The Cartographer’s Debt
The cell stank of piss and old straw, but Elias Vance had stopped noticing the smell three days ago. What he noticed now was the ink. A thin, rust-colored trickle of it, bleeding from a cracked bottle wedged between the flagstones, tracing a delicate line toward the drain. Even here, even broken and discarded, his eyes measured it. The angle of the flow. The rate of seepage. The way the liquid obeyed the subtle slope of the floor.
He laughed, a dry, hollow sound that scraped his throat. *Old habits.*
The debtors' prison of Thornwell was a squat, windowless warren beneath the city's eastern granary, and it held exactly the kind of men who'd once made Elias grateful for his royal commission. Thieves who'd stolen bread. Farmers who'd lost a harvest to blight. A poet who'd written something unkind about a baron's mistress. They were not criminals, not really. They were simply men who owed more than they could pay, and in Valdris, that was the only crime that mattered.
Elias had been here for six weeks. He knew because he'd counted the days on the wall with a sliver of bone he'd found in his straw mattress, scratching a careful grid into the limestone. Forty-two marks. Forty-two days of thin gruel and thinner hope. His hands, once steady enough to draw a coastline within a hair's breadth of true, now trembled when he tried to hold the bone. His fingers, stained permanently with ink, had begun to lose their calluses.
He was still tracing the ink line with his eyes when the door at the far end of the corridor groaned open.
Boots. Two pairs, by the sound of them. One heavy, one light. The heavy one belonged to a guard, judging by the familiar rhythm of iron-shod heels on stone. The light one was wrong. Too deliberate. Too quiet.
Elias sat up, his back against the damp wall, and watched the shadows shift in the torchlight.
The guard appeared first, a thick-necked man named Corvin who'd taken a perverse pleasure in emptying Elias's slop bucket each morning. But Corvin wasn't looking at him. Corvin was looking at the man behind him, and there was something in the guard's face that Elias had never seen there before. Fear.
The second man stepped into the light.
He was tall, but not imposingly so. Thin, with the kind of lean, wire-taut build that suggested a lifetime of movement rather than muscle. His face was unremarkable—narrow, pale, with a close-cropped beard the color of ash. His clothes were traveler's clothes, plain wool and leather, but they fit too well. They moved with him like a second skin. His eyes were the color of a winter sky, pale and flat, and they found Elias's face with the precision of a surveyor finding a landmark.
"Elias Vance," the man said. Not a question. A statement of fact, delivered with the calm certainty of a man who'd never been wrong in his life.
"Depends who's asking." Elias's voice came out rougher than he'd intended, cracked from disuse and the sour wine the guards sold to prisoners who could afford it. He couldn't afford it.
The man smiled. It was a small, precise thing, barely a movement of the lips. "I am Silas. I work for a man who has need of your particular talents."
"I'm flattered." Elias gestured at the cell around him. "As you can see, I'm quite busy."
Silas's smile didn't waver. He reached into his coat and produced a folded piece of parchment, which he held out through the bars. "Your pardon. Signed by Warlord Kaelen himself, sealed with his own ring. It grants you full release from this place, and full restoration of your rights as a citizen of Valdris."
Elias didn't move. He stared at the parchment, at the familiar shape of a royal seal—no, not royal. Kaelen's seal. The wolf's head, jaws open, ready to devour.
"I know what you're thinking," Silas said, tucking the parchment back into his coat. "You're thinking that a pardon from Kaelen is worth less than the paper it's printed on. You're thinking that a man who's spent his life drawing maps for kings doesn't trust a warlord's promises."
"You're not wrong."
"Kaelen is not a king," Silas agreed. "But he is a man of his word. He has never broken a promise, and he has never made one he couldn't keep. That is why he's survived where other lords have fallen. That is why he will win."
Elias let out a bitter laugh. "Win what? There's nothing left to win. The kingdom's fractured, the lords are squabbling over scraps, and the Ashveil is eating everything it touches. There's no victory in that. Only survival."
Silas tilted his head, studying Elias with those flat, pale eyes. "You speak of the Ashveil as if you know it."
"I know what it was." Elias's voice dropped. "I've drawn maps of it. The old maps, from before the Burning. It was a province once. Farms, villages, a whole people. Now it's ash and poison and things that crawl in the dark."
"And yet you've never set foot in it."
It wasn't a question, but Elias answered anyway. "No. No one in their right mind does."
"Kaelen intends to change that." Silas stepped closer to the bars, close enough that Elias could smell him—soap and leather and something else, something metallic. "He intends to cross the Ashveil. To reach the Hollow's Gate, and from there, the valley beyond. Alder's Hollow."
Elias's blood went cold.
He knew Alder's Hollow. He'd been born there, in a small village called Merrow's Rest, nestled in the green folds of the valley. He'd drawn his first map at his mother's kitchen table, a crude sketch of the village and the river that ran through it, and she'd laughed and called him her little cartographer. He hadn't been back in fifteen years. He'd been too busy climbing the ranks of the royal surveyors, too busy proving that a boy from a farming valley could measure the world with the same precision as any noble-born scholar.
But he remembered it. The smell of the orchards in spring. The sound of the mill wheel turning. The way the mountains rose up on either side, sheltering the valley from the worst of the winds.
"What does Kaelen want with Alder's Hollow?" Elias asked, and he was proud of how steady his voice sounded.
Silas's smile widened, just slightly. "That's not my place to say. My place is to find the right man for the job. And you, Elias Vance, are the right man."
"I'm a disgraced cartographer who's been rotting in a cell for six weeks. I'm not the right man for anything."
"Disgraced?" Silas's eyebrows rose. "Is that what you call it? I call it being the only man in Valdris with the courage to draw what he saw, rather than what he was paid to see."
Elias flinched. The memory came unbidden, sharp and painful as a splinter under the skin. The map he'd drawn of Lord Ashworth's holdings, showing the true boundary of the river—a boundary that cut through a disputed tract of land, revealing that Ashworth had been claiming territory that belonged to his neighbor. The map had been accurate. It had been true. And for that, Elias had been branded a forger, stripped of his commission, and thrown into this cell to rot.
"The map was accurate," Elias said, his voice barely a whisper.
"I know." Silas's voice was soft, almost kind. "That's why Kaelen wants you. He doesn't need a cartographer who draws what he's told. He needs one who draws what's there. The Ashveil doesn't care about politics. It doesn't care about noble feuds or royal decrees. It only cares about what's true. And you, Elias Vance, are the only man in Valdris who can find that truth."
Elias stared at him. The words were honey, sweet and golden, but he'd been stung before. He knew better than to trust a man who smiled like Silas smiled.
"And if I refuse?"
Silas's smile didn't waver, but something shifted in his eyes. A coldness, like frost spreading across a window. "Then you'll stay here. You'll rot. You'll die in this cell, and no one will remember your name except as a cautionary tale about what happens to men who cross their betters."
Elias looked at the ink line on the floor. It had reached the drain now, a thin red thread disappearing into the darkness.
"What's the job?" he asked.
Silas produced a second parchment, this one unrolled and held flat against the bars. It was a map—a rough, incomplete sketch of the Ashveil's western edge, marked with the old provincial boundaries and a few scattered landmarks. But there was something wrong with it. The proportions were off, the distances distorted. It was like looking at a face that had been stretched and pulled out of shape.
"This is what we have," Silas said. "Old surveys, incomplete, unreliable. The Ashveil has changed since the Burning. The ground shifts. The landmarks move. What was a road is now a ravine. What was a village is now a crater. We need you to chart a path through it. A safe path, from the western edge to the Hollow's Gate."
Elias studied the map, his cartographer's eye picking out the errors, the gaps, the places where the unknown swallowed the known. "How many men?"
"Twenty. Soldiers, scouts, a surgeon. Enough to protect you, not enough to draw attention."
"And if I say no?"
Silas folded the map and tucked it back into his coat. "Then I'll find someone else. There are other cartographers in Valdris, though none as good as you. But I'd rather have the best. I'd rather have a man who knows that a map is a promise—a promise to show the truth, no matter how ugly it is."
Elias was silent for a long moment. He thought of his mother's kitchen table. He thought of the map that had ruined him. He thought of the ink line, still bleeding toward the drain.
"One condition," he said.
Silas raised an eyebrow.
"When this is done, when I've charted your path, I want the map of Ashworth's holdings. The one I drew. I want it back."
Silas's smile returned, wider this time. "Done."
The cell door swung open.
---
The air outside the prison was a shock, even after only six weeks. Elias stood in the narrow alley behind the granary, blinking in the pale afternoon light, and breathed in the smell of the city—woodsmoke and horse dung and baking bread. It should have been overwhelming. Instead, it felt like coming home.
Silas led him through the winding streets of Thornwell, past the market square and the guild halls, past the temple with its cracked bells and the fountain where the children played. Elias kept his eyes forward, but his mind was working, cataloging the streets, the alleys, the shortcuts. It was a habit he couldn't break, and he didn't want to.
They stopped at a modest inn near the city's eastern gate. The sign above the door showed a sleeping fox, curled around a bottle of wine. The Fox's Den. Elias had heard of it, though he'd never been inside. It was the kind of place where men came to talk about things they shouldn't, and where other men came to listen.
Silas pushed open the door and gestured for Elias to enter.
The common room was dim, lit only by a few guttering candles and the weak light from the windows. A fire crackled in the hearth, and the smell of roasting meat hung thick in the air. At a table in the corner, a man sat alone, a half-empty tankard in front of him.
He was younger than Elias had expected. Mid-thirties, maybe, with dark hair cropped close to his skull and a face that was handsome in a hard, angular way. His clothes were simple but well-made—a leather jerkin over a linen shirt, sturdy boots, a sword at his hip. His eyes were the color of river stones, gray and cold, and they fixed on Elias the moment he entered the room.
"Elias Vance," the man said, and his voice was low and smooth, like water running over stone. "I've heard a great deal about you."
Elias stopped in the middle of the room. He didn't need Silas to tell him who this was. He could feel it, the weight of the man's presence, the way the air seemed to thicken around him.
"Warlord Kaelen," Elias said.
Kaelen smiled, and it was a strange thing—warm and cold at the same time, like a fire that had burned down to embers. "Please. Sit. Eat. You look like you haven't had a proper meal in weeks."
Elias didn't move. "I've heard a great deal about you too."
"I'm sure you have." Kaelen gestured to the chair across from him. "But I'd rather you judge me by what you see, not what you've heard. Sit."
Elias sat.
The food was good—roast mutton, dark bread, a wedge of cheese that crumbled at the touch. Elias ate slowly, deliberately, forcing himself to savor each bite even as his stomach screamed for more. Kaelen watched him, saying nothing, his tankard cradled in his hands.
When Elias had finished, Kaelen leaned back in his chair. "Silas tells me you've agreed to chart the Ashveil."
"I've agreed to consider it."
Kaelen's smile widened. "I appreciate a man who doesn't rush into things. But I should be clear with you, Elias. This isn't a negotiation. It's a conscription. You'll chart my path through the Ashveil, or you'll go back to that cell and rot. The choice is yours, but I'd prefer you make it quickly."
Elias set down his fork. "And if I chart your path? What then?"
"Then you'll be paid. Generously. And you'll be free to go wherever you like, with my seal of protection and my gratitude."
"And Alder's Hollow?"
Kaelen's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes. "What about it?"
"What do you want with it?"
Kaelen was silent for a long moment. Then he leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his voice dropping to a murmur. "The Hollow's Gate is the only pass through the mountains. It's the only way into the valley. And the valley is the only place in Valdris that still has what we need."
"What do you need?"
"Food. Water. Land that isn't poisoned." Kaelen's voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "The Ashveil is growing. Every year, it spreads a little further. Every year, we lose more ground to the ash and the poison. Alder's Hollow is the last place in this kingdom that can sustain life. And I intend to take it."
Elias's stomach turned. "It's not yours to take. It belongs to the people who live there."
"The people who live there are farmers. Shepherds. They don't have the strength to hold the valley against what's coming." Kaelen's eyes were cold, pitiless. "I do. I can protect them. I can feed them. I can give them a future."
"By conquering them?"
"By saving them." Kaelen's voice was soft, almost gentle. "You don't have to like it, Elias. You just have to draw the map. The rest is my concern."
Elias looked at the table, at the crumbs of bread and the smear of grease from the mutton. He thought of his mother's kitchen table. He thought of the map that had ruined him.
"One map," he said. "I'll draw you one map. And then I'm done."
Kaelen smiled. "That's all I ask."
He extended his hand across the table. Elias stared at it for a long moment, at the calluses and the scars, at the signet ring on the middle finger—the wolf's head, jaws open.
He took the hand.
The grip was firm, almost crushing, and when Kaelen let go, Elias felt the ghost of the pressure lingering on his palm like a brand.
"Welcome to the expedition, Cartographer," Kaelen said. "We leave at dawn."
He laughed, a dry, hollow sound that scraped his throat. *Old habits.*
The debtors' prison of Thornwell was a squat, windowless warren beneath the city's eastern granary, and it held exactly the kind of men who'd once made Elias grateful for his royal commission. Thieves who'd stolen bread. Farmers who'd lost a harvest to blight. A poet who'd written something unkind about a baron's mistress. They were not criminals, not really. They were simply men who owed more than they could pay, and in Valdris, that was the only crime that mattered.
Elias had been here for six weeks. He knew because he'd counted the days on the wall with a sliver of bone he'd found in his straw mattress, scratching a careful grid into the limestone. Forty-two marks. Forty-two days of thin gruel and thinner hope. His hands, once steady enough to draw a coastline within a hair's breadth of true, now trembled when he tried to hold the bone. His fingers, stained permanently with ink, had begun to lose their calluses.
He was still tracing the ink line with his eyes when the door at the far end of the corridor groaned open.
Boots. Two pairs, by the sound of them. One heavy, one light. The heavy one belonged to a guard, judging by the familiar rhythm of iron-shod heels on stone. The light one was wrong. Too deliberate. Too quiet.
Elias sat up, his back against the damp wall, and watched the shadows shift in the torchlight.
The guard appeared first, a thick-necked man named Corvin who'd taken a perverse pleasure in emptying Elias's slop bucket each morning. But Corvin wasn't looking at him. Corvin was looking at the man behind him, and there was something in the guard's face that Elias had never seen there before. Fear.
The second man stepped into the light.
He was tall, but not imposingly so. Thin, with the kind of lean, wire-taut build that suggested a lifetime of movement rather than muscle. His face was unremarkable—narrow, pale, with a close-cropped beard the color of ash. His clothes were traveler's clothes, plain wool and leather, but they fit too well. They moved with him like a second skin. His eyes were the color of a winter sky, pale and flat, and they found Elias's face with the precision of a surveyor finding a landmark.
"Elias Vance," the man said. Not a question. A statement of fact, delivered with the calm certainty of a man who'd never been wrong in his life.
"Depends who's asking." Elias's voice came out rougher than he'd intended, cracked from disuse and the sour wine the guards sold to prisoners who could afford it. He couldn't afford it.
The man smiled. It was a small, precise thing, barely a movement of the lips. "I am Silas. I work for a man who has need of your particular talents."
"I'm flattered." Elias gestured at the cell around him. "As you can see, I'm quite busy."
Silas's smile didn't waver. He reached into his coat and produced a folded piece of parchment, which he held out through the bars. "Your pardon. Signed by Warlord Kaelen himself, sealed with his own ring. It grants you full release from this place, and full restoration of your rights as a citizen of Valdris."
Elias didn't move. He stared at the parchment, at the familiar shape of a royal seal—no, not royal. Kaelen's seal. The wolf's head, jaws open, ready to devour.
"I know what you're thinking," Silas said, tucking the parchment back into his coat. "You're thinking that a pardon from Kaelen is worth less than the paper it's printed on. You're thinking that a man who's spent his life drawing maps for kings doesn't trust a warlord's promises."
"You're not wrong."
"Kaelen is not a king," Silas agreed. "But he is a man of his word. He has never broken a promise, and he has never made one he couldn't keep. That is why he's survived where other lords have fallen. That is why he will win."
Elias let out a bitter laugh. "Win what? There's nothing left to win. The kingdom's fractured, the lords are squabbling over scraps, and the Ashveil is eating everything it touches. There's no victory in that. Only survival."
Silas tilted his head, studying Elias with those flat, pale eyes. "You speak of the Ashveil as if you know it."
"I know what it was." Elias's voice dropped. "I've drawn maps of it. The old maps, from before the Burning. It was a province once. Farms, villages, a whole people. Now it's ash and poison and things that crawl in the dark."
"And yet you've never set foot in it."
It wasn't a question, but Elias answered anyway. "No. No one in their right mind does."
"Kaelen intends to change that." Silas stepped closer to the bars, close enough that Elias could smell him—soap and leather and something else, something metallic. "He intends to cross the Ashveil. To reach the Hollow's Gate, and from there, the valley beyond. Alder's Hollow."
Elias's blood went cold.
He knew Alder's Hollow. He'd been born there, in a small village called Merrow's Rest, nestled in the green folds of the valley. He'd drawn his first map at his mother's kitchen table, a crude sketch of the village and the river that ran through it, and she'd laughed and called him her little cartographer. He hadn't been back in fifteen years. He'd been too busy climbing the ranks of the royal surveyors, too busy proving that a boy from a farming valley could measure the world with the same precision as any noble-born scholar.
But he remembered it. The smell of the orchards in spring. The sound of the mill wheel turning. The way the mountains rose up on either side, sheltering the valley from the worst of the winds.
"What does Kaelen want with Alder's Hollow?" Elias asked, and he was proud of how steady his voice sounded.
Silas's smile widened, just slightly. "That's not my place to say. My place is to find the right man for the job. And you, Elias Vance, are the right man."
"I'm a disgraced cartographer who's been rotting in a cell for six weeks. I'm not the right man for anything."
"Disgraced?" Silas's eyebrows rose. "Is that what you call it? I call it being the only man in Valdris with the courage to draw what he saw, rather than what he was paid to see."
Elias flinched. The memory came unbidden, sharp and painful as a splinter under the skin. The map he'd drawn of Lord Ashworth's holdings, showing the true boundary of the river—a boundary that cut through a disputed tract of land, revealing that Ashworth had been claiming territory that belonged to his neighbor. The map had been accurate. It had been true. And for that, Elias had been branded a forger, stripped of his commission, and thrown into this cell to rot.
"The map was accurate," Elias said, his voice barely a whisper.
"I know." Silas's voice was soft, almost kind. "That's why Kaelen wants you. He doesn't need a cartographer who draws what he's told. He needs one who draws what's there. The Ashveil doesn't care about politics. It doesn't care about noble feuds or royal decrees. It only cares about what's true. And you, Elias Vance, are the only man in Valdris who can find that truth."
Elias stared at him. The words were honey, sweet and golden, but he'd been stung before. He knew better than to trust a man who smiled like Silas smiled.
"And if I refuse?"
Silas's smile didn't waver, but something shifted in his eyes. A coldness, like frost spreading across a window. "Then you'll stay here. You'll rot. You'll die in this cell, and no one will remember your name except as a cautionary tale about what happens to men who cross their betters."
Elias looked at the ink line on the floor. It had reached the drain now, a thin red thread disappearing into the darkness.
"What's the job?" he asked.
Silas produced a second parchment, this one unrolled and held flat against the bars. It was a map—a rough, incomplete sketch of the Ashveil's western edge, marked with the old provincial boundaries and a few scattered landmarks. But there was something wrong with it. The proportions were off, the distances distorted. It was like looking at a face that had been stretched and pulled out of shape.
"This is what we have," Silas said. "Old surveys, incomplete, unreliable. The Ashveil has changed since the Burning. The ground shifts. The landmarks move. What was a road is now a ravine. What was a village is now a crater. We need you to chart a path through it. A safe path, from the western edge to the Hollow's Gate."
Elias studied the map, his cartographer's eye picking out the errors, the gaps, the places where the unknown swallowed the known. "How many men?"
"Twenty. Soldiers, scouts, a surgeon. Enough to protect you, not enough to draw attention."
"And if I say no?"
Silas folded the map and tucked it back into his coat. "Then I'll find someone else. There are other cartographers in Valdris, though none as good as you. But I'd rather have the best. I'd rather have a man who knows that a map is a promise—a promise to show the truth, no matter how ugly it is."
Elias was silent for a long moment. He thought of his mother's kitchen table. He thought of the map that had ruined him. He thought of the ink line, still bleeding toward the drain.
"One condition," he said.
Silas raised an eyebrow.
"When this is done, when I've charted your path, I want the map of Ashworth's holdings. The one I drew. I want it back."
Silas's smile returned, wider this time. "Done."
The cell door swung open.
---
The air outside the prison was a shock, even after only six weeks. Elias stood in the narrow alley behind the granary, blinking in the pale afternoon light, and breathed in the smell of the city—woodsmoke and horse dung and baking bread. It should have been overwhelming. Instead, it felt like coming home.
Silas led him through the winding streets of Thornwell, past the market square and the guild halls, past the temple with its cracked bells and the fountain where the children played. Elias kept his eyes forward, but his mind was working, cataloging the streets, the alleys, the shortcuts. It was a habit he couldn't break, and he didn't want to.
They stopped at a modest inn near the city's eastern gate. The sign above the door showed a sleeping fox, curled around a bottle of wine. The Fox's Den. Elias had heard of it, though he'd never been inside. It was the kind of place where men came to talk about things they shouldn't, and where other men came to listen.
Silas pushed open the door and gestured for Elias to enter.
The common room was dim, lit only by a few guttering candles and the weak light from the windows. A fire crackled in the hearth, and the smell of roasting meat hung thick in the air. At a table in the corner, a man sat alone, a half-empty tankard in front of him.
He was younger than Elias had expected. Mid-thirties, maybe, with dark hair cropped close to his skull and a face that was handsome in a hard, angular way. His clothes were simple but well-made—a leather jerkin over a linen shirt, sturdy boots, a sword at his hip. His eyes were the color of river stones, gray and cold, and they fixed on Elias the moment he entered the room.
"Elias Vance," the man said, and his voice was low and smooth, like water running over stone. "I've heard a great deal about you."
Elias stopped in the middle of the room. He didn't need Silas to tell him who this was. He could feel it, the weight of the man's presence, the way the air seemed to thicken around him.
"Warlord Kaelen," Elias said.
Kaelen smiled, and it was a strange thing—warm and cold at the same time, like a fire that had burned down to embers. "Please. Sit. Eat. You look like you haven't had a proper meal in weeks."
Elias didn't move. "I've heard a great deal about you too."
"I'm sure you have." Kaelen gestured to the chair across from him. "But I'd rather you judge me by what you see, not what you've heard. Sit."
Elias sat.
The food was good—roast mutton, dark bread, a wedge of cheese that crumbled at the touch. Elias ate slowly, deliberately, forcing himself to savor each bite even as his stomach screamed for more. Kaelen watched him, saying nothing, his tankard cradled in his hands.
When Elias had finished, Kaelen leaned back in his chair. "Silas tells me you've agreed to chart the Ashveil."
"I've agreed to consider it."
Kaelen's smile widened. "I appreciate a man who doesn't rush into things. But I should be clear with you, Elias. This isn't a negotiation. It's a conscription. You'll chart my path through the Ashveil, or you'll go back to that cell and rot. The choice is yours, but I'd prefer you make it quickly."
Elias set down his fork. "And if I chart your path? What then?"
"Then you'll be paid. Generously. And you'll be free to go wherever you like, with my seal of protection and my gratitude."
"And Alder's Hollow?"
Kaelen's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes. "What about it?"
"What do you want with it?"
Kaelen was silent for a long moment. Then he leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his voice dropping to a murmur. "The Hollow's Gate is the only pass through the mountains. It's the only way into the valley. And the valley is the only place in Valdris that still has what we need."
"What do you need?"
"Food. Water. Land that isn't poisoned." Kaelen's voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "The Ashveil is growing. Every year, it spreads a little further. Every year, we lose more ground to the ash and the poison. Alder's Hollow is the last place in this kingdom that can sustain life. And I intend to take it."
Elias's stomach turned. "It's not yours to take. It belongs to the people who live there."
"The people who live there are farmers. Shepherds. They don't have the strength to hold the valley against what's coming." Kaelen's eyes were cold, pitiless. "I do. I can protect them. I can feed them. I can give them a future."
"By conquering them?"
"By saving them." Kaelen's voice was soft, almost gentle. "You don't have to like it, Elias. You just have to draw the map. The rest is my concern."
Elias looked at the table, at the crumbs of bread and the smear of grease from the mutton. He thought of his mother's kitchen table. He thought of the map that had ruined him.
"One map," he said. "I'll draw you one map. And then I'm done."
Kaelen smiled. "That's all I ask."
He extended his hand across the table. Elias stared at it for a long moment, at the calluses and the scars, at the signet ring on the middle finger—the wolf's head, jaws open.
He took the hand.
The grip was firm, almost crushing, and when Kaelen let go, Elias felt the ghost of the pressure lingering on his palm like a brand.
"Welcome to the expedition, Cartographer," Kaelen said. "We leave at dawn."