Jones ran down the alley with his coat pulled tight. A throne waited for him in a court he had never seen, and he meant to claim it. But tonight, the court had sent something else first. He could feel the assassin two streets back, close enough to taste iron in the air. He rounded a corner and stopped cold. The little brick cottage he used as a bolt-hole stood open, ivy torn from the doorframe in long green ribbons. Claw marks scored the wood. They had been here. They knew his hiding places now. Jones backed away before the shadow inside could lift its head. He sprinted across the empty lot and dropped to his knees beside a patterned iron disc set into the pavement. His fingers found the seam. He heaved, slid through, and pulled the cover back into place above him. In the dark below, he pressed his mismatched eyes shut and listened. Footsteps passed overhead, paused, and moved on. He was alive. He was also blind, underground, and the court now knew exactly who they were hunting.

Water hit Jones's ankles before his eyes adjusted to the dark. The storm above had found the drain, and the drain had become a throat. He pushed deeper, one hand on the slick wall, the other braced against the current. Somewhere ahead, metal groaned. A broken pipe jutted from the wall, gushing a hard white rope of water. It had torn loose a grate and flung it sideways, twisting the iron like wet paper. The flood slammed Jones into the wreck. His hand struck the grate, and the band on his finger slid free. He lunged after the dull purple gleam, caught it against his palm, and shoved it back on. He would not lose her here. Not for a court, not for a throne. The water was at his chest now. He waded forward and saw it — a small round hatch set into the side of the tunnel, rimmed with old patterned metal. He spun the lever. It fought him. He set his shoulder and turned again, and the seal cracked open. Jones dragged himself through and slammed the hatch shut behind him. Water hammered the door, then quieted to a hiss. He lay on dry stone in a black, still corridor he had not chosen and did not know. He was alive. He was somewhere else now, and something on the other side of this dark had already heard him arrive.

Jones lay still on the dry stone, listening. Something breathed in the dark. Not close, not yet. He needed to see, but a light would mark him as surely as a shout. He weighed the risk and reached into his coat. His thumb found the small metal lighter. He flicked it once. A weak orange flame jumped up and pushed the dark back a few feet. Iron bars lined the corridor on both sides — old cells, rusted shut, stretching further than the flame could reach. Long scratches scored the stone floor between them. Deep ones. Fresh. A wet click sounded from inside the nearest cell. Jones turned the flame toward it. Pitch black eyes caught the light. A hunched shape pressed against the bars, claws curled around the iron. The bars held. Then another click answered from a cell behind him. And another. Jones stood slowly, lighter raised. The cells were cages, and the cages were full. He was not trapped with the thing in the dark. He was walking a hallway lined with them, and every one of them now knew exactly where he was.

Jones held the flame steady. The clicks had become a chorus, but one cell had gone quiet. From inside it, a voice scraped out his name. Not a guess. His name, spoken slow, like something tasted. He stepped closer despite himself. The creature inside pressed a clawed hand to the bars. Purple fur, jagged teeth, eyes like wet coal. At its feet sat a broken slab of stone, runes burned red along the crack. "They sent word ahead," it said. "Down here we read what falls through." Jones glanced at the latch. Tiny screws had worked loose from the hinge plate and lay scattered on the stone. The bar trembled in its bracket. One good push and the door would swing. "Who sent word," Jones said. He kept his voice flat. The creature smiled wider. "The ones who want you off the chair before you sit on it. They wrote it on the stone so we'd know the face. Mismatched eyes. A boy with a claim." It tapped the rune. "Let me out. I'll tell you their name." Jones weighed it. A name was leverage. But a free thing with claws was a problem he couldn't cage twice. He drove his boot into the latch, hard, and slammed the loose bar back into its bracket. Then he kicked the rune-stone through the bars, into the dark behind the creature, out of reach. The thing shrieked. He ran. The corridor swallowed the flame's edge and the cells screamed behind him, but the latch had held. He'd learned two things and kept them both. Someone in the court had paid to have his face described in stone. And whoever they were, they were close enough now to whisper through walls.

Jones ran until the screams behind him thinned to echoes. The corridor forked, then forked again. He dug the old compass from his coat, but the needle hung snapped against the glass, useless. He pocketed it and picked left because left sloped up. The slope ended at a wall of broken ice. Pale blue blocks had crashed down from some vent above, sealing the passage shoulder to ceiling. He pressed a palm to it. Cold bit through his glove. No way through without hours he didn't have. He backtracked. In the next chamber he found the wreck. A rusted hauler, painted red and blue once, lay tipped against the wall, doors pried open, seats slashed. The court's hunters had been here. They had searched it and moved on, which meant they were ahead of him now, not behind. Jones crouched by the wheel well and made himself think. He turned the purple ring on his finger, the black band with its painted flowers, and used the small steady fact of it to slow his breath. The hunters had a direction. He didn't. But a searched room was a room they wouldn't search again. He climbed inside the wreck and pulled the torn seat over himself. He waited. Footsteps passed in the corridor, then faded toward the ice. When they were gone he crawled out and followed their back-trail the other way. He was still lost. But he was no longer wandering blind. He was moving against the current of people who knew the way out.