Elias didn't sleep.
He lay on his back and watched the ceiling go from black to grey to the thin, washed-out blue of a Vespera dawn. The sword was on the table across the room. He could see the line of it in the dark. He'd cleaned it before bed and oiled the blade and wrapped it back in the cloth, but he hadn't put it away. He didn't want it in the chest. He wanted it where he could see it.
The list of names was in his inside pocket. He'd taken his coat off but he hadn't taken the list out. He'd read it six times. He had it memorized now.
*J. Kellan, chandler, Lower Dock Street.
M. Tiris, tax office, Third Tier.
B. Arlen, boarding house, Salter's Lane.
S. Vane, clerk, provincial records.
R. Darrow, captain, city watch, retired.
L. Cael, printer, West Ward.
H. Merren, grain factor, North Market.
E. Theiss, widow, High Hill.*
Eight names. Eight threads. His mother had touched all of them.
At five, he gave up on sleep. He dressed in the dark, pulled on his boots, and went downstairs.
Lira was already in the kitchen.
She was at the table with her journal open and three candles burning. She had ink on her fingers and her hair was still braided from yesterday. She hadn't slept either.
"You're early," she said, without looking up.
"So are you," Elias said.
"I couldn't stop thinking." She turned the journal so he could see. She'd made a grid. Names down the side, dates across the top, lines connecting them. Under that, excerpts from the courier's documents she'd copied at the Red Mare. Valmere contingency. Asset relocation. Proceed with phase two. The widow's accounts are secured.
"The widow," Elias said. "E. Theiss. From Harlan's list."
"Yeah." Lira tapped the name. "E. Theiss, widow, High Hill. That's the rich quarter in the capital. If her accounts are secured, that means someone got to her. Or her money. Or both."
"Phase two of what?"
"I don't know yet. But 'phase one' had to happen first. And we don't know what that was."
Elias sat down across from her. "We need to know."
"We need to move," Lira said. "We can't just sit here with names and not use them."
Harlan came in then. He looked like he hadn't slept much either. He had circles under his eyes and he was carrying two cups of tea. He set one in front of each of them and sat down at the head of the table.
"I figured you'd be here," he said.
"We need to go to the capital," Elias said.
Harlan didn't look surprised. "I know."
"You knew we'd say that," Lira said.
"I hoped you would," Harlan said. "And I hoped you wouldn't. Both."
Mira came in next. Then Aldric. The kitchen got crowded. Nobody had called a meeting. It just happened, the way things happened in this house when something had shifted.
"You're not going today," Mira said, before anyone else could speak. "Or tomorrow."
"Why not?" Elias said.
"Because you're not ready," Aldric said. "And because the capital's not ready for you."
"What does that mean?"
"It means Draven's people are looking for you," Mira said. "They have been for four years. Quietly. Carefully. But they're looking. If you walk into the capital at sixteen with your father's face and your mother's eyes, you'll be dead before you find High Hill."
"I won't walk in as me," Elias said.
"No," Mira said. "You won't. But you need a cover that holds. You need papers that pass a check. You need a story that survives three questions from a city guard who's bored and mean. You need a reason to be there that doesn't get you thrown in a cell."
"I can do that," Lira said.
"I know you can," Mira said. "That's why we're not sending you today. Because when you go, it has to work."
Harlan set his hands flat on the table. "You get one first move. One. After that, Draven knows you're alive and active. After that, the game changes. So your first move has to count."
They spent the morning planning.
---
By noon they had the shape of it.
Elias would go as Corin Vale, a junior clerk in the provincial records office, sent to the capital to file quarterly requisitions. The records office was real. The requisitions were real. S. Vane, from Harlan's list, was a clerk in that office and could provide the papers. Corin Vale was a name that wouldn't trip any flags. He was twenty, not sixteen, so Elias would need to be careful about his face, his voice. But he was tall enough to pass.
Lira would go as his sister, Marta Vale, traveling with him to see a physician in the capital about a persistent cough. That gave her a reason to be there and a reason to be uninteresting. Sick girls didn't get questioned twice.
They'd enter through the north gate, not the main gate. Less traffic, fewer guards. They'd stay at B. Arlen's boarding house on Salter's Lane. That put them in the West Ward, close to L. Cael the printer and not far from the tax office where M. Tiris worked.
Their objectives were threefold.
One: Make contact with S. Vane and confirm the cover. Get the papers, get the seals, get the details of the records office so Elias could answer questions.
Two: Find E. Theiss on High Hill and determine what "the widow's accounts are secured" meant. Was she alive? Was she coerced? Was she working with Draven?
Three: Get eyes on the supply caches from the courier's map. Not close. Not yet. But confirm they existed. If Draven was building for war, they needed to know where.
"Four weeks," Mira said. "You have four weeks before the summer court session starts and the city doubles its guard. You go in, you do the work, you get out. No heroics. No deviations. If something goes wrong, you abort and run. You do not fight."
"I can fight," Elias said.
"I know you can," Aldric said. "That's why I'm telling you not to. You fight in the capital, you die in the capital. There are a hundred guards for every one of you. You win the first fight and lose the war."
Lira looked at her notes. "What about J. Kellan? The chandler on Lower Dock Street. Why is he on the list?"
"He's our extraction," Harlan said. "If you need to leave fast, you go to him. He has a boat. He can get you out through the harbor, past the chain. He's done it before."
"And if he's dead?" Elias said.
"Then you go to the Temple of the Four Winds," Mira said. "There's a priest there named Brother Pell. He'll hide you. But you only go there if Kellan's dead, because once you do, the network in the capital is burned. We don't use Pell unless we have to."
They went over it again. And again. By late afternoon, Elias could recite the plan in his sleep. Lira had it in her journal in her shorthand, with contingencies for contingencies.
"Two weeks," Mira said finally. "You train for two weeks. Covers, codes, extraction routes. Aldric drills you on city fighting. I drill you on not fighting. You leave on the first of April."
"That's thirteen days," Elias said.
"Then you have thirteen days," Mira said.
---
The thirteen days went fast and slow.
Mornings were with Aldric in the yard. Not sword forms now. City work. Knife work. Close quarters. How to move in an alley. How to use a wall. How to break a hold and run. "You're not trying to win," Aldric said, over and over. "You're trying to leave."
Elias learned to fall without hurting himself. He learned to take a punch and stay on his feet. He learned that a sword was useless in a corridor two feet wide.
Afternoons were with Mira. Codes, ciphers, dead drops. How to pass a message in a market. How to tell if you were being followed. How to lose a tail in a crowd. How to make yourself forgettable.
"You're too tall," Mira said. "You can't help that. So you hunch. You look down. You don't meet eyes. You become a clerk. Clerks don't look like threats. They look like work."
Lira trained with her too. She learned to cough on command, to make it sound wet and weak. She learned to walk like someone who was tired all the time. She learned to cry without tears, just by breathing wrong.
"Why do I need to cry?" she asked.
"Because people don't search crying girls," Mira said. "They want you to stop. They'll let you through a checkpoint just to not deal with it."
Evenings were with Harlan. The capital's layout, its politics, its dangers. Who was who. Who could be bought. Who couldn't. Where the guard posts were. Where the sewers ran. What the bells meant.
"The bell at noon is the tax bell," Harlan said. "The bell at six is the gate bell. If you hear the bell at any other time, something's wrong. If you hear it three times in a row, the city's locked down. You go to Kellan. You don't wait."
At night, Elias lay awake and ran through it all. The names, the routes, the lies. Corin Vale. Marta Vale. Records office. Salter's Lane. High Hill. When the blood remembers.
On the tenth night, he went to the cellar. The chest was still there, empty now. He sat on the floor next to it and unwrapped the sword. The inscriptions caught the lamplight.
Vor-dorrin. Upholder of the Shadow.
He didn't take the sword with him. He couldn't. Corin Vale wouldn't have a blade like that. He'd have a knife, plain and cheap, for cutting twine. But he held it for an hour, just feeling the weight. Reminding himself.
---
They left on the first of April.
Dawn, like always. The sky was grey and the air smelled like rain. Harlan had a cart ready with two small trunks. Papers, clothes, a few books to make the covers real. Nothing that could be traced.
Mira checked the seals on the requisition papers one last time. "S. Vane's mark," she said. "It's good. If anyone asks, you're filing for the Valmere office. You're behind because of the bridge washout. That's why you're late."
Aldric gave Elias a knife. Plain, worn, with a nick in the handle. "Don't use it," he said.
"I won't," Elias said.
"Don't lose it either," Aldric said. "That was mine when I was your age."
Lira hugged Harlan. She held on for a long time. "We'll be back," she said.
"I know," Harlan said. "Just make sure it's you when you come back."
Cook gave them food for the road. Bread, cheese, dried apples. She didn't say anything. She just put her hand on Elias's cheek for a second, and on Lira's, and then she went back inside.
They climbed into the cart. Jan drove them as far as the crossroads. He didn't talk. He just nodded when they got down.
"Four weeks," Mira called from the porch. "Four weeks, and then you come home."
Elias nodded. He didn't promise. Promises were for things you could control.
He took Lira's hand. They started walking.
---
The road to the capital was three days.
They walked. They didn't take coaches. Coaches kept manifests. Coaches remembered faces. They walked and they were Corin and Marta Vale, brother and sister, and they told that story to the farmer who sold them milk and the tinker who shared their fire and the guards at the provincial checkpoint who barely looked up.
"Purpose?" the guard said.
"Filing requisitions," Elias said. He held out the papers. "Records office."
The guard glanced at the seal, grunted, and waved them through.
Lira coughed at the right times. She leaned on Elias when they were in sight of people. At night, when they were alone, she was sharp and alert and not sick at all.
On the second night, it rained. They slept under a tree and woke wet and cold. Lira didn't complain. Elias didn't either. They were past complaining.
On the third day, they saw the capital.
It rose out of the plain like a stone tide. Walls forty feet high. Towers at the corners. The river cut through the center and the bridges were thick with traffic. The gates were open. The bells were ringing noon.
Elias stopped on the road and looked at it. His father's city. His mother's city. The place where she'd died. The place where Draven ruled.
"You ready?" Lira said.
"No," Elias said.
"Good," Lira said. "Neither am I."
They walked toward the north gate.
---
Salter's Lane was narrow and smelled of fish and tallow. The boarding house was three stories, leaning against its neighbors like a tired man. The sign said "Arlen's," with the 'B' faded.
B. Arlen was a woman in her sixties with iron-grey hair and a scar across her knuckles. She looked at them when they came in, looked at the papers Elias handed her, and looked at Lira's face.
"Shh," she said, before either of them could speak. "Rooms are upstairs. Second floor, back. Don't talk in the common room. Don't talk where the walls are thin."
She gave them a key. She didn't write their names in the ledger.
Upstairs, the room was small. One bed, one window, one chair. The window looked out over a courtyard where someone was beating a rug.
Lira shut the door and locked it. She put her back to it and exhaled.
"We're here," she said.
"We're here," Elias said.
He set the trunk down. He didn't unpack. Corin Vale wouldn't unpack. He'd wait.
Lira sat on the bed and pulled out her journal. "Tomorrow we go to the records office," she said. "We meet S. Vane. We confirm the cover."
"And then?"
"And then we find the widow."
Elias went to the window. The city was loud. Carts, voices, the bells. Somewhere out there was High Hill. Somewhere out there was Draven. Somewhere out there was the answer to phase two.
He touched the knife in his belt. Plain and cheap. For cutting twine.
"Four weeks," he said.
"Four weeks," Lira said.
Below them, the city moved. The game had started.