Magda stopped just shy of an intersection and leaned back against the short stone wall for a moment, gulping air and catching her breath while still out of sight of the street. She opened the door on her lantern a crack and carefully peeked around the corner. She had been running with such abandon that she wasn’t sure of exactly where she was.

As she held the lantern out around the corner, light fell on closely spaced buildings that she recognized. Signs hanging out front advertised several small businesses: a cobbler; a seamstress; and a carpenter’s shop. Just up the street to the right, she knew that there would be a road coming down off the lower parts of the mountain that intersected the street.

That was the one road she needed. It made a loop past a few homes and a number of storehouses that held grains and dry goods. A little higher up, the side road reconnected back with the main road going up to the Keep.

Without taking time to finish catching her breath, Magda shut the door on her lantern and raced off up the street. If she got there too late, she had no chance. Without pause, when she reached it, she took the road that angled off up the hill and curved up along the skirt of the mountain. She could just see the lights of the Keep high above.

It was harder running uphill. Her legs burned from the effort. She feared that they might give out at any moment, but she knew that she dared not slow. If she didn’t get out in front of those men before they made it up to the Keep, she knew that she wouldn’t have a chance. If they got past her, she’d likely never be able to find where they took Merritt.

The Keep was immense. There were places all over the Keep where they could hide him. For all Magda knew, they might take him to an obscure room like the one where they had taken Tilly. There were thousands of rooms in the Keep. She would never be able to find him. And if they took him to the prosecutor’s offices, with his private army headquartered there, she would never get in.

In all likelihood, though, they would take him down to the dungeons where Naja had been. Magda didn’t think that she would have a chance to make it in there again. After the two dungeon guards had been killed, not only would the men down there be on alert, they would probably double or triple the guard.

The smell of pines and fir trees got stronger the higher up the road she ran. Magda could at last hear a small brook off in the darkness. She knew the brook and where it was located above the buildings. Finally out of the city, she found herself running past the dark shapes of towering trees.