A long minute passed before Vincent saw her writing. She recognised the moment by the way his head jerked as though he were going to lift it, and only just stopped himself. The sentinel marched, his feet grinding against the dirt of the yard. Dice rattled together and a soldier shouted with laughter. In the distance a rooster crowed.

When the sentinel’s back was once more to them, Jane wiped her words clear and wrote, I WILL CUT YOUR ROPES. DO NOT MOVE.

He coughed and adjusted his head in a nod masked as a lolling movement. Jane let out a breath she had been unaware she was holding and waited until the sentinel faced away again. She stretched her hand out, keeping within the limits of the Sphère’s glamour, and put the knife against the rope on Vincent’s right hand. His eyes widened at the touch of the blade, and he held very still.

It was but the work of moments to cut through the ropes binding Vincent. His hands freed, Jane looked again to the guard. His steady pace took him past Vincent again, ennui clear in each step.

She wrote: WHEN CAMP FOLLOWERS COME. I COUGH 2, YOU ROLL LEFT.

He grunted to show he understood.

While they waited for the followers, Jane adjusted the manikin she had so carefully built, and composed it in Vincent’s sprawling posture. Each scrape of her boots on the gravel sounded as thunder in her ears, making her freeze in terror, but it seemed that the sounds blended into the general hubbub of camp life.

As the sun crept on its path, Jane eased her way around the trellis, moving the Sphère and the manikin in a slow, careful progression, until she was standing by the side of the trellis, ready to spring forward. Until the camp followers arrived to provide a distraction, Jane could do nothing but wait.

She thanked the heavens for the glass Sphère, without which she would have had no way to reach her husband. Even were she not with child, walking any distance while controlling the glamour of a Sphère Obscurcie would have been too great an effort to have been successful.

A bead of sweat tickled past her ear. One of the flies on Vincent found her and buzzed around her head, tempted by the salt on her skin. Jane’s apprehension grew with each passing moment, yet she could do nothing but sit and count each breath Vincent took.