Rowan Sable wore the red-and-gold collar of a peace hostage, and he wore it smiling. He had been given to the foreign court six weeks ago, a lord's son traded to hold a treaty together. He laughed at their jokes. He bowed lower than any guest should. And every day he counted doors, because a man who wants to run home must first learn where the walls end. The trouble was simple. He could not map the palace without walking it, and he could not walk it without being watched. Yesterday he had lingered too long near the east stair. Two guards had drifted close, hands loose near their swords. He had bowed, praised the tapestries, and retreated. Today the same guards followed him at twenty paces. Every wing he studied cost him more suspicion than it gained him knowledge. He stopped in a small garden court to think. That was where the old woman found him. She sat on a stone bench, patchwork cloak spread around her, a fat leather book open on her knees. She did not belong in a palace. Yet no guard looked at her twice, as if she were a shadow they had agreed to ignore. "You walk in circles, young lord," she said, not looking up. "A man counting rooms he isn't allowed to count." Rowan kept his smile. "I admire the architecture." "Then let me sell you the whole of it." She turned a page. Folded papers spilled from the book like leaves. She drew one out, and on it was inked a full plan of the palace. Every wing. Every stair. Every door. "Kessa Bryne gives people exactly what they want. You want the shape of your cage." Rowan's mouth went dry. The map was real. He had spent weeks earning fragments of it, and here it lay complete, worth every risk he had taken. "And your price?" he asked. Her smile widened. "Nothing you'd miss. Only your name." "My name." "Rowan Sable. Say it's mine, and the map is yours." She held out a small quill. "A hostage with no name draws no eyes. You'll walk these halls unseen. But letters home won't reach a man who isn't Rowan anymore. And no treaty was signed with a nobody." He understood then. The map would free his feet and cut his roots at once. Without his name, no guard would stop him. Without his name, no one waited for him in Embermere. Rowan took the map. He needed the halls more than the watching eyes would let him earn them any other way. He pressed his thumb to the page where she pointed, and the ink took the print like a signature. The garden went quiet. When he looked up, the guards had turned away. They no longer saw him at all. He had his path out. He had lost the name that would prove he belonged at the other end of it.

The map bought Rowan his freedom, but freedom without direction is just a longer cage. No guard saw him now. He walked the halls like smoke. Still, the paper showed him a hundred doors and never once told him which one pointed toward Embermere. He picked a servant's stair at dawn, followed it down and out, and told himself any road beyond the walls was better than the ones inside them. He was wrong. The path split, then split again. He chose left, then right, guessing by the angle of the sun. By midday the palace was gone behind him. So were the roads he knew. The land turned to marsh and thornscrub. He had walked himself deep into country that did not belong to his court, and every mile made the mistake harder to undo. That was where he saw the deer. It stood white against the dark trees, tall and still, its antlers catching a light that had no source. It watched him without fear. When he stepped closer, it turned and walked, then paused, as if waiting. A voice stopped him. "You'll follow it into a bog." He knew the coat before the face. Deep blue, silver crest on the lapel. Lira Vane, the foreign envoy who lived in the guest tower, who smiled at every lord and wrote down what they let slip. She had smiled at him too, weeks ago, over wine. She was not smiling now. "You see me," Rowan said. "I see you." She looked him over, flat and careful. "Others don't. I noticed that days ago. Interesting." He should have run. But she stood between him and the only living thing that seemed to know these woods. "That animal is leading me somewhere." "It leads lovers to lovers. Not lords to home." She tilted her head. "You're lost. You're far from any court that wants you. And you're worth something. Both of those things." Rowan weighed it. He had no name to prove who he was, no road he trusted, no ally within a day's walk. She had the crest of her own court and, he guessed, the maps to reach it. "You know the way out of this country," he said. "I know three ways." She started walking, not toward the deer. "Follow. Or don't. I don't beg." He followed. The deer watched him go, then faded back into the trees. By dusk Lira brought him to a hard road, dry and marked with cart ruts, running east. Solid ground. A direction he could trust. "This joins the border trade route," she said. "From here you could reach half the courts in the region." Then she looked at him, steady. "I helped you. Now tell me what you traded to become a man no guard can see." Rowan had his road home at last. He had bought it by owing his secret to a woman who sold secrets for a living.