Stone Creek's territory did not have a center.
Arvella understood this on the third mile of the journey north — when the forest gave way to the river valley and the river became visible below, silver-fast over smooth stone, carving a path through the landscape with the absolute confidence of water that had been doing the same work for ten thousand years and intended to continue. The river did not care about borders. It ran straight through the place where three territories converged and kept going, and Stone Creek had built itself along the river's indifference — not a compound, not a fixed point, but a network. Clusters of structures at the water's edge, spaced along the bank at intervals that corresponded not to defensive positions or administrative convenience but to the places where t
