“Do not touch that.”
Karen remembered that color.
Karen looked first at the hand of the soldier who had spoken. The dirt on his fingertips was suspicious before the document was.
That soil was a different color from the mud outside the main camp. It was the gray earth that clung to you near the north gate.
Karen’s voice came out before Ruan’s.
It was just as the north-gate sentry pushed a metal buckle, set atop a piece of cloth, to the edge of the table. The buckle was half broken, and mud and dried blood were thinly lodged in its grooves. The leather strap was twisted, as if it had been hastily cut away with a knife.
The sentry froze, looking back and forth between Karen and the buckle.
“We found it in the brush outside the north gate. Just before the night shift changed, a shadow got right up to the fence, and we drove it off. This was left behind.”
Ruan looked at Karen before the buckle. Her fingertips stopped for the briefest instant just before they touched the edge of the table. At first, her eyes showed disbelief. Only then did her gaze drive into the inside of the buckle.
Karen reached out at once and turned the buckle over. On the inside was a shallowly carved emblem. It was somewhere between a cracked star and interlocking fangs.
The moment she saw that emblem, Karen’s eyes wavered once, and the knuckles of the fingers gripping the buckle went white.
It was an emblem she had seen before.
But her eyes said she had never expected to see it here again.
Only after that brief denial passed did her face harden.
“Who saw it first?”
“The third watch at the north gate.”
“What other traces were left?”
“A few footprints and a scratch on one of the fence posts. There was also the end of a severed strap and a piece of black cloth. The ground was dry after the rain, so there wasn’t anything more.”
Karen asked no further questions. Instead, she rolled up the buckle in the cloth and drew it toward herself. The movement was so quick and precise that Ruan read it first not as a simple habit of vigilance, but as a reaction born of familiarity.
“I’ll go take a look.”
That short statement caught in Ruan’s mind. Karen had always moved first, but now she had secured the buckle before answering, and in the next moment she was already turning toward the outside of the tent.
“Don’t go alone.”
Karen’s gaze came briefly to Ruan. She did not look as if she meant to be persuaded.
“Two men with me will be enough.”
“Take two and go.”
Two sentries immediately fell in behind her. Karen went out toward the north gate with the buckle and severed strap wrapped in the cloth. Her wet boots pressed briefly into the dirt floor, then vanished from sight.
After that, through the gap in the tent, Ruan saw the position of the flag near the north gate change once. It was a shorter, lower signal than the usual notice for a change of watch. The moment three sentries looked in the same direction at once, Ruan had the sense that something heavier than a simple lost item had been found over there.
The inside of the tent grew quiet again, but the manner of its silence had changed. Sera kept glancing toward the north gate even as she selected medicine bottles, and Orte’s hand paused once as he turned the pages of the ledger. No one asked anything, but the hand choosing medicine bottles and the hand turning records stopped at the same moment. That was enough.
Ruan received another stretcher. It was a supply soldier whose thigh wound had reopened. As the half-healed membrane split apart, he kept the pressure of his hands even. The smell of disinfectant and wet cloth clung heavily to the inside of the tent.
Even so, in one corner of his mind, the carved lines of the emblem he had seen earlier remained caught. Each time two short whistle blasts rang out outside, his fingertips tensed first, ever so slightly. Whenever that happened, Ruan exhaled more slowly and forced his gaze back down to the flesh and stitches before his eyes.
He did not know what it was. But one thing was clear: for the first time, Karen had tried harder to hide her own reaction than the object itself.
The north gate grew noisy when the sun had climbed a little higher. A horse whinnied sharply, and someone’s shout to clear the way came in on the wind.
When Karen returned, the hem of her cloak was wet, and the glove on her right hand was gone. A cut, not very long, ran across the lower part of the back of her hand. One of the sentries who had gone with her had dirt on his forearm, and the other was carrying the severed end of the strap and the piece of black cloth wrapped separately. None of the three raised their voices, but they breathed with the peculiar restraint of people who had smothered a commotion outside before coming in.
The sentry who followed her in lowered his voice further.
“They didn’t get past the inside of the fence. Instead, they abandoned another piece of equipment and fled. There was a knife mark on the post, and a piece of cloth was caught in a crack in the wood. The cloth still smelled of oil. It may have been a sign they were trying to set a fire. They didn’t even look back and spat out one word that sounded like a northern tongue.”
Karen’s jaw tightened once more at those words. Ruan had not heard the word, but he did see her stiffen like someone who had understood the sound.
Before she could open her mouth, Ruan pulled a chair over.
“Sit.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sit.”
This time Karen could not immediately argue. She set the cloth-wrapped buckle, the severed strap, and the black cloth on the table and sat down reluctantly.
Ruan poured water over the wound first to wash away the dirt. The cut was not deep, but if left as it was, it would quickly split open.
“Did a blade graze you?”
“While I was grabbing the strap.”
It was a short answer. Ruan pressed around the back of her hand, then stopped. More than the wound, her hand was cold. Karen did not look like someone who had run back from outside, out of breath. Rather, she looked like someone who had cooled too quickly. On the inside of her wrist, there were also faint abrasions from the buckle’s strap. They looked like traces left by someone who had tried not to let go, and in the end had lost her grip.
He wrung out the disinfectant cloth once more. Even in that brief interval, Karen checked the tent entrance, the buckle on the table, and the direction from which the horses’ cries came outside, one after another. Only then did Ruan clearly notice that her gaze caught more often on the buckle than on the door.
“Is it familiar?”
Karen delayed her answer. The silence was long enough for the disinfectant cloth pressing against the back of her hand to feel colder.
“I’ve seen something similar before.”
“Where?”
Karen’s lips closed once, then opened again.
“In the north. Long ago.”
The north, long ago. It had been given a name, but no specific place. What remained after that one phrase was only the fact that Karen had cut off everything that should have followed.
Ruan did not pry further. He knew that trying to dig it out now would only make Karen close herself off more. Instead, he fixed the hand wrapping the bandage more firmly.
“Then you should have been more careful.”
Karen let out a very small breath. It was neither a laugh nor an excuse.
“I didn’t think it would come this far.”
It was impossible to tell whether she was talking about the buckle, her own past, or the darkness beyond the north gate now. Ruan did not bother to divide that ambiguity. He tied off the end of the bandage and checked only that blood was not seeping through again. The bleeding had stopped. But the look in Karen’s eyes had not yet settled.
The sound of military boots drew near outside. The tent flap was lifted, and Aizen entered. Behind him were a guard captain and two messengers. Aizen’s gaze moved first to the bandage on Karen’s hand, then to the pieces of buckle and cloth on the table, and lastly over Ruan’s face.
“Have you confirmed it?”
Karen bowed her head briefly.
“There were traces of an approach outside the north gate. We stopped them from coming farther in.”
Aizen did not pick up the buckle. He leaned close, looked at the emblem once, then immediately turned his head toward the guard captain.
“Shorten the interval between watches at the north gate. Reconcile the night entry and exit records again, and starting today, add another layer to the access line around the medical tent.”
The guard captain answered at once.
“Yes, sir.”
“Always attach two guards whenever the medical officer moves. Reports come to me first, and make sure no useless talk leaks outside.”
His words were calm, but the decisions had already been made. Ruan could not immediately tell whether those orders were meant to help Karen or to bind the area around himself more tightly. He only had the distinct sense that they contained both.
One of the messengers took out the new entry marker on the spot. The other noted down the position of the stakes in front of the tent. From outside came even the sound of footsteps dragging in new rope.
Karen’s eyes cooled even further. Aizen did not pretend not to see it.
“I know you saw it first. That is precisely why I’m narrowing the perimeter.”
Karen did not argue and merely pressed her lips together, swallowing her words. Her face said she had already calculated that the moment she objected, she would have to explain far more. To Ruan, that brief silence felt far heavier than gratitude or acceptance.
What Aizen did not ask was, if anything, more distinct. Instead of probing into its identity, he was moving on the premise that someone who already knew that identity was inside.
Aizen left one messenger behind and went out. The guard captain also returned at once toward the north gate.
For a moment, silence remained inside the tent. Sera moved two medicine bottles to another spot, and Orte began writing the new access line into a blank space in the ledger. Not a single person raised their voice, but the shape of the space had already changed.
Ruan rose from his seat and lifted the tent flap slightly. Outside stood two sentries who had not been there before. The direction of their spearheads was different from before as well. It was less an angle meant to keep people out than one meant to keep those inside from going out easily. A little farther away, new rope was being wound around stakes, and a board for checking entry was being moved to the front of the medical tent. As the blank spaces Orte had to fill increased, the gaps Ruan could simply pass through would shrink.
“It’s for safety.”
Karen spoke quietly from behind him. It sounded less like an explanation than words she was attaching to herself first.
Ruan let go of the flap. The lines being strung outside were increasing, but the suffocation was entering the tent faster than they were.