Ivy found him at the edge of Marrow’s camp, where the trees thinned into a scatter of packed earth and someone had strung a line of drying herbs between two low branches.
“You’re the one who trades north,” she said. Not a question.
The man didn’t look up from what he was doing — turning a strip of leather over in his hands, checking the stitching along one edge. “Depends which north you mean.” His name was Corwin. Marrow’s people called him that when they wanted something fixed and called him worse when he charged for it.
“Fifteen years ago. Maybe more.” Ivy had spent the walk over rehearsing how to ask this without sounding like she was asking. It hadn’t worked. “Anything that used ink the way the pendant does. Anything marked wrong on purpose.”
Corwin’s hands stopped.
He set the lea
