She took the horse's lead silently. Glancing sidelong at Levi, hesitating just long enough to make a point of it, she clucked her tongue and tugged off for the gate as he had instructed. It wasn't like she had any particular quarrel with his directions or any better ideas, but three days was not wholly enough time to distance herself, and her hands still gripped awkwardly inside leather gloves. But it was mollifying to know that the first order of business was the one that mattered most to her.

The best that could be done for a tie-out was the thick leg of a cascade of ivy. The horses settled, she fired a wire high up on the parapet and climbed.

A day where the clouds furled up on each other like sour milk. The sky was nearly the same color as the stone walls and the bare, ugly dirt of the courtyard below left the impression of a dug grave. She pressed her lips together and listened, rather than watched, for Levi's horse. The bastion tower at the hillcrest was the highest point, so that was where she flew.

At its top she found a table so weather-beaten the legs had cracked on one side and knelt askew, a trapdoor, and nothing else. It was a better viewpoint for the surrounding countryside and the substantial and barren fortress below. There, at the west, Levi's compact form on the back of his chestnut horse. The only living things in view, so far, though a cold trickle crept up the back of her neck.