Then the gates were just ahead. Compared with the harbor on the other side of the city, the area here was a scene of normality as wagons carried bushels of wheat into the city and herders brought tethered goats in for the slaughter.

‘As soon as we’re through,’ Dion said. ‘Run.’

He kept her close as they passed between the gates. Soldiers glanced down at them from high perches on the towers at both sides.

Suddenly they were through.

‘Run!’

Dion and Chloe moved from a walk into a sprint. He checked over his shoulder to see if she was keeping up and led her away from the road, skirting the walls and towers, keeping a hundred paces between them and the city until they finally left Lamara behind.

‘Keep . . . running . . .’ Dion panted.

The terrain here was treacherous and rocky. They weaved around spiky shrubs and leaped over clefts in the rock. Chloe fell and grazed her palms but she climbed back to her feet without complaint and continued to follow, her jaw clenched as she ran.

Dion was confused for a moment, but then he found the steep-walled stream and breathed a sigh of relief. He took Chloe along the high ground until they reached the place where the stream joined the river.

‘We’re going to have to get down to the bottom. Be careful,’ he said.

He slid down on the seat of his trousers, calloused palms breaking his fall. When he reached the base of the gully he turned back and saw Chloe climbing down much more gracefully than he had, facing the opposite direction.

Dion stood with his feet in shallow water and pulled at the bushes, and there was the Calypso.

As he freed the vessel, he realized he had forgotten how beautiful it was. Sleek and rakish, with horizontal blue and gold stripes on the hull, it begged to be out and riding the open seas.

Dion began to breathe freely for the first time as he brought the boat bobbing to the shore of the river.

‘I could use your help mounting the mast,’ he said to Chloe.

‘What do you need me to do?’

‘Firstly, get in.’

She waded through the river and clambered awkwardly into the boat as Dion held it fast. Together they mounted the mast and then raised the sail to halfway so that it snapped and billowed in the steady breeze.

Glancing up at the sky, Dion saw that it was late evening and would soon be night. He nodded to himself. He had sailed through the night to reach Lamara, and he could do it again on the return journey. The lighthouses would guide him out of the inlet and into the open sea.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked Chloe.

‘I’ve never been readier.’