#things that happened offscreen during Summerchild

[finiansghost]

Moranwen waits, slow searing breaths while the Isle screams around her, for the doorway to close behind her traitor sister. A heartbeat, two, while it dissipates past reopening. She has time. She remembers, to a nicety, what it took the Fisher to kill their father. And her eldest son is more than his namesake ever was, in matters of grim endurance. She saw to that. (Her youngest is already dead. The Tesauai chose expedience over cruelty, and left nothing to chance.)

She knows it's going to be bad. She has enough ice in her heart now to weather any storm of emotion. She reaches, opens. Steps through.

The formless, directionless onslaught of agony bleeding from the stones themselves is replaced by something infinitely more specific. It's not an improvement. Perhaps it's just that the former is something she's had practice at ignoring.

Fresh water instead of salt is also not an improvement. It was probably supposed to be a taunt. Her sister's husband is not as creative as he likes to think. This is as old as the ice in her heart. Her son is dying, but he is not dead yet. And she has breathed for both of them before.

To move him now, to cut him down, will do more damage. That is inevitable, now. Even to set his ribs back in some approximation of their proper place is to do more harm, and very great hurt.

Fortunately, that isn't something Moranwen baulks at.

He is beyond screaming. Beyond sound. Sound needs more breath than reflexive fluttering twitches can manage. This would be… dangerous, if he wasn't. Maybe even to her. Certainly to anyone else in earshot. She will, reluctantly, grant the oath-breaker her sister married some wit; no doubt he thought of that, when he chose this death, and not another.

All her anger is ice. All her anger has been ice for a very long time. The burning flare now, the rage that he would dare to touch her son, takes her by surprise. The song that wells up is death to any who intrude on her now, death and drowning, the binding-together of the Isle's children, the spinning of power into life, the soothing of that helpless reflex that just wastes energy he no longer has to spare.

The Weather Isle's Frost-cold daughter, the False Chaunter's heir as much as Maefel and Rhian's, sings her fury. Sings mine over her last living child, threads healing if not comfort through her song. He knows her, in the moment; his hate tangles with hers. She breathes for them both, tastes salt on her lips, and takes her table-knife to bonds that that were a petty first cruelty.

Braces to catch him; braces for the spike of second-hand agony, the grate of bone on hatchet-splintered bone. Wraps him in what is probably his own discarded cloak. His awareness is falling fast, slipping into sleep, cradled in her power, and that's good; she will have to carry him from here, and that, too, is going to hurt.

[finiansghost]

Lee Corran rides into Caer Guen at the worst possible time. Absolutely the best time he could have made, out of Carycoll well before the winter sun was more than a horizon-shadow, a courier's re-mount at the Meremarch, and now here he is, a little before sunset on a sticky summer night, with a summons from Rob's sister and a deadline that would be a cursed hard ride if he was starting it fresh.

Rob's not, because when you make the promise that you will bloody your own hands in pursuit of what he supposes he must call order, when you make that promise loudly enough that they name you for it, then there are expecations to live up to in the rising days of summer. Call it luck's faint grace that he hasn't fought today, only ridden a long sweep north of the city, and returned in time to have at least eaten something hot.

And the benefits of command mean that other people get to scurry around packing his saddle-bags and tacking a horse for him. Lee helps buckle him back into armour, with the dubious-apologetic air of a man who thinks he should, somehow, have done better. Or that Rob's attempting something impossible. Or - no. Corran. Murray's little brother. He knows Rob can do it, and knows enough about why to be uneasy.

This time of year, out here, it never gets all the way to full dark. Close as makes little odds, for a few hours in the middle, but there's enough light from a waning half-moon to follow the road. And enough light, by the time he reaches Caeruith, that staying on the road isn't taunting the un-laid ghosts.

The moor's tending wide, lately; it's full day, by the time he reaches the Meremarch, and the kind offices of a stablemaster forewarned he would be coming back this way in a hurry. They shoo him out of the way while they change his tack over, feed him small beer and hot porridge, and see him out onto the road again after really very little delay.

So then there's just the long road into winter, the fair morning turned to a drizzle that isn't sure if it wants to be rain or snow. At least the banked road's fairly clear. Throwing his good winter cloak around his shoulders will have to be good enough; he doesn't think he can afford the time to stop.

Mercy, but this is a misery he knows in his bones. Steady trot; this is a courier mount, can do this all day, and never mind what would be best for him. No real way to know - the sun's still rising the the sky, that's all - how much time he has. Or how much longer the road will be. It depends, greatly, on whether the king wants him here. If the king knows he's coming; Rosie didn't mention. Ignore the nagging pull to the left, west of the road, the old and inadvertent magic telling him that way is home; there's nothing there now but mud and rot and remembered misery. Ignore the burning ache. Ignore the cold and damp. Mile after grim mile up the rutted mud of the tithe road to answer his king's call to council, and maybe - if his sister's right, and she usually is - the call to war.