“You can hold it there?” Tan asked, pinning him with a stare.

Kaden hesitated. Shin training was filled with exercises of pulse and breathing. Once, when he had barely turned eleven, he counted every heartbeat for two days. Still, there were limits. “Not if I have to run.”

“There will be no running, not if all goes as I plan.”

“And what, exactly, is the plan?”

“At eighty-six thousand beats, use the key to leave your cell.”

“Eighty-six thousand?”

“A day. You will leave the cell and walk to a small alcove just outside. Wait there until the guard comes, then step from the alcove and kill him.”

Kaden’s heart jumped for two beats, and with an effort he slowed it to the same steady pulse.

“How?” he asked.

“Just as you would kill a goat,” Tan replied. “A single cut across the neck.”

Kaden shook his head, fear and confusion clawing at his calm.

“The Ishien are warriors,” he protested.

“The Ishien will expect you to be in your cell, unarmed and helpless. They know that I am dangerous, and so they have sent extra guards. You . . .” He shook his head, a single curt gesture. “They do not fear you.”

“Then what?” Kaden asked, putting from his mind for the moment the vision of the knife clasped tight in his grip, of warm flesh folding back beneath the blade.

“The guard who brings your food is also the one who watches the door to this branch of the prison. When he is dead, the way will be clear. You will wait for another four thousand heartbeats, then go.”

“Go where?”

Tan slid the knife along the inside of his own arm, raising a slender trail of blood. It was black in the lamplight, like pitch or shadow. He dipped a finger into the blood, then turned to the wall, sketching a map over the rough stone. As Kaden watched, the monk inked a tree of corridors and stairwells, the branches ramifying across the wall.

“Here,” he said finally, pointing to a small room off a long, straight hall, “is your cell. And here”—another, much larger room—“the harbor.”

“The harbor?” Kaden asked, shaking his head.

“The Ishien need supplies, and not everything can be transported through the kenta. There is an underground harbor carved by the sea. You will go there.”

“Won’t it be guarded?”

“At the mouth, yes,” Tan replied. “But they will not expect anyone to be leaving. You will climb aboard the vessel tied up to the stone wharf, hide among the barrels, and wait. I will join you. When the tide turns, the ship will sail, and we will be gone.”

“What about the body?” Kaden asked, sweat dampening his palms. “The guard I’m supposed to kill?”

“The guards’ shifts do not match the tides,” Tan replied. “By the time his relief arrives, we will have sailed. At the moment, there are no other boats moored in which they might follow.”