He slipped silently down through the stable, before he heard a sound in the loft, above him, the storage space between the rafters and the peak of the roof. He froze in place, listening.

A tinny voice said, from the loft, "Between all the excitement yesterday and then last night, it's been one thing after another. Though I suppose it isn't anything compared to the life of a gem merchant, sir."

Tavi blinked. The voice was Beritte's, but it came as though through a long pipe, distant and blurred. It took him a moment to realize that it sounded the same as when his aunt spoke to him through Rill.

A woman's voice, strange to Tavi and near to hand, murmured with a sort of languid laziness, "There you see, love? He has a drink now, and we're able to pay attention. Sometimes it's nice to hurry."

A strange man's voice answered with a low growl. "All this hurrying. When we kill them and finish the mission, I'm going to lock you in a room in irons for a week."

The woman purred, "You're so romantic, my love."

"Quiet. I want to hear what he's saying."

They fell into silence while tinny voices came down to Tavi on the floor. He swallowed and moved very quietly, forward, past the spot in the loft the voices came from, and down to the stalls where the strangers' horses had been put.

Though their gear had been removed, the horses still wore their bridles, and the saddles had been stood on end on the floor beside them, ready to be thrown on and cinched, rather than resting on the pegs on the other side of the stables and their blankets drying on the ground.

Tavi crept into the first stall and let the horse smell him, keeping a hand on the animal's shoulder as he moved to its saddle and knelt beside it. He drew the knife from his belt and, quietly as he could, started cutting through the leather of the saddle's girth. Though the leather was thick, his knife was sharp, and he cut through it completely in only a moment.

Tavi repeated the gesture twice more, leaving the stall doors open and cutting the other two saddles to uselessness. Then he went back, gathering up the horses' reins, keeping his motions as slow as possible, and led them out of their stalls and back down the stables toward the doors out.

As he passed the spot in the loft where the strangers lay, Tavi's throat tightened and his heart hammered in his chest. People, people he had never seen and did not know were there to kill him for reasons he could not fully understand. It was all too strange, almost unreal-and yet the fear in him, something instinctive and all too certain, was very real indeed, like a trickle of cold water gliding slowly down his spine.

He had led the horses past the loft when one of the beasts snorted and tossed its head. Tavi froze in place, panic nearly sending him running.

"Fear," hissed the woman's voice, suddenly. "Below us, the horses."

Tavi jerked on the reins and let out a loud whistle. The horses snorted, breaking into an uncertain trot.

Tavi let go of the reins to dash ahead to the stable doors and throw them open. As the horses went through, Tavi let out a scream that warbled into a high-pitched shriek, and the horses burst out into a run.

There was a roar from behind him, and Tavi glanced over his shoulder in time to see a man, even bigger than his uncle, come crashing down from the loft, a naked sword held in his fist. He looked around him, wildly, and Tavi turned and fled into the darkness.

Someone seized his arm and he almost screamed. Amara clapped cold fingers over his mouth and dragged him into a run, north and east, toward the causeway. Tavi glanced around behind him and saw Fade shuffling along under the weight of his burdens, but no one else seemed to be following them.

"Good," Amara hissed. He saw the flash of her teeth in the growing dark. "Well done, Tavi."

Tavi shot her a grin and one to Fade as well.

And that was when the scream came to them, from behind the walls of the steadholt proper, clear and desperate and terrified.

"Tavi," Isana screamed. "Tavi, run! Run!"

Chapter 19

Tavi ran.

His muscles were sore and the myriad scratches felt horrible, sending curling ribbons of pain through his skin, but he was able to run. For a while, Amara ran beside him in silence, hardly limping at all-but after a quarter mile, her motion became uneven, and on her exhales she started letting out whimpers of sound. Tavi dropped his pace a bit to run beside her.

"No," she gasped. "You have to keep going. Even if I don't get to the Count, you have to."

"But your leg-"

"I'm not important, Tavi," Amara said. "Run."

"We need to head east," Tavi said, staying beside her. "We'll have to find a place to cross the Rillwater, but there's thick and twisty woods on the other side. In the dark, we could lose them there."

"One of the men behind us," she panted. "Woodcrafter. Strong one."

"Not there," Tavi said. "The only one who has ever gotten along with those furies is my uncle, and it took him years. He showed me how to get through them."

Amara slowed and nodded, as they neared the top of a hill. "All right. You, come here." She beckoned to Fade, who shuffled to her obediently. She took the bundle from him and took out his uncle's bow and the arrows with it. She braced the bow against her leg and leaned hard on it, bending it enough to string it, then took it in hand and picked up the arrows. "I want you two to get into the woods. Keep going through them."

Tavi swallowed. "What are you going to do?"

Amara took the sword from the bundle and slipped it through her makeshift belt. "I'm going to try to slow them here. I'll be able to see them coming here as well as anywhere."

"But you're standing out here in the open. They'll just shoot you."

She smiled, grimly. "I think there will be a bad wind for it. Leave me some of the salt. Once that storm hits, we should be free to start evading them a little more securely."

"We'll stay here and help," Tavi said.

The Cursor shook her head. "No. You two get moving. Just in case things don't go well. I'll find you by morning."

"But-"

"Tavi," Amara said. She turned to him, frowning gently. "I can't protect you and still fight here. These men are powerful crafters. You can't do anything to help me."

The words hit him like a physical blow, and he felt a surge of frustration, helpless anger, that raced through him and for a moment washed away the aches of his body. "I can't do anything."

"Wrong," Amara said. "They'll be using earth- and woodcrafting to track you-not me. I'll be able to ambush them, and if I get lucky I might stop them altogether. Get moving and keep their attention on you."

"Won't their earthcrafter feel you?" Tavi asked. "And if they're using wood, too, you can't climb a tree to get off the ground."

Amara glanced to the north. "When that storm gets here, the furies

in it…" She shook her head. "But I can take advantage of things now. Cirrus."

She closed her eyes for a moment, and the wind began to rise around her. It made the loose clothing on her billow and flap, though Tavi, standing only a few feet away, felt nothing. Amara spread her arms slightly, and the wind gusted her completely off the ground for a moment-and then settled into a whirlwind that threw up dust and debris and specks of ice in a cloud around her legs to the knee. She hovered there, momentarily, then opened her eyes and drifted left and right, experimentally.

Tavi stared at her, stunned. He had never seen such a display of wind-crafting. "You can fly."

Amara smiled at him, and even in the dimness her face seemed bright. "This? This is nothing. Maybe after all this is over, I can show you what real flying is." She nodded. "Those storm furies you have here are bad ones, and there's not much time before they get here. But this will keep Fidel-the enemy from sensing me."