The Last Mark

They left the sixth station with half a waterskin, three strips of dried meat, and a map Seraphine had to keep folded inside her coat to stop the wind taking it.

The route climbed out beneath the fractured sky. They could not see the fracture from the narrow cut, but its light slipped over the stone in pale, wavering bands. Seraphine watched the ground more than the sky. She went first, rope looped around her waist, and Aren followed with his left hand on the line.

“How far?” he asked.

“Until the next rise. The map puts the seventh station beyond it.”

“That’s what the map says. How far does the rise look?”

“Farther than I want.”

They had saved one drink of water for midday. Seraphine measured it between them and gave Aren the larger share. He tried to push it back. She closed his fingers around the cup with both hands, then remembered his right hand was numb and steadied it for him.

“Drink before you start negotiating,” she said.

He did. The water tasted faintly of the leather in the skin. Seraphine drank the rest.

The climb narrowed around a spur of rock. Beyond it, the path crossed an open slope cut by cracks and old ice. There was nowhere to shelter if the fracture’s shadow reached them. Aren looked at the route, then at Seraphine’s scraped knees from the last crossing.

“We can wait until the light moves,” he said.

“And sit here with less water?”

“I meant until the shadow clears.”

“It may not. We don’t know what time means under it.” She checked the line between them. “We go while we can still see the path.”

Aren nodded. He didn’t like how easily she had made the decision. He liked less that he would have made the same one.

They crossed the open slope one at a time. Seraphine stopped at each pale mark set into the rock and waited for Aren to reach her. At the third, she spotted a strip of blue cloth caught under a shelf of stone. It was the color of the map case’s lining.

“Could be old,” she said.

Aren crouched. His right hand wouldn’t close around the edge of the cloth. He used his left to tug it free. It came loose with a little spray of ice, too faded to identify.

“Someone came this way,” he said.

“Someone left this way, at least.” She tucked it into her pocket. “We can decide later whether it means anything.”

They reached the rise near midday. The path bent sharply, and the station lay just beyond it, hidden from view. Aren felt the mark tighten under his sleeve before they saw the first pillar. The dark spread across his shoulder in a branching line; now the skin around it felt too cold, though the stone was warm beneath his left palm.