It was almost half an hour after they had left the narrow alleyway that Lewis stopped outside a three-story clapboard building. At some point over the years, it began subsiding and now leans drunkenly against the building beside it. Pulling a pair of keys from inside his coat, Lewis opened the door to a dark hallway.

Holding the door open, he let Emily pass him before he closed the door on the cold night air. ‘It’s not much, I’m afraid,’ Lewis said apologetically as he led her up the rickety staircase in the dark. At the top of the stairs, he took the second key, unlocking the door to his and Arron's rooms. Ushering Emily inside, he pushed the door shut again. With the light from a small log fire, Lewis lit the lamp on the small table.

‘You don't have to stand in the doorway, you know,’ Lewis said when he realised she hadn’t moved.

‘How long will it be before you get back?’ She asked, unable to contain a yawn.

‘Probably a couple of hours,’ Lewis answered. ‘I might be able to get away a little earlier, though.’ Turning away from her, Lewis opened one of the two doors on one side of the room. Beckoning her inside, he moved to the cupboard. Opening it, he pulled one of his old training shirts and a pair of black shorts off the shelves. ‘Here, you might as well get some sleep while I finish my patrol.’

When she took the clothes from him, Lewis turned back to the wardrobe and pulled another black jacket out, switching it with the bloodied one that he was wearing before he shut the cupboard again. ‘Why are you doing all of this for someone you just met?’ Emily asked.

‘I don’t know why, but I believe you when you say you didn’t do it. Regardless of that, bounty hunters shouldn’t be in Tristan. Giving you somewhere safe to stay for the night is the least I could do,’ Lewis replied. ‘Get some sleep, and we’ll talk about it in the morning.

‘Thank you,’ Emily replied quietly. ‘Will you take me to the bakery after?’

With a nod, Lewis headed back into the main room, pulling the door shut behind him. As much as he wanted to ask her all the questions that were running through his head, they would have to wait until the morning. He would have missed almost an hour of his patrol by the time he caught up with Arron.

After locking the front door of the building again, Lewis hurried down a concealed alleyway, turning over the events of the night as he tried to make some sense of them.

Bounty hunters had somehow managed to get inside the city and were hunting down a girl who looked like she was about the same age as him. They had also managed to avoid all the guard patrols and were claiming that King Vandemark was dead. According to them, Emily was the person responsible. Although Emily had said that their claims about King Vandemark’s death were true, she insisted that she hadn’t had anything to do with it. For some reason, her pale and tired features made Lewis believe her.

Trying to push the thought of the consequences he could face for his decision out of his head, he tried to remember the patrol route he had been given for the night. After the narrow streets that separated the market district and the large park, he was supposed to patrol the shops close to the market.

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Taking a series of short alleyways between the towering clapboard houses, he found himself in the middle of the street, where he and Arron had first seen the bounty hunters. Before he could start to track down his friend, he heard a crash somewhere behind him. Spinning around, he saw a figure hobbling towards him. Careful not to make any quick movements, he slipped his bow off his shoulder, watching as the figure came closer.

Just as Lewis pinched the feathers of one of the arrows in his quiver, preparing to draw it, the light from one of the lamps fell on the figure. With one hand dabbing at her eyes, the elderly woman with silvery grey hair tied back messily froze in her tracks when she noticed Lewis standing in the street.

‘What business do you have on the streets tonight?’ Lewis asked as gently as he could while trying to keep some authority in his voice.

‘Lewis, you have to help me,’ she whimpered, her voice barely carrying across the distance between them.

Cautiously, Lewis moved towards her, remembering to keep his bow drawn from his training in case it was a trap. Over the years, many guards had been caught out when they attempted to apprehend a criminal escaping from the scene of a crime.

Determined not to make the same mistake as the others, Lewis repeated his question as he approached the woman.

‘Please, they’ve taken Charles,’ she begged, backing away when she saw the bow in Lewis’ hand.

‘Maria? Who’s taken Charles?’ Lewis asked when she stepped further into the light, and he recognised her as his grandmother.

‘I don’t know. They came into the bakery when he was lighting the ovens. I was outside collecting the wood for the fires,’ she explained.

When Maria mentioned the bakery, Lewis dropped the arrow back into the quiver and shouldered his bow again.

‘Maria?’ Lewis replied, moving quickly towards her. ‘What’s happened?’

At the sound of her name, she peered out of the darkness at him. ‘Lewis, you have to help me,’ she repeated urgently. ‘I heard them shouting from inside the bakery. Before I could see who else was in there, they dragged Charles out,’ she said quickly. ‘I was coming to find you.’

‘Why were you coming to find me? There must have been some guards nearby that you could have gone to.' Lewis asked as he attempted to comfort her. When he suggested finding other guards, she shook her head violently. ‘Why didn’t you go to the other guards?’

‘I think it was them. I followed them a little way; they were dragging Charles towards the castle!’ Maria replied. ‘It’s all gone. Everything! They took Charles, and then they set the bakery on fire!’

‘Okay,’ said Lewis slowly, racking his brains for what his training told him to do in this situation. When nothing came to mind, he realised that in none of the situations taught to them was there one where he couldn’t call on anyone else in the guard to help. ‘Okay, let’s get you back home, and then I’ll see what I can find out for you.’

‘But what if they come back for me?’

‘Alright, you can come with me. Once we get to the bakery, I’ll find you a carriage and get them to take you to stay with mum and Uncle Samuel,’ Lewis suggested.

When she nodded at his proposal, he turned her around so that they could head in the direction of the bakery. Remembering what Emily had said about needing to find Charles Hargrove, he felt a wave of guilt. If he had listened to her, perhaps they would have been able to get to the bakery first.

‘Can you think of any reason that they might want to take Charles to the castle?’ Lewis asked. It seemed like too much of a coincidence that Charles would be taken from the bakery on the same night that Emily appeared looking for him.

‘I-I don’t know,’ Maria hesitated. ‘What would they want with a baker?’

What the castle would want with a baker indeed, Lewis thought as he guided Maria through the dark streets, letting her question hang in the air unanswered.