They left Harrowgate in the dead hour before dawn, and not by the road.
Dorrin the innkeeper found them just as they were slipping down the back stairs. She stood in the kitchen doorway in her nightgown, a cleaver in one hand and a candle in the other, and for a long moment Nathan thought they were finished.
"Veyron men have been asking questions at the market," she said. "Three of them. They'll be at my door by sunrise."
Mira's hand drifted to her blade. "Dorrin—"
"Put that away, girl. If I wanted to sell you, I'd have done it yesterday." The big woman jerked her chin toward the cellar stairs. "My boy was ranked F at fifteen. Veyron didn't want him, and the Guild wouldn't pay him enough to eat. He died on a beast cull, and not one of them came to the burial." Her face hardened. "I don't care what's in your blood. Go."
She led them through the cellar and into a narrow tunnel that smelled of river mud. At its end, a rusted grate opened onto the water. A flat-bottomed barge sat moored below, half-loaded with sacks of grain.
"Bargeman's a friend," Dorrin whispered. "He sails at first light for Calder Reach. Stay quiet and stay low."
Nathan wanted to thank her, but she had already pressed a heavy cloth bundle into his arms and shoved him toward the water. "Eat that. And boy?" Her voice dropped. "Whatever you are, don't let them make you into what they say you are."
They crept onto the barge. Nathan had just settled into the shadows between two grain sacks when the lanterns flared along the dock.
"There," said a calm voice. "Right where I expected."
Mira swore softly. Nathan's stomach dropped.
Four figures stepped out onto the pier, all in blue and gold. At their head stood the man from the Guild hall, the one with the polite smile. Up close he was tall and fair, with a long coat embroidered in silver thread and a crest at his collar that Nathan hadn't noticed before: a pair of wings clutching a sword.
"Lucan Veyron," Mira breathed. "A-rank. Light-bound."
"You know me," Lucan said pleasantly. "Good. It saves time." He lifted one hand, and a pale blue glow gathered around his fingers. "The Council would like a word with your friend. Hand him over, and no one need be hurt."
"He's a child," Mira said.
"He's a signature." Lucan's smile didn't change. "Please. I am being very patient."
The rope holding the barge to the pier was still tied. The bargeman was nowhere in sight. Mira slid forward, wind curling around her wrists, her blade drawn.
"Mira, don't," Nathan whispered.
"Stay down."
She lunged. Her wind blade cut a silver arc through the air, fast and clean, and for a moment it seemed she might win. Two of the guards went sprawling. A third staggered back with a gash across his arm.
Then Lucan raised his hand, and chains of light shot from his fingers.
They wrapped around Mira's arms, her ankles, her throat. She cried out as they dragged her off her feet and slammed her against the dock's edge. The wind around her died like a snuffed flame.
"There," Lucan said gently. "That was unnecessary, wasn't it?"
Nathan felt the cold place behind his ribs stir.
*Don't.* He heard Orla's voice, and the letter's slanted script. *The world will lose you.* He could not use it. He knew he could not use it.
Mira's face was turning red. Her heels scraped weakly against the planks.
"Please," Nathan said. His voice shook. "Let her go."
"Come with me, then."
"I'll—"
"Nathan, *no*," Mira rasped.
He looked at her, at the chains of light biting into her throat, and the decision made itself.
He lifted his hand.
He didn't reach for the guards or for Lucan. He reached very carefully for the chains alone and thought, with all the precision he could gather, *only that.*
The hollow answered.
The chains vanished. They didn't shatter or fade. They simply stopped being there, and Mira dropped to the planks coughing, hands at her throat.
Lucan stumbled back with a sharp breath. For the first time, the smile left his face.
"So it is true," he whispered.
Nathan was already moving. He grabbed Mira under the arms and hauled her toward the barge's rail. The mooring rope was still taut. He drew a breath and pointed at it.
*Only the rope.*
It disappeared. The barge lurched free and swung out into the current, and the dock receded as the river pulled them away. Lucan shouted something behind them. A flare of blue light cut across the water, missed the barge by a hand's width, and hissed out in the mist.
They drifted into the dark, and then into the bend of the river, and the lanterns on the pier shrank to pinpricks and went out.
For a long time, neither of them spoke.
Mira sat against the grain sacks, rubbing her throat. Nathan sat across from her, hands pressed between his knees, trying to breathe.
"What did it take?" she asked finally.
"Nothing."
"Nathan."
"Nothing," he said again, and smiled.
He had been trying to remember his mother's eyes for the last two minutes. Brown, or hazel, or green? He could see her mouth, her hands, the way she folded his shirts. The color of her eyes was gone, as clean and silent as a section of wall.
Behind them, the river carried them south. Ahead lay the capital, and the people who had put his face on the board.