11

Caru woke the next morning to an uneasy mix of hope and paranoia. Kimke and Mieta were already awake, and had brought him a tray of fruit and cheeses. While he ate, theyformed a rudimentary plan of leaving the city, basic since Caru had only been to the city a handful of times, and Kimke had never been.

They would exit the train depot and work their way to the west. Sharing the train with Captain Ferrak would make escape difficult, though, so they would need to move quickly, and without time to examine the Lieve Portal. If Ferrak didn’t catch them on the station platform, he would most likely report to central authority quickly and have the city perimeter locked down.

Time spent making that report would be time they could use making their escape, though. Even with a royal decree, getting the orders from the local garrison to soldiers at the walls would take still more time. With luck, an escape made at a full sprint might give them an advantage of an hour or so.

Kimke was astonished that Martel had been with them for the entire trip. She took pride in her sense of perception and was disappointed that she had never noticed Martel back at the station in Garenesh. Caru was still shocked she had found him days earlier in the Trade Plaza by the way he had studied the Portal. He hadn’t been staring, no matter what she’d said. He wasn’t that foolish.

By the same merit, Kimke chided him for being too eager to trust people. Caru only smiled and pointed out that he’d been right to trust his instincts with Mieta. That brought a quick smile from the human woman, and her eyes beamed at his confession of trust.

She did have a pretty smile.

For a human.

The group forced themselves to relax for a few minutes before the train began its approach to Lieve. Though Lieve was a major population center of the west—the former capital of the nation of Khald before the region had been taken by Serana centuries ago—there had been no need to dig channels through the city for the trains. The city was somewhere to the left of the train, and their view from the cabin’s window to the right showed only an increasing number of farms. The train passed beneath an arch, and then they were cruising between tightly packed buildings. Lieve did not have Garenesh’s size, but it made up for it in density. Mieta leaned from her seat, looking up through the windows at the buildings. Though Caru expected her to be disappointed by architecture so similar to that of Garenesh, she was enraptured. It was her first time seeing another city close up, after all.

It was hardly spectacular when viewed from the sky, and certainly didn’t compare with the other capital cities. Instead, it was a small city made large by the presence of the Portal. Khald had never been a mighty nation, focused mainly on agriculture surrounding the Portal’s economic hub. Erman trade and loamy soil fed by frequent Tempest storms had forced the city into existence.

There was no rain today, though. The skies had emptied themselves the night before, giving the land time to soak it in. Scattered puffy clouds dotted the sky, but the sun shone through otherwise unabated.

The train coasted for a moment before the brakes engaged, the squeal sounding much quieter from within the cabin than it had from inside the depot two days ago. Smoke and steam streamed past the windows until the train came to a shuddering stop. Caru and the women shared a look as they let themselves exhale. Time to fade into the crowd while dodging their pursuers.

They stepped out to find nearly all the train passengers already making for the station platform. Elbows and shoulders jostled the three as they made their way through the cramped corridor. With Mieta to his his left and Kimke to his right, Caru shoved through and burst from the car’s exit onto the station platform. While Central Station in Garenesh had been a grand construction of glass and steel, Lieve had only a broad, open platform with ticket booths dotted along its length. Porters stood along the train, unloading luggage while city guards moved in to keep them from being rushed by the crowd. There really were hundreds falling out onto the platform. Caru thought it amazing that so many had fit into the train, and even more amazing that his small group had managed to get a private cabin. Caru hadn’t seen the conditions in the forward cars, but all those people must have been packed in. Were so many really that eager to get out of Garenesh?

As a clamor arose at one of the luggage racks, Caru was grateful that Mieta had brought only the one small suitcase. It only held a few changes of clothes and nothing more.

Caru nodded to the women and descended with them from the platform. Keeping an eye to Cirellias to keep him moving westward, he looked down the broad avenue leading from the station and saw the arch in the wall that marked the city gates. He rubbed his hands along his pants over the thighs and was shocked at how slick his palms were. His nerves were getting to him. He glanced over his shoulder once, looking for either Martel or Ferrak. Ferrak he wouldn’t recognize, and there was no sign of Martel, either. No time to linger, keep moving.

Mieta whipped her head from side to side as they walked along the street as though wanting to see everything at once, but still she focused on the task at hand. Caru turned down a side street, not daring to take the most direct path to the gate. He strode with a determined pace, and humans and ermen alike shied away from his intensity. More than a few feathers ruffled indignantly in his wake.

Kimke pushed to the front of their group, angling through the avenue as Caru and Mieta followed side by side. He took a moment to scan the crowd. Humans and ermen laughed, traded, shook hands. A group in the distance clapped and sang together, forming a circle around a human man and an erman woman. She jumped, flapping wings and lifting several feet from the ground. The man made an elaborate show, laughing as he clutched his hands together and begged her to return. She smiled, and the others around him cheered as she descended to resume the dance. Even the guards were relaxed, a few of them joining in to clap to the music.

It should be easier to tell good from evil.

He considered asking Kimke to slow down, but despite their pace, no one was crying out over them; he doubted they were even the rudest people in the crowd. Within minutes, the station was already over a mile behind them, and no alarm had been raised. Ruffled feathers, yes, but no one had called out to the guards. “You can slow down for a minute,” he muttered to Kimke. “I don’t think we’re being followed.”

Kimke slowed, turned to scan the crowd, and then nodded. A casual stroll would draw less attention, but Caru still wanted to sprint.

He wondered if the rest of his life would consist of running toward cities and then away from them.

Kimke turned down another street, and the Portal stood before them, this one also in the center of a small trade square. Unlike in Garenesh, this Portal stood in the open air, the centerpiece of a small park. On the back side, however, erman longshoremen arranged sacks and crates into incoming and outgoing shipping lines in a fenced off area on the rear side. Human merchants waited for their shipments at the gate to the arena. The day was warm, so many of the erman workers had stripped to the waist, sweating in the sunlight as they moved freight with aether and muscles.

A few ermen flew above the square, and more entered and exited through the Portal after sharing a quick word with the Sentinel on duty. Caru wanted to examine the Portal or speak with the Sentinel, but that would only raise the same questions he had feared in Garenesh. He still thought he might be able to make a pass at it, but there were Seranian guards here as well—not on alert yet, but he didn’t want to be in the city if Ferrak managed to have it locked down.

He sighed in relief as Kimke turned down a side road next to the wall and brought them to the western gate. The guards on duty didn’t look especially interested in people leaving, so word of their arrival must not have come from the garrison, yet. There were too many people for the guards to notice, especially without orders.

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Their gamble had paid off.

The three still slowed their pace as they passed through. Best not to raise unnecessary suspicion when no one seemed to care.

Lieve’s tight paving stones quickly gave way to sparse cobble between the outlying buildings. Shops and homes pressed against the walls as though begging for entry into the city. Streets meandered, heading in general directions rather than the intentional direct lines and curved arcs from within Lieve. Each corner held its own surprise, and Caru was grateful that none of those surprises were harmful.

Buildings spread farther apart as they moved away from the city. Cobblestone gave way to packed dirt pathways, and trees began peeking out from between shops. Outer Lieve gave them room to truly breathe. Kimke kept her eyes up, making sure they were still moving westward. More of the moon lit from the bottom as the sun continued along its downward arc.

The sun lingered low and slightly to the south as they passed the last of Lieve. City turned now to farmland, various crops swaying in breezes as they anticipated the approach of distant western clouds. Caru strained his eyes west, hoping to see the outer edge of the Tempest on the horizon. No such luck there, though he could now see the outer cliffs of Edaria, indistinct as they were at that distance.

“It will be dark soon,” Kimke said.

“It will,” Caru agreed. He pointed to a road branching to the right, a simple dirt path that led to a distant copse of trees maybe two miles away. “We’ll turn up there,” he said while pointing the trees out to the women. “Set up and camp and wait for Martel.”

When they came to the split in the road, Caru knelt and retrieved a piece of folded blue cloth from a pocket in his breeches. Holding the cloth strip in his hand, he looked over the pathway until he found a pointed stick large enough to weigh it down, but not large enough to hide it.

“What are you doing?” Mieta asked.

“I told Martel I’d leave a sign for him.”

“Not too obvious, I hope,” Kimke said.

“Not at all, just blue cloth on a stick.” He took the stick and jammed it through the cloth with a quick thrust, effectively creating the most pathetic flag he had ever seen. “This isn’t too noticeable, is it?” He waved his creation feebly for emphasis.

Kimke grinned before laughing at the display. “It should be fine as long as your craftsmanship doesn’t repel him.”

Caru slumped his shoulders, feigning sadness and planting the flag along the intersection’s northern edge. “Maybe next time I’ll hunker down and carve out an idol for the man to spot.” He smiled as he stood and took a few steps along the path. “You two are coming, right?” he asked, turning on his heels and taking a few backward steps.

Mieta laughed and moved forward, turning to look at Kimke, who shook her head and then walked forward to join them.

As they walked, Caru felt like they were slowly becoming the people they were meant to be.

—

Ferrak bolted through the streets of Lieve, paying no heed to those whom he shoved out of his way. More than a few people raised fists behind him, shaking angrily. They did not matter. He’d had the two ermen and the human woman directly under his nose for days on that train, and he would not let himself fail General Hibranth now. However, they had only been spotted once, in the dining car, and by the time Ferrak had been alerted, they had been gone. The sheer enormity of the train made it difficult to conduct a room-by-room investigation without alerting passengers. The oversized passenger train would seat some six hundred people, and two hundred of those could rest comfortably in private cabins. The original plan was to stake out the departure platform and collect the fugitives as they left, but the speed with which they had left made him suspicious that they had been alerted to his presence. Releasing his orders at the Lieve garrison had taken longer than he had expected, and the men at the gate had wanted to argue with him and verify the documents he bore from the general. Time had slipped through his fingers. He barked orders to Seisk, Farren, and Dell, telling them to spread over the city and see to it themselves that the gates were locked down.

The ermen would most likely try to escape to the west, as it looked like they were trying to work their way back to Edaria, or at least toward the fields in its shadow. Much good that would do them. He admitted it did not make as much sense as he hoped, but they had taken the first westbound train out of Garenesh two days earlier. Perhaps that was only coincidence, but ermen heading toward Edaria were too risky to ignore in their current state.

He pushed through a cluster of people as he came to the large western gate. Would they still be in the city? There was never enough time! That he remained in civilian clothing did not help his situation, with his military dress still packed away in the simple pack slung over his shoulder.

“You!” he said, pointing to one of the guards.

The crowd backed away and paused as the man snapped to attention and planted a hand on his sword’s hilt. One of his companions lit up as well and raised the barrel of his rifle in Ferrak’s general direction.

“What business do you have?” the swordsman asked, nodding for the rifleman to lower his weapon. He never drew his hand away from his sword, though. When the gun lowered, the crowd continued milling through the gate, though at a much slower pace.

“Captain Ferrak Carsynth, Seventeenth Infantry, Garenesh Division. I’m looking for—“

“Ain’t dressed like no captain I ever seen,” the rifleman said, looking like he might raise the gun again.

Ferrak swore and dug into a breast pocket, pulling out a leather case and opening it to reveal identification, documentations bearing his physical description, rank, stamped with the Seal of the Flame of Garenesh, and signed by General Hibranth himself some years prior.

The two guards scanned the document, and the rifleman lowered his weapon when his superior nodded. “I trust you have more sense than this fool?” Ferrak asked the swordsman.

The swordsman licked his lips. He whispered, “Bloodmage,” and then said aloud, “Yes, captain.”

Ferrak leaned in close to keep the exchange from the ears of curious passersby. Enough people watched already to make him nervous. Best to keep them from hearing more than they needed. He motioned for the rifleman to lean in as well, and the man obliged. “Blood-Emperor Theop is looking for three fugitives,” he said, holding his open hand a few inches above and to the side of his head. “Male, dark brown hair, green eyes.” He then lowered his hand until it was even with his own head. “Female, light blonde hair, blue eyes.” Hand parallel to his shoulder. “Female, black hair, green eyes. Traveling together, or so we think. Have you noticed them in the past hour?”

“We ain’t seen nobody like them,” the rifleman said.

Idiot!

Thankfully, the more intelligent man spoke up. “We’ve seen hundreds, if not thousands, pass through here in the past hour, captain. I’m sorry, sir, but if people matching those descriptions passed through, they didn’t act in a way to draw attention to themselves.”

Ferrak cursed himself for ever losing sight of them on the station platform. Those three had sprinted away like they knew they were being followed, but how could they have known? At least the guard gave an answer, if not one Ferrak wanted to hear.

He saw motion to his right and was relieved to see Seisk jogging down the wide street toward him. The large man actually made a decent attempt at weaving through the crowd while only bumping into a handful of alarmed people. The long haft of his waving lance tended to create a bubble in the crowd around him as the gleaming tip sawed through the air above.

“Sir!” Seisk said, giving a quick salute as he came to a stop. “The other gates are on alert. Farren and Dell are now moving west of the city as you suggested, and the Lieve garrison has sent patrols in other directions.”

“Good work, corporal,” Ferrak said. “You and you,” he added, pointing to the two guards before him. “Tell the other men here to search for people matching the descriptions I gave you. Try and detain them, if possible, but try not to make a scene.” They nodded, and Ferrak hoped they understood.

He turned and was blinded momentarily by the gleam of Seisk’s lance. It passed quickly, and he smiled as he looked through the western gate. The plan would come together. It had to.