Marina did not run. Every instinct in her told her that running from a hum like the one building in the air around this stranger was exactly as pointless as running from the boundary stones' hollow answer had been the night before, a threat that did not care about distance in the way ordinary danger did.

"Cultivated how," she said instead, keeping her voice level, keeping the woman's attention on words rather than on Halvard, still bound and bleeding in the chair between them.

"The old fashioned way," the woman said, something almost amused in her tone. "Careful breeding across three generations, patience the Custodian has in abundance and most...