, they do a good trade in trickets there with all of the sites in the area, there'll be someone who can identify these for us for a fee there."

Bean chirped in approval.

"It would be nice to know. We've been carrying around a lot of stuff..." Hina said. "How do they know?"

"How do they know what?"

"How do they know what the trinkets do? Is it a working? Or what?"

"As I understand it, you get a feel for these things after a while. And then the shape of a trinket often gives you a good guess about what it does, if you've seen enough of them, and as I understand it, there's a working that fills in some of the gaps."

"Huh. I wonder if just anyone can learn it."

"I think so, but I'm sure the full details are at least a bit of a secret."

A few minutes later, they were back at the campsite. Hina waved to the guard who was standing by the nearest wagon, facing outwards towards the wild. He nodded in return.

"Welcome girls. Any trouble out there?" asked the guard, a nervous fellow named Sterg who was about twice Hina's age.

"No, nothing to report," said Olivia.

"Hopefully we're in for a quiet night," the guard said. "We'll hit Modmin tomorrow afternoon. If we don't have any trouble tonight, this'll be the quietest I've ever seen this stretch. Spooky."

"Well, good luck with that," said Olivia. "I'm going to turn in."

"Evening."

Hina looked around the campsite, but couldn't see Kai. He must have been with the guards, playing cards and drinking, or whatever it was they did when they were off duty.

There was another distant howl while Hina was setting up her blanket near Olivia's. She looked out towards the horizon, but couldn't see anything. She shivered.

"I'm going to go see if I can find Kai," she said, "I'll be back in a bit."

"I think I'll try to sleep. See you in the morning."