Ben Holt spread the folder open on the counter of his market stall and weighed each scrap down with a jar. He was fourteen, tall for it, and his blue shirt was torn at the cuff from the last town he had walked out of. Inside the folder he kept the proof: receipts, sketches of bootprints, an apple core sealed in wax paper, a list of towns that fit his father's pattern. On top sat the worst one, a crumpled receipt with the name Barren Holt printed across it in heavy black letters. His father had bought groceries here, in this lot, before Ben ever arrived. Ben smoothed the paper flat and tried to keep his hands from shaking. Seven towns now. He was getting closer, and he knew what closer meant. If he found his father before he was ready, he would be the next name on a list like this one. He was sorting the receipts by date when the noise outside changed. A crowd had formed near the edge of the lot, tight and loud, the way crowds got before something bad happened. Ben stood on his crate to see over the awning. In the middle of the press was a girl his age, brown hair in a ponytail, a short sword on her hip. Behind her, lifted high and bright as stained glass, were two orange and black wings. The crowd pushed in. Someone shouted a price. Ben saw a man at the back peel a paper off a post and check the face on it against hers. A hunting poster. He thought of the old man on the cliff, the one who had grabbed his wrist when he was four and held on without a word until he stopped shaking. Ben shoved the folder into his mail bag and jumped the counter. He drove his shoulder through the ring of bodies. Hands grabbed at his shirt and tore it further. He got an arm around the girl's waist and pulled. "Move," he said. She moved. They broke out the back of the crowd and he ran her low along the row of stalls, ducked under his awning, and dropped the wooden shutter behind them. Outside, the shouting spread the wrong direction. Inside, it was suddenly quiet enough to hear her breathing. She folded her wings tight against her back and put her hand on the sword. Her eyes went to the open folder on the counter, to the receipt on top, to the name. She read it once. Her face did not change. "Aria," she said. "Aria Nightwing." Then she pointed at the receipt. "Barren Holt. That's the man who killed my parents." Ben set his hand on the counter to keep it steady. He had been looking for his father alone for ten years. He was not alone anymore.

Ben latched the shutter and turned back to the girl with the wings. They had a name between them now, and a shared enemy, and no time. He spread the folder across the counter and pointed at the receipt. "He was here three days ago. He won't stay much longer." Aria leaned over the paper. Beside it lay another sheet Ben had pulled off a post that morning, a list in heavy ink under the word Barren and seven names crossed through. She read it without blinking. "Then we go now," she said. "And I have to tell you something first. Barren Holt is my father. I've been working to take him down since I was old enough to understand what he was." Ben's hand stopped on the counter. He looked at her wings, folded tight, and at the sword on her hip. "Your father." "Yes." "And you didn't say it before." "I needed to know if you'd pull me out of that crowd anyway." She held his eyes. "You did." Ben breathed out. He had carried the name alone for ten years. Hearing it from her mouth made it heavier and lighter at once. "We can't walk," he said. "Your wings won't fold long enough. They'll spot you on any road." "Then we ride," she said. They traded the last of Ben's coin and three items from his bag for a striped horse with a mane like a brushfire and a covered wagon with a small door and a lantern hook. Aria climbed into the back and pulled the canvas shut. Ben took the reins. The horse leaned into the harness and the wheels turned. From inside the wagon Aria's voice came low through the boards. "Drive fast." Ben drove fast. The market shrank behind them. Open ground opened ahead, flat and pale under a sky going the wrong color. The storm came down before the first mile marker. Wind hit the canvas sideways. Rain turned the track to grease. Ben felt the back of the wagon drop and heard wood split under him. The horse staggered and stopped. He jumped down into the mud. The rear wheel was in three pieces around the axle. He could see the rim bent past saving. Aria pushed the canvas open a finger's width. Her wings flexed against the inside of the wagon, too big to hide on foot. "How bad," she said. "Bad," Ben said. "Walking puts you in the open. Fixing it costs us a day. He'll be three towns gone by then." Ben wiped rain off his face and made the call. "We fix it." He pulled the wax-paper bundle and a coil of wire from his bag and knelt by the broken wheel. "Stay inside. Don't open that door for anyone but me." Aria's hand closed on the edge of the canvas. "We lose him for now." "We keep you," Ben said. "We find him again." The canvas dropped. Ben bent to the axle and started to work.

Ben drove the last pin into the rebuilt wheel and stood up. His hands were raw. The rain had stopped an hour ago, and the sun was already low. He looked at the wagon, at the striped horse cropping grass beside the road, and at the old wooden post leaning at the shoulder where a faded notice still clung to the grain. The post marked the last village where his father had been seen. They had lost half a day. He told himself half a day was nothing if they kept moving. Aria pushed the canvas open. Her wings spread wide in the open air for the first time since the market. She was not looking at him. She was looking past him, down the road. "Ben." Her voice was flat. "They're already here." He turned. Four men stood at the bend, hoods up, yellow scarves bright against the gray road. The lead one carried a long rifle loose in one hand. Ben knew the shape of them from the notes in his folder. Hunters. His father's hunters. One of them held a sealed scroll out in front of him like a writ, dark ribbon swinging. "Aria Nightwing," the man called. "By order. Step down." Doors opened in the village behind them. People drifted out to the edge of the road and stopped, watching, not coming closer. Aria dropped from the wagon and drew her sword. "Get behind the wheel," she said to Ben. Ben did not get behind the wheel. He pulled the wire coil from his bag and the iron pin he had used on the axle. He stepped up beside her. "We're not running," he said. "Good," she said. The lead hunter raised the rifle. Aria's wings beat once, hard, and she was off the ground and over him before he set the stock. Her blade came down on the barrel and bent it sideways. Ben threw the pin underhand at the second man's knee and heard him drop. The third charged. Ben swung the mail bag, heavy with a week of strangers' gifts, and caught him across the jaw. The fourth ran. The villagers did not cheer. They watched. Aria landed on the lead hunter's chest and put the point of her sword under his chin. "Where is he," she said. The man's eyes moved to the scroll on the ground. Ben picked it up. The ribbon was his father's. He had seen the same ribbon on the receipt three days back. "He's close," Ben said. "He sent them because he knows where we are." Aria stood off the hunter and let him crawl. She looked at Ben. The villagers were already turning back to their doors. "Then he's not running anymore," she said. "He's waiting." Ben tied the scroll to his belt. The half day was gone. The hunt had turned around.

They followed the scroll's trail to the parking lot at the edge of town. A festival was packed into the cracked pavement, stalls and bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder under strings of paper lamps. Ben and Aria pushed into the middle of it. The striped horse trailed behind them, ears flat. At the center of the lot stood a tall wooden post, weathered gray, the kind people tied notices to. Ben stopped beside it. He had carried a broken piece of the wagon wheel under his arm the whole walk in. Aria touched the post once with her palm. "Here," she said. The crowd flowed around them and did not part. Then the music stopped. The crowd pulled back in a slow wave, and Barren stepped through with four hunters at his shoulders, yellow scarves bright, rifles low. He looked at Aria first. He looked at Ben second, and his face did not change. Ben lifted the wheel shard. Aria dropped her sword belt to the ground and raised her fists. "No blade," she said. "I want my hands." Barren smiled a little and waved the hunters forward. The first hunter swung his rifle stock at Ben's head. Ben caught it on the wheel shard and felt the wood crack down to his knuckles. He drove the jagged end into the man's ribs and the hunter folded. Aria was already in the air, one short beat of her wings, and she came down on the second hunter with both fists on his jaw. The third hunter raised his rifle at her back. Ben threw the wheel shard. It hit the barrel and the shot went wide into the lamps overhead. Glass rained down. The striped horse screamed and reared and kicked the third hunter into the post. The crowd stumbled back, then stopped stumbling. They had nowhere to go. Barren and the last hunter were neither winning nor losing. Ben took a rifle butt to the mouth and tasted blood. Aria's wing tore on a knife. She kept swinging. Barren caught Ben by the collar and held him at arm's length and looked at his face for a long second, the way a man looks at a ledger he isn't sure he wants to read. Then a stallholder, an old woman in a white head covering, picked up a length of broken lamp pole and brought it down on the last hunter's shoulder. A boy threw a clay jug. A man in a dark robe stepped in front of Aria and took the next knife on his forearm. The crowd had watched too long. They moved all at once. It was over fast after that. Hands came from every side. The hunters went down under boots and fists and the kicking hooves of the striped horse. Barren let go of Ben's collar to swing at the old woman, and Ben drove his shoulder into his father's stomach and put him on the ground. Aria landed on his chest. Her wings were torn and bright. She did not raise a fist. She only held him down while the crowd closed in around them, and she said, quiet enough that only Ben and Barren heard, "You don't get to make another one of us." Ben pulled the scroll from his belt and dropped it on his father's face. The dark ribbon lay across Barren's eyes. The crowd took him from there. Later, when the lamps were out and the lot was quiet, Ben sat on the curb beside Aria and the striped horse. His mouth was swollen. Her wing was bandaged with strips from a stranger's robe. The old wooden post at the center of the lot still stood. Someone had nailed Barren's torn yellow scarf to it without a word. Ben opened his mail bag and took out the folder he had carried across seven towns. He set it on the pavement between his