Placing a hand on Tiro's bloody chest, Oliver set the Second Wind spell to a single mana-day per second and triggered the spell, watching with his mana sight as several faint, fine tendrils of mana immediately stretched out from beneath the base of his skull down through his body, winding back and forth as if seeking for injury. Some of them went to his wounded hand and began to branch out. It seemed there was still work to do there; the 71 mana he'd picked up earlier had not been enough.

Drawing on the single experience of manipulating mana that he'd had with Madame Carrix, Oliver mentally reached out and attempted to grab hold of the tendrils as they quested through his hand, splitting into ever finer branching clouds as they reached the epidermal layer. He took the main stem of that particular tendril and pulled, imagining it flowing out through the base of his palm the way the Spark spell had done.

The spell resisted, seemingly refusing to exit through his skin, the clouds where the tendrils had split up lagging behind as if dragging in the air.

He pushed more forcefully, then realized that Galen was standing beside him.

"What do we do with her?" grunted Galen, destroying Oliver's focus and causing the mana lines to snap back into place. Oliver looked up to see Galen was holding his wand at the mana hound's temple. She was cringing away from him, helpless to escape in her blindness.

"Wait a minute," he said, "I'm trying something."

"He's going to go," said Galen. "We need to get out of here."

"Hold on," Oliver grunted, distracted.

He looked back down. He'd lost his focus and the mana had escaped his grasp. The spell had finished its work in his hand and the tendrils were already retracting up his arm.

He tried to snag the spell a second time mentally, grabbing the tendril and envisioning it flowing back to his arm. Its job done, it seemed to refuse even more strongly, but slowly, ever so slowly, he wrestled it under control and drew it back down to the palm of his hand.

Focusing, he envisioned it jumping the gap between his body and Tiro's, leaping like a spark across the gap. As far as he knew there was no restriction on the direction mana could flow or paths it could take, so it ought to work, provided he could make it work.

After a moment of prolonged focus the mana yielded to his control and he was able to force the strand downwards, into the open air out of his hand and down into the wounds on Tiro's body. Once he'd forced it across the gap, it was like forming an electrical channel; it flowed smoothly.

He watched as mana poured into Tiro, the thin cord becoming thicker and thicker as the spell kicked in, assessing the needs of the new target and drawing more mana to that location. One, then two more lines of mana appeared, splitting off from the initial point of contact and flowing into Tiro's body.

As Oliver watched, the mana in his system dropped precipitously. 203 mana later, the flow trickled to a halt and the mana tendril retracted back within him and then up his arm and out of sight somewhere beneath his skull.

Tiro took a deep breath, eyes fluttering fully open. He groaned and then his hands flew to his chest in a panic, finding torn cloth and blood. He pushed away from Oliver, leaning to one side, and began to dry heave for a moment.

"Teor's mane," muttered Galen. "Didn't know you were a mage, Oliver. Thought you were just a useless lump."

"So did I," Oliver wanted to say, but was too full of the sheer relief and exhilaration of having saved Tiro's life.

"Kill her," said Tiro from the ground. He was looking at the mana hound.

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"What? No," said Oliver at once, holding a hand to forestall Galen.

"It's the only way," said Tiro, pushing himself into a kneeling position and then heaving himself to his feet. "She'll lead them straight to us. She has our trail now. And she knows about me. She needs to die."

The look on the mage tracker's face was pure terror, fear for her life. She was looking from speaker to speaker, not looking at their faces, unable to see. Far from the horror movie apparition or bringer of doom she'd seemed when Oliver first saw her, she now seemed a piteous thing, rendered younger than he'd thought by her fear and vulnerability.

"No," he said again, firmly. "I won't kill in cold blood. Can you disable her system so she can't see mana any more?"

"Polephenes could," said Galen.

"Polephenes isn't here," said Tiro coldly. "Do it."

Oliver took a step towards Galen, raising a hand. "Kill her and we're done."

The big man hesitated, raising the wand and pressing it more firmly against her temple with a sharp indrawn breath.

"Like you have a choice," Tiro said. "We're out of time. There will be others coming to investigate the disturbance."

"And then what?" Galen asked. "Polephenes disables her system and she spends the rest of her days living at the manor house?"

At this pronouncement, the mana hound jerked, trying to escape Galen's grasp. There was a short flash of red light from the wand and then she collapsed bonelessly to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

Oliver and Galen both sighed. The three men looked down at her for a moment.

"I'll clean up here." Galen's voice was a quiet rasp. He swiped at the blood on his face.

"They'll be coming, Oliver. We need to get moving."

Oliver looked at the fallen woman for a moment longer, then silently went over to the other soldier that Galen had slain and tried to withdraw the sword. It was stuck firmly in place.

Galen came over and withdrew it easily, but the blade was deformed and useless. He handed to Oliver, who cast it aside in disgust. Tiro was leaving. Oliver followed.

—

The boat was a small, simple rowboat with a pair of oars, unlikely to draw attention. It was tied up in front of a small shack crouched on the riverbank alongside a number of other shacks.

"Going downriver will be easy," muttered Tiro as they climbed in. "Coming back up will be the hard part."

Oliver didn't feel the need to grace this statement with a reply as they pushed off. He climbed into the boat after Tiro, crouching low to maintain his balance and avoid knocking the boat into the water.

"It belongs to a fisherman who's a sympathizer," said Tiro. "It'll be back before dawn."

"Why did we have to leave at night again? Would have been much smarter to leave during the day, blend in with the crowds." Oliver said, as Tiro pushed off with one oar.

"I explained it before: the mana hound had your scent. It would've been better to leave when she wasn't sniffing around," he responded in a whisper.

"Didn't seem to help, did it?"

"They must've been working her half to death." Tiro at least had the good grace to cringe at the ghastly pun. "That, or it's just bad luck that they happened to be in the right place at the right time. Don't know what they were doing up this late. It's been days. Just proves my point, though; in a crowd we wouldn't have seen them coming at all. They would have gotten the drop on us."

"She must have seen us from far away," Oliver said, trying to make sense of the encounter.

"Mana hounds have a reputation for the impossible. They're part of why the last couple of rebellions failed so badly."

"But she didn't seem to recognize us at first," Oliver went on.

"The trail," said Tiro. "The mana suppressors we were wearing probably prevented her from noticing us right away, but she would have noticed the trail you were leaving."

A memory returned to Oliver, the blind woman staring at the way they'd come. "Right," he said. Although he felt regret for the way she'd died, there was also a sense of relief. This would be a clean getaway, he hoped. Finally.

—

The meeting place was a small fishing village several hours downriver. They'd been moving at a good clip thanks to the current, and Tiro had foregone rowing for some time, so he had to pick up the oars and set them up again in the brackets to row them to the side of the river as they approached.

When they reached the small dock against which several other boats were moored, there was nobody standing there. Tiro made fast the boat and they both climbed out carefully, one at a time.

When Oliver turned around there after climbing on to the dock, there was a hooded, cloaked figure standing on the dock waiting for them.

Tiro reached into his jacket as the figure approached. In response, the figure stopped moving.

"Fledgeling cranes do not fly alone," he said, with a New York accent.

"Except by night," responded Tiro.

"Is this him?"

"It is," said Tiro.

Oliver stepped forward. The figure threw back his hood, revealing an imposing middle-aged black man, bald, with a short dark beard.

"Hello, Oliver." He pronounced the name correctly, held out his hand for a handshake. Oliver took his hand and shook it firmly. "You're a long way from Kansas," the man said.