They hurried down the hallway to a set of stairs leading up to the back of the building, safely away from the main entry. They climbed slowly, listening for the sounds of other people, but everything was quiet. At the top of the stairs a short hallway led to a service door at the rear of the building. Xac reached for a hooded cloak hanging on a peg and handed it to her. She slipped it on wordlessly and pulled up the hood. When she nodded that she was ready, the boy opened the door.

Cold air rushed in, causing her to flinch. It was nighttime, everything dark save for where lamps and candles flickered in windows and from behind glass casings on poles and porches. The trees looked stark and bare, spectral giants looming over houses that had a squat, hunkered-down look. No sounds rose out of the darkness save the low wail of the wind come down off the mountains to the north.

It was early morning, Phryne decided, and most of the city was asleep. Hardly anyone would be up and about at this hour. Xac Wen—and the Orullians, she was guessing—had planned well.

The boy started off right away, motioning for her to follow. He hardly needed to bother; she was right on his heels, casting anxious glances left and right, hopeful they had gotten past the worst. She breathed in the cool, fresh air and felt her head spin with the sweetness of it. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, still weak and a bit disoriented, still not quite believing she was free.

“Where are Tasha and Tenerife?” she asked, but he put his finger to his lips and silenced her. Questions would have to wait.

They made their way through the sleeping city, two more of night’s shadows, following narrow trails that were seldom used, a roundabout way to wherever it was they were going. Phryne had no idea of their destination. Surely not the boy’s home or the Orullians’ cottage. Some safer place, but where would she be safe in this city?

She found out quickly enough when they arrived at the tree house that Tasha and Tenerife had been building some weeks earlier. Still unoccupied, it sat dark and silent, cradled in the bows of a huge cluster of spruce, barely visible in the darkness. A narrow wooden stairway wound upward through a series of platforms, and they climbed it as quickly as they could manage, gained the decking that surrounded the home, found the door leading in, and entered.

“No one will look for you here,” Xac Wen advised, closing the door behind them. “It’s empty. I’m acting as caretaker, keeping watch until Tasha and Tenerife return. I like it here, living on my own. My parents don’t care.”