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“We’re going to need you alive and able to walk if we’re going to use you as a hostage.” Nedar’s bow was slung over his shoulder, and his arrows rattled in their sheath.

He was the one who’d shot at them. Except his arrows had missed.

She smiled and closed her eyes again.

“She’s out of it. She doesn’t even realize she’s in enemy hands by the looks of it.” Nedar didn’t lower his voice, and the noise of it was like hammering in her brain.

She lifted a hand to cover her ear.

“Just make sure she doesn’t die, Nedar. Don’t let her sleep. We can’t bargain with a dead woman. Her horse is long gone, so is mine, and the only one we have left is caught in the thorns.” He sounded like he was about to scream.

She hoped he didn’t, her head couldn’t take it.

Rough hands grabbed her and lifted her up into a sitting position, and she felt the rough bark of a tree against her neck and hair.

White light exploded across her vision for a few seconds, and she leaned to the side and vomited.

When she was done, she closed her eyes and tilted her head upward, resting against the tree trunk.

She could hear the men bickering close by, and she finally worked out the long mane of Nedar’s horse had been caught in a bramble bush, and they were trying to work it free.

They had also been sent to pick up a message from a spy in the Rising Wave column, and they hadn’t been able to find it.

Cassak thought the spy hadn’t been able to leave the message for some reason, and Nedar thought they’d been given the wrong location.

Both agreed they couldn’t look for it any longer, though. They had to go as soon as the horse was free.

It didn’t sound as if the horse was cooperating, though. It stamped and tried to throw back its head, then panicked all over again as the brambles kept it in place.

She took stock of her injuries while they were distracted.

She had worked a healing into her cloak, but she wasn’t feeling any better, even though she was gripping the fabric with both hands. It might be that her healing spell had been damaged by the sharp branches.

She needed to remember to work something into her shirts after today, if she somehow escaped. She needed something closer to her skin.

She was always getting others to wear her protections close, but she had put so many layers of protection into her cloak, she’d gotten complacent.

The fight with Revek last night should have been a warning. Once he’d taken her cloak off her, she had been without a shield. But that had only been last night. Less than twelve hours ago.

She hadn’t had time to process everything it meant. And she’d had other issues to deal with.

Still, she was paying the price now.

“Here.” A leather water skin was dropped onto her lap, and she lifted it with shaking hands and sipped at the water carefully, resting a little after each swallow.

“Careful.” It was ripped from her grasp, and she realized she had tipped it to the side and water was spilling onto her cloak.

She rubbed her fingers over the wet patch and found a snarl of ripped threads.

She needed to craft new protections.

Even hastily thrown together ones seem to work well enough in the short term. She assumed their power would dissipate quickly, but she didn’t need them for long.

She dipped her hand into her cloak pocket, so used to the motion she kept her eyes closed. She worked her needle free from where it was woven into the fabric of her pocket for safekeeping. She always kept it threaded with dark brown thread, the same color as her cloak, to make her workings easy to overlook.

She smoothed a hand over the fabric, finding a place with no embroidery on it, and an obvious tear. She lifted it up in front of her and finally opened her eyes.

“What are you doing?”