Stone swallowed the square one turn at a time. The Hermit led him through a stair hidden behind a countinghouse wall, past the ink-stale dark of a storage room, and into a passage narrow enough to punish every mistake in Ouz’s balance. Lamps burned low in iron cups along the corners. Their light never rose higher than boots and wet stone, leaving the old knight’s city cloak to move ahead like a piece of the passage itself.
Ouz kept one hand against the wall until the left wrist began to shake. Two fingers still answered him; the rest lagged beneath the binding, small betrayals arriving with every step. Pain pulled through the damaged shoulder. When the iron guard over his right stump knocked once against stone, too loud in the passage, both men stopped.
Above them, feet crossed the countinghouse floor. The Hermit lifted one hand without looking back. Ouz held still. Breath stayed shallow inside the ribs. Death’s Awareness opened with the same tired scrape it had carried since Narkala. It caught the passage in pieces: dust shifting overhead, water inside the wall, leather tightening around the Hermit’s sword grip. Above them, two men spoke Ostgardic too softly for meaning. Coin clicked once inside a sleeve. One left foot dragged.
The voices moved away.
The Hermit waited for another count before he continued. He used no lamp of his own. He had already learned the turns, the low beam, the broken edge at the third step. His boots found the safe stones without search. Ouz watched the rhythm despite the pain. Years had passed for the old knight. A different memory sat in those shoulders now, heavier than the one Ouz had carried through death. The body still knew the lesson it had taught.
At the bottom, a narrow door opened beneath an abandoned cooper’s shop. Recent sweeping had left deliberate lines of dust around the workbench and the barrel hoops hanging above it. Two barred shutters faced a brick drain trench outside. Behind stacked staves, a second door offered the only route deeper into the building. The Hermit checked its bottom seam with two fingers and slid a knife through the gap before touching the latch.
“Stand away from the center of the room,” he said in Zhanar.
The warning struck too close to the past. Zhanar on the tongue, clipped short, carrying the old assumption that obedience had already been paid for in work. Ouz moved to the left wall because the habit answered before grief could get in its way.
The rear room had been prepared for a quick departure. A cot and wash basin occupied the wall nearest the drain, while an unmarked travel chest waited beside the single chair. The Hermit secured the outer door with a wedge. Beside the threshold, he set a small bronze ring on the floor and pressed two fingers to its surface. Pressure gathered around the frame, lifting the hairs along Ouz’s neck.
“Formation?” Ouz asked.
“Habit,” the Hermit said.
“You used to call them cages.”
Steel left the scabbard halfway before the sentence finished. The Hermit stood still with the blade angled down in a low guard, quiet enough to pass for restraint and ready enough for truth. His eyes moved over Ouz’s face, the road cuts, the rain hood, the torn cloak, the tied sleeve over the iron guard. They stopped at the left hand.
Ouz kept his voice even. “You do not remember saying it.”
“I remember a boy with a chain mark outside my door,” the Hermit said. “He knew a dead name and spoke of roads turning backward. I remember kicking him into the snow before he finished making the inside of my skull itch.”
“You fed him first.”
“I had made poorer choices that week.”
Ouz almost smiled. The mouth found the shape and failed to keep it. He looked toward the basin instead, because the old man’s face had the wrong amount of distance in it. Two years of winter mornings lived in Ouz. Ropes in the yard. Iye on the roof. A blade tapping on a board. A hand breaking the iron at his ankle. For the Hermit, most of that had never happened.
The old knight slid the sword fully home, though his hand remained on the hilt as he came closer. “Sit.”
Ouz stayed upright.
The Hermit’s gaze sharpened. “If pride held blood inside the body, kings would never die. Sit down before you fall on my floor and make me clean around you.”
The answer landed where it should. Ouz crossed to the cot and lowered himself with care. The knees held. The left hand touched the cot edge and slipped. The Hermit caught his elbow before the fall became visible enough to be named. The grip pulled Narkala across his sight before sense could stop it. Cold metal held his back again while a black-stained worker leaned close, watching for pain in his eyes. Beneath the iron guard, the stump went cold. The Hermit released him at once.
Ouz breathed through his nose until the room steadied.
“I need to see the arm,” the Hermit said.
“Leave it covered.”
“I didn’t ask to admire it.”
“I said no.”
The Hermit looked at the covered stump again. His expression stayed hard, yet the room had shifted. He had heard the refusal beneath the word. He moved to the water jar, poured into the basin, and tore a strip from a clean cloth. “Left hand first.”
Ouz let him take the hand because the left still belonged to the living. The old man worked without pity. That helped. He unwrapped the road binding, checked the knuckles, pressed near the wrist, and watched which pain Ouz hid badly. His fingers were careful around the smallest finger. The curled shape did not improve under touch.
“Break healed wrong,” the Hermit said.
“Several men helped.”
“Generous of them.”
“One wanted me useful. The others only disagreed on how much of me had to remain.”
The Hermit dipped the cloth and cleaned the torn skin inside the palm. “You collect poor company.”
“I learned from masters.”
A dry sound came from the old knight. Almost a laugh. It ended too early.
Beyond the hidden room, road bells and drain water carried the city around them. Search orders would already be moving out from the square, built from Ouz’s limp, the iron guard, the torn cloak, and whatever name the skull masks had taken from witnesses. One look had been enough for the black-robed mage to choose pursuit by calculation, and Ostgard’s quiet channels would carry his order faster than shouted alarm.
The Hermit tied the fresh cloth tight enough to support the wrist. “Thumb still listens. Index and middle can work. Ring finger follows late. The little finger has settled wrong inside the old damage.”
Ouz looked at the binding. “Can it be fixed?”
“With time, proper splinting, and a healer who knows hands better than pride. If the joint stiffens further, you keep a hook where a finger used to be.” The old man’s hand paused on the knot. “Who had you?”
“Samrajya. A city called Narkala.”
“Samrajya learned to build careful rooms before you were born.”
“They had Ostgard tools.”
The Hermit’s face closed a little. “A great many poisons wear Ostgard metal.”
Ouz watched him. “Is this the Roundtable’s capital?”
The cloth knot pulled tighter than the wound needed. For a breath, the Hermit kept his eyes on the binding instead of Ouz’s face. “Where did you learn that name?”
Ouz flexed the two useful fingers and felt pain answer cleanly. “If I tell the same story, you will kick me again.”
“In this condition, a kick would kill you or embarrass me. Neither serves the night.”
“You know I am telling enough truth.”
“I know you are trained enough to choose which truths bleed in front.”
“That sounds like something you taught me.”
“I taught no one who looks at me that way.”
Ouz turned toward the shuttered lamp and the barrel hoops above it. The wet-wood stink filled the room, giving him something physical to hold while the old words worked under the ribs. Dead Calm leveled the surface and left the ache where it could still be used.
“I need the Death Worshippers,” Ouz said.
The Hermit stopped breathing for half a count. “Many idiots say that after reading the wrong temple scrap.”
“I killed one.”
“Idiots also lie.”
“This one called himself Cursed Full Moon. Pale skin. Chakrams. Poison carried in mist. False bodies when the eye trusted too much. His rite was tied to Erlik.”
The Hermit’s eyes hardened at the old name.
Ouz continued before suspicion could close the door. “He killed me more than three hundred times. That part belongs to the story you already hate. I found the way through him. He spoke Erlik’s name when black fire answered me.”
“Black fire,” the Hermit said.
Ouz lifted the covered stump a little. Cold pressure gathered under the iron. “Dead fire. It cost me less before this.”
“Show me.”
“Keep your eyes for something useful.”
The old knight studied him for a while. “That refusal sounded learned.”
“It was expensive.”
From the front room came a faint click. The bronze ring by the door had shifted. The Hermit crossed the floor without noise. His hand touched the wall near the door. Ouz reached for Death’s Awareness and found only pressure behind the eyes until he narrowed his breath. Two boots outside the cooper’s shop. One stopped at the threshold. A staff butt touched stone. A man cleared his throat.
The Hermit drew a little slate from the wall shelf and held it toward Ouz. Written Ostgardic covered one side. Ouz could not read it. The old knight turned it over and tapped the blank face with a fingernail. The sign meant wait.
Ouz did.
A key entered the shop door above. It turned once. The outer door opened. Someone crossed the floorboards, muttered about damp, and kicked a loose hoop aside. Another voice answered from the street. The man inside walked to the back of the shop, stopped above the cellar, and breathed through his mouth.
The Hermit’s fingers rested on the formation mark beside the hidden door.
Ouz lowered his left hand toward the ring knife under his cloak. The two useful fingers found the grip and settled badly around it.
A bell rang somewhere beyond the shop, two low notes followed by one high. The man above cursed and left in haste. The street voice followed. The shop door closed.
The Hermit waited longer than a younger man would have. When he returned to the cot, he looked older.
“Skull patrol?” Ouz asked.
“Messenger and a shop factor who thinks he owns this building.”
“Does he?”
“On paper.”
“That is dangerous in Ostgard.”
The Hermit sat on the only chair. “You know too much about this city and too little. That combination gets men opened.”
“They already tried.”
“Death Worshippers,” the Hermit said. “They were never Ostgard’s. The capital kept records, bought relics, and hired men foolish enough to touch old rites.”
Ouz looked at him. “You know where they are?”
“The capital likes to own everything,” the Hermit said. “It dislikes housing things that remind it of older masters. Bantu cliffs have shrines older than the lake road. Denmoor tolerates what taxes cannot tame. Volodskya spits at the border and pretends it has no part in it. That leaves holes wide enough for dead names.”
“You know the road?”
“I know many roads I should have avoided.”
“I need a road there.”
“You need sleep, a surgeon, and a reason I should not put you under a grain tarp and ship you east.”
Ouz met his eyes. “There was another dead thing. A mage, perhaps, built from corpses and carrying four arms. It could make dead limbs answer. I need to understand that.”
The Hermit’s mouth opened a fraction before discipline closed it again, too quickly to hide the recognition. “Do not describe her,” the Hermit said.
Ouz let the next question die. Wet wood and drain water filled the pause until the old knight gave it a name.
“Livia,” he said. “She was my sister.”
Memory returned with the ruin, white eyes watching from dead flesh while four arms moved under another will. Ouz’s sword had opened her body for the black fire, undoing work someone else had performed with patience.
“I killed her,” Ouz said.
“I watched.”
Ouz looked up.
“From the ridge,” the Hermit said. “Not close enough to hear every word. Close enough to see what mattered.”
Ouz had carried the ruin as another death along the road. Across from him, the Hermit held the same memory in the locked jaw and the hand resting too still beside his sword. Years of waiting had ended before he reached the place himself.
“I didn’t know she was your sister.”
“No. You found the thing I had left too long in the world.” His voice stayed level, and the levelness made it worse. “I lived near Zhanar because of her. Close enough to watch the roads leading to that ruin. Far enough to pretend my exile had cleaner reasons.”
“That is why you were in the square,” Ouz said.
The Hermit’s gaze returned to him slowly.
“Part of it.”
The answer did not open further. Old work had followed the Hermit west, and some of it still breathed under Ostgard stone.
Ouz lowered his head. “I am sorry.”
“Do not try to make it easy.”
“I am sorry,” Ouz said again. Nothing else he could offer belonged in that room.
The old knight stood. The chair legs scraped once. “I should have done it long before you found her. Years before. Decades, perhaps. The thing wearing her shape had been a wound left open because I could not put my hand where sense told me to put it.”
Ouz looked at the floorboards.
“You did the right work,” the Hermit said. His voice stayed controlled, and that control made every word rougher. “Knowing that does not make me grateful cleanly. Owing you does not stop me from hating the hand that finished it.”
Ouz left the answer alone. The Hermit spent the silence on work, opening the travel chest and moving through its packed layers until he found an herb packet beside a narrow black-cloth case. He left the case in place and brought out the medicine.
“Drink this.”
“What is it?”
“Bitter enough to be medicine. Weak enough to keep you walking.”
Ouz took the cup with two fingers and his palm. The hand shook. The Hermit waited until the liquid almost spilled before he steadied the cup, and that restraint hurt more than assistance would have.
The taste dragged old bark and iron down his throat. His stomach argued. He kept it.
The Hermit noticed where Ouz’s eyes had gone. “You keep watching my feet.”
“You moved in the dark like you knew where every road ended.”
For a while, the old man said nothing. Water dripped from the cloth into the basin. Outside the shutters, a cart rolled over stone and faded into the city noise.
“When I was a boy,” the Hermit said, “a blind man lived in the house. Every board had a weight he remembered. He crossed cluttered rooms without touching the furniture, and a change in breathing told him where a lie had entered. During a fire, men with working eyes lost the door. He walked straight to it.”
Ouz looked at him.
“I had working eyes and more anger than sense. So I copied him. Badly at first. Later, men called it instinct. Knights called it discipline. The Roundtable called it useful. Every name came late.”
The memory reached Ouz stripped of the man’s name. Its lesson had survived through the Hermit’s winter drills and street work. Somewhere in that poorer house, a blind man had begun another road Ouz now owed.
The Hermit picked up a second cloth and threw it at him. Ouz caught it against his chest. “Wipe your face. We leave before the patrol pattern tightens.”
“You are helping me?”
“I am leaving the city. You may limp in the same direction.”
“What about your work?”
The old knight lowered the lid and rested one hand on the unset latch. “It followed me here.”
“The man beside the king,” Ouz said. “The one in black.”
The Hermit’s hand stayed on the latch a moment longer.
“He saw me in the square,” Ouz said.
“I noticed.”
“You know him?”
“I know the shape of his work. And he saw enough of yours.”
Ouz watched him fold the herb packet shut. “Name?”
“Names are doors in this city. Do not open one because curiosity scratches at the handle.”
“That means the answer matters.”
“It means you are still alive because you ran before asking it.”
Ouz took the cloth and wiped dried blood from his cheek. “If he has my face, the search changes.”
“It already changed.”
“How much time before it reaches this room?”
“Less than you want. More than he likes.”
“You still choose the road with me.”
The Hermit fastened the latch. “I choose the road out of the capital. You may survive beside it if you keep up.”
“My horse is near the lower bridge,” Ouz said. “Cheap stable under the arches. Wounded left foreleg. Brown gelding.”
The Hermit looked at the bound left hand, the iron guard, and the way Ouz’s weight had settled wrong on the cot. “Can it still carry you?”
“Far enough.”
“That is the sort of answer men give when they want another man to discover the lie on the road.”
“It carried me here.”
The old knight took that for what it was worth and left alone for the lower bridge. When he returned, rain darkened his cloak and mud clung to his boots.
They left through the drain window when the second bell changed the street rhythm. The Hermit moved first, loosening the inner bar and sliding into the brick trench outside. Ouz followed poorly. The iron guard struck the sill. Pain leapt through the shoulder. The Hermit caught his cloak and kept him from hitting the drain face-first.
“Quiet,” the old man said.
“I was quiet.”
“You made too much noise.”
Ouz climbed down with his jaw locked around the answer. Old rainwater moved around his boots. The trench led under the cooper’s yard and out through a culvert whose iron grate had one hinge shaved thin. The Hermit lifted it enough for a man to crawl beneath. Ouz hated the shape of it at once. Narkala had taught his body too much about narrow openings and men waiting at the far end.
The Hermit saw the pause. “I checked the far side before I opened the passage.”
“When?”
“When I left you in the room.”
That answer helped more than pride wanted. Ouz lowered himself into the culvert.
Stone pressed at his back. Water soaked his knees. The right stump had no hand to brace the crawl, so he used forearm, shoulder, and left knuckles until the hand flashed white. Halfway through, breath shortened. He kept moving because stopping would make the passage smaller.
Fresh air reached him carrying horse stink and river mud. Beyond the culvert, a low stable sat under the meeting point of two streets. Ouz’s gelding waited in the rear stall, feed bag over its head and a new wrap around the wounded fetlock. The choice of stall kept it away from the door and most of the yard. One ear lifted when Ouz entered.
“You reached him,” Ouz said.
“The stable boy had enough sense to take coin before asking questions.”
“Did he remember me?”
“He saw a wounded traveler’s horse and an old man with money. I gave him the part of the story he could spend.”
Ouz crossed to the stall and touched the gelding’s neck with the back of his left fingers. The animal kept chewing.
Leaving Ostgard required a different lie for each gate. The Hermit took a covered hospice cart from the stable yard, old enough to smell of boiled linen and poor repairs. The gelding went behind it under a patched cloth, head low, one more tired animal in a city that preferred not to look closely at sickness.
At the first checkpoint, Ouz lay under sacks while the Hermit argued in Ostgardic with the bored cruelty of a man paid to deliver useless things to richer men. The guard stopped listening before the complaint ended and waved the cart onward.
At the second, the old knight wrapped Ouz’s stump in stained cloth and called it river fever from the lower drains. The clerk looked once at the shape under the cloth, wrote the wrong mark on the right slate, and waved them through because paperwork gave him somewhere safer to put his eyes.
Past the outer mills, they abandoned the hospice cart at a shrine stable and took the smaller road with the gelding and a pack mule the Hermit had bought under a false name. The mule carried the food, blankets, spare cloth, and travel clutter that made two hunted men look poor instead of dangerous.
Once the capital fell behind, sleep came in broken pieces. Ouz woke beneath a pilgrim loft where shrine bells marked the dark, and another night found him inside a cave screened by thorn. The other shelters blurred into damp roofs and borrowed corners. The Hermit kept fire away from any place where smoke could carry their route, and each village supplied them only once. Stone changed under the road; the dialects changed with it.
Traveling beside the Hermit made every failure visible. A loose wrist binding tightened before Ouz asked, and the stirrup shortened after one bad dismount. Food stayed within reach of the useful fingers while fever had less room to hide under the old man’s attention. Suspicion remained between them, yet the Hermit kept helping him for reasons Ouz could not name.
On the third morning, Ouz tried to mount before the saddle strap was ready. The left hand slipped. His chest hit leather, and the world went narrow.
The Hermit took his belt and hauled him upright. “Use the stone.”
“I can climb.”
“You can fail loudly.”
Ouz used the stone.
The old man looked at the iron guard after. “You lost the forearm below the elbow.”
“Below the elbow.”
“Clean cut?”
“Blessed Warrior.”
The Hermit’s mouth tightened. “Samrajya?”
“Ishaani.”
“I have heard that name. Mostly from men who had already decided the room needed more wine.”
“He is still alive.”
“Of course he is. Men like that collect other people’s endings.”
Ouz settled into the saddle, breath thin. “He wants the black fire.”
“Men want many things until they learn the price.”
“He is learning the price.”
The Hermit glanced up. “That almost sounded like my student.”
Ouz’s attention dropped to the reins. A breath passed before the old knight’s hand tightened around the mule’s lead; he faced the road and resumed walking without comment.
Bantu Lake appeared through rain four days later, a gray sheet caught between low ridges and dark villages. Denmoor held the eastern shore behind old stone and charter law, with inns that priced a man by his boots before asking his name. The Hermit avoided the main lake road and took them through quarry tracks where water filled the ruts and frogs left small signs in the mud.
At a hill shrine above the lake, Ouz asked, “How far?”
The Hermit studied the cliff line beyond the water. “Another day if your body behaves. Two if it tells the truth.”
“My body lies badly.”
“It has your voice.”
Wind moved across the lake and brought the smell of wet reeds. Ouz adjusted the cloak over the iron guard. The left hand ached under the fresh wrapping. Low Tín held steady only when he kept the breath shallow and regular. Anger wanted speed. The road took what speed it could afford and threw away the rest.
Near evening on the following day, the monastery began to separate from the rain-dark cliff. The stair appeared in broken stretches above the ravine, vanishing behind outcrops before returning higher in the rock. A shift in the cloud exposed plaster beneath stone eaves and timber balconies hanging over the drop. Unlit windows faced the ravine from openings cut deep into the mountain.
“Bad climb,” the Hermit said.
“You said they were here.”
“I also said bad climb.”
“You could stay below.”
“I could have stayed in Ostgard and enjoyed a quieter death.”
At the ravine mouth below the stair, the animals went no farther. The Hermit tied the gelding and mule beneath a leaning pine, checked both knots, and scattered feed where the ground stayed dry. Ouz watched from the first step and measured the climb above them.
The stair rose into rain and stone until the upper ledges disappeared.
“Still want the monastery?” the Hermit asked.
“Yes.”
“Your body disagrees.”
“It has been overruled before.”
“That habit will bury you if you keep mistaking stubbornness for command.”
Ouz put his left hand against the wall and started climbing.
The first hundred steps took strength from his legs. After that, the climb began taking sense. The stair had been cut for men who climbed it every day and for no one else. Water ran down the center groove. Moss slicked the edges. Ouz kept the wall side when the cliff opened, using the iron guard against stone whenever the left hand failed. The Hermit took the outer edge without comment, one shoulder near the drop, leaving Ouz the side with something to fall against.
Near the last turn, Ouz’s left leg failed. He went down against the wall, shoulder striking cold stone. The iron guard scraped the stair. Breath fled his chest. Tín lurched under the ribs, low and crooked.
The Hermit crouched in front of him. “This is a stupid place to prove a point.”
“I’m not proving.”
“You are bleeding through the palm wrap.”
“I noticed.”
“I will carry part of your weight.”
“You will pull the wrist out of place.”
The Hermit’s expression hardened. “You are going to let me carry part of your weight, because falling off this stair gives the monks less reason to talk and gives me more work with the horse.”
Ouz stared at him.
The old man stared back.
Ouz let him take the left side.
The Hermit set a shoulder beneath Ouz’s left side and took hold of the belt, keeping every finger clear of the damaged wrist. They climbed by matching each step to a breath. The shared weight scraped at Ouz’s pride, while warmth through the wet cloaks pulled him back to the snow where he had once been smaller beside the same man.
At the top of the stair, the monastery gate stood open beneath prayer strips gone gray with damp. A wooden bowl beside the threshold held rainwater and two dead beetles. The Hermit stopped before the arch. His attention moved over the entry piece by piece and settled last on the windows giving back no light.
“This place has been arranged for eyes.”
Ouz rested one shoulder against the gatepost. “Hidden?”
“Worse. Expected.”
They entered together.
Inside, the outer court carried the order of a place abandoned for inspection. Sleeping mats had been rolled inside the open cells, and a broom leaned beside one doorway with its straw still straight. The cistern occupied the center of the flagstones. Wet plaster and old ash filled the damp air, threaded with a bitterness that touched the back of Ouz’s tongue. Death’s Awareness stirred before the threat gave itself a shape.
The Hermit pulled a cloth from his pouch and dipped it into a small flask. “Cover your mouth and nose. Don’t breathe deep until you know what rides in it.”
Ouz took it with his left fingers. “Poison?”
“Something is riding the mist. Could be poison. Could be powder or spirit-work pretending to be poison. Let your blood answer before your lungs do.”
Mist seeped through cracks around the cistern and spread low across the flagstones, pale gray until the doorways gave it a trace of blue. Bitterness sharpened through the wet cloth. Dead Venom tightened in Ouz’s blood before thought caught up, and he steadied his breathing long enough for the body’s resistance to name the threat.
A voice reached them from the far side of the court. “You entered uninvited. Return down the mountain.” Neither man yielded ground. The Hermit’s sword had come free without sound; Ouz had missed the draw, and irritation kept fear from taking the whole of his attention.
“I came to speak,” Ouz called.
“You need permission to keep breathing in this court.”
The voice moved through every place the mist reached. The court stripped age and distance from it, leaving no useful direction for Ouz to follow.
The Hermit shifted half a step, placing stone at his back and Ouz outside the easiest killing line. He had made the choice without looking. Ouz felt the old lesson in it and kept his own left side clear.
“I killed Cursed Full Moon,” Ouz said.
Soft laughter moved through the mist. “Children borrow dead men’s names when they wish to look taller.”
“He killed me often enough for me to learn how he fought,” Ouz said. “In the end, I knew him better than he knew me.”
“The apprentice you name would have opened a half-bound cripple before that hand found a weapon.”
The voice had measured his stance, the left wrapping, the iron guard, and the weight he kept off one leg. Someone watched from close enough to read the damage.
Ouz let anger settle under Dead Calm. “These wounds came later. They came from the men holding your apprentice’s leash.”
Silence tightened across the court while mist gathered around the cistern lip. The Hermit lowered his blade a fraction, ready for a threat moving closer.
“Samrajya found your apprentice and used him against a Zhanar camp,” Ouz said. “They believed his rites could be kept on a leash. My black fire broke into the rite. He spoke Erlik’s name, and Aldacı heard him.”
Something shifted near the upper balcony. Death’s Awareness snapped toward the movement and found wet wood behind the mist.
“I bring Aldacı’s warning,” Ouz continued. “He wanted me far from your order.”
Cold metal touched beneath Ouz’s jaw. The knife had reached him without cloth or breath to announce it, its edge angled for a short draw across the throat. Death’s Awareness remained stretched across the court and had found nothing beside him.
The Hermit turned with terrifying speed and found the blade already resting at Ouz’s throat, beyond any strike he could finish safely.
Beside Ouz’s cheek, a pale mask filled the edge of his vision. Fitted plates left no soft seam around the brow, and one eye socket had been sealed beneath a dull white lens. Copper coins overlapped across the lower face, clicking softly with each breath. The hood offered no loose cloth for a grip. One gloved hand held the knife while the other hovered near Ouz’s damaged left wrist, ready to take the useful hand before it moved.
At this distance, the voice belonged to the masked priest alone. “Choose the next words carefully,” the priest said, coins clicking over the mouth. “Lie about Erlik, and I will keep asking until your body answers for you.”
The edge pressed deeper beneath Ouz’s jaw. Blood warmed the blade while the Hermit held his sword ready, trapped outside any safe line of attack.