One of the guards on duty directed him to a large tent behind Klia’s that had been assigned to him and Mika, but when he threw back the flap he was surprised to find it dark. He snapped his fingers and a lantern overhead flickered to life. Their things had been brought in and properly arranged. Mika had even set out parchment and writing implements on the small field desk. But of the boy there was no sign. Thero’s heart skipped an uneasy beat. It wasn’t like Mika to wander off.

Thero went to the desk to see if the boy had left him a note, but there wasn’t one there, or anywhere else in the tent. He fought back his rising uneasiness as he went back to Klia’s tent. She and Zella were perusing one of the maps of the city.

“He’s not there?” said Klia. “He’s so good-natured, perhaps he’s made friends with some of the soldiers and is sharing supper with them around one of the campfires.”

That certainly seemed more plausible than Mika wandering off.

“Do you want me to help you look?” she asked.

Thero smiled at the honest offer; most royals would have sent for a guardsman or two, but Klia would have gone herself. “No, love, I’ll find him.”

He went to the open circle at the heart of the encampment but there was no sign of the boy and no one seemed to have seen him. At last he found a cook who’d given Mika a pocket meal that afternoon.

“Did you see which way he went?” asked Thero.

The cook shrugged and pointed in the general direction of the road. “Off that way, I think.”

Had Mika disobeyed and followed him into the city? Thero had never known the boy to be willful. But if not that way, then where?

Thero made his way through the east side of the camp, asking after Mika again. A sutler remembered seeing a young boy heading down to the river that afternoon.

Hours had passed since then. Mika could have fallen in the water and been swept away. Thero had no reason to think he could swim. Heart pounding, he ran back to the tent and flung open the equipment chest. He had something better than a search party.

In an upper tray was a tiny leather pouch containing a slip of linen dotted with Mika’s blood: a charm made for just such a time as this. He clenched it in his left hand and sent a wizard eye spell out into the surrounding darkness. His inner vision spiraled over the starlit camp like a bat, then swooped down to the riverbank. Almost immediately he saw a small form sprawled beside a boulder near the roadside, still in sight of the encampment. It was Mika, asleep, unconscious, or …