Mira Nightingale wanted to draw every land no one had drawn. She spread her maps across the tower floor and searched for a single line past the borders. There was none. Every map she owned stopped at the same place, where the known world ended and the wilds began. She had hoarded hundreds of charts for this moment. Not one crossed the edge. She knelt and traced the last inked ridge with a stained finger. Beyond it, blank paper. She had planned to leave at first thaw and chart the wilds until her atlas held the whole world. But she could not start from nothing. Without a reference point, she would waste seasons wandering, drawing blind. Her collar itched. She tugged it higher over the scaled patches on her neck and kept working. She pulled maps from shelves, from drawers, from the rolled stacks jammed in every window. She checked their edges one by one. All of them died at the border. Then she remembered the box. It sat on the highest shelf, a carved stone case her mother had left her. She had never opened it. She climbed, lifted it down, and pried the heavy lid. Inside lay a compass rose, its metal points rimmed with frost that did not melt in her hands. Fine snowflake lines covered its face. She had never seen a maker's mark like the one etched at its center. She set it on the blank edge of her largest map. The frosted needle swung. It did not point north. It pointed past the border, into the empty paper, and held there. Mira's breath caught. This was a starting reference. Someone had built this compass to guide a mapmaker into the wilds. Her mother must have carried it once. A scratch came from the window. She turned. A lynx crouched on the sill, its coat pale as cloud, thin lines of light crackling along its ribs. It stared at the compass, then at her. She had never seen such a creature. It stepped inside without fear and pressed its nose to the frosted needle. Mira did not move. The lynx looked at the direction the needle held, then back at her, and she understood. It knew that way. It had come from there. She gathered her packs before dawn. She rolled the largest map, wrapped the compass in cloth, and left the useless charts on the floor. Her problem was solved. She had a heading and a guide. But at the tower door, the lynx would not lead. It sat and stared past her, up at the mountain that rose behind the tower. The mountain she had burned from every map she ever found. The compass needle, when she lifted it, swung from the wilds and locked onto that peak instead. Her path did not run outward. It ran up, toward the one place she had spent her life erasing.

Mira faced the mountain from the tower door. The compass needle locked onto its peak. She could not chart a route up a place she had spent her life erasing. She owned no drawing of it, no height, no ridge line. To plan a climb, she needed a rough survey. She had none. She knew who did. The girl drew everything. Mira climbed to the drafting room. Hale Juniper sat cross-legged on the floor, barefoot, her small fingers black with ink. She looked ten years old. She had drawn every map in this tower twice. When Mira entered, Hale did not look up. "I need a survey of the mountain behind us," Mira said. "Height, slopes, any pass." "I drew it," Hale said. "Second survey. Page under the table." Mira's stomach dropped. A drawing of her mountain existed, in her own tower, made by a child. Her hand itched to burn it. She fought the itch. She needed it more than she needed it gone. Hale pulled a rolled parchment from the box beneath her worktable. She spread it flat. The mountain filled the page. Ridges, a snow shelf, one narrow pass on the north face. Every line clean. "How do you know the height?" Mira asked. "Shadow at noon. Measured it four seasons." Mira leaned close. The pass was real. A route ran up the east ridge, along the shelf, through the gap. She could chart it now. The compass had a heading, and now the heading had ground beneath it. Then a hammer struck downstairs. Then again. Metal on metal, steady. "Who is that?" Mira asked. "Locksmith," Hale said. "King sent him. Every lock in the front hall." Mira went cold. Her atlas was locked. The scout's folded report was locked. She took the survey and went down. A heavyset man knelt at the hall door, a ring of old keys at his belt. He did not turn when she came. Milo Strand fit a new plate to the wood and drove a screw home. "That is my hall," Mira said. "On whose order?" "The king's." He kept working. "I need the new key." "He gets it. Not you." Milo set down his screwdriver. He worked out the old lock and held it out to her, flat on his glove. "This is yours. What a lock remembers belongs to its owner." Mira took the old lock. It was dead metal now. The new one answered to the king. She understood. The king had stopped believing she only copied charts. He wanted a key to her tower, and everything in it. Her atlas. Her mother's compass. The mountain she was about to climb. Mira folded the survey against her chest. She had her route at last. She also had less time than she thought. She would climb the mountain before the king turned his new key.