Aria’s POV
The mint reached them before we did.
Three days downriver, a girl found a green leaf caught on a fishnet. No Warden mark. No order. Just mint. She crushed it between her fingers and the smell went through the whole settlement. After-rain. After-fear.
That’s what the trader told us when he came upriver with his boat full of cloth and salt. He’d heard the story at the next market: Debt’s pack leaves ridge unarmed. Warden asks without blade. Ridge sends mint.
He didn’t know our names. He knew the leaves.
“Market’s talking,” he said, unloading salt onto Sen’s table. “They say the ridge wrote a border. Not a line. A current.” He set a bundle of cloth down. Blue, like Coren’s.
But this one had tiny green stitches along the edge. Mint leaves, sewn small.
“They sent this,”
