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knew the whispers had not ended with the worm, but increased—while the part of her that loved Malian, and was Derai to the core, struggled to break free of what seemed a waking nightmare.
    Instead, Nhairin thought, I led Nerion straight to Malian when we fled, as unerringly as if she held a compass and I was north. My oldest friend, she added, rocking again, made me into a traitor to Earl and Heir and House, as well as to myself—Nerion, in whose cause both my face and my leg were cut open, holding the door against the Old Earl when he was bent on her murder.
    The sense of betrayal was gall. Nhairin could taste its bitterness in her mouth.
    The Madness of Jaransor had finally shut out Nerion’s whisper, but the words the Westwind guards called Nhairin—traitor, betrayer, scum—could always work their way into the core of the darkness and find her there, no matter how she had crouched and rocked, trying to hold them out. Traitor, betrayer, scum , Nhairin repeated silently: not because I helped Malian flee Night, but because of what I did at Nerion’s behest. Stilling, she pressed scratched hands to her face, because now that she had stopped long enough to think, she knew it did not matter whether she stayed ahead of winter or not. The Derai Alliance had no tolerance for traitors, and the outsider world, from what little she understood of it, had little truck for the Derai. “So I may have woken,” Nhairin whispered to the grit-laden wind, “but I’m still lost.”
    Lost, the wind whispered back: friendless, homeless, lost . . . Slowly, Nhairin lowered her hands as another thought took hold: she could take her own life. The Honor Code allowed it where a Derai sought to atone for compromised honor or broken oaths. No one would know if she committed suicide out here, and few would care if she was never found, but it was the one way to be certain Nerion could never whisper into her mind again.
    And compel me to do her will, betraying honor and every oath I ever swore, Nhairin thought, drawing her dagger. Besides, the act of restitution was what counted, not whether anyone knew of it.
    â€œLost.” The murmur gusted out of the wind as it veered around, blowing off Jaransor instead of down from the north. Nhairin’s heart thudded sharply, but the voice was a sigh against her ear rather than a compulsion in her mind. Yet although she remembered the Gray Lands’ wind well from crossing the plain with Malian, she did not think this voice had been in it then. “A filament for the lost . . . to find their way home by. May it find you out, Nhairin, wherever you are.”
    May it find me ? Nhairin thought, the knife forgotten. Wonder was a ball, lodged in her throat, the stinging in her eyes more than blown grit as dust spiraled about her. Hiding me, Nhairin realized—and although she could not see the filament the wind-voice spoke of, she could sense its presence, unraveling through the swirl of debris. And if she could keep moving, keep following where the thread led . . . Slowly, Nhairin sheathed the blade and rose, grimacing at the flare of pain from her leg, before turning into the wind.
    It occurred to her, as she started out, her sense of a voice within the wind, hiding and guiding her, could simply be the Madness reasserting itself. Some people, she thought—the sort of reflection Nhairin-that-was would have entertained—might say that hope itself was a form of madness, and clinging to it further proof she was deranged. Regardless, she plodded on, and gradually another realization intruded. It was not just that the Madness, once she let it in, had been stronger than Nerion’s hold on her mind. Nhairin could not shake the sense that fact mattered , in some way she could not discern. As though it’s a story I need to tell, she thought, other than to the wind.
    Yet even if she dared return to the Wall, Nhairin doubted anyone there would believe her tale.