Bee said, “You can’t save every mistreated person, not alone and with the law against you.”

Rory shifted onto the bench beside Vai. “I want to row now. I’m too angry to talk.”

Though our hearts felt wintry, signs of spring had crept into the landscape: buds greening on trees, violets in patches of color beneath the stark woodland, birds flocking north as they honked or trilled. In this flat country the river split into channels separated by long, flat islands. We passed several villages. At midday we saw riders on the eastern shore. Later in the afternoon a man with a spear watched us pass. Sheep worked their way over a greening pasture still damp with yesterday’s rain. As we swept around a wide bend, the sun peeped out from behind a patchwork of clouds.

Open land breached by a canal spread away from the eastern bank. Through this grassy expanse a troop of mage House soldiers picked their way toward the water’s edge.

“Curse it,” said Vai. “Bee, you’ve the steadiest hand. Keep the prow in line with the current. Rory. Catherine. You two sit close in the middle.”

He shifted up to kneel at the prow as Bee settled to the oars. Rory and I weighted the bench at the stern. My cane flowered into a sword as two boats exactly like ours appeared alongside us. It was an impossible illusion to hold through every shift and nuance, and Vai meanwhile kept glancing up at the sky. Thunder rolled although the sky hadn’t the weight of storm clouds.

The soldiers parted to let through a man on a horse. In his flowing robes and with his height and hair, I knew him at once as the mansa of Four Moons House. Soldiers with crossbows knelt to take aim.

“How could the mansa have come after us so quickly?” muttered Vai.

“The dragon betrayed us,” muttered Rory.

“Kemal never would!” Bee glared, but her steady rowing and skillful piloting did not slacken.

A force both terrible and strong was grinding within the clouds drifting innocently above. On the shore the mansa raised his gaze heavenward as snow began to fall. Vai was going to hide us in a blizzard. All we needed to do was get beyond the range of their bows.

More soldiers rode into view. They were wearing three different uniforms: the black-on-white squares of Five Mirrors House, the four phases of the moon of Four Moons House, and the strung bow of White Bow House. Mansa Viridor trotted up to greet the mansa and look across the water toward us. I was too shocked to utter a word.

“I should have known better than to trust friendship offered by cold mages,” Vai muttered.

Snow began to fall in earnest.