“Aev put you up to this.”

“She would be angry if she knew I was here,” he said. “I already bought a ticket.” A white hologram-stamped card protruded from a side pocket of his valise. “I will follow you.”

“I could stop you.”

“You are fighting for my people. I endangered us all two nights ago. Let me help.”

The horse snorted and scraped a spark off the cobblestones.

“Fine,” she said. “Get in before I change my mind.”

He carried the valise as if it weighed very little—not that Tara’s luggage was much larger—but a blink told Tara the bag lacked any magical capabilities, folded space, or hidden compartments. “That’s all you brought?”

“Books,” he said. He pulled the door shut, and they rolled west into the night.

“No toothbrush? Clothes?”

“This flesh doesn’t work the same as yours. Close enough for imitation only. I do not need to eat in this form. My sweat’s pure water unless I wish it otherwise. Conserves salts.”

Tara pushed back the velvet curtain. They rode past a broad dark space walled with brick: a park or a graveyard. Shale would know which. Wind shifted leaves like clouds above the wall. If there were graves, she could not see them.

Leaving a city was like peeling off a sticky bandage: no matter how fast you tried to go, a few grimy traces still lingered on your skin. Even after buildings gave way to open fields, Tara still didn’t feel as though they’d left Alt Coulumb. The skeleton of a burned house stood watch over swaying wheat.

“The moon roads would be faster,” Shale said. “All places are one where Seril’s moon shines.”

“The red-eye will get us to DL by sunrise, and I don’t want to take any more of Seril’s power than I have to. If we need her roads later, we’ll use them.”

They crested the western ridge and took a right turn through a spur of the Geistwood. Stars shone clear in the dark. Tara tasted their light. In Alt Coulumb, where human fires blunted the stars, wielding Craft felt like doing surgery wearing wool mittens. Out here, the mittens fell away, and her scalpel was sharp as ever.

“Was that really why you refused?” Shale asked.

“What, you think I’m unnerved by the thought of Seril carrying me through the god-realm? Conventional air travel’s safer, more comfortable, and almost as fast.”

The trees failed and the cab descended a long shallow slope to the airfield. Crystal fangs surrounded a blacktop paved with some distant volcano’s ash.

A dragon crouched on the runway.