I knew he was coming before I even caught a flash of the dark green hood of his robe, and I knew what he was going to tell me. I turned around when he laid a cold hand on my shoulder. His skin was coated in greyish smears of ash, he had a black eye, and his lips were bleeding. I could still see the scars rippling down the cheeks from the last time.

“They fought me proper this time, Antheia. I was clean out by the time they all had a go at me. Still, it’s better than ‘em just putting a bullet through me. That’s dirty tactic, that is.”

“But they did it again?”

He nodded slowly, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Yeah. We’ve got until next week to give ‘em what they want, or they’re gonna do it again.”

“The children?”

“I took ‘em down to the creek, told ‘em to go and practice their charms. The older ones know there’s something wrong though. Some of ‘em are almost as old as us now, ain’t they? Sixteen?”

“Arktos, we can’t give ‘em what they want…can we? I vowed to protect this place, this guild. Look at everything we built.”

“I know, Antheia. We both did. But we might not have a choice. Come on, you better come see what they done.”

◆◆◆

Dying amber embers crackle under my bare feet as I walk on what is left of the blackened grass on the top of Koraki Crest. This time, the flames are worse. They lick at the remains of my hut, and others are reduced to dust and billow with demented grey smoke. Our grove of ash trees flickers with flames.

“Is there anything left?”

“Barely. They took our knives. And the elders’ cabin is ruined.”

I take a look around me. I can see shards of the bottles of our remedies and potions littering the floor. Our lampsi flowers are charred. Crumpled hammocks lie alight on the floor. One of our diamond-edged knives is shattered next to our plundered weapon stash.

A woman comes up the hill, carrying a pail of water on her shoulders, which she pours onto the worst of the fire which splutters, momentarily seeming to fizzle away, but is resurrected by the flames that dance violently everywhere around it.

“I’m tryin’. I’m really tryin’, Antheia, but it’s no good.”

“It’s okay, Lykia. You’re doin’ such a good job.”

She tries to smile back at me, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes, and her voice falters as she speaks again. “Is this the start—is this the start of—a war?”

“I’ll make sure it isn’t. I promise.”

Arktos looks at me anxiously. “Antheia.” He whispers. “That’s a big promise. I’ve—got a barge tied at the Dock, y’know. We could just—leave.”

“And go where? Don’t you remember why we left all those years ago? We were lost kids with shattered dreams then, and now we’re nothing but outcasts running from the memory of somewhere and someone we can never, ever go back to. This is our home. All of our homes. I don’t care what you wanted before, because we ain’t getting it back. This is who we are. We’re never gonna be like ‘em again."

Arktos did not believe her - or at least, believe they were safe with her. After all, there were children with them, twenty young children under ten, who were scared, and already grieving for a life they would never have. He would not create more victims of war. He would not let them lose each other as well.

In the night, he awoke Lykia, who carried herself with the maturity of someone who was decades away from being fourteen.

Arktos did not wake the others. He moved as though the night itself were a co-conspirator, quiet and deliberate, the lantern shuttered to a slit of amber. When Lykia opened her eyes, she did not cry out. She only watched him, already alert, already weighing what this meant.

“Get your boots,” he said softly. “And your cloak.”

She sat up, hair loose around her shoulders. “You’re sending us away,” she said. It was not a question.

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

He paused, and that pause told her more than any answer could have. She rose and dressed without further prompting, then helped rouse the youngest children—those who still slept with fists curled as if clutching something they feared to lose. She spoke to them in murmurs, steady and warm, promising an adventure, promising the waters would be kind. Arktos watched her do it, the way she knelt to be at their level, the way fear loosened its grip when she took a small hand in hers.

On the riverbank, the barge waited, tethered and low in the water. Supplies had already been stowed: sacks of grain, a cask of fresh water, blankets, a compass wrapped in oilcloth. Arktos checked the knots one last time, then turned to Lykia.

“You’ll follow the current until it widens,” he said. “When the river splits, keep east. Don’t take the southern fork, no matter how calm it looks.”

She nodded, committing every word to memory. “And if we’re stopped?”

“You won’t be, if you keep to the banks at dawn and dusk. Travel at night when you can. If anyone asks who you are, you’re traders’ kin. You lost your caravan.”

“And if they don’t believe me?”

“Then you keep sailing.” His mouth tightened. “You don’t argue with men who ask questions like that.”

She studied his face, searching for cracks. “You’re not coming,” she said again, quieter now.

“I can’t.”

“Because of her,” Lykia said, not accusing. Naming.

He did not deny it. “Because of all of them,” he replied, glancing back toward the sleeping camp. “If I go east, I draw eyes. If I stay, I can keep the road clear behind you.”

“You always do this,” she said, and there was heat there now. “You stay where it’s worst.”

“Someone has to.”

She stepped closer, lowering her voice. “You trust me with them?”

“I trust you more than anyone,” he said immediately. “That’s why you’re going.”

Her breath caught, just slightly. She squared her shoulders. “Then you have to trust me to say this: you don’t get to decide alone who survives.”

A long silence stretched between them, filled only by the river’s slow pull against the hull.

“I know,” he said at last. “That’s why this is so hard.”

He knelt then, bringing himself level with her. From his neck he drew a thin cord, and from it a small carved token, worn smooth by years of touch. He pressed it into her palm.

“This will open doors where words won’t,” he said. “And if it doesn’t—sell it. Food matters more than symbols.”

She closed her fingers around it. “You’re telling me goodbye.”

“I’m telling you to go,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”

The children were already aboard, huddled together under blankets, eyes wide but dry. Lykia climbed onto the barge and took the pole, planting it against the bank. She hesitated, then looked back.

“East,” she said. “And when it’s safe?”

“When it’s safe,” he agreed.

She pushed off.

The river took them gently at first, a broad, patient hand. As the camp receded into darkness, Lykia kept her gaze forward, counting breaths, counting stars. The children watched the sky too, tracing shapes with tiny fingers. She told them stories—of cities that floated on light, of fields that sang when the wind passed through them. By the time dawn thinned the night to gray, fear had softened into a wary quiet.

By the second day, the banks grew greener. Birds skimmed the water, and the current widened as Arktos had promised. Lykia learned the river’s moods: where it pulled, where it pretended to rest. She rationed carefully, praised small courage loudly, and cried only when the children slept.

At dusk on the third night, she tied the barge to a stand of reeds and sat with the compass in her lap, its needle steady, pointing east. She held the carved token in her other hand and thought of Arktos standing alone in the dark, watching the water carry them away.

“We’re going the right way,” she told the children when they stirred. And for the first time since they had left, she believed it.