The informant caught Maren Goldweaver by the sleeve as she left the transfer office, and his grip told her he already knew. He was a thin man from her block, one of the runners who traded names for bread. Six months of quiet work sat inside her satchel: copied logs, a route to her sister's file before the Registry sealed it. He could end all of it before noon. "You've been asking after the purge," he said. "Wrong questions. Wrong ears." She did not pull away. She had rehearsed this moment in her head for weeks, though not with him. "Walk with me," she said. "You'll want what I'm carrying more than the reward." He walked. That was the first small yes. She led him down through the lower sectors, past shuttered stalls and the notices nailing the lockdown to every post. Her gold earrings knocked against her jaw as she moved. She had worn them on purpose. A woman in gold did not look like a woman about to run. She stopped at a two-level house with iron studs on every plank. The lower level was a forge, doors braced with metal, hammers ringing inside. The blacksmith who worked there was Miller Ironhand, and Maren had chosen him because word in the sector said he armed people the Council wanted disarmed. Miller opened the door with a hammer still in his hand. Tall, blonde, soot up both forearms. He looked at the informant, then at Maren, and his face closed. "No," Miller said. "Not him. Not you." "Hear me for one minute." "You've been in the Registry halls. I've been watched for less." "I've been in them because my sister's file closes this month," Maren said. "He knows. He was going to sell me on the walk here." The informant started to speak. Miller lifted the hammer an inch and the informant stopped. Maren opened her satchel and set a dagger on the workbench. It was small, old, the blade folded in a pattern Miller's eyes went to at once. Her father's. The last thing she owned that could be sold. "You made this," she said. "Ten years ago. Your mark is on the tang." Miller picked it up. Turned it. His jaw shifted. "Where did you get it." "My father bought it from you before the purge. I'm giving it back. In trade." "For what." "For him." She nodded at the informant. "Keep him here until my sister is out. Feed him. Don't hurt him. When she's clear, let him go. He talks now, we all hang." Miller looked at the informant. The informant looked at the hammer. "Enough," Miller said. He set the dagger down on his side of the bench. He shut the door behind Maren with the informant inside. She walked back toward the Registry with three weeks less time than she had this morning, and one blacksmith who now knew her name.

Maren was ten steps down the lane from the forge when boots hit the stones behind her. She turned, hand already inside her satchel. Miller caught up in three strides. He had pulled a coat over his soot-marked shirt and left the hammer behind. "The runner won't go anywhere," he said. "I bolted the inner door. He eats when I say." "Then why are you following me." "Because you're walking to the Records Hall alone, and you won't get past the front step." She stopped. "I've been past it twice this month." "In gold earrings. In clean braids." His eyes moved down her sleeve, over the chain at her wrist. "They log faces like yours. You want the sealed wing, you need someone inside to point at the shelf. You don't have that name yet. I do." Maren felt the ground shift under the plan she had carried for six months. He was right. She had the transfer codes. She did not have the wing. "Who." "Compliance clerk. Owes me for a blade I never charged for. She'll tell you where your sister sits, but she won't speak to a woman dressed like that." They went back to the cottage together. The front door was crowded with locks and hanging keys, planters set along the boards. Inside, she pulled a bundle from the chest under the window. A child's small business suit, patched at both elbows. Her sister's, from the year the schools still ran. She set it aside and took her own tattered work clothes from the shelf. She dressed in the back room. She left the gold in a bowl on the sill. When she came out, Miller was waiting in the front room. He wore a man's gray suit, frayed at the cuffs, the tie knotted loose. The collar sagged the way her father's had sagged after long shifts. Maren stopped in the doorway. Her breath caught. "Where did you get those." "He left them the day he brought me the dagger to sharpen. Said he'd come back for them." Miller pulled the coat straight. "He didn't." She could not speak for a moment. Then she nodded once and walked past him to the door. The Records Hall sat three streets over, tall stone, colored glass in every window. Clerks moved in and out with folders under their arms. Miller and Maren joined the line at the side stair, two tired workers waiting on a stamp. A woman came down the steps toward them. Black hair pulled in a tight bun. Cracked glasses. A gold chain rode at her collar over a dark jacket. She saw Miller first. Her mouth tightened. "Not here," she said. Then her eyes moved to Maren. "Inside. Now. Both of you." Maren followed her up the steps. The clerk's name, Miller had said on the walk, was Delia.

Delia led them down a marble hall lined with numbered doors. She spoke without turning her head. She said the sealed wing was two floors up, that Maren would need to wait in a side office while she pulled a shelf number. Miller walked at Maren's shoulder. His jaw was set. Maren counted the doors and matched them to the codes she had memorized from six months of transfer logs. A bell rang three times from the ceiling. Delia stopped. Clerks poured out of the numbered doors with folders pressed to their chests. A voice on a speaker said lockdown drill, all visitors to the front steps, all staff to assigned stations. Delia's mouth tightened. "Out," she said. "Now. I can't move you during a drill." A uniformed guard rounded the corner behind them, waving people toward the entrance. Maren's stomach dropped. If she left, the informant at Miller's forge would talk before she got another chance. Her sister's file would close by the end of the week. Miller read her face. He stepped past her without a word and drove his fist into the guard's jaw. The guard hit the wall. Delia shouted his name. Miller grabbed Delia's arm and pulled her toward the noise, blocking her view of Maren. "Go," he said over his shoulder. "Two floors. I'll hold her." Maren ran. She took a service door and climbed a narrow stair. On the second landing she stopped, breathing hard. Three corridors branched off. She did not know which one held the sealed wing. The transfer logs had never mapped the inside. A tail flicked around the far corner. Spotted, thin, tipped in cream. She followed it. The tail belonged to a leopard cub no bigger than a lap dog, wings folded soft against its spotted back. It padded down the corridor without looking at her. It stopped at a heavy door, sniffed the seam, and slipped through a gap where the wood had warped. Maren pushed the door open. Shelves. Floor to ceiling, packed with sealed folders, each spine stamped with a code she knew by heart. The sealed wing. The cub sat on a low shelf and watched her with green eyes. "Sorry," she whispered. "Not now." She ran her finger along the spines. G. Goldweaver. She found her sister's file three shelves down, the red closure tag already clipped to the top edge. She pulled it free and shoved it inside her shirt. Boots pounded on the stair below. A man's voice, not Miller's, shouted a name she did not recognize. Then Delia's voice, closer, sharp and clear. "She's up here. Second floor. The sealed wing door is open." Maren pressed her back to the shelves. The file was against her ribs. The cub stretched, yawned, and walked toward the door as if to greet whoever came through it.

Maren pressed her back to the shelves and stared at the file against her ribs. She pulled it free and cracked it open. Half the page was plain: her sister's name, a date, a transfer stamp. The rest was a block of letters and numbers she did not recognize. Not any code from the transfer logs. A cipher. Whoever had moved her sister had hidden the location behind it. She could not read where her sister was. Boots hit the landing below. The cipher would have to wait. She had to get out. The leopard cub sat by the door with its wings half open. It made a low sound in its throat, more purr than growl. In the corridor, a body hit the floor. Then another. Then a third, in slow, heavy thumps. Maren edged to the door and looked out. Two guards lay sprawled on the tile, chests rising and falling, mouths open. One snored. The cub blinked at her like it had done nothing. She did not have time to understand it. She shoved the file back inside her shirt and ran to the tall window at the end of the wing. The latch was stiff. She forced it open. Below, the courtyard was empty. She uncoiled the thin rope she had wound under her belt for six months and never used, tied it to the iron mullion, and dropped it down the stone face of the hall. She climbed out. The rope burned her palms. Her boots hit gravel. She ran. A hand caught her elbow at the corner of the wall. Miller. His knuckles were split. He had a cut above one eye. "Move," he said. They went through side lanes until the Records Hall was behind them. Neither spoke until the cottage door shut and the bolt slid home. Maren dropped the file on the table. The red closure tag caught the lamp. She flattened the pages and pointed at the block of scrambled text. "It's coded," she said. "I can read the header. Not the rest. Not where they took her." Miller looked at it. He did not touch it. "You know anyone who can break it?" Maren did not answer at first. She sat down. She looked at her hands. "One person," she said. "Then we go to him." "Topper." The name came out flat. "He worked ciphers for the Registry before they threw him out. He'll read it in an hour." Miller waited. "I swore I would never ask him for anything again," she said. "He knows that." "Will he do it?" "He'll do it. He'll make me pay for it." She closed the file. The cub sat on the windowsill outside, tail wrapped around its paws, watching her through the glass. "Sleep an hour," she said. "Then we find him."

Maren sat on the bench in the forge while Miller wrapped her forearm. The rope had opened a long scrape when she climbed down the Records Hall wall. Blood had soaked through her sleeve on the walk back. She kept her eyes on the floor. She did not want him to see her face while she thought about where they were going next. "Hold still," Miller said. He tied off the cloth. "Deep, but clean." "Thanks." He stood and went to the rack behind the anvil. He came back with a short sword in a plain sheath. The pommel was set with a dark stone. He laid it on the bench between them. "For your cipher man," he said. "Steel's folded twelve times. Worth more than he'll want to admit." Maren stared at it. She had spent the last hour trying to think of anything she still owned that Topper would take. Her gold was pawned. Her father's dagger was already promised. She had nothing. Without a price at the door, Topper would shut it in her face. "I can't ask you for that." "You didn't." He picked up the sword and held it out. "Take it." She took it. They walked to the edge of town where the stone houses started to lean. Topper's place sat back from the path. Grey stone, a rocking chair on the porch, an empty bottle half sunk in the grass. No smoke from the chimney. Maren slowed. Miller watched her. "You've been here before." "Once." "How once?" She did not answer. He looked at the door, then at her, and his jaw set. She knocked. The door opened on the second try. Topper leaned in the frame with his shirt half undone, hair pushed back, a grin already forming when he saw who it was. "Well," he said. His eyes went down her and back up. "Come back for some more, freckles?" He winked. "I knew you would." Heat climbed Maren's neck. She looked at the boards under her boots. Miller stepped forward before she could speak. He held out the sword flat on both palms. "Payment," he said. "For a cipher. One page." Topper's grin thinned. He looked at Miller. He looked at the blade. He drew it two inches, checked the edge, slid it home. "Folded work," he said. "Fine. Fine." He took the sword and tucked it under his arm. "Inside, then. Both of you. And keep your friend on a leash, Maren, he's staring like he wants my teeth." Miller did not move his eyes off him. Maren stepped past Topper into the dark front room. She pulled the file from inside her coat and set it on his table. The red closure tag showed against the wood. "One page," she said. "Read it now." Topper shut the door behind them.

Two hours passed at Topper's table. Maren paced the front room. The file lay open where he had left it. He sat with his boots up, turning a pencil, humming under his breath. He had not written a single line in the last hour. Miller stood by the door with his arms crossed. He watched Topper the way he watched a hot bar cooling wrong. "You said one page," Maren said. "You said you could read it." "I can read it." Topper tapped the pencil on his teeth. "Reading it and giving it to you are different jobs, freckles." "You took the sword." "I took a sword." He smiled without showing teeth. "Pretty steel. But this cipher is Registry inner-ring. I used to write these. A blade gets me started. It doesn't get me finished." Miller stepped off the wall. "Finish it." "Or what, blacksmith?" Topper spread his hands. "You break my fingers, the page stays quiet. You need me talking." Maren's jaw locked. He was right, and he knew it. Every hour the informant sat in Miller's forge was an hour closer to the red tag on the file turning real. She was about to offer her earrings, her father's tools, anything, when something moved by the window. The leopard cub landed on the sill. Its wings folded against its spotted back. It looked at Maren like it had followed her from the Records Hall on purpose. It probably had. Topper's boots came off the table. He sat forward slowly. The smug drained from his face and left something hungrier behind. "Well now," he said. "That will do nicely." "No," Maren said. "A winged pup. Registry would empty a vault for that." He was already standing. "Leave it with me until sundown. I'll have your page by then. Sword and cub, freckles. That's the price." The cub padded across the floor to Maren's boot. It pressed its head to her shin and started to purr. The sound filled the room like a low kettle. She had known this animal one day. She did not know where it slept or what it ate. She did not know if it could open a latched door. She knew what Topper was. She knew what he would sell it to before nightfall. "No," she said again. Miller looked at her. He did not argue. Maren picked up the file. She closed it over the red tag. She bent and scooped the cub against her chest. Its wings settled against her arm. "Keep the sword," she said. "We're done." Topper's mouth opened. "Maren—" Suddenly the cub began making a whining sound and staring intently at Topper. His eyes glazed over as he looked at the wall. Miller looked at Maren with alarm, but said nothing. Suddenly with zero tone in his voice, Topper begin writing and finished the cipher. Maren grabbed it hurriedly and they scrambled out the door as Topper slumped, head hitting the table. OK so that was twice now the club had saved her butt. What else can this cub do she wondered.

They didn't stop to read the decoded page. Maren shoved it into her coat with the file. The cub rode against her chest, wings folded flat, breathing slow like a child asleep. Miller kept pace beside her, one hand near his belt. They cut through back lanes toward his forge, ready to check on the informant still tied inside. At the last corner Miller stopped her with an arm across her ribs. She followed his eyes. Two guards stood across from the forge door. A third leaned in a doorway two houses down, pretending to smoke. A woman on a stoop watched the shutters and did not blink when a cart rolled past. Someone had talked. Word of the break-in at the Records Hall had crawled through the sectors and settled here. "They're watching every window," Miller said. "The informant?" "Still inside. Gagged. He'll keep an hour, maybe two." Maren pulled back into the shadow of a wall. She finally opened the folded page. A name. A route number. A holding station four days east by cart. Her sister. Alive enough to be moved, close enough to the red tag to be gone by week's end. Her hand shook once. She closed it. "Four days out," she said. "I have to leave now. Tonight." Miller looked at the guards, then at her. "I'm coming." "No." She kept her voice under the wind. "You've done enough. Stay with the forge. Stay with your work." "Look at my door, Maren." He didn't raise his voice. "Three guards. A neighbor counting my shutters. The second I step inside they take me. The forge is finished." "Then run somewhere else." "Where." Not a question. He waited. She had no answer. Every name she knew in the sectors was a name the Council also knew. He had assaulted a guard for her. He had worn her father's suit. He had nowhere left that wasn't watched because of her. The cub shifted against her coat and pushed its head up under her chin. Warm. Patient. "The informant," she said. "Cut him loose once we're clear of the sectors. He talks, we're already gone. He was going to talk anyway." She hated that he was right. "Cart?" she asked. "East gate has a grain run before dawn. Driver owes me a blade. We ride under the sacks to the second checkpoint. Walk from there." "Weapons?" "On me. Two knives at the small of my back. Nothing at the forge worth dying for." She studied him. His jaw was set the way it had been in the Records Hall stairwell. He was not asking. "Fine," she said. "With me. But you follow my calls." "Enough." They backed out of the lane the way they'd come. The forge stayed behind them, watched, closing like a file. Maren tucked the page deeper into her coat and turned east, the cub warm against her ribs, four days of road ahead and no way back.

The grain cart rolled them past the second checkpoint at midmorning. Maren and Miller climbed out from under the sacks, paid the driver with a nod, and watched the green cart creak back toward the sectors. Then they walked. Fields gave way to thin woods. The road narrowed to a rut. By dusk her legs shook and the cub had gone limp against her chest, wings tucked, breath warm through her shirt. She had no house to knock on out here. Every contact she'd cultivated for six months lived west of the checkpoints. She ran the eastern names in her head anyway. A cousin of a clerk. A farmer who'd once carried a letter for her. Both too close to Registry ears. Both a day's walk in the wrong direction. If they slept on the open road, the trackers behind them would close the gap by morning. "No house," she said. "No," Miller said. "Then off the road." He nodded and pushed into the trees. They walked until the rut was gone from sight, then further, until a stand of pines closed around a patch of needles. Miller unrolled the one square of canvas he'd pulled from the cart. It covered a body and a half. He laid it flat and stepped back. Maren set the cub down in the center. The cub curled, wings folding like paper. She sat. Miller sat on the other edge, his back to hers. The canvas was narrow enough that his spine pressed against her shoulder blades. Neither of them spoke for a while. She listened for boots. She heard only wind and the cub's slow breath. She wanted to say something about Topper. About the house she'd gone to before. About what Miller had heard in that man's mouth. The words lined up and would not come out. Behind her, Miller shifted. He drew breath like he meant to speak. He didn't. She felt him settle again. She closed her eyes. The cub pushed its head against her thigh. Miller's back was warm. Her legs finally stopped shaking. She did not turn around. He did not turn around. The tension sat between their shoulders like a third body and neither of them moved it. "Two hours," Miller said. "Then I take watch." "Two hours," she agreed. Her hand found the file inside her coat. Still there. Red tag, four days east, a name she meant to reach before it was crossed out. She let go of it. Sleep took her between one breath and the next. Miller's back rose and fell against hers. The cub tucked deeper into her lap. Somewhere behind them, boots were still walking. They would deal with that at first light. For now, hidden by pines and a strip of cloth, the three of them slept.

Maren woke with her cheek on Miller's chest. His shirt smelled of smoke and pine. His arm was loose across her back. She held still for one breath, then pushed off him and sat up fast. The cub rolled off her lap and yawned. Miller yawned too, eyes closed, and rolled onto his side like nothing had happened. She watched him a second longer. He kept up the act. She let him. The file was still inside her coat. She pulled it out for something to do with her hands. Red tag. Same red tag. She thumbed it open on her knee. "I don't even know your sister's name," Miller said. His eyes were open now, on the trees, not on her. She looked up, startled. "Gisela." Her throat caught. "G. Goldweaver. Just like the file says." She turned the page toward him. The picture was clipped to the corner. Long curly hair. Gold hoops in her ears. A red sash at her waist. Fourteen in the photo, maybe fifteen now. Miller looked a long time. "She's got your face," he said. "She's got our mother's." A voice cut through the pines. Then another. Not close, but not far. Boots on needles. Someone laughed, short and wrong. "Trackers," Miller said. Maren shoved the file into her coat. She scooped the cub up one-handed. Miller was already on his feet, rolling the canvas, kicking needles over the flat spot where they'd slept. He grabbed the pack. She grabbed the water skin. Six seconds, maybe seven. "Which way," she whispered. He pointed away from the voices, deeper east, downslope. She went. He followed. They didn't run. Running snapped branches. They moved fast and low, foot to root, foot to stone, the cub tucked against her ribs with its wings pinned flat. Behind them a man shouted a name that wasn't theirs. A dog answered. Not close. Not yet. The slope dropped into a creek bed. Miller stepped down first and reached back. She took his hand. He didn't let go once she was down. He pulled her along the water, boots in the shallow, cutting their scent. They walked the creek until the voices thinned to nothing. Then further. When Miller finally stopped, the sun was high and her lungs burned. She checked her coat. File dry. Red tag intact. The cub blinked up at her, ears flicking. "They'll circle back to the road," Miller said. "We stay off it." "Four days east," she said. "Then we've lost half a day." She nodded. Half a day was not the file. Half a day was not Gisela. She could spend half a day. Miller finally let go of her hand. She felt the place where it had been. She didn't say anything about that either. They climbed out of the creek on the far side and kept east.

By late afternoon the pines thinned. Maren saw sky through the trunks. She slowed. Miller slowed with her. The cub shifted inside her coat and pushed its head up under her chin. They crept to the last line of trees and crouched behind a fallen trunk. The forest ended in a slope of yellow grass. Beyond the grass sat a low building of weathered wood and iron. A row of cells stood along its front, roofed rough, locks fat with rust. A gate cut the fence at the near corner. Two guards leaned there in gray coats. A third crossed the yard. Maren's breath stopped. In the second cell from the end, a girl sat with her knees up. Long curly hair. A red sash. Even from here Maren saw the gold hoop catch the sun. "Gisela," she whispered. She started to rise. Miller's hand hit her shoulder and drove her flat. His other arm pinned her elbow. Grass pressed into her cheek. "Stop," she hissed. "Let go." "No." "That's her. That's my sister." "I see her." His voice stayed even. His grip did not. "You cross that grass, they shoot you before you make thirty steps. Then she watches it. Then she still doesn't come home." Maren stopped pulling. Her chest heaved against the ground. The cub squirmed free of her coat and crouched beside her, ears flat, wings folded tight. Miller eased his weight off her but kept one hand on her arm. He watched the yard. "Only the coats go through that gate," he said. "Nobody else. They wave each other in." Maren wiped grass off her mouth. She made herself look at the guards instead of the cell. Gray coats. Belt, cap, a badge sewn at the chest. The third guard walked out through the gate and up a track toward a shed at the tree line, alone. "If we got a coat," she said. "A cap. A badge. I could walk to that cell." Miller's eyes tracked the lone guard too. "One at a time. That one." "He's coming back this way." "He is." They watched him reach the shed. He propped a rifle by the door and went inside. The door swung half shut. Maren pushed up onto her elbows. "We take him quiet. In the shed. You hold him. I take the coat." "And the cap. And the badge." Miller was already moving, low along the trunk, toward the cover of a thicket that ran to the shed wall. She followed. The cub came at her heel, silent in the grass. They reached the shed as the guard stepped out. Miller took him from behind, one arm across the throat, one hand on the mouth. Maren caught the rifle before it fell. The man kicked once, twice, then went slack. Miller lowered him inside. Maren shut the door. She pulled the gray coat off his shoulders and laid it flat. The cap. The badge. Her hands shook. She folded the coat over her arm. "I go," she said. "You go," Miller said. "I cover the gate from here." She looked at him. He looked back. Neither said the rest. She started buttoning the coat.

Maren crossed the yard in the dead guard's coat. The cap sat low on her brow. The badge scratched her collarbone. She kept her stride slow, the way she had watched the others walk. At the fence, the two guards at the gate glanced up. She lifted a hand. They lifted theirs and looked back at the road. She passed inside. The cells sat in a row against the wall, iron bars streaked with rust. Grass grew up to the stone. She counted from the end. Second cell. A shape sat inside with knees drawn up. Her sister looked cold. Thin. Bruised at one wrist. Skin gray under the freckles. But breathing. Alive. A gold hoop still hung from one ear. Maren stopped at the bars. Gisela's head came up. Her mouth twisted. She spat on Maren's boots. "Haven't you had enough taunting for one day." "It's me," Maren whispered. Gisela's eyes went huge. A sound came up her throat and she caught it behind her hand. She rose on shaking legs and gripped the bars. "Maren." "Quiet. Come close." Maren pulled a gold earring from her ear. She bent the hook straight against her thumbnail and slid it into the lock. The rust fought her. She turned her wrist and felt the pins drag. "They switch soon," Gisela breathed. "The guards. Every hour. It has to be near." "I know." Maren glanced over her shoulder. The two at the gate faced the road. The yard was empty. Somewhere past the tree line Miller was watching with the rifle. She turned back to the lock. One pin caught. Another. The wire bent. She straightened it against the bar and tried again. Sweat ran down her spine under the gray coat. "Almost," she whispered. Gisela pressed her forehead against the iron. "Please." "Almost." The wire slipped. Maren swore under her breath and reset it. She felt the last pin lift. Click. The lock dropped into her palm. She caught the door before it swung. "Come out. Walk beside me. Head down." Gisela stepped through and nearly buckled. Maren caught her under the arm. The girl weighed almost nothing. Maren shut the cell door and hooked the broken lock back through the loop so it looked closed from ten paces. Then a bell rang from the low building. Sharp. Twice. At the gate, one guard straightened and turned toward the yard. His eyes tracked across the cells and landed on Maren with a girl on her arm. He shouted. Maren pulled Gisela hard against her side and ran for the fence line. From the trees came the crack of Miller's rifle. The shouting guard dropped. The second guard swung his weapon up toward the woods. "Run," Maren said into her sister's hair. "Run with me now." Gisela ran.

They ran until the shouting thinned to nothing behind them. Maren kept one arm hooked under Gisela's shoulder. Miller came up on the other side, rifle across his back, and took most of her weight without a word. Gisela's boots dragged through the ferns. Her breath came in short, wet pulls. Every ten steps she stumbled, and every ten steps Miller caught her. Voices carried through the trees behind them. Not close. Not far enough. A dog barked once and stopped. "She can't keep this pace," Maren said. Her own lungs burned. "They'll hear her breathing before they see us." "I've got her." Miller shifted his grip and lifted Gisela nearly off the ground. He moved through the brush like she weighed nothing. Maren fell in behind, watching the trail for prints. They cut down a slope and across a shallow creek. Miller took a hard turn along the bank, then another, doubling their line. The voices behind them grew confused. A man shouted a direction. Another shouted a different one. Then the woods went quiet except for their own steps. Miller stopped in a stand of pine and lowered Gisela down against a trunk. He crouched beside her and put two fingers to her throat. "Fast. But steady." Gisela's head tipped back against the bark. Sweat ran through the dirt on her face. She caught Maren's sleeve. "We have to finish it," she whispered. "My mission. The ledger." "No." Maren knelt in front of her. Her voice cracked. "You were almost dead in that cell. We can't move you like this. You're too weak to stand, let alone run." "Maren—" "No." Gisela closed her eyes. Her chest worked hard for each breath. Maren pressed the back of her hand to her sister's forehead and felt the cold sweat there. Four days back to any road she trusted. Gisela would not last four days. Something shifted in Maren's coat. The winged leopard cub climbed out from the fold at her hip, dropped to the pine needles, and padded straight to Gisela. It stepped into her lap and curled there. A soft blue light rose from its fur. Not a flame. A steady glow, like water lit from beneath. The light spread across Gisela's chest and down her arms. Her breathing slowed. The gray under her freckles faded. Color came back into her mouth. Gisela opened her eyes. They were clear. "This cub," Maren said. She couldn't finish. A word came into her head as if someone had set it down there. Not a guess. A name she suddenly knew. "Eir," she said. "Its name is Eir. It means help." The cub blinked up at her, wings folded flat. Gisela sat forward on her own. She flexed her hands. "I can run now," she said. Miller stood and picked up the rifle. "Then we run."

By dusk they crossed a ridge and dropped into a hollow between two fallen trunks. Miller checked their back trail one last time and shook his head. No dog. No boots. The woods held only wind. He set the rifle across his knees and sat. Gisela slid down beside Maren and stretched her legs out straight for the first time in days. The cub curled between them, wings tucked flat, breathing slow. Maren looked at her sister in the low light. Color in her cheeks. Dirt in her hair. Alive. She had spent six months reading transfer logs for this face, and now the face was here, and Maren still did not know what her sister had been doing when the Registry took her. "Gisela." Maren kept her voice level. "When you went missing. What were you doing?" Gisela picked a pine needle off her sleeve. "Working for the rebel cause." "You were working for—" Maren's voice climbed. "I told you that was too dangerous. I told you that a year ago. You said you were done." "I'm old enough to make my own decisions." Gisela snapped it out. She sat up straighter. "I don't need your permission." "Aren't you like sixteen?" Miller asked. Gisela's head whipped toward him. "Who gave pretty boy a right to my business?" "I just need to know what's going on," Miller said. Flat. No apology. Maren pressed her hands to her eyes. "He's right. I need to know. Tell me what the mission was." Gisela pulled her knees up. She spoke fast, the way she did when she wanted it over. "A ledger. The physical one. The Registry ships carry a book that lists every debt sold to every council. Names, amounts, buyers. I was going to take it off a transport out of the eastern port. Two nights before the guards grabbed me. I studied the shift change for a month. I had the exit mapped." "And?" Maren said. "Someone gave me up. I don't know who. They took me before I ever got near the deck." "So the ledger is still on the ship." "It's still moving. They rotate it every ten days. My window closes in six." Maren stared at the ground between her boots. Six days. The transport route ran east, farther from any safe road. And now she knew what had followed them out of that cell. Not one guard shift. A whole faction that had already burned Gisela once and would burn her again the moment they found her breathing. "You are not going near that ship," Maren said. "Then you are," Gisela said. "Because if I don't finish it, they hunt me until they finish me." Miller looked at Maren over the cub's sleeping back. He did not speak. He did not have to. Maren nodded once. She had her answer, and with it, her next problem.

They moved before dawn and reached the harbor by afternoon. Maren kept Gisela on her right and Miller on her left, the cub asleep in her coat. The dock stretched long over the water, thick posts wrapped in wet rope, a wide berth waiting empty at the far end. Gulls picked at fish guts on the boards. Maren pulled her sister back into the shadow of a warehouse and studied the pier for gray coats. Six days had shrunk to one. "We wait for dusk," Maren said. "Ship comes in, we board with the loaders." Miller pointed his chin at an alley between two stacks of crates. They slid into it. The alley smelled of tar and salt fish. Gisela crouched against the wall and rubbed her wrists. Maren watched the mouth of the alley over the sight of Miller's rifle. Boots slapped the boards. Someone running. Miller rose and swung the rifle butt back to strike. A young man skidded in, bandana loose, one gold hoop swinging at his ear. "Wait!" Gisela lunged and caught Miller's arm. "It's Kato. He's with me." Kato put both hands up, breathing hard. Gisela stepped into him and he folded her against his chest like he'd been holding the space open for weeks. Maren did not lower her hand from the knife at her hip. "With you how." "He ran messages for our crew," Gisela said. "He's the one who told me the ledger route." "Then he's the one who knew where you'd be the night you were taken." Kato's face changed. "I didn't sell her. I've been watching this dock for six weeks waiting for one of us to come back." "Prove it," Miller said. "Shifts haven't changed," Kato said, fast. "Same four men on the berth, same two on the gangway. The ship rotates in at sunset tonight. Three hours on shore, then out. That's your window." Gisela squeezed Maren's arm. "He's right about the shifts. I studied them too." Maren looked past Kato's shoulder at the pier. A man in a gray coat had stopped at the end of it. Short, thick through the neck. He turned a slow circle, scanning faces. Maren knew that circle. She had watched him do it in a Records Hall corridor six months ago, right before he pinned her against a shelf and asked her name. The informant. Still working. Still here. She pulled Kato deeper into the alley. "Gray coat at the pier head. Squat. Scar under his jaw." Kato looked, then flattened against the wall. "That's the one who took her name to the Registry." "He hasn't seen us," Maren said. "Yet." She turned to Miller. "He spots her, we're done. He spots me, he calls the whole dock." "So he doesn't spot either of you." Miller checked the rifle. "I'll take him off the boards before sunset. Quiet." Maren nodded. One informant. One dock. One tide.

Kato crouched in the alley and drew a square in the dust with his finger. "Cargo hold sits below the aft deck. Loaders bring crates up the plank at dusk. Two guards check faces at the gangway, not lids." Maren watched his hand. "You want me in a crate." "Barrel would break your back. Crate has straw. I know the loader on the third stack. He owes me. I mark yours with chalk and it goes below without a lift check." Gisela nodded once. "It works. I studied the plank last summer." Miller set the rifle across his knees. "And the informant?" "Sunset," Miller said. "I take him behind the net shed. No sound." They waited. The cub slept in Maren's coat and its ribs moved against her hand. The sun dropped and turned the water orange. Miller stood, checked his knife, and slipped out of the alley without a word. Maren watched him cross the boards and disappear behind stacked crab pots. Kato led her to the third stack. He pried a lid, dumped half the straw, and held it open. Maren climbed in. She folded her knees to her chest. The cub pressed warm against her stomach. Kato marked the wood with a chalk X and hammered the lid down. Light came through in thin lines. She felt the crate lift. Boots on the plank. A grunt as it dropped. Then dark, and the smell of tar and rope. The ship groaned around her. She counted her breaths and waited for the hold to empty of loaders. A crowbar hit the lid. Wood split. Hands seized her collar and dragged her out over the splinters. She hit the deck on her knees. Gisela knelt beside her, wrists bound behind her back. Kato next. Miller last, blood down his temple, hands tied at the front. Four men in gray coats stood over them with rifles leveled. "You really thought Kato was the informant." The voice came from behind a stack of barrels. A young man stepped into the lamp glow, hands in his pockets, easy as a boy at market. Maren had never seen his face. Kato had. "No," the young man said. "It was me." Kato lunged against the guard holding him and the guard drove a knee into his gut. Kato folded. "No," Kato said into the boards. "No, no—" Gisela's mouth opened and no sound came for a full breath. Then it came all at once. "How could you betray your brother?" she screamed. "Kato, how could he—" The young man crouched in front of Maren and studied her face like a page. He tapped her coat where the cub breathed. "The Registry wants the file," he said. "And the animal. Take them below." A guard hauled her up by the braids. The gangway was gone. The dock was gone. Water slapped the hull. The ship was already moving.

The guard's fist stayed knotted in Maren's braids. The young man who had called himself the informant stepped closer and pulled Maren's coat open. The cub blinked up at him, small and warm against her ribs. He smiled like he had found a coin in the dirt. "Kazuki will want to see this himself," he said. He lifted the cub out of her coat. The cub squirmed. Maren lunged and the guard yanked her back by the hair. "Don't," she said. "Please. It's just an animal." "Then you won't miss it." A door opened at the stern. The man who came through wore a captain's coat and a scar that ran from brow to cheekbone. He looked at Kato on the boards and his mouth tightened, then went flat again. Kato lifted his head. "Kazuki," Kato said. Kazuki did not answer his brother. He held out a gloved hand. The informant placed the cub in it. From his belt Kazuki drew a slim glass tube with a needle at one end. He pressed the needle into the cub's neck. The cub jerked once, then went soft. Its wings folded against its side. Its eyes stayed open and empty. Maren made a sound she did not recognize. "Alive," Kazuki said. "For now. That depends on you." He passed the cub to a guard. "Cage it. Below." Then he pointed at Gisela and at his brother. "Those two, aft hold." He pointed at Maren and Miller. "Those two, with me." Gisela twisted against her ropes. "Maren—" "Walk," a guard said, and shoved her. They took Maren and Miller down a narrow stair. The room at the bottom had a table bolted to the deck. Hooks lined one wall. Pliers, a saw, a cluster of thin blades hung in order of size. A huge man in a leather apron waited by the table. He did not look up when they entered. He tied Maren to a post and left Miller standing where he could see her. Then he chose a small knife from the wall. He pressed the flat of the blade to Maren's cheek. Miller made a strangled sound in his throat. "The file," the big man said. "And what the animal does. Tell him, or she bleeds." Miller's jaw worked. He said nothing. The knife slid down to the opening of Maren's shirt and settled there. The big man pushed. The tip broke skin. A bead of blood welled and ran. "Stop," Miller said. The big man did not stop. He pushed again. Maren bit her tongue and did not cry out. She stared at Miller and shook her head once, small. Miller's shoulders dropped. "The file is sewn in the lining of her coat," he said. "The cub heals. That's all I know." The big man wiped the knife on Maren's sleeve and left the room to fetch the coat. Eir was gone. The file was gone. And Miller would not look at her.

The big man came back with Maren's coat. He dumped it on the table and cut the lining open in one long stroke. His hand went in and came out empty. He turned the coat inside out and shook it. Nothing fell. Miller lifted his head. His face changed. He looked at Maren for the first time since he had spoken. "I could have taken it," Maren said to him, quiet. "You didn't know enough to really hurt me." His mouth opened. Before he could speak, boots came down the stair. Kazuki ducked through the door. He looked at the empty coat. He looked at the big man. "It's not there," the big man said. Kazuki crossed the room and hit Miller across the jaw with a closed fist. Miller's head snapped sideways. Blood ran from his lip. He blinked at Kazuki, stunned, and Maren made her face go slack the same way, as if she too could not understand. Kazuki watched them both. He did not seem convinced. He walked to the wall of blades and chose a longer knife, wider at the base. He came back and stood between them. "One of you moved it," he said. "Or one of you knew." He laid the edge along Maren's forearm and drew it across. The skin opened. Maren clenched her teeth. He turned and did the same to Miller, a clean line above the wrist. Miller grimaced but did not pull away. "One of you knows," Kazuki said. "Or I bring the other girl in here. The young one. Your sister." Maren's stomach dropped. She saw Gisela the way she had last seen her in the aft passage, wrists bound, mouth set. Gisela would not talk. Gisela would bleed on this table and not talk. Maren looked at the cut on her arm. Blood ran into her palm. She thought of Eir in a cage somewhere below, sedated. She thought of the file, folded small, pushed deep into the seam of her boot two nights ago while Miller slept. She lifted her chin. "It's in my boot," she said. "Left one. Under the insole." Miller's head jerked toward her. Kazuki nodded to the big man, who knelt and pulled the boot off. He dug out the folded page and handed it up. Kazuki opened it, read one line, and smiled without warmth. "Good," he said. "You saved the child a trip." He folded the page into his coat. He looked at Miller, then at Maren, and something in his eyes moved from question to plan. "Bring them up," he told the big man. "All four. On deck." The big man cut Maren's ropes from the post and hauled her upright. Her arm bled onto the boards. Miller stood on his own. As they climbed the stair, Kazuki spoke behind them, calm. "The animal wakes at dusk," he said. "Then we find out what else it does."

The big man shoved Maren up the stair ahead of Miller. Wind hit her face. The deck rolled under her boots. Two guards held Gisela and Kato near the mast, both bound at the wrists like her. Kato's lip was split. Gisela stood straight, eyes fixed on the cage set down beside Kazuki. The cage was iron, low, meant for a dog. Inside, the winged leopard cub lay on its side. Its ribs moved in shallow pulls. One wing twitched. Kazuki crouched beside the bars. "Wake up," he said. He rapped the metal with the flat of his knife. The cub's eyes opened. It saw Kazuki first and flinched back against the far bars. Then it saw Maren. A thin whine came out of it. Blood ran from the cut on Maren's forearm down her fingers and pattered on the deck. Miller stood beside her, his own wrist wound soaking his sleeve. He was pale. His shoulders had begun to sway. "Untie us," Maren said quietly, over her shoulder to Gisela. "Any way you can." "Working," Gisela said. Her fingers moved behind her back, small and quick. Inside the cage the cub gathered itself. Its head came up. It looked past Kazuki, past the mast, out to open water. Then it opened its mouth and roared. The sound was not a cub's sound. It hit the deck like a struck bell. Every guard flinched. Kazuki swore and slammed the flat of his hand against the cage. "Shut it up," he snapped. A guard turned toward the bars. Maren watched the horizon instead. A dark line was rising out of the flat sea. It grew as she looked. Not a wave yet. Something under the wave. A back, gray and long, breaking the surface far off and rolling under again. "Miller," she said. "Look east." Miller lifted his head. His eyes found the line. "Wave," he said. Kato saw it too. "That's coming here." The swell rose. It kept rising. It climbed above the mast height in the distance and rushed toward them, a wall of green water pushed by something enormous underneath. "Gisela," Maren said. "Now." "Almost." Kazuki turned from the cage and saw the wave. His face changed. He shouted for the helm. The guards let go of Gisela and Kato and ran for lines. Gisela's rope dropped from her wrists. She lunged for Maren, fingers already picking. "Hold still." The rope loosened. Maren pulled her hands free and tore at Miller's knots. Kato worked his own against a cleat. The wave was close enough now that Maren could see spray tearing off its crest. "Cage," Miller said through his teeth. "Get the cage." Maren dropped beside the bars. The cub pressed its nose to her hand. She yanked at the pin on the door. The wave hit.

The wall of water hit the ship broadside. The deck tilted hard. Maren's boots slid on wet planks. She grabbed for the cage but her fingers slipped off the iron. There was nothing else within reach. The mast was too far. The rail was too far. Her knees went out from under her. The cage door banged open on its own. The pin had shaken loose in the impact. The cub staggered up onto its feet, wings half-spread, and shoved through the bars just as another lurch threw Maren sideways. Her shoulder hit the deck. She started to slide toward the rail. A wing struck her ribs. Hard. Not a rescue. A shove. The cub's wing hit her again and drove her over the low rail before she could catch anything. The sky spun. She saw sail, then water, then sky. "Maren!" Miller shouted. He lunged after her along the tilting deck, one hand out. His fingers closed on air. He didn't stop. He kept going over the rail after her. Behind him the cub turned on Gisela and hit her the same way, one wing across the chest, driving her off the boards. Kato went next, half-shoved and half-falling. The cub sprang out behind them into open air. Maren braced for cold water. She did not hit water. She hit something broad and firm and warm. Her palms slapped down on a curved surface slick with sea. Barnacles scraped her knee. Under her hand she felt shell, then skin, then the slow rise of something breathing. She lifted her head. She was lying on a back the size of a barn roof. The skin was deep purple, the color of a bruise turning. Starfish clung to it in clusters. Shells grew in ridges along a broad spine. Ten feet away Miller was on his hands and knees, staring at what he'd landed on. Gisela sat up further down. Kato clung to a ridge of shell. "It's the whale," Gisela said. "From under the wave." Behind them the ship groaned. The mast had cracked. Water was already pouring in through the split hull. Kazuki stood at the broken rail, shouting something Maren could not hear. Guards scrambled for boats that were no longer there. The cub landed beside Maren on soft feet. It pressed its head against her arm once, then folded down flat against the whale's skin, spent. The great back beneath them shifted. It began to move. Not out to sea. The whale turned its head toward the dark line of shore and started to swim. Maren looked back once at the sinking ship. She may not have the file, but her sister was beside her. Miller was breathing. Kato was alive. The four of them rode low on the whale's back as it carried them away from Kazuki, away from the guards, away from the water closing over the deck. Shore lay ahead. She did not know what waited on it.

The whale slid them into the shallows and left them on wet sand. Maren stood up first. Her coat weighed twice what it should. Her boots were full of water. The cub climbed out of the surf and shook itself, then sat down hard and would not stand again. Miller came up beside her, dripping, one hand pressed to the gash on her forearm from the interrogator’s knife. "Sit," Miller said. He guided her down onto a piece of driftwood. He pulled a strip from the dry inner hem of his shirt and threaded a bent fish hook he'd found in his pocket. His hands were steady. He worked slow through her skin, careful as he could be. Maren watched his jaw more than the needle. Gisela stood at the tideline with her arms wrapped around herself. Her curls hung heavy with salt. Her gold bracelets were still on her wrists, but everything else was gone. "We'll never find that ledger," she said. "It's out there on another ship by now. And he's going to come for me." "Who," Maren said. "The one who sent me for it. I don't know his name. Nobody does. He doesn't forgive people who come back empty." Kato sat further up the beach, wringing out his bandana. He said nothing. His brother had put them on that ship. He had not spoken much since the deck went under. Miller tied off the stitch with his teeth. "I know this coast," he said. He looked at the low hills behind them, at a bent pine leaning south. "We're a week from home. Maybe less on foot." "We can't go home," Maren said. Her voice came out flat. "Council guards took your forge. My name is on every gate between here and there." "And we can't go back to the rebels," Gisela finished. "Not without the ledger." They sat with the sound of the surf. No food. No coin. Maren's coat lining was empty where the file had been. The cub's ribs rose and fell against her ankle. Maren looked down at her wrists. Two thin gold bangles. At her throat, a chain her father had given her. On Gisela, the same. She pulled a bracelet off and held it flat in her palm. "There's a fishing village up the coast," Miller said. "Half a day. They'll trade for gold." "Then we trade," Maren said. She worked the second bangle over her knuckle. Gisela was already unclasping her chain. Kato came over and dropped a single gold hoop into Maren's hand without a word. They walked north along the sand with the cub tucked under Maren's arm. Behind them the tide erased their prints. Ahead was a village that did not know their faces, food they could buy, and no ledger, no file, and no plan yet for how a Goldweaver without gold would win her sister free.

The village sat in a hollow of gray rock, roofs patched with tar and nets drying on the fences. Maren pulled her hood low. Miller had warned them on the walk: Registry notices had come up the coast fast, and her face was likely on every post by now. A copper coin to anyone who pointed her out. She kept her head down and followed Miller past the first cottages. Gisela walked close to her left. Kato trailed behind, quiet, one hand near his belt. The cub rode inside her coat, breathing slow against her ribs. A hand clamped over her mouth from behind. An arm hooked her waist and pulled her back against a chest she knew. "Miss me, darling?" Maren went still. Topper. She had left him unconscious on his own floor after the cub broke his mind open for the cipher. She had sworn she would never see him again. Miller spun, knife already out. Kato stepped wide to flank. Gisela froze. "Easy, blacksmith." Topper's mustache brushed Maren's cheek. His breath was warm and smelled of cheap beer. "Your pretty friend and I are just catching up. I saw the notice on the tavern wall. Nice likeness. Ten silver, it said." Miller's knuckles went white on the knife. "Let her go." "After what she left me with? Guards kicked my door in the morning after she walked out. Took my books. Took my coin. I spent a week in a cell explaining a cipher I don't remember cracking." His arm tightened. "So no. Not yet." Maren swallowed against his palm. She could feel the cub shift under her coat, still too weak to help. "Name your price," Miller said. Flat. No wasted words. "Ten silver won't cover it." "We don't have silver." "Then what have you got, hero?" Miller's jaw worked. He looked at Maren. She saw him choose. "You come with us," Miller said. "Food. A share of whatever we get. You keep your mouth shut about her face. You walk when we say you walk." Topper laughed once against her ear. "You're offering me a job." "I'm offering you her life for yours. Take it." A long pause. Then the hand slid off her mouth. The arm loosened. Maren stepped forward and did not look back until she was beside Miller. Her legs shook. She locked her knees. Topper strolled around into view, smoothing his shirt. "Partners, then." He grinned at Miller. "Try not to snore." Miller did not lower the knife. "One wrong word in this village and I open your throat." "Charming." Gisela stepped close to Maren. "Who is he." "Someone I paid off once," Maren said. "He's with us now." She pulled her hood tighter and walked. Behind her, Topper fell in beside Kato, whistling low. The notice was already on the tavern wall. Her face was worth ten silver in every village from here to home, and she had just bought one man's silence with a seat at their fire.

They kept to the shadows past the market stalls. Miller walked close on Maren's right, his palm flat against the small of her back. The touch was steady, warm through her coat. She had not realized she was shaking until his hand stopped it. Topper walked ahead of them, whistling, hands loose at his sides like a man who owned the street. Every step he took past a village notice made her stomach tighten. One word from him at the wrong stall and the guards would be on them before dusk. Miller stopped them behind a stack of crab traps near the tavern. "Wait here." He looked at Topper. "You too." Topper spread his hands and grinned. "I'm a guest, blacksmith. Guests behave." Miller went inside. Maren watched the tavern door and counted breaths. Gisela leaned against the wall beside her, arms crossed. Kato crouched low, eyes on the alley mouth. Topper studied Maren's face like he was pricing it. "Stop looking at her," Gisela said. Short. Flat. Topper laughed and turned away. Miller came back with bread wrapped in cloth, a wedge of hard cheese, and three brass keys on a ring. "Three rooms. Above the kitchen. Back stairs." They climbed the narrow staircase one at a time. Miller unlocked the first door and tossed a key at Topper. "Yours. Stay in it." "Alone? You wound me." "One word downstairs about her and I come through that door." Topper touched two fingers to his brow and stepped inside. The lock clicked. Gisela took the next key from Miller's hand before he could offer it. She grabbed Kato's sleeve and pulled him through the second door. "Goodnight." The door shut. The bolt slid. Maren stared at it. "Gisela—" "She's asleep," Kato called through the wood. Then a pause. "Or pretending." Miller held up the last key. He did not smile. He did not apologize. He only waited. Maren took the key and opened the door. The room was small. One bed. One window shuttered against the cold. A basin on a stool. Miller set the bread and cheese on the stool and turned to face her. He looked at her the way he had looked at her on the whale's back, when they first realized they had lived. "You're pale," he said. "I'm fine." "You're not." She opened her mouth to argue. Nothing came. Her hands were shaking again. Topper's breath was still on her cheek. Her face was on every wall in the village. Her sister's file was at the bottom of the sea. Miller crossed the room in two steps and pulled her against his chest. She broke. She cried into his shirt without sound at first, then with sound, her fingers knotted in the linen at his back. He did not speak. He held her and let her ruin the front of his shirt. Six months of not crying came out of her in one room above a stranger's kitchen, and when she was empty, she was still standing, and he was still there.

Morning light came through the shutter slats in thin gray bars. Maren splashed water on her face from the basin. Her eyes were swollen. Miller was already dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed with his boots laced. He passed her the heel of last night's bread. She ate it standing up. Downstairs, a kettle rattled. Somewhere in the village, a bell rang the hour, and she thought of the notices nailed to every post between the tavern and the well. Her face. A copper coin. She could not walk to the market. She could not ask a fisherman about ship schedules. She could not step outside this room without a hood pulled low, and even then, Topper's mouth was a door she could not lock. Gisela came in without knocking. Kato followed, closing the door soft behind him. Gisela sat on the floor with her back against the wall and pulled her knees up. The winged cub padded out from under the bed and curled against her boot. Miller latched the door. "Not Topper," Maren said. "Not Topper," Miller agreed. Gisela looked around the room. "Who do we trust. Besides us." No one answered. Kato scratched his jaw. Miller shook his head once. Maren counted the room and stopped at four. The list was that short. "I can't walk down there," Maren said. "My face is on the post outside the kitchen door. I saw it when we came in. I can't ask about transfer schedules. I can't ask about anything." "Then we need people who can," Gisela said. She pulled a folded scrap from her vest and smoothed it on the floorboard. Three names, written small. "Rebels. Not the leader's people. People who hate him the way I hate him. Two days south. Maybe less." Kato leaned over the paper. "I know the second one. He's real." "We can't live our whole life on the run," Gisela said. Flat. "We failed the ledger. He'll send someone. But these three won't. If we go to them and ask what we have to do to earn a place, that's one door that isn't a trap. One party on our side. One." Miller looked at Maren. Waited. "South," she said. "We go south." Gisela folded the paper and tucked it away. Kato stood. "What about him," Miller said. He tipped his head at the wall between their room and Topper's. "He comes," Maren said. "We tell him we're moving. Nothing else. Not where. Not why. Not the names." Miller nodded once and unlatched the door.

Miller's hand was on the latch when a knock came at the door. Three quick raps. Then Topper let himself in without waiting. He wore that smug grin, the one Maren had seen too many times. He held his palms up like a man showing he had no knife. "You won't believe me," Topper said. "But it wasn't me who sent him." "Who," Miller growled. "Bounty hunter. Downstairs." Topper tipped his head at the floor. "Asking the barmaid about a brown-haired woman with freckles. Copper coin in his hand already. He's here for her head." Maren stood up from the bed. Her stomach dropped. Gisela pushed off the wall. Kato was already at the shutter, easing it open a finger's width to look down at the yard. "Back stairs pass the kitchen," Kato said. "He'll see us." "Window," Miller said. Maren looked down. Two stories. Barrels below, and a slope of tile from the kitchen roof. Too far to jump. "Rope," she said. There was no rope. There was a bed frame with two lengths of hemp lashing the slats. There was the drawstring from Kato's pack. There was Miller's belt. There was the sash from Gisela's waist and the leather cord from Topper's shirt. Maren stripped the lashings from the bed with shaking hands. Gisela untied her sash and passed it over without a word. Kato pulled the cord from his pack. Miller yanked his belt free of the loops. They knotted it all on the floor. Square knots, the kind Miller showed her once at the forge. Hemp to leather. Leather to sash. Sash to drawstring. Maren tested each knot with her weight before passing the line to Kato. Downstairs, a chair scraped. A man's voice asked something. The barmaid answered, too soft to hear. Miller tied the end to the bed leg and dragged the frame to the window. The cub padded to Maren's boot and she scooped it into her coat. Gisela went first, hand over hand, boots against the boards. Then Kato. Topper looked at the rope like it might bite him. "Go," Miller said. Topper went. The line held. Maren swung her leg over the sill. Miller's hand was on her wrist for one second, steady, then gone. She climbed down. Her palms burned. The cub shifted against her ribs. When her boots hit the barrel, she jumped clear and looked up. Miller came last, fast, and dropped the final feet. They ran. Past the woodpile, through a gap in the fence, into the lane behind the tavern. No one shouted. Not yet. Gisela led south along a drainage ditch, keeping low. Maren's lungs burned. At the treeline she stopped and looked back at the village. No pursuit. Not yet. "How did he know," she said. No one answered. They ran again.

Two days south, the woods thinned into hill country. Maren walked at the front with Gisela, who counted paces under her breath and watched the ridge line. Kato kept close to Gisela's shoulder. His hand brushed hers on a low branch and stayed there a beat too long. Gisela did not pull away. Miller walked behind them with his eyes on Topper, and Topper walked with his eyes on the back of Maren's neck. No one spoke of the bounty hunter. No one had to. The cub rode inside Maren's coat, warm against her ribs. "An hour out," Gisela said. "Maybe less." "And when we get there," Maren said, "what do we hand them?" Gisela did not answer. Maren had turned the question over for two days. The rebels would want proof. A ledger. A name. Coin. She had none of it. She had a stolen sister, a wanted face, and a cub she would not trade. She touched the lining of her coat where the file used to be. "We tell them what we know," Miller said behind her. "Registry routes. Transfer days. Guard rotations." "Words," Topper said. "They'll want something they can hold." The snap came from under Maren's boot. The ground fell away. Rope bit her waist and her arms and yanked her upward. She heard Gisela scream, then Kato, then her own breath punched out of her chest. The forest tilted. She was ten feet up, then fifteen, folded into a net that stank of pitch. The cub thrashed against her ribs and went still. "Kato!" Gisela's voice, close and high. "Kato, answer me!" Maren twisted. Kato hung in a net across the clearing, head slumped, blood on his temple where a branch had caught him. He did not move. Gisela's net swung ten feet below his. Miller was higher, off to Maren's left, already sawing at rope with his belt buckle. Topper dangled lowest, cursing. "He's breathing," Maren called. "Gisela. He's breathing. I can see his chest." Gisela stopped screaming and started climbing the inside of her net toward him. Boots crunched below. Four of them, then six. Men in mismatched leather stepped out of the ferns with crossbows raised. Not gray coats. Not Council. Rebels. A woman with a scarred jaw looked up at Maren. "State your business," she said. "And what you brought us." Maren's mouth went dry. She had rehearsed a dozen answers. None of them were true enough. Below her, Gisela was still climbing toward Kato. Miller had stopped sawing. Maren pulled her coat open. The cub lifted its head, wings folding tight, eyes bright in the green light. "I brought her," Maren said. "And what she can do. That's the offer." The scarred woman lowered her crossbow one degree. She did not lower it further. "Cut them down," she said. "The man with the head wound first."

The rebels cut them down one by one. Kato dropped into two men's arms, limp, blood streaking his jaw. Gisela hit the ground running and shoved past a crossbow to reach him. Maren landed hard on her knees. The cub squirmed inside her coat and dug small claws into her ribs to stay hidden. Miller landed beside her and put a hand under her elbow without a word. Topper stayed on the ground where he fell, cursing quietly. The scarred woman watched Gisela cross the clearing. Gisela stopped three paces from her and her face broke. "Vera," she said. "It's me." Vera's mouth opened, then closed. The old scars on her jaw pulled tight. She lowered her crossbow the rest of the way. "You shouldn't have come back," Vera said. Gisela started to answer. Vera cut her off with a look and jerked her chin at her men. They marched the group through the ferns to a grassy opening ringed with tents. Kato was carried between two rebels. Gisela walked at his hip and would not let go of his sleeve. They were pulled into the largest tent. A woman with rolled sleeves knelt beside Kato and opened her kit. Gisela dropped down next to her and pressed her hand to Kato's chest. Maren watched her sister's knuckles go white. Vera sat on a crate across the tent. She set the crossbow across her knees and looked at Maren. "Open the coat," Vera said. Maren's throat closed. She thought of Topper's hands reaching for the cub in his kitchen. She thought of Kazuki's needle. She had refused every trade until now. The cub was the only thing left in her hands that anyone wanted. Kato's breath rattled. Gisela made a small sound. Maren opened her coat. The cub climbed out on its own. Its wings unfolded, bright in the lamplight. It stepped onto the packed dirt and walked to Kato without being asked. It laid its small head against his sternum. Kato's rattle eased. Color moved back into his face. The cub's flanks trembled, then steadied. It did not collapse this time. It sat up on the blanket beside him, alert, tail curled. Gisela pressed her forehead to Kato's shoulder and cried without sound. Vera watched all of it. She did not smile. "That animal stays with us," Vera said. "You brought it here. That was the price of walking in." Maren's hands were shaking. "She isn't a coin." "No," Vera said. "She's better. And I have fourteen names I owe." Miller shifted at Maren's shoulder. Maren caught his wrist before he could speak. She had no rifle. No file. No ledger. Nothing to set against a camp of armed rebels and a leader who had already decided. "Feed my people," Maren said. "Tend the boy. We stay the night." Vera nodded once. The cub did not look at Maren. It stayed pressed to Kato's ribs, breathing with him, already someone else's.

Vera's men took Maren and Miller across the clearing to a smaller tent at the edge of the camp. One of them lifted the flap and jerked his head. Inside was a cot, a folded blanket, and a lantern hung from the center pole. The flap fell shut behind them. Maren heard boots move off through the wet grass, then stop close enough to listen. Maren sat down on the cot. Her coat felt too light. Her ribs no longer had a small warm weight pressed against them. She stared at the dirt floor and tried to think of what she still had to trade in the morning. She could not name a single thing. Miller crouched in front of her. He did not speak. He took her wrist and turned it toward the lantern. The stitches he had put in her arm days ago were healing clean. He touched them with the pad of his thumb. Then he moved his hand up to the bare place on her forearm where her gold bracelet used to sit before Miller traded it for bread in the fishing village. He rested his fingers there for a moment. He drew one of her braids forward over her shoulder and ran his hand down its length. Then he pulled his hand back and stood up. "You should sleep," Miller said. "I'll take the floor." "The cot's big enough." He looked at the cot. She looked at it too. It was not big enough. His shoulders alone would hang off the frame. She closed her mouth. He sat down against the tent pole and rested his arms on his knees. Maren lay back. Her arms felt cold where his hand had been. She pulled the blanket up and it did not fix it. "They'll turn us out at sunrise," she said. "With nothing." "Maybe." "I gave her away, Miller. She was the only thing keeping us alive." "You kept Kato alive." "Vera won't feed us past breakfast for that." Miller was quiet for a while. The lantern hissed. Outside, someone laughed low and a pot scraped. "Eir will find us again," he said. Maren turned her head toward him. He was watching the tent flap, not her. She thought of the cub sitting up alert beside Kato, tail curled, not collapsing this time. Stronger here than she had been anywhere else. Fed. Guarded by fourteen names' worth of grief. She thought of Gisela's white knuckles on Kato's sleeve, and of Vera lowering the crossbow when she saw Gisela's face. Maren let her eyes close. The cub was not lost. The cub was placed. Somewhere a sealed file was waiting to be found, and Maren had just spent her last coin buying a night inside the only camp that might help her do it. She would ask Vera at first light. Not for shelter. For a trade.

At sunrise, Vera's men brought all five of them to the main tent. Maren walked at the front. Miller stayed at her shoulder. Gisela and Kato followed. Topper came last, wrists loose, mouth already open to complain about the walk. Vera sat behind a plank table with a tin cup in her hand. The scar across her jaw looked deeper in the flat light. She did not stand. "You ate," Vera said. "You slept. Kato is breathing. That was the trade." "I want another one," Maren said. "I can't shelter fugitives. My people would hang me for it. You're the Registry's face on every post north of here." "I know their routes," Maren said. "Every transfer ship, every rotation, every clerk that signs off. Six months of logs. It's in my head." Vera set the cup down. "Words." "I can name the ship your ledger rides on. I can name the week it docks." "Still words." Maren's throat closed. She had nothing on paper. Nothing in her hands. She had spent the cub last night to sit in this tent, and Vera was not going to take a promise. Topper shifted behind her, bored. He said something under his breath about breakfast. Maren turned her head. She looked at him for a long second. The white shirt. The smug mouth. The mustache he touched when he was pleased with himself. A former Registry cipher clerk who could read anything the Registry wrote down. She turned back to Vera. "Then take him," Maren said. She jerked her chin at Topper. "He worked ciphers for the Registry for nine years. He can read every code on that ledger you want. He's been our prisoner since the coast. We've been feeding him to keep him quiet." Topper's mouth fell open. "What —" Miller stepped in front of him. One hand on his chest. "Quiet." Miller's other hand rested near his belt. He was smiling, barely. Maren had not seen him smile in weeks. Vera looked at Topper. Topper looked at Miller's hand. He shut his mouth. "Nine years," Vera said. "Ask him anything from the sealed side," Maren said. "He'll answer. He wants to live." Vera studied him. She studied Maren. She drank from the tin cup. The tent was quiet enough to hear Kato breathing. "Sit down," Vera said finally. "All of you." They sat on the packed dirt. Vera leaned forward. "You want back on our side, this is the price. There's a Registry clerk two days east who signs the transfer manifests for the northern routes. Delia. She turned once. She'll turn again if the right person asks. Bring her to me alive, with the current manifest, and you're ours again. Fail, and don't come back." Maren's hands went cold. She knew the name. "Agreed," Maren said. Vera nodded once. "Take your cipher man. You'll need him." Topper made a sound like a kicked dog. Miller's hand did not move from his chest.

They packed in the gray hour before the camp woke. Vera's people gave them a wax-cloth map, dried meat, and two water skins. Maren rolled the map tight and tucked it inside her sleeve. Gisela stood by the tent flap with Kato, who was upright now but still slow on his feet. The cub was somewhere behind the far tents, out of sight. Maren did not go look for it. "You're staying," Maren said to Gisela. "Both of you. Kato can't walk two days." Gisela did not argue. She only said, "Bring her back breathing." Kato nodded once. "Don't die." Maren turned away before her face gave anything up. Losing the cub last night had already scraped her hollow. Leaving her sister in someone else's camp was worse. Outside the tent, Miller checked the rifle strap on his shoulder. Topper stood beside him, sulking, boots half-laced. He had not been asked if he wanted to come. "Two days east," Miller said. "We move." They walked into the trees. The map showed a clerk's boarding house on the edge of a market town. Delia would be there by dusk tomorrow if the manifest schedule held. After an hour, Maren spoke without looking at either man. "She turned on me once already. She'll scream the second she sees my face. I have no way to hold her." Topper snorted. He walked with his hands in his pockets, mustache twitching. "Delia. Tight bun. Cracked glasses she won't replace." Maren stopped walking. "You know her." "I know everyone who signs manifests." He rolled his shoulder. "She owes me. Two years back. A ledger error I buried for her before her supervisor saw it. She'd have lost her post." He smiled under the mustache. "She still owes." Maren's stomach turned. Delia had almost certainly lost the post anyway, after the sealed wing. Because of Maren. And now Topper wanted to press an old debt on top of that. "You'll use that on her," Maren said. "You want her walking back with you, or you want her screaming?" Miller watched Maren. He did not speak. He was letting her decide. Maren thought of the red closure tag. Of her sister's file, lost to the sea. Of Vera's terms. Fail and don't come back. "Use it," she said. "But you speak first. Alone. I stay out of sight until she's agreed." "My pleasure." Topper touched the corner of his mustache. They walked on. The pines thinned toward a cart road. Maren pulled the map from her sleeve and checked the fold. Two days. One clerk. One man she despised, holding the only leash that would keep Delia quiet long enough to move her. She had traded the cub for shelter. She had traded Topper for a mission. Now she was trading her own conscience for a woman she had already ruined once. She folded the map and kept walking.

They were a day's walk in when Topper began to drag his boots. He kicked a root, then another. Miller kept the pace. Maren watched the trees and pretended not to hear him breathing loud through his nose. "I've been thinking," Topper said. Maren's shoulders tightened. "Don't." "I don't think I get that good of a cut." He stopped in the path. "Food. A bed. That's what you're paying me. Meanwhile I'm the one walking her back to you. I'm the leash. Without me she runs." Miller turned. "You agreed to the terms." "I agreed before I understood them." Topper spread his hands. "I go back to that camp, I'm a tool. Vera works me till my fingers bleed and calls it shelter. That's not a cut. That's a collar." Maren made herself speak level. "You get food. You get a bed. Nobody hands you to the Registry. That's the cut." "Not enough." "It's what we have." "It isn't." His mouth curled under the mustache. "You have plenty." Miller stepped closer to him. "Walk." Topper walked. For twenty paces. Then his hand shot out and closed around Maren's wrist and yanked her in against his chest. His breath was hot on her ear. His other hand slid to her hip. "You know what would suffice," he whispered. She froze one beat. Then she twisted. Miller was already moving. He hit Topper across the jaw with the flat of his fist and Topper went down hard. Miller followed him to the ground. The rifle strap slid off his shoulder. He drove his knuckles into Topper's mouth, then his nose, then his mouth again. Topper's hands came up and did nothing. Blood ran into his mustache. "Miller." Maren grabbed his arm. He shook her off. "Miller. Stop." She caught his wrist with both hands and pulled. He was heavier than her by half. She braced her boot against his hip and hauled backward until he sat back on his heels, breathing through his teeth. Topper rolled onto his side and coughed red into the dirt. Maren stood between them. She did not let go of Miller's wrist until his shoulders dropped. Topper spit and pushed himself up on one elbow. He looked at Miller. He looked at Maren. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and got to his feet, slow. He picked up his pack. He fell in behind them on the path. Nobody spoke. They walked until the light thinned. Maren's wrist throbbed where his fingers had been. Miller's knuckles were split and wet. Topper limped, silent, at a careful distance. The cut was settled. He would not ask again. He would come with them to the boarding house, do the work on Delia, and walk her back to Vera. Not because Maren had satisfied him. Because Miller had shown him the other price.

They reached the boarding house at dusk. Maren and Miller crouched in the brush across the lane. Topper walked the last stretch alone, straightening his shirt, wiping the blood crust from under his nose. He looked almost like himself again. The building was small and white, one story, a tin roof, one door. Nothing like the tall stone hall where Maren had last seen Delia. A clerk lived here on rotation. That was all. A young woman came up the path from the other direction. Tight black bun. Business suit. A gold chain at her throat. Her glasses sat crooked, one lens split across the middle. She had not replaced them. Maren remembered the sound of Delia's voice down the corridor, telling the guards which door she was behind. Guilt moved through Maren again, low and familiar. She had come to ruin this woman a second time. Topper caught Delia at the door. He said something Maren could not hear. Delia went still. Then she unlocked the door and let him in. "You alright?" Miller asked. He shifted closer in the brush. "I don't want it to bother me the way it does," Maren said. Miller did not answer. He watched the door. Minutes passed. Maren counted her breaths. She listened for a shout, a whistle, boots on gravel. Nothing came. A lamp lit inside. A shadow crossed the window twice. The door opened. Delia stepped out first. Topper followed with his arm around her shoulders, easy, like a cousin walking her home. She carried a thick file against her chest, both arms locked around it. No coat. No bag. She had not stopped to pack. No alarm. No guards. Yet. They came down the path together. Delia's face was flat. Her jaw was set. She looked straight ahead and did not slow. Maren stood as they reached the brush. Delia stopped. Her eyes found Maren's face and held. "You," Delia said. "Me." "He said manifests. He said one night." Her voice was level. "He did not say you." "I know." "You will get me killed." "Maybe," Maren said. "Walk with us anyway." Delia looked at the file in her arms. She looked back at the small white building. A lamp still burned in the window. She had left it lit. She had left the door unlocked. "Two days," Delia said. "Then I am done with you." "Two days," Maren said. Miller took point. Topper fell in behind Delia, close enough to touch her elbow, not close enough to earn Miller's eye. They moved off the lane and into the trees before the lamps in the neighboring houses came on. Maren walked beside Delia. The file pressed between them as the path narrowed. She did not ask what was in it. Not yet. Vera would want to see it first, and Maren would need to be in the room when she did.

They walked two days through pine country without trouble. Delia kept pace and kept quiet. She held the file against her chest at every rest stop and slept with it under her arm. Once, on the second morning, Maren woke and found Delia sitting up at the edge of the coals, watching her. Delia did not look away. She did not move for the file either. She just watched, and Maren understood the walk was the only thing holding. They reached Vera's camp at midday. Sentries waved them through. The big tent stood at the center, canvas patched in three colors. Miller pulled the flap back. Topper went in first. Maren followed with Delia at her shoulder. Delia stopped one step inside. The file slipped an inch in her arms. Her eyes went wide behind the cracked lens. "Mom?" Vera stood at the map table. Her hand closed on the edge of it. She did not speak. Her eyes filled, and she did not blink the water back. Delia's face changed. The shock burned off fast. What came under it was older and harder. She looked at Maren. She looked at Topper. She looked at the scarred woman across the tent who had not come for her in years. "You knew," Delia said. "I knew a name," Maren said. "Not this." "You knew enough." No one moved. Kato was not in the tent. Gisela was not in the tent. Two rebels at the far wall looked at their boots. "Give me a moment with my daughter," Vera said. Miller touched Maren's elbow. Topper was already backing toward the flap. They stepped out into the sun. The flap fell shut behind them. Miller led her to their tent without speaking. Inside, Maren caught his hand and turned it over. The knuckles were split from the boarding house, scabbed and reopened by the walk. She sat him on the cot and wet a rag from the water skin. She cleaned each knuckle. He watched her face the whole time. She watched his. The deal had held. Delia was here. The file was there. Vera had what she asked for, and Maren had bought another day. "Maren," Miller said. She looked up. "If she—" The flap tore open. Gisela came through at a run and put her arms around Maren's neck hard enough to knock her back against Miller's knee. She smelled like wood smoke and horse. She was crying without sound. "You came back," Gisela said. Maren held her. Over Gisela's shoulder, through the gap in the flap, she saw the big tent across the yard. No shouting came from it. Only the low sound of a voice she could not make out, and another voice answering. Whatever Vera and Delia were to each other, it was Maren who had dragged it into the open. And now it was Vera's price to name.

Gisela let go and sat back on her heels. She wiped her face with the flat of her hand. She looked at Miller's split knuckles, then at Maren's face, and she understood without being told. She stood up. "I'll be with Kato," she said. "Come find me after." She slipped out. The flap fell shut. Across the yard the low voices in the big tent went on, Vera's and Delia's, neither one raised. Whatever they said, they were saying it without the camp hearing. That meant Vera had not decided yet what to do with Maren. Maren turned back to Miller's hand. She wet the rag again and worked the dirt out of the deepest split. He did not flinch. "She'll set a price," Maren said. "I need to know what's in that file before she does. Whatever it is, it's what Delia was willing to walk two days for. It's leverage. If Vera reads it first, she names the terms and I take them." "Then we get to it first." "How. It's in the tent with them." "It's in Delia's arms," Miller said. "Not Vera's." She looked up. He was right. Delia had not let the file go on the walk. She had not let it go stepping into the tent. A daughter meeting a mother after years would not hand a stranger her only card. Maren tied off the rag. She stood. The flap moved. Delia stepped in without asking. Her eyes were red. The file was still against her chest. She looked at Maren a long moment. "She wants it," Delia said. "She hasn't asked yet. She will." "Yes." "You dragged me here for it." "I did." Delia set the file down on the cot between them. She did not open it. "Read it," Delia said. "Before I go back in. I want someone in this camp to know what she's buying." Maren opened the cover. Miller stood at her shoulder. The top page was a transfer manifest. Under it were names, dates, holding orders. Halfway down the third page Maren stopped. Her family’s name was there “Goldweaver”. A date and a place. She noted them. She closed the file. Her hands were steady. "Thank you," she said. Delia took it back. "I owe you nothing. Remember that." She walked out. Maren sat down on the cot. Miller stayed standing. "We're safe here for now," he said. "That was a big win." She breathed out for what felt like the first time in a week. She reached for his hand to finish the dressing. She did not notice how close he was standing. His other hand went to her hair and pushed it behind her ear, then ran down her braid. She looked up at him. He looked down at her mouth. Neither of them decided. They brought their lips together.

Maren woke on the floor. The cot had been too narrow for both of them, and at some point in the night they had slid down without waking. Her head lay on Miller's chest. Her arm crossed his stomach. His hand rested at the small of her back. Gray light came under the tent flap. Somewhere in the camp a pot banged against a stone. She did not move for a moment. She listened to him breathe. Then she sat up. "The date is nine days out," she said. "The place I don't know. I read it once. I have to trust I read it right." Miller opened his eyes. "Say it back." She said the date. She said the place. Both came clean. "Again," he said. She said them again. Same words. Same order. "Then we go," he said. "Nothing on paper. Nothing on you. If they stop us and search, there's nothing to find." "Why our name," she said. "Why in the middle of Delia's file. It wasn't the top page. It wasn't marked. It was buried." "Someone put it where it wouldn't be looked for." "Then the place matters. The date matters. We go and we see." She pulled her braids over her shoulders and worked them tighter. The gold at her wrist caught the light. She stood. Gisela was outside the med tent with Kato. He sat up against a post, color back in his face. Gisela looked at Maren's face and knew. "Where," Gisela said. "East. Nine days out. I'll tell you the rest when we're clear of the camp." Kato nodded once. "I can walk by tomorrow." "Then walk by tomorrow." She found Vera at the fire. Delia stood at Vera's shoulder now, the file gone from her arms. Whatever price had been set, it had been paid between them. "We're leaving at midday," Maren said. "Thank you for the shelter." Vera looked at her a long moment. "You don't tell me where." "No." "Good." Vera's eyes moved to Topper, sitting by the wood pile. "He stays. He works my manifests. That was the trade." "He stays," Maren said. "The cub stays too. You knew that." "I knew that." Vera gave a short nod. Not friendship. Not enemy either. Topper heard his name and looked up. He opened his mouth to say something and Miller looked at him and he shut it. By midday Maren, Miller, Gisela, and Kato were at the tree line with what the camp had spared them. Bread. Water. A blade each. The date sat in Maren's head like a stone she could not drop. The place sat beside it. She had not written a word. She stepped into the trees and the others followed.

The trees closed behind them within an hour. Maren walked with the date and the place set in her head like two nails. Nine days. She did not know the roads. She did not know the rivers. She only knew east, and east was not enough. They stopped at a stream to fill the skins. Kato crouched by the water, still slow but steady. Gisela knelt beside him and rinsed her hands. "We can't take the road," Miller said. "Not with your face on paper in every village between here and there." "Then we don't take the road," Maren said. "Woods, then. All the way." "Nine days through woods we don't know." "Better than nine days on a road that knows us." Kato spat into the water. "There's a ridge line east. Runs most of the way. Traders use it when the tolls go up. No patrols. No inns." "You've walked it?" Maren asked. "Once. Halfway. There's a river crossing four days in. Shallow at a bend. I can find it again." "And after that?" "After that we ask the trees." Gisela looked up. "We'll manage. We always have." Maren studied her sister's face. Sixteen years old and already talking like someone who had buried people. She nodded once. They moved on before dusk. Kato took the front. Gisela walked at his shoulder, quiet, watching his footing. Maren and Miller fell back a stone's throw behind, out of the others' hearing. "I've suspected for a while," Maren said. "My father had something to do with the rebels. This only makes my suspicions stronger." Miller looked at her. "Our name buried in a Registry manifest. A date. A place. Someone hid it there for a reader who knew to look. He knew people who knew how to hide things like that." Miller did not answer at once. He stepped over a root and held a branch back for her. "He kept a suit at your forge for years," she said. "He gave you the dagger work. He trusted you with things he didn't tell me." "He paid me to make blades. That's all I know." "You'd tell me if it wasn't." "I'd tell you." She stopped walking. He stopped with her. He bent and kissed her forehead. She was not used to it. Her breath caught for a beat before it steadied. "We can't assume," he said. "Not yet. We go to the place. We see what's there. Then we know." "And if it's a trap." "Then we know that too." She nodded. Ahead, Kato had stopped at the edge of a clearing and lifted one hand. Gisela dropped low beside him. Maren and Miller closed the gap fast and quiet. Kato pointed through the brush. A narrow track ran east through the pines, packed dirt, no wheel ruts. Old. "The ridge line," Kato said. "We're on it." Maren looked east. Nine days. She stepped onto the track.

They walked the ridge two more days before the ground began to slope. On the third morning, Kato lifted a hand and pointed through the pines. Water. The river ran wide and brown below them, moving fast at the middle and slow at a long bend. Kato led them down. "Shallow here," he said. "Waist deep. Maybe less." Maren looked at the far bank. Nothing moved in the trees. She hated that. She hated not knowing what the file meant. Her father had buried their name in a manifest for a reason, and she still could not read that reason. "If it's a trap," she said, "we walk into it blind." Miller adjusted the strap across his chest. "Then we don't walk in together. Kato and Gisela go ahead. Scout the road on the other side. We follow when they signal." Kato nodded once. Gisela was already pulling her boots off. They crossed in a line, Kato first, Gisela close behind, Maren and Miller trailing. The current pushed hard at Maren's knees. She kept her eyes on her sister's curls, bright against the water. They climbed the far bank wet to the thigh and lay flat in the ferns. "Tracks gone," Kato said. "River took them." Gisela squeezed water from her sleeve. "We've got maybe a day before anyone picks us up again." "Go," Miller said. "Both of you. Check the road east. We'll come when it's clear." Kato and Gisela slipped into the trees. Maren watched them go. She felt the small relief of hidden tracks and hated how quickly it faded. They waited. Ten minutes. Twenty. Then wheels, groaning on packed dirt. And a voice she knew. Gisela. Loud. Cheerful. Wrong. Maren was up before she thought. Miller caught her arm at the tree line and held. Through the brush she saw the road. An old wagon, a farmer in a straw hat at the reins, and in the back, sitting on sacks, Kato and Gisela. Gisela was laughing at something. Kato had one arm across his ribs like a man who had walked too far. Neither looked back. Maren pulled against Miller's grip. He did not let go. "It would have been suspicious not to take the ride," he said, low. "A farmer offers, you take it. Refusing gets remembered." "They're going without us." "They're going ahead. We'll find them again." The wagon rolled on. Maren watched until the road bent and swallowed it. Then she saw it, at the edge of the ruts, a small canvas bag. She stepped out and picked it up. Bread. Dried apple. A wedge of cheese wrapped in cloth. Enough for two, for a day. She held the bag against her chest. Miller stood beside her, watching the empty road. "Nine days," she said. "Now six." "We walk," Miller said. "We meet them at the place." She nodded, and they turned east into the trees.

The road bent away with the wagon on it, and Maren turned into the trees with Miller at her shoulder. The bag knocked against her hip with every step. She kept her eyes on the ground and counted her breaths against the count of days. "I just got her back," Maren whispered. Miller pulled her closer under his arm. They walked faster inside the pines, off any path, keeping the road's sound to their left. Six days. A cart moved twice what feet could move. If Gisela and Kato reached the place first and waited, they would be seen. If Maren arrived after, the transfer would pass and the name in the manifest would move to somewhere she could not follow. She had not eaten since the river. Her mouth tasted of metal. The ferns blurred at the edges and the ground tilted. Her boot caught a root and she went sideways. Miller caught her before her knee hit dirt. He swept his other arm behind her legs and lifted her against his chest. The supply bag hung from his fist. She weighed nothing to him. She hated that she was grateful. "Put me down. We lose time." "You need to eat." He carried her to a fallen pine and set her on it. He crouched, opened the bag, and laid every piece out on the cloth between them. Bread. The wedge of cheese. Three strips of dried apple. A stub of hard sausage she had not seen before. He did not choose for her. "Pick." She reached for the bread because it was closest. He tore off a piece of cheese and pressed it into her other hand. Then he brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear with two fingers and left his hand at her jaw a moment. "Chew," he said. "Slow." She ate. The bread went down like wood at first, then like bread. The cheese cut the sick feeling in her stomach. She took an apple strip. Her hands stopped shaking. Miller watched the trees while she ate. When she reached for a second piece of bread he shook his head and wrapped the rest. "Save half for tonight," he said. "We push till dark. Then again at first light. No fires." "The cart will beat us." "Not by much. Carts stop. Carts get stopped. We don't." He stood and offered his hand. She took it and rose without stumbling. The trees ahead ran east in long straight lines, easy walking under the needles. Six days on foot against wheels. She had the food in her stomach and Miller at her side and a name held only in her head. She let go of his hand and stepped past him. "Then we walk till dark." He followed. The road kept its distance to their left, and they matched its pace, then beat it.

They walked until the light turned gray under the pines. Maren's legs moved on habit. Miller stayed a half step behind her, close enough to catch her if she tipped. The road hummed faint to their left. She counted trees to keep her feet honest. Her boot met something that did not give. A thin line pressed against her shin, low, taut, wrong for a root. She stopped and threw her arm back across Miller's chest. "Wire," she whispered. Miller crouched beside her knee. He followed the line with his eyes, not his hands. It ran from a stake by her boot up into the ferns. He traced it further with a slow turn of his head. "Snare line," he said. "For meat." She eased her foot back. The wire held. She lifted it clear. A small bell rang above them. A cage of green wood and iron dropped from the branches. Miller shoved her sideways. The cage crashed into the dirt where she had stood, bounced, and settled on its ribs. They pushed it off their legs together. It was heavier than it looked. It was not the danger. Boots hit the ground fast through the ferns. A boy came first, no taller than her hip, cheeks red from running. He stopped short when he saw them and stared at Maren's face. Behind him a man came through the brush with a long knife at his belt and a coil of wire on his shoulder. Not a soldier. A trapper. His eyes went to the sprung cage, then to her. Miller stood up in front of her and set his hand at the small of her back, guiding her behind the trunk of the nearest pine. He stepped into the man's line of sight. "Sorry for the trap," Miller said, easy, like he was buying nails. "My wife's a clumsy walker. We'll pay for the reset." The trapper did not smile. "Woods are posted. What are you doing off the road?" "Short cut to the crossing," Miller said. "Storm took the bridge south. We heard from a farmer." The boy leaned to see around Miller. Maren pressed her cheek to the bark and kept her braids inside her collar. Her face was on notices in every village they had passed. A copper coin was a week of meat for a boy like that. "Bridge is fine," the trapper said. "Step out where I can see you, missus." Miller did not move. He reached back without looking and closed his hand around Maren's wrist. "Run," he said, low. He threw the sprung cage at the trapper's knees and drove his shoulder into the man's chest. The knife came halfway free and fell. Maren ran. She heard the boy shout her description at his father's back as she cleared the ferns. Miller caught her at the next rise, breath hard, blood at his lip. "They saw," she said. "Enough of you," he said. "Move."

They ran until the ferns thinned and the ground turned to needles. Maren's chest burned. She could still hear the boy's voice pitching her description back through the trees. He would reach a village by dark. Her face would be on the road before her. Miller pulled her behind a fallen trunk. He listened. No dog. No shouting. The trapper had not come after them. That was not what worried her. "He knows you now," she said. "Both of us." "Me," Miller said. "He'll remember me. Tall. Blonde. Called you my wife." Heat climbed her neck. She hated that the word landed the way it did, and that he had said it so quickly, without thinking, like it was already true. She looked at the dirt. "You need a cloak," Miller said. "Or change your hair." Her hand went to one of her braids before she could stop it. "Not the hair." He watched her a moment. He did not ask why. She was glad. Her mother had done these braids in her lap on the kitchen bench. It was one of the few pieces she still had, and she carried it on her head. "A cloak, then," he said. "For both of us." He found a laundry line at the edge of the next hamlet. A widow hung sheets and traveler's coats there for coin. They would not knock. They would take two and leave a gold link on the post. They moved parallel to the road, low through the pines. The hamlet sat in a shallow bend, six roofs and a well. Smoke rose from two chimneys. The line ran behind a shed, heavy with wash. Maren waited in the ditch while Miller crossed. He cut two hooded cloaks from the line with his knife and left a link from her bracelet on the post like he'd said. He was back before she counted a hundred. Gray wool, patched, smelling of soap and woodsmoke. He handed her the smaller one. She pulled the hood up and tucked the braids inside her collar until nothing brown showed. "Better," he said. She pulled his hood up too. It hid the blonde. It hid the blood at his lip. In gray wool he looked like any tired man walking his wife to the crossing. "How long before the boy reaches a village?" she said. "By dark." "Then we don't stop at dark." They climbed out of the ditch and walked east under the hoods. The trapper's face would travel. Hers would travel with it. But the woman on the notices had bright braids and no cloak, and the man beside her had gold hair and no beard shadow, and for another day at least those two people did not exist on this road. She kept her chin down and counted trees again.

By dusk they reached the edge of a village Miller said sat on the trade road two days short of the crossing. Smoke rose from a dozen chimneys. Carts stood by a low well. Maren pulled her hood tight, but the gray wool stopped at her wrists. Her bracelet showed. Her boots showed. City boots, thin-soled, stitched by a shop that never sold to farmers. "Wait," Miller said. He crouched behind a stack of firewood and pulled the food bag off his shoulder. He rolled it tight, then tighter, until it was a lump the size of a small melon. "Put this under your shirt." She stared at him. "They'll look past a pregnant woman," he said. "Their eyes will slide right off." She unbuckled her belt and shoved the bundle up under her shirt. It sat wrong. Miller stepped close and reached under the cloak with both hands. He shifted the bundle higher, smoothed the cloth over it, tucked the bracelet inside her sleeve so it stopped catching light. His knuckles brushed her ribs. She felt her breath catch and hated that it did. "Better," he said. He did not step back right away. She pulled the cloak closed over the swell. "Walk slow." They walked into the village slow. Miller took her elbow the way a husband would. Two men by the well glanced up, glanced down. A woman with a basket looked at Maren's belly and looked away. Nobody looked at her face. Nobody looked at her boots. They moved through the square searching for Gisela and Kato. The supply bag signal had been left three days back. The farmer's cart could not be far ahead now. "Any spare change?" The voice came from a doorway. An old woman sat on the step, gray shawl over her head, hand out. Miller reached for a coin. Maren looked at the hand. Young knuckles. Gold ring turned inward on the third finger. She looked up at the face inside the shawl. Her own face looked back. Gisela had smudged her cheeks with ash and pulled the shawl low, but the eyes were the same, and the freckles under the ash, and the small chip in the front tooth. Maren almost said her name. She swallowed it. "Bless you," Gisela said, and closed her hand on Miller's coin. Her thumb tapped his palm twice. She tipped her chin toward an alley behind the doorway. Maren followed the tip of her chin. Kato stood at the alley mouth with a hat pulled low, watching the street. Gisela stood up from the step. "Come inside, sister," she said, loud enough for the well. "You shouldn't be on your feet." The city woman in gray wool was gone. A pregnant traveler and her mother-in-law and her husband walked out of the square together. Nobody stopped them.

Inside the doorway, the room was dim and smelled of old cooking fat. Gisela shut the door and pulled off the ashen shawl. She and Maren caught each other in a hard, quick embrace. Gisela's arms were thin under the cloth. Maren felt her sister's braid press against her cheek and let go before she wanted to. "Four days," Gisela said. "That's what's left. Kato says the trail from here he doesn't know." Kato leaned in the back doorway, hat still low. "My route ends at this village. Past the well, past the mill, I've never walked it. Registry patrols the last stretch. Wrong turn puts us at a checkpoint." Maren pressed the food bundle higher under her shirt. "Then we need someone from the village. Someone who's walked it." "Quiet ask," Kato said. "Not loud." They slipped back onto the street in their disguises. Maren waddled with a hand at her back. Gisela shuffled beside her, shawl pulled low, playing the mother-in-law. Miller took Maren's elbow. Kato peeled off and moved between two houses like a shadow, scouting ahead for anyone who traded east. A man stepped out from the shade of a doorway. Middle-aged. Wool coat. A carter's hands. "It's not safe for the elderly or a pregnant woman on the streets right now," he said. His eyes moved to Maren's face and stayed there. Stayed longer than a stranger's eyes should. She felt his look settle on her freckles, on the line of her jaw under the hood. She knew that pause. She had seen it on the notice boards. Maren gasped. She bent forward over the bundle and clutched at Miller's sleeve. "Oh — oh, it's coming, it's coming now —" She sagged into his side, hand pressed low, breath ragged. Miller caught her at once. "Easy. Easy, love." He turned his shoulder between her and the man. "You'll pardon us. Her time's started. We need to be inside." Gisela was already at Maren's other arm, muttering in a papery old woman's voice. "Move, move, get her off the road." The man stepped back. His mouth opened, closed. "There's — the midwife's two doors down —" "We have kin here," Miller said, already walking. "Thank you." They pushed past him. Maren kept moaning until the doorway swallowed them. Inside, Kato was waiting. He had a boy by the shirt, no older than twelve, wide-eyed but not frightened. "He knows the last stretch," Kato said. "His uncle drives salt to the crossing. He'll walk us past the patrol road for a gold link." Maren straightened. She pulled a link from her bracelet and set it in the boy's palm. "At dark," the boy said. "Back door." Gisela looked at the front window. The carter was still standing in the street, watching the house. "We leave at dark," Maren said. "And we don't come back through this village."

They waited out the afternoon in the back room while the carter watched the front of the house. Maren kept the food bundle strapped high under her shirt, the shape of a late pregnancy pressing against the cloth. She sat on the floor with one hand on it, in case anyone glanced through a window. Gisela stayed by the shutter, watching the street through the crack. "He hasn't moved," Gisela said. "Two hours." "He'll move at dark," Kato said. "Or he'll bring someone." Miller checked the back door hinges and oiled them with lamp fat so they wouldn't groan. The boy sat on a stool in the corner, swinging his heels, the gold link already tucked into his boot. He watched Maren like she was a story his uncle had told him. "You walked this route?" Maren asked him. "To the patrol road," the boy said. "Not past it. Past it my uncle goes alone." Miller and Maren traded a look. Three days beyond the patrol road, and no one to lead. She pushed the thought down. At dusk the boy stood up. "Now." Miller lifted Maren against his chest before she could argue. Her arms went around his neck. The bundle stayed tucked under her shirt, a round weight between them. To anyone watching from the road, she was a wife too weak to walk, being carried to a bed she wouldn't reach in time. Gisela cracked the back door. The alley was empty. The boy slipped out first and waved them on. Kato went last, hand on the knife at his belt. They moved between houses, past a chicken coop, past a woodpile, out to a footpath the boy knew. Miller's breath was steady against Maren's temple. She kept her face against his collar. She didn't look back at the front of the house, at the carter, at whether he had turned to follow. The boy led them for two hours through low scrub and a drainage cut. He stopped at a stand of birches where the ground rose. Beyond the trees, a wide dirt track ran north to south, empty in the moonlight. "The patrol road," the boy whispered. "They pass twice before dawn. Cross fast. After that I go home." Miller set Maren down. She pulled the bundle out from under her shirt and stuffed it into her pack. Her stomach was flat again. She felt light and exposed. She knelt to the boy's eye level. "You didn't see us. You didn't take anything." He nodded, too quick. Gisela crouched beside her. "He'll talk," she said, low. "Boys talk." "I know." They watched him run back the way they'd come, small feet, no sound. Then Maren turned to the empty road, and to the three days of forest beyond it where no one on earth knew the way.