The horn call came too late, but it came. By dawn Lil Nerva heard the raiders fanning through the district. They had found their dead comrade. Boots hammered the alleys. Voices barked door to door. She pressed against a cold wall and counted them by sound. Too many to fight. If she ran now, they would see her green skin from a street away. She needed a way under them, not through them. She remembered the old blind man. People in the district called him Scar, a killer who had quit the trade years ago. Her mentor once said he owed debts to no one and favors to few. Lil Nerva found his door and knocked twice. It opened before her hand dropped. Scar filled the frame, tall, a long coat hanging off his shoulders. One eye was dark and sharp. The other had gone white and blind. He looked at her face, then past her, as if he heard the raiders himself. "The green one," he said. "They're hunting you." He did not ask to come in. He stepped back and let her pass. "I need out of the district," she said. "Unseen." He studied the dagger at her belt. The red stone caught the lamplight. His jaw tightened. "That blade killed one of theirs. That's why they're sweeping." He said it flat, not a question. "He would have talked," she said. Scar grunted. For a moment she thought he would send her back into the street. Then he turned and crossed the room. He kicked aside a rug. Beneath it, worn stone steps dropped into dark. "Smugglers used these before the warlord came," he said. "The tunnel runs under three streets. Comes up past the wall. They don't know it's here." A fist pounded a door nearby. Then another, closer. Scar lit a short candle and held it out. "Why help me?" she asked. "Your teacher kept a man alive she should have killed," he said. "Me." He pushed the candle into her hand. "Go. Don't light it until the stairs end." She went down. The air turned wet and close. Behind her she heard the front door burst. Scar's voice rose, calm, lying easy. Boots stamped above her head. She froze, candle dark, hand on the hilt. The voices argued. Then they moved off. The tunnel ran long and low. She counted her steps the way she counted patrols. When the stone ended she lit the candle. A ladder climbed to a hatch. She pushed it open and came up in a quiet yard beyond the wall. The district lay behind her, still crawling with men who wanted her dead. But they searched empty streets now. She was out, and no one carried her name. She wiped the hatch dust from her hands. Scar had given her one thing more than passage. He had named the man he worked for before he quit. The warlord. And he had told her where the warlord slept.

Lil Nerva reached the empty road past the wall and thought she had won. Then she heard dogs. She turned. Three raiders came through the far tunnel mouth, the one Scar had sent her through. They had found the hatch. Now they swept the dry ground beyond the wall, heads low, fanning wide. One pointed at her boot prints in the dust. The open road offered nothing. No wall, no alley, no shadow to hide her green skin. She ran. The road climbed and bent. Ahead stood a low stone house with a weathered face and a dark arch cut into its base. It looked ordinary, but the arch swallowed the light like a throat. She had seen that kind of door before. Smugglers built such places to hide what moved under them. She sprinted for it and dove into the dark mouth. Inside, the air hit her like a wet rag. The passage sloped down. Shelves lined the walls, crowded with a smuggler's leavings. A dented suit of armor stood in one corner, swords crossed behind it, catching her candle's light. On a shelf sat small sealed jars. She grabbed one and read the faded label. Fox musk. Trappers used it to throw hounds off a scent. The dogs bayed at the arch behind her. She twisted the lid. The amber musk stung her nose. She smeared it across the stone floor and backed deeper into the tunnel, dragging the jar as she went, laying a thick false trail toward a side passage. Then she pressed herself flat behind the armor and went still. The raiders crowded in. Dogs hit the musk and went mad, hauling their handlers toward the side passage, away from her. The men cursed and followed the dogs. Boots scraped past her hiding place. One raider paused an arm's length away. She gripped the dagger. The red stone was dark in her fist. He breathed, spat, and moved on after the others. Their voices faded down the wrong tunnel. Lil Nerva waited until she heard nothing. Then she slipped out from behind the armor and found the shaft she needed, a narrow chimney with iron rungs climbing up. She set the empty jar on a shelf and climbed. The hatch at the top gave onto a quiet slope, far from the dogs, far from the road. She lay in the grass and caught her breath. The raiders were in the ground now, chasing a fox that was not there. They would come up empty and furious. They had lost her, but they knew she lived, and they knew which way she had run. Scar had bought her the district. This house had bought her the open ground. She had the warlord's sleeping place in her head. For the first time she was not running from the raid. She was walking toward the man who ordered it.

Lil Nerva followed the road toward the warlord's sleeping place. She crested a ridge and dropped flat. Below, the road ran through a narrow cut between two rocks. Raiders had blocked it. Four of them lounged by a cart, crossbows across their knees. One checked every traveler who passed. This was the only road ahead. If they saw her green skin, they would know her at once. They would hold the ground and send word. Her trail would end here, and the warlord would learn she was close. She watched for a way around. The rocks rose sheer on both sides. There was no gap, no goat path. She could wait for dark, but the raiders had torches stacked by the cart. They meant to hold the checkpoint all night. "You're thinking of running it." The voice came soft from behind her. Lil Nerva spun with the dagger up. A woman knelt in the grass, hands open and empty. An elf, tall and still, with pale braided hair and a green tunic worn for travel. She had made no sound coming close. Lil Nerva had killed quieter than this and still not moved like that. "You'd die on the road," the elf said. "Crossbows beat a knife." She tilted her head at the raiders. "They burned something of yours. I can see it on you." Lil Nerva kept the blade level. "Why help me?" "I don't like their checkpoints." The elf drew a small glass vial from her belt. Inside swirled a pale fog, bright as a lamp. "This moves you past a wall. One throw, one step. But only one of us goes. There isn't enough for two." Lil Nerva looked at the vial, then at the four men. A trick could leave her stranded in the open. But waiting cost her nothing but trust. "How do I know it works?" The elf uncapped the vial. The fog rose and spun into a glowing veil the size of a door. "Step through where the road bends past the rocks," she said. "You come out beyond them. The men see nothing." She pressed the vial into Lil Nerva's hand. "Go while it holds." Lil Nerva slid down the slope under cover of the mist's glow. The raiders turned toward the light. One stood and shouted. She reached the bend, pushed the vial forward, and stepped into the veil. The world went white and cold. Then she stood on the far side of the cut, the checkpoint behind her. Crossbow bolts rattled off stone where she had been. The men ran to the rocks and found nothing but fading fog. Lil Nerva did not look back. The road ahead lay open to the warlord's door. But the raiders had seen the mist. They would know someone slipped their line. They would wake the warlord's house and tell him a shadow had passed their wall tonight.

The elf woman was gone. Lil Nerva stood on the far side of the cut and turned a full circle. No braids, no green tunic, only grass bending in the wind. The woman had handed her the vial, then slipped away while the mist still glowed. She was the only ally Lil Nerva had beyond the wall. Without her, she faced the warlord's house alone, blind to what waited there. She knelt and found a single boot print pressed into the mud, pointed away from the road. She needed someone who could follow that trail. Hours later she found a half-elf tracker crouched at a stream near the treeline, reading the ground the way others read a page. Kya wore a worn leather vest and a dagger at her hip. A white wolf lay beside her, calm, one eye blue and one green. "You're the green woman the raiders are hunting," Kya said, not looking up. "Your print's heavier on the left. You favor a hurt leg." "I'm looking for someone," Lil Nerva said. "An elf. Pale braids. She vanished at the cut in the rocks." Kya finally stood. She studied Lil Nerva's face, then the dagger at her belt. "Vanished people cost extra. What's she to you?" "She gave me something. I need to know why." Lil Nerva set two coins in Kya's palm. "And I need to reach the warlord before his men wake him." The wolf lifted its head. Kya watched it, then nodded. "He trusts you. That's rare." She pocketed the coins. "Come. The elf passed through here before you did." Kya led her along the stream, reading broken stems and turned stones. The trail bent toward a tree with a house grown into its trunk, wooden rooms wrapped around living branches. A soft light burned in a high window. Kya raised a hand and stopped. "She's inside," Kya whispered. "But she's not alone. Boots came and went. Heavy ones. Raider boots." Lil Nerva climbed the wooden steps. The door stood open. Inside, the elf woman sat at a table, calm, her hands folded. Pale braids. Green tunic. She did not rise. "You followed faster than I thought," the elf said. "You sent me past that checkpoint," Lil Nerva said. "Right into his road. Why?" "Because the warlord fears the dagger your mentor carried." The elf's voice stayed even. "I was your mentor's friend, long ago. When the warlord turned on him, I promised to put the blade where it could cut. You are the blade now." "You let the raiders see the mist." "I did. They ran to tell him a shadow slipped the wall. His house is half-empty tonight, chasing it." The elf stood. "He sleeps behind the hill, in a metal shelter with one door. His guards are at the checkpoint. This was the only hour you'd ever have." Lil Nerva's hand tightened on the dagger. The elf had risked her life, not stolen it. "You could have told me." "You wouldn't have trusted a plan," the elf said. "Only a door. Go. The hour is short." Kya led her over the hill through the dark. Below sat a sleek metal shelter, rounded like an egg, soft light rimming its single door. Two guards slumped by a cold fire. The wolf growled low. Kya touched its neck and it fell silent. "Door's that way," Kya breathed. "I'll hold the fire-side. The wolf takes the first man who wakes." She met Lil Nerva's eyes. "Finish it. For whoever they burned." Lil Nerva crossed the open ground low and fast. The first guard stirred. The wolf struck, dragging him down without a sound. The second reached for his crossbow. Kya's thrown dagger caught his shoulder, and he dropped. Lil Nerva pushed through the metal door. Inside, the warlord sat up in his bunk, reaching for a blade on the wall. He was smaller than she had pictured, gray at the temples, eyes wide in the glow. "You," he said. "The teacher's dog." "Her student," Lil Nerva said. He lunged. She turned the blow and drove the ancient dagger up under his ribs. He gripped her arm, then let go. His weight settled against her, and she lowered him to the floor. The men he had sent to burn children, the students she had buried, all of it narrowed to this one still room. She wiped the dagger and stepped out into gray dawn. Kya waited with the wolf, breathing hard. The elf stood on the hill above them, watching, then turned and walked into the trees. Lil Nerva did not chase her. The debt was paid, the blade was clean, and for the first time since the yard burned, no one was hunting her. She sheathed the dagger, nodded to Kya, and walked back toward the wall as the sun came up.