The Domini saga

Beyond the butcher’s hamlet, the eastern road dips into a caravan camp. Cookfires glow between covered wagons, and pack animals stand tethered beneath the evening sky.

The calm driver from the earlier roadside stop looks up as Kynes approaches. Recognition passes across their face, followed by a small, deliberate nod.

They keep their voice low while several travelers pretend to tend cooking pots, check harnesses, or watch the road. Their attention keeps returning to Kynes, waiting for a reaction.

The camp absorbs the statement. A cook pauses over the pot, a harness buckle goes still, and the nearest travelers exchange quick glances before resuming their chores.

The driver lifts two fingers toward the road. Farther east, a teamster quietly folds a scrap of marked cloth beneath a ledger instead of packing it away.

The marked scrap disappears into the teamster's coat. The eastern road remains open, but the camp now offers a choice: confront the courier, or let the message travel and follow its consequences.

Kynes turns toward Slaan and gives a quiet nod. She closes the journal, its distinctive weave catching one last thread of firelight.

Slaan slips beyond the wagons and out of the camp's sight. A faint shimmer passes over her outline, then the night holds only empty ground.

Invisible, she crosses behind the teamster as the camp resumes its ordinary motions. Her hand finds the marked scrap beneath the ledger and lifts it cleanly from the coat.

The shimmer returns beside Kynes. Slaan's fingers emerge just long enough to place the stolen report into his hand, then vanish again.

Across the fire, the Calm Driver watches the teamster continue eastward, unaware that the message has changed hands. The marked report now rests with Kynes, while its intended recipient waits somewhere beyond the road.

Kynes gives Slaan a small approving nod. The gesture is enough. Her unseen presence withdraws toward the wagons, leaving him with the report and the camp's unguarded voices.

As the fire burns lower, Kynes listens without joining in. Teamsters trade road gossip, naming a washed-out ford, a patient toll collector, and a caravan that turned south after strangers asked too many questions.

The Calm Driver eventually mentions that the eastern road remains open, but several travelers have been asking which camps belong to which companies. No one names Kynes. The warning becomes a clear advantage, not a summons.

Night drags toward morning. Bren secures a quiet patch beside the lee of a loaded wagon, away from the fire and clear of the road. Bedrolls are unrolled there, with the horses and wagons between the sleepers and passing eyes.

Bren answers with a small shift of her gaze toward the sleeping wagons, then settles beside Kynes as though the arrangement had been hers to propose.

The plan passes cleanly through the camp. No one challenges it. Across the fire, Slaan turns a page in her journal, accepting the cover without lifting her eyes.

The driver's quiet adjustment gives Kynes and Bren a clear first departure, while Slaan and Nhal keep the later watch without losing sleep.

Beyond the wagons, the eastern road divides in the darkness. One track follows the open road, while the other bends toward the tree line, waiting for the choice dawn will expose.

The camp sinks into sleep. Bedrolls become still shapes between the wagons, and the fire settles to a red hush.

Kynes points toward the journal tucked beneath Slaan's sleeping arm, then toward the dark road beyond the wagons.

Bren lowers herself beside the bedrolls and studies the two tracks from above, one pale beneath the stars, the other swallowed by trees.

Bren studies the dark tree line, then folds Slaan’s journal beneath the nearest bedroll before rising.

Kynes leads the wagons’ shadowed edge and finds the narrow trail beneath fern and frost. Bren follows, sweeping away the first prints with a branch.

The woods close behind them. By dawn, the caravan camp is gone from sight, and the deer trail brings them to the outskirts of the next town.

A lone town watchman steps from beside the gatepost, one hand resting on his spear. He looks from Kynes to Bren and blocks the unmarked entrance.

The watchman studies the claim, then steps aside. His spear rises from the path, granting the party entry.

As Kynes passes, the watchman scratches the party's description and destination into a wax tablet. The permission is real, but their arrival is no longer private.

Bren crosses the threshold behind Kynes, keeping Slaan's journal tucked beneath her cloak. The gate swings inward, and the tree line disappears behind timber and stone.

Kynes nods thanks as Slaan, Nhal, and Bren pass the watchman and merge into the waking town. The watchman lets them go, his tablet tucked beneath one arm.

Slaan lets her stride carry her past the gate while one concealed hand traces the smallest pattern beneath her cloak.

Therefore, the befuddlement settles over the watchman's wax tablet and the memory behind his eyes, quiet as dust on a road.

The watchman pauses beneath the gate arch. His stylus hovers over the tablet, then marks a line that no longer resembles the party's number, faces, or destination.

Bren keeps walking, the journal's distinctive weave hidden beneath her cloak. Nhal drifts toward the market road, and Slaan folds the spell into the town's ordinary morning noise.

The party's true route remains absent from the watchman's account. Behind them, he turns the tablet over twice, troubled by a report he can no longer trust.