“So… what now?”

  “To the depths if I know, Mara. I haven’t been here since I was twelve, and back then I was leaving, not trying to get back.”

  They stood together at what they agreed must be the unmistakable landmark where the river emerged from the hills and the guide would meet them, their words all but engulfed by the pounding crash of water.

  Mara tipped her head back, gazing up at the towering cliff from which the waterfall tumbled. They’d come upon it with no warning. For three days after the Songbird, they’d trekked through the Smokestacks with no indication that the terrain was changing. They could have been walking in circles for all she could tell, if not for the steady direction of the compass.

  And then, out of nowhere on the morning of the fourth day… this.

  The cliff rose up over them, tall as a Loftland pine and broad enough she couldn’t see where it fell away to either side. It stretched out in either direction, straight enough it brought to mind a manmade wall more than a geographic feature. Mara might have thought it was manmade, if not for the fact that it was clearly a thing of the land—as if the ground had simply split apart, one half of the earth sliding down while the other shot up.

  Surely, this was where the guide was meant to meet them, but they’d been waiting for four hours and night was about to fall.

  “Is it meant to take this long?”

  “Mara, I don’t know.” Eli sat beside her on a fallen log, studying the pool with an expression of troubled confusion that didn’t assuage her own growing trepidation. Nick played at their feet, digging a hole in the soft, wet earth for reasons unknown to Mara but nonetheless deeply important to him.

  “Should we make camp here?”

  Eli sighed and looked to the sun, flirting with the trees on the far side of the river. “Let’s. Maybe they only come by once a day, and we missed the window today.”

  “Yeah,” Mara said. “I bet that’s it.”

  They stood and hefted their packs, and Mara had just crouched to clean off Nick’s hands when Eli froze. She went still as well, one finger pressed to her lips, eyes piercing her son with unspoken command.

  “Human,” Eli whispered after a few heartbeats. “Hide.”

  They’d already formulated a plan for this meeting—how she and Nick would tuck themselves away in case whoever came upon them wasn’t the guide, or in case it was the guide and something else went wrong. They’d even picked out a particular hiding spot in the hours they’d been waiting—a tumble of massive rocks near the base of the cliff. She could watch from there, but the vegetation nearby was thick enough she could also slip away into the forest if needed.

  She took Nick there now and stood where she could just peek through a narrow slit where two of the rocks met. “You have to be extra quiet, my love,” she told Nick, and in the back of her mind she wondered what long-term damage all this being quiet was doing to her son’s development. Children were meant to be loud and inhibited. They shouldn’t acquiesce as easily as Nick did, his little face fixed into solemn lines of understanding.

  Pressing a kiss to his cheek and closing the door on worries for which she didn’t yet have the time, Mara turned her attention back to present worries. To Eli, who sat on the log where she’d left him, placidly watching the water thunder down into the pool like he’d wandered into the most forbidding woodland on the continent during his afternoon ramble and had simply stopped to rest his legs and enjoy the view.

  They waited for five minutes. Ten. Mara had just reached into her pocket to check the watch a third time when movement caught her eye and Eli stood. In no evident rush, he turned to face the man who emerged from the trees. Mara’s first impression of the newcomer was simply large. Heavily muscled and broad as a barn, he stood at least half a foot taller than Eli, who stood several inches taller than Mara, who was herself no dainty flower.

  If she’d had time over the last few days to conjure a mental image of the mysterious Smokestacks guide, the reality wasn’t far from what her imagination would have conjured. Aside from his aggressive largeness, he wore a thick beard that concealed much of his face, and his hair hung in a tangle to his shoulders. His clothing, however, was well cared for, his leather boots and vest oiled to a smooth matte finish. He wore a broadsword at his belt and carried a crossbow in his right hand, quiver of bolts at his shoulder.

  Mara watched as the two men studied each other. She’d learned, by now, not to underestimate Eli in a fight, but she still didn’t like how this felt–this hiding, purposeless and impotent, while he stood between her and such a mountainous danger. She might have faith in his ability to protect her, but her concern for her own safety had evolved into concern for his.

  But before her pulse could trip from the steady hammer of anxiety into the flutter of outright fear, the hairy man’s face broke into a grin so bright she could see it even through the heavy concealment of his beard.

  “Enjoying the sunshine, are you, brother?”

  Eli’s back was partly to her, so Mara couldn’t see his face. But his tone held a smile no less bright when he replied.

  “Best one can do to warm one’s bones, this far from hearth and home.”

  With a guffaw, the bigger man yanked Eli into a hug that made Mara wince and flex her own shoulders in sympathy. Then he pushed him away, held him by the shoulders, and gave him a little shake. Took his head between two meaty paws, and gave it a little shake. And finally pulled him back in for another spine-cracking hug.

  Eli, for his part, received the affectionate assault with characteristic equanimity, thumping the man a few times on the back in obvious but restrained fondness.

  When they parted, Eli put a hand on the man’s shoulder, leaning close. Mara could make out the low murmur of his voice but not the words and knew that he was giving this man the same briefing he’d given every other person they encountered–I have Davy’s widow with me, and his son. The kid doesn’t know his dad is dead. Best if you don’t spill the secret. As he spoke, the man’s eyes shot unerringly to hers. How he could see her through the tangle of vines, Mara had no idea. But she was unmistakably seen.

  “Hello, there!” he bellowed. “You can come on out now, darling.”

  Mara hesitated until Eli turned to give her a reassuring smile, tipping his head for her to join them. Gathering Nick against her, she circled around the rocks and strode toward them.

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  Depths, but the man was huge. She’d thought it might just be the perspective, but the closer she came the more he loomed. When she reached Eli’s side, she had to tip her head back just to see the man’s face. “Hello.”

  Teeth flashed in a grin behind his beard, but his eyes were heavy with sympathy. He bowed his head and closed his eyes in brief, silent acknowledgment of her loss before his face brightened once more. “Hello yourself, darling. I’m Quint.”

  He stuck out a massive hand and she switched Nick to her left hip before extending her own.

  “Mara.”

  “A lovely name,” he said, his fingers engulfing her hand entirely before he gave it one small, gentle shake, “for a lovely lady.”

  “Gods’ sake,” Eli muttered. “Now I know why they stuck you out here.”

  Dropping Mara’s hand, Quint flashed his grin at Eli before reaching out and engulfing him in another hug, which Eli made a token effort to escape, which transformed the hug into a loose headlock, which Eli managed to escape in earnest with at least the bulk of his dignity intact.

  Nick giggled from where he’d hidden his face in his arm, which drew the giant’s attention.

  “And you must be Nick, then?” Quint said, and Nick peaked out. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir. My name is Quint.”

  Nick stared at the enormous hand held out to him, then looked up at Quint’s face, then at Eli, and finally up at Mara. She raised her eyebrows and scrunched her nose into a silly smile to put him at ease, which warmed into a true one as Nick reached out and wrapped his hand around two of Quint’s fingers.

  “What do you say, Nicky?” Mara asked.

  “Is nice to meet you too, Mister Kint,” Nick mumbled with a bashful grin.

  “So,” Quint said, giving Nick’s hand a final pump before turning to Eli. “Let’s get you lot to the house?”

  Mara’s heart stuttered. Was this it? Was this man about to take them to the Enclave? Eli hadn’t told her anything beyond this point–it didn’t seem that he could. Was it really so close? What would happen when they get there? Would Davy’s parents be there? Tonight? Would she have to meet them in her stiff, smelly trekking clothes? Would she have to hug them and cry with them? Tonight? Would she have to tell Nick the truth? Tonight? Would Davy leave her to her lonely dreams? Now? She wasn’t ready.

  She wasn’t ready.

  Feeling eyes on her, she looked up and her gaze met Eli’s. His expression was caught somewhere between question and concern, eyes searching.

  “To Quint’s house,” he clarified, and she wondered if he’d seen her panic or felt it. The echoes of connection had faded for her in the days since the Songbird, but perhaps it lingered for him. She ought to ask. “The guide’s house,” Eli was saying. “Quint can tell us more, but we won’t reach the Enclave tonight.”

  Having missed the split second exchange that, for Mara, had stretched out into whole minutes, Quint threw his head back and laughed.

  “No,” he chuckled, turning and heading back into the woods. Eli gestured for her to precede him, and she ducked her head and followed after Quint. Ahead of her, his chuckle slid into an amused sigh. “You won’t reach the Enclave tonight.”

  “When will we reach the Enclave?” she asked. Maybe this man hadn’t taken quite so many blood oaths as her companion and she’d finally be able to learn something useful.

  “I’m afraid that kind of talk will have to wait,” Quint answered.

  Maybe not.

  Mara glanced back at Eli, who shrugged. “The Enclave didn’t have the protection of numbers, back when it was first settled,” he explained. “Most of its defense is magical in nature, and the Guide is one of the weakest points in the defense.”

  “Excuse you,” Quint said good naturedly.

  “Especially when the position is manned by loud-mouthed giants who couldn’t naturally retain a secret if their lives literally depended on it,” Eli shot past her.

  “Didn’t you just say you understood why I was entrusted with this esteemed honor?” Quint lobbed back.

  “I said I understand why they wanted to get rid of you for a year or two. I introduce you to Davy’s wife and less than ten seconds later you’re flirting with her.”

  “I wasn’t flirting.” Quint looked over his shoulder to Mara, and she felt like a small child invited to play with slightly older small children. “Did you feel as if I was flirting with you, darling?”

  Mara bit the inside of her lip. “Well nobody else but my mother has ever called me ‘darling,’” she offered–her best effort at a neutral play. “But you both seem to have forgotten that this repartee did start with me asking a question, to which I still haven’t received an answer.”

  Quint laughed, offering her a pleased grin over his shoulder. “And I’ve gone and forgotten what the question was. But if I did remember, I’d probably bet that I didn’t answer because I can’t. As Prince Eli, here, was in the process of explaining when I knocked him off his path, the Guide is indeed a weak point in the Enclave’s magical defenses. As such, there are rituals upon spells upon rules to perform and abide by before I can tell you even the most basic details about where you’re going or how you’re going to get there.”

  “Well at least this process is consistent,” Mara sighed, smiling at Eli’s quiet huff of amusement from behind her.

  “We rebels do seek consistency in our day-to-day,” Quint said agreeably. “We only mean to topple the government, not your sense of equilibrium.”

  Having led them to a place in the cliff face indistinguishable from every other point along the towering granite wall, their guide stopped and turned around. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out three small carved-stone pendants, dangling from loops of twine.. “You’ll need to put these on before we go any further. Wear it inside your shirt. It needs to touch bare skin.”

  Mara eyed the stones dubiously as Eli reached out and took one.

  “What are they?”

  Quint shrugged and jerked a thumb at Eli. “You’ll have to ask him. I haven’t got an ounce of magic in me.”

  “Everyone’s got magic in them, you clown,” Eli grumbled, slipping the twine over his head and tucking the pendant beneath his shirt. He took the remaining two from Quint and turned to Mara. “It’s mostly shadow-casting,” he assured her. “Specific to the illusions and wards over the Guide’s outpost.”

  “Mostly?”

  “Mostly, yes. There’s a thread of persuasion worked in. It tangles the words on the way out if you try to tell anyone else what you’re seeing. It’s how the Enclave protects all its avenues of approach.”

  That did make sense, Mara reasoned. If the place was protected by illusory persuasion, it would be safer if only a limited number of people were able to see through said illusions. And you wouldn’t want those people able to articulate what they were seeing or a few good communicators with pendants could lead a successful, albeit fumbling assault.

  “Clever,” she said, reaching a hand out and hovering her fingers near the stone pendants Eli held out for her. She didn’t have to exert herself to hear the cool static of the shadows–familiar after so long spent living with Davy.

  Dispelling the thought, she took the two remaining pendants and slipped one over her head. The second she tucked it under her shirt and the cool stone touched her skin, the world sharpened, though she hadn’t even notice it had gone out of focus.

  “Oh.” She blinked up at the cliff face, which was not in itself an illusion. What was an illusion was that the wall was unbroken. “Oh my.”

  They stood before a narrow crevasse in the wall, and Mara peered into it–bare earth with a few scraggly plants clinging to life against each wall, stretching into shadow and then into darkness.

  “Nick, my love,” she said, turning to her son. “I want you to close your eyes and help me do some magic, alright?”

  Her son obediently snapped his eyes shut, and she turned them so the cliff was at his back and slipped the last pendant over his head, tucking it under his shirt. “Now when I count to three you’re going to clap your hands and a big hallway is going to appear in the cliff. And Mister Quint will take us down the hallway to a nice warm house to sleep in. Are you ready?”

  Nick nodded vehemently, eyes still squeezed shut, and Mara had to pull her head back to avoid his forehead slamming into her chin. “Alright, one. Two. Three!”

  Nick clapped and his eyes popped open and he looked up at her expectantly.

  “Nicky, you did it!” she exclaimed, spinning around so he could see the cliff face. His little eyebrows shot up, and he looked at Eli.

  “That’s impressive magic, buddy,” he said with a solemn nod. “Well done.”

  “Indeed,” Quint said, leaning against the opening with a lazy grin hiding behind his bushy beard. “Thank you for your help, Prince Nick. Now, come on, the lot of you. I’d like to get home before dark.”