Erick's jade statue was even more compelling in the first light of day. What had always been a monument to beauty turned otherworldly when the sun slipped along its planes. Veins in the stone seemed to wake and breathe, cool green deepening to ocean-dark in the hollows and lifting to pale fire along the edges. The grace in the carving was impossible to miss. Standing there, I understood how Erick had sidestepped a lifetime as a battery. The sort of genius that could make something as beautiful as that was of a much better use creating more than being drained of everything. He had given them things like this, and in return they had given him room to keep his own name.

It was early, but I didn't risk creeping. I took the heavy knocker and hammered out a brisk, but clear announcement of my presence. With the sort of friends Erick kept, being found skulking near his threshold would no doubt end in disaster. Making him annoyed because of a loud noise in the morning was preferential when compared to potentially receiving a knife in the chest for trespassing. He'd only met me once, and I had been a different person then. If he had forgotten my face, I couldn't blame him.

Better that the neighbours think it's an urgent commission, I told myself.

Once word of the prison broke for real, any gossip about an oddly dressed visitor would drown in louder talk.

The door swung wide on a man wearing a scowl that looked molded to his face. It took me a moment but I recognised him as the driver who had spirited us out of this district after the train job. One hand sat casually behind his back, weight set to bring whatever he held into play the second the situation asked for it.

"Hey," I said, keeping my hands where he could see them. "Is Erick in? I've got a message for him."

He didn't soften. His eyes went from my boots to my hairline, then past my shoulder to sweep the street for second acts and shadows.

"What is the message pertaining to?" he asked, voice thick with sleep and suspicion.

"That's best kept between me and Erick," I said with a smile that didn't show teeth.

The frown dug in deeper. "And who might you be?"

I glanced once up and down the lane, as if checking for eavesdroppers who did not exist.

"A messenger from an old friend. We met once. You drove me and a few others after we got off our train at the wrong stop."

Confusion puckered the scowl, then comprehension ironed it smooth. He peered closer, searching my face for a sign of the boy he had once smuggled away.

"Very well," he said at last, seemingly seeing enough of the boy I once was. "Come in and wait, so you don't rouse half the street."

"Gladly." I stepped into the cool hush of the house and let the door close on the waking city and any eager ears.

After years in drab cells, the first steps into Erick's house felt obscene in their softness. The carpet had the lush, springing give of moss after rain allowing my shoe to sink until the leather lipped the pile and for an instant I forgot how to walk like a man and not a ghost. The impulse to peel them off and feel the threads against bare skin hit hard but Erick's household was a shoes-on affair for reasons I'm not quite sure of so I was denied my pleasure.

Gold-framed paintings marched along the walls, their gilt catching early light and breaking it into small suns. I tried to focus on one—a farmer reaping a harvest, a seamstress mending tears, a fisherman casting lines into a sea so realistic I could practically taste the salt—but my attention couldn't be constrained with so much on display. Up above the chandelier hung like a frozen constellation, a hundred cut-glass drops fed by a steady bead of mana. Light pooled, then spilled in slow pulses through the facets, warming in a pattern that strangely imitated candle flames. I wanted to look at everything at once and ended up seeing nothing well because of it. The polish on the banister, the smell of wax and stone and citrus peel, the quiet thud of my own heartbeat reminding me this wasn't a dream designed to break me later.

Fortunately, I didn't have to wait long. Footsteps padded back across the carpet and the driver reappeared, composed and watchful, though less suspicious than he had originally been. His expression now closer to something as close to curiosity as a man with his position could show.

"Mr. Stanson will see you now," he said. Hearing Erick's surname reminded me that I had not gotten the name of the driver.

"Thank you," I answered, dipping my head. "Apologies, I don't think I caught your name…"

"You did not." He offered a firm, courteous smile that closed the door on the question. The refusal was polished enough to be polite and final enough to sting. I wasn't sure why it irked me and not understanding that emotion made me dismiss it entirely. I'd learned quickly from Ashley. If there was an emotion I was feeling for reasons I couldn't explain, then I needed to question it—perhaps it would be legitimate, perhaps it wouldn't—either way, I couldn't let myself be ruled by it.

"Fair enough," I said, letting it go. He shifted aside without ceding his watchfulness and I moved past him, following the quiet glow and the scent of ink and paper toward Erick's office, where the sound of a chair scraping back and the whisper of a page turning suggested a man already at work.

I almost walked straight in, then caught myself and rapped my knuckles on the panel, remembering manners I hadn't needed to use in the longest of times. The driver gave a small nod of approval from his station by the jamb.

"Come in," Erick's soft voice called.

I opened the door and found a man who looked as if he'd seen a ghost. Erick was as big as I remembered, his desk dwarfed by his frame, his broad shoulders were perhaps narrower than what I recalled but that could easily have been due to his poor posture. His steel-grey hair sat less tidy than on the day we'd met, but even at this hour he was impeccably turned out in clothes that could only have been made for him with how they accentuated his good points. His eyes moved up and down my body before settling on my face.

"Hello, Erick," I said, smiling at his shock. "Sorry for dropping by so early but events are in motion that I believe you should be aware of."

"Brandon Horlock," he breathed. "I thought you were dead."

He sat backwards hard, making his chair groan. His pen clattered to the desk as the paper before him lost its importance in an instant.

"And yet here I am," I said, spreading my hands. It felt indecently good to be alive in front of someone who'd expected otherwise.

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"Yet here you are," he echoed, a disbelieving shake easing out of his head. He gathered himself with visible effort. "Come. Sit." He gestured to a chair opposite. "Tell me what's happened. Are the guards behind you? Should we be expecting them?"

He half rose as he spoke, already moving to enact plans a man like him keeps for emergencies.

I tilted my head side to side. "Yes and no. There's a chance they come here, but I think it unlikely. I covered my tracks well enough and as far as I'm aware, they'd have no reason to link the two of us."

Curiosity and concern wrestled across his face as his mind raced through what might be transpiring. I spared him the struggle.

"There's been a prison break," I said simply.

Silence settled over the room for a heartbeat, thick as velvet.

"More than just you, then?" Erick asked, careful voice barely managing to sit on the hope inside it.

I nodded.

"More than just me. A full rebellion."

He drew a sharp breath.

"You mean it?"

"All of them," I said. "Every cell was getting opened. Last I saw, they were well on their way to taking the prison."

His eyes went distant, then bright with calculation. I could almost hear the wheels turning as he went over routes, allies, timetables, which doors in this city would slam and which might open a finger's width.

"Excuse me one moment."

He rose and crossed the office in three long strides. Muffled voices traded quick sentences beyond the door. I heard the sound of retreating footsteps. The driver was surely on his way to set things in motion. What that meant, I didn't know.

"Forgive me," he said, reclaiming his chair. "Can you give me the long version? As much as you're willing. We thought you dead for a year, and I'd like to know how you weren't."

It could have been a threat in another mouth in another situation but from him it was only plain interest and the weight of necessary knowledge. We both understood that if I'd sold him out, I wouldn't be here at dawn. Soldiers would.

"I'll tell you what I can," I said. "Some things are better left unsaid. Others aren't useful to you."

Then I set it out: the escape gone wrong and Tom's betrayal that caused it. A short version of the chains and the cold lessons learned under Sebastian's hands, his death and my subsequent escape. Then in more detail I told him about Ashley's voice commanding the prisoners into soldiers, the doors opening, the blood and fire, the destroyed gate, and finally my journey to meet him.

By the time I finished, Erick had fetched a bottle and two heavy-bottomed tumblers. He poured deep and pushed one across the desk. The whiskey smelled of smoke and stone fruit.

"So what you're telling me is that we have an army holed up in a fort?" he said, tossing back the first glass in one swallow. I took a cautious sip of mine then a deeper pull while he refilled his own, lower this time.

"Something like that," I said. "How long they hold it is your sort of problem, not mine."

"We could use a man like you, Brandon." He didn't push the words so much as set them between us as a clear offer.

"I'm sorry. That's not for me. I'm here because I owed it to Billy to warn you of what had transpired."

"What a fine man he was," Erick murmured, lifting his glass. I raised mine to meet it. We drank to a ghost who deserved better than he got.

"What do you plan to do now?" he asked when the quiet settled.

I shrugged, eyes drifting to the curtained window as if I could see the road through it. "Leave Radan. See what the world looks like without the worry of ghosts chasing me. Maybe find a ship south and pay my way as dead weight."

"That's hard without resources," he said. "We could help."

"I know," I said. "But you're about to be busy, and that noise will cover me. The guards will be watching what comes in. I'm counting on them paying less attention to what slips out."

It was mostly true. The larger piece I kept to myself was that I didn't want to be indebted to anyone. Not to rebels, not to nobles, not to anyone who would one day look at me and say the word owe.

"We could pay you," Erick tried again, the slightest wheedle finding his voice. "You remember the fee from the train job? More than that—much more. Help us and we can make you a rich man."

The number that floated up in my head was tempting enough to hurt, but I shook it away.

"Thank you. Truly. But I need distance from Radan. There's too much here that is going to haunt me and Rebellion doesn't feel like my sort of work. I want something a little more… fun."

"It is your work, though," he said, meeting my look without flinching. "You're one of us."

I must have bristled, because he lifted both hands, palms open.

"It's obvious from your story, and from what we pieced together before you disappeared. I don't mean to brand you or spread your name. But this—" he tapped the desk once, lightly, as if that could stand in for the city "—this is your rebellion. We're doing it for people like me and you."

His words landed and sat there, heavy as a tool you don't want to pick up. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was exactly the kind of person who should plant his feet and swing until something changed. But I could feel the mark on me like a hot coin in a pocket, the one that meant I'd bring trouble through any door I chose to stand behind. I took another drink, let the burn clear my throat, and set the glass down carefully.

"Maybe it is," I said. "Maybe I'm built for it. But I'm not signing my name to anyone's banner. Not today. I came to warn you. I'll take a clean shirt if you've got one. After that, I'm gone."

Erick sighed, the kind of tired breath a man gives when he knows the argument is over. There were good reasons for me to join, and we both knew them. I just wanted something else.

"Wait here a moment and I'll see what I can get you." He left with quick, purposeful strides and returned not long after with a neatly folded bundle. "These should be about your size. Good quality, too. It might throw off anyone who's got your scent."

"Thanks, Erick. I appreciate it." I meant it. "I do wish you all the best with the rebellion, but… I've done my part."

"I can't argue too much with that," he said, mouth turning rueful. "I just know it's going to get messy, and we could use every fighter we can find."

I shrugged and pulled my shirt over my head, the old cloth dragging against scab and bruise. The clean one slid on like water, soft and cool, a reminder that not all fabric had to feel like a punishment. The trousers were the same. Comfortable, well cut, expected to be worn by someone who expected luxury and not just utility.

"By the way," Erick said, almost casual, just enough pause to snag me as I was hiking the waistband. "How come you haven't asked about your friends? I thought you would have by now."

I flinched and tried not to let it show.

"I wanted to," I said, eyes finding the corner of the desk. "But I need to leave them in the past. If I go to them, I'll only bring trouble to their door."

He nodded slowly. "I get it. It's hard when you have the baggage we do."

I managed a thin smile and, because I couldn't hold the line completely, asked, "Do you… do you know how they're getting on?"

He gave me a look bordering on pity. I wasn't sure if it was because I didn't have the willpower to resist asking, or if it was because of the answer.

"Marky's been looking out for them. Says it's the least he could do." He hesitated, choosing the order of the words with care. "From what I last heard, Morgana's working in a shipping office. Dillon has… well. There's no easy way to say this."

My stomach hollowed as I began assuming my friend was dead. My mind went to what I would need to do to make sure his death was avenged and how I could make sure Morgana was supported.

"He's been conscripted," Erick said, letting out a breath with the words. "He's eighteen now, after all."

Something cold moved up my spine.

"Where have they sent him?" I asked, though I already knew the answer would be the worst possible one. With my life, it always was.

Erick met my eyes and didn't look away. "The Invader's Gate."

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