You could smell the city hours before you saw it, yeast from the mills, iron from the forges, and a thin ribbon of incense that meant someone wanted to be seen being holy. The hedged lane narrowed the caravan into single file and made everyone listen to their own breath.

  Aros walked the line, counting faces, buckles, and nerves. When he reached the vanguard, Candriela was already wearing a groove into the road.

  "You're walking holes into the dirt," he said.

  She didn't smile. "Since Gemma told me Virea is alive, I can't wait for meetings and careful minutes. We hit Sbelto, we turn around, and if no one moves on my sister, I go. Alone if I must."

  "We'll go back to Preta," Aros said, steady. "Then we look."

  "I will look," Candriela answered, impatience finally breaking the surface. "I'm done letting other people measure how much of my life I'm allowed to spend on her."

  "Don't lay weight on Gemma right now," he said gently. "She's already carrying enough."

  "I know exactly what she's carrying," Candriela said, voice softening a fraction. "And you know there's no one in this world who'd be happier to help me than the girl who believes helping is the only way to breathe."

  A stone mile marker leaned toward the ditch, its numbers blurred by a hundred rains. Aros sighted the sun, did the quiet math in his head, and moved on.

  Gemma was in the middle ranks with Broko, the bow he'd carved sitting well against her back. Every few dozen paces she raised an invisible shot, set her shoulders, and let the shape go before thought could ruin it.

  "You're crowding the grip," Broko said. "Let the hand be a shelf, not a fist. Like that. Good. Again."

  "I can almost hear the arrow," Gemma murmured.

  "You'll hear it when it misses. That's an education."

  "How's the arm?" Aros asked, stepping in.

  "Steady," she said. "Better when I don't think."

  "Then don't. Keep the bow close and your eyes open."

  Broko flicked Aros a look that meant lesson over and drifted off to bully a slingman who probably deserved it. Gemma adjusted her quiver and stared down the lane.

  "How long?" she asked.

  "Two hours if nothing decides to go wrong," Aros said. "Less if we're lucky." He paused. "We won't be lucky."

  She nodded, as if bad odds were the right kind of truth.

  Up near the scouts, Phillip rode with his hood thrown back, posture loose in the infuriating way of people who had always had doors opened for them. Aros came alongside; the young Dromo turned without surprise.

  "You've had an easy road for a traitor," Aros said.

  "I was hoping for an easier one," Phillip replied, almost pleasantly.

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  "If this is a trap...if we walk into a mouth you knew would close, if Preta pays for your smile...I'll hang you, and then I'll go looking for your brother. Do you understand me?"

  Phillip's smile didn't reach his eyes. "You killed my eldest brother, Kingslayer. Another Dromo on a rope wouldn't make the broadsheets."

  "Old news is still news to the neck," Aros said.

  "Good," Phillip said. "Then let's earn a more interesting headline."

  The hedges fell away to low, worked fields. Aros lifted a fist. The column slid into a shallow hollow by a line of alders, the pause rippling backward until the last cart settled.

  "Listen," Aros said. He crouched and drew Sbelto in the dirt: a square for the Fountain of the Three Saints, a band for the granary road, a dark vein beneath for the old siphon. He didn't flourish. He put down what mattered.

  "Plan stays exactly as agreed," he said. "We go in small, fast, and quiet. We make their spectacle fail in public, or we take a piece that costs them and come home."

  He tapped the fountain. "Valve team: Candriela, Gemma, Hest, Morin, with me. We enter through the culvert Phillip marked. One key turn, a quarter turn on the wheel and a breath more, no heroics, and the siphon pulls the fountain off the priestly feed and onto the old city run. If the Light rides water there, then the wrong valve opens at the right time. Thirty breaths. Out by the census stairs. We return to Preta."

  He shifted the stick. "Choir team: Talon, Digiera, Broko, Latis, Ren. You're a rumor with teeth. The Choir's cart is your friend until it isn't. A rope trips late. A censer rolls where it shouldn't. A bell misses its cue. They can swing swords at us; they can't arrest a rhythm. If you have to choose between a clean escape and a broken wrist, you come back with the broken wrist. Then we return to Preta."

  He pointed to the edges of the sketch. "Covers: merchants with complaints, priests with letters. Hirias's writ buys you moments at doors and gates, moments, not miracles. If a Custodian captain wants to enjoy his cruelty, you don't meet him."

  Phillip unrolled a thin strip of vellum and tapped three places. "Blind side on the granary steps here. The reserve companies loaf at the old baths. The White Choir parks on the east curb because men who sing like being seen before they're heard."

  He looked up just once, and Gemma felt the faintest prickle in her palm, like someone tracing a circle there. She ignored it and checked her bowstring.

  "Questions?" Aros asked.

  There were none; the right ones had been asked yesterday and the wrong ones would get people killed today.

  "Movement in two files," he said. "Keep to the shadow of hedges, keep your heads down. If the city looks at you, look back like you were born arguing about onions in those streets."

  They rose. As people found their places, Candriela caught Aros's sleeve. "Two hours," she said. "Then I start breaking whatever I must to find Virea."

  "Two hours," he said. "And if you go, you don't go alone."

  She searched his face for the cost he wasn't naming and gave a tight, grateful nod.

  Gemma slid into Valve team, the bow knocking gently against her shoulder as she walked. Broko brushed past and squeezed her elbow. "Keep breathing," he muttered, "and keep your head lower than your pride."

  "Lower than yours?" she whispered back. "Impossible."

  He snorted and peeled off toward the Choir team. Phillip eased his horse back until he was level with Aros again.

  "If this is betrayal," he said lightly, "use a heavier rope. I hate wriggling."

  "You won't," Aros said.

  "Comforting."

  They stepped out of the hollow and onto the lane again. Ahead, the first low roofs of Sbelto's outlying mills smudged the light. The wind shifted and carried the city's breath to them, warm yeast, damp stone, stale incense lit too early by hands that needed to be seen.

  Aros raised his hand one last time. The column stretched into the gait of people who belonged on that road for reasons too ordinary to challenge. Birds wheeled above the hedges, turned twice, and settled as if afternoon had decided not to notice them.

  "We go in quiet," Aros said, voice pitched for the line, "we make the lie crack, and we come home. Preta is where we sleep. Don't make me count you and find fewer names."

  Candriela set her jaw. Gemma touched the carved grip of her bow and felt the leather warm under her palm. Talon's eyes flicked once toward the imagined square on the dirt and then forward, already seeing the real one. Phillip angled his horse to the verge and smiled like someone who had just set a chessboard.

  Two hours more. Then the work. Then, if the gods were kind, which they weren't, they would be walking back to Preta by moonlight, carrying the kind of story that made cities think and tyrants tighten their belts.

  The Knights of Light moved. The lane unspooled beneath their feet, and Sbelto, with all its bells and pipes and staged piety, drew nearer with every quiet step.

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