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forgive me if I’ve done harm to that boy . But surely all she had told them was harmless—Samik could be anywhere by now.
    The men seemed to have come to a conclusion. With one catlike motion, the bald man released her, sheathed his knife and joined his men as they trooped out the door. He turned back at the threshold and smiled in false apology. “One thousand thanks for your kind help. We regret your window.”
    BACK IN THE ALE ROOM, Ragnar bent over the map.
    â€œYou can’t be serious,” Jax protested. “We can’t search the whole Backend interior!”
    â€œWe won’t have to—look at this.” Ragnar traced the roads with his finger. “Besides the Western Carriageway, there are three roads out of Shiphaven. Two are basically coast roads. Only one heads inland.”
    He cocked his head, considering. “Like I said before, our young buck’s not used to living rough. He won’t be wanting to sleep in a ditch, I’ll warrant. So we’re looking for a town within a day’s journey, say about…here.” The finger tapped the map, and they all peered at the spot.
    â€œGreenway,” Ragnar announced. “I’d wager we’ll pick up his trail in Greenway. There, or the next town down the road.” He looked around the table. “We need horses. I’ll go report back to Jago. You lot, find us something decent to ride. Just buy them, clean and aboveboard. Meet me at the docks.”
    IN THE DEEP SILENCE OF PREDAWN, Samik sat up in bed. The cold air on his shoulders was like a slap in the face, but at least it brought him fully awake. The dream was vivid in his memory as though it were painted onto the inky blackness in the caravan. There was no action, just the single image: a dark night, a vast sky studded with stars, and the dim outline of two figures. Though he couldn’t make out their features, he knew the slighter figure was Rowan. Of the other figure, the one who held Rowan close in a pinion grip, Samik could see only two things: the glint of his sword, and the faint reflection of light—starlight? torchlight?—off his bald head.
    Was it a true dream, or just the meaningless weavings of his own sleeping mind? He couldn’t tell. Samik shook his head, trying to clear it. The clarity, the realism, felt true. But it was easy to see how his own worry could have shaped it—here he was in a strange land, fearful of pursuit, traveling lonely roads with a stranger. It wasn’t much of a leap from there to imagining Rowan in danger. The dream could even be his own conscience talking, warning him not to mix Rowan up in his troubles. Or it could be a true vision of the future, or a possible future. Dreams, even true dreams, were often more confusing than helpful.
    His grandmother would have known how to sort it out. Samik felt a stab of loneliness—for his granny, who had died the previous winter after a long illness that shrank her to the size of a child—and then for his home and family. If only he knew how things were with them. But the Sight was like that; it didn’t necessarily show you what you wanted or needed to know. His granny had taught him that. She had it too, the Sight. His mother did not like to talk about it—that was a lot less puzzling, now that he had met Rowan. The Tarzines, however, did not see it as anything so remarkable: an unusual ability, yes, like being double-jointed, and not often any more useful.
    There would be no going back to sleep, not for a while anyway. Samik felt for the little lamp clipped by his bed and the spark striker stashed beside it, and soon a tiny but comforting light flickered beside his head. He eased from the bed and groped below it until he found the pen, ink and account book his father had tucked into his pack.
    He shrugged into his coat and propped the book against his raised knees, stashed the little inkpot on the ledge of the caravan wall and began to