Dawn came thin and gray over the southern woods. Bert set an easy pace along the hunter’s path, hood back, hands loose at his sides. Jerric matched him step for step, trying not to look like he was trying.

  “Keep your eyes soft,” Bert said. “Hard eyes miss the things that don’t want to be seen.”

  “Soften my eyes,” Jerric muttered. “Right. How soft?”

  “Soft enough to see a boot-print in grass and still not walk into a tree.” Bert shot him a grin. “You’ll get it.”

  They moved under old oaks laced with fog. Twice Bert pointed to nothing, and twice Jerric, squinting, finally caught the small: the bent reed, the lighter patch of moss.

  They took a break in a shallow dell where water made a patient noise under stones. Bert dropped to a crouch and drew idle circles in the dark soil with a twig.

  “You ever meet my mother?” he asked.

  Jerric shook his head. “No. She passed before I was born.”

  Bert gave him a look, half a grin, half a rebuke. “I know when my own mother passed, boy. That’s not what I asked.”

  Jerric frowned, thrown. “Then?”

  “Pat,” Bert said, the name like he’d set down a pack and found it still warm. “She could fling a shoe like a boomerang. I swear by every saint and scoundrel, she once hooked it around a corner and smacked me in the ear for swiping honey from the jar.”

  Jerric laughed, then tried to smother it. “Did it… come back?”

  “Oh, it came back,” Bert said gravely. “And if it didn’t, she had another shoe.”

  Jerric bit down a smile. “And Great Grandpa Billy?”

  “Best laugh in Calmyra,” Bert said, simple as stating north. “You could be knee-deep in trouble, he’d light the room like dawn and make you feel foolish for ever doubting you’d find your feet.”

  Bert’s grin tilted. “Aunt Vicky—now there was a woman with a spine made of tempered truth. I once stole a sweetroll out of her window—just a roll!—she caught me by the collar, carried me to the balcony, and—” He flung his arms wide. “—dangled me over the garden until I promised to put it back crumb by crumb.”

  “You’re making that up,” Jerric said, delighted.

  “Only a little.” Bert wiped his hands on his trousers and rose. “The point is: the dead have hands, if you listen. They don’t always touch—sometimes they nudge.”

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  They pressed on. The woods thickened into a hush that ate footfall. Somewhere a dog barked once, twice—and then didn’t. Jerric froze.

  “Don’t chase ghosts,” Bert murmured, without looking back. “Let ghosts chase you, if they need to.”

  They crested a low rise. West sign: the faint iron reek of a cook-pot, a churned patch where a dozen boots had argued with the earth, scraps of crimson thread snagged on thorn. Bert’s eyes moved the way a hawk’s do, left-right, near-far.

  “Nothing heavy,” he said. “They’re rotating. Counting the trees. Getting comfortable where they shouldn’t.”

  A heartbeat later, the world reached out and nicked him. A low branch, hidden by fog, cracked his temple as he ducked wrong. He swore softly, hand to his brow; blood wet his knuckles.

  Jerric grabbed his arm. “You all right?”

  “Fine,” Bert said, blinking. Then he laughed, a small, surprised sound.

  “That’ll teach me to slander Aunt Vicky. She still throws from strange angles.”

  He pointed with his chin at the mark his stumble had uncovered.

  “But that’s a track we would’ve missed if the woods hadn’t smacked me.”

  They bandaged it at the stream. As Jerric tied the knot, something like cold passed over his shoulders, not weather—attention. He glanced up, searching the gray. Nothing. Only the patient whisper of leaves.

  He didn’t mention it. He just let it sit in his ribs, light as a coin.

  They came home by a different path because Bert always did. When the walls showed through the trees, he clapped Jerric’s shoulder once, firm.

  “You see more when you breathe,” he said. “You fought well last week because you waited. Keep waiting. Let the field come to you.”

  Jerric nodded. He didn’t trust his voice.

  — — —

  Midday in the war room, Petric had the drawers open and a rag in his hand, doing the kind of cleaning that’s really thinking. His knuckles bumped a false bottom. He pried it up and found a narrow book: leather, worn smooth by other hands.

  He opened to a page scored by a heavier pen. Today I lost my temper at Gung. I called it training and it wasn’t. The lines bit deep, as if the writer had wanted to cut more than paper.

  Jorlan stepped in with two cups and a brow already arched. “Didn’t know you kept records.”

  “Didn’t know you could read,” Petric shot back. Their smiles were easy, then not.

  Jorlan set a cup down, read the page over Petric’s shoulder without leaning. He didn’t flinch at the words.

  “You’re not that man,” he said finally.

  “I was,” Petric said.

  “You also closed the book,” Jorlan said. “Write something better in it.”

  Petric stared a moment, then took the quill. He wrote, small and careful: Hold fast. Let them breathe. He left the page open to dry.

  — — —

  Evening burned itself out on the cliffside circle. Petric and Gung faced one another with wooden blades, both barefoot, both quiet.

  They moved without talking until the crack of a missed line snapped the air. Petric hissed, shook out his hand.

  “You’re thinking too much,” Gung said.

  “You’re not thinking enough,” Petric answered.

  A few exchanges later it ended in a draw neither argued. They sat on the stone lip, breathing, looking out at a sea that pretended not to know them.

  Gung said, “When your head runs, anchor it.”

  “How?”

  “One breath, one look, one word,” Gung said. “My word is still. Find yours.”

  Petric turned the advice like a coin between fingers. “I almost shouted at Lysa last week,” he said quietly. “She did nothing wrong.”

  Gung nodded once, the way a man acknowledges a storm on the horizon. “Then fix the air before it breaks.”

  They sat with the quiet until it felt like it was sitting with them.