Surprise twisted Fulton’s features. “Minister . . .” he began, but before he could finish, Adare turned and darted west, deeper into the plaza, toward the canal that emptied into the Basin. She needed to get over the bridge spanning that canal, then to the narrow watercourse draining away to the west. Just a few hundred paces, she thought, feet pounding on the wide stones. Just a few hundred paces and she’d be safe.

“Birch!” the Aedolian bellowed. The younger guardsman spun around, stretching out an arm to stop her, but he was too slow, baffled into momentary hesitation by her unexpected flight.

Adare ducked to the left, felt the fabric of the dress twist between her legs, and for a moment she was falling, careening toward the broad paving stones. She caught herself with an outstretched hand, pain tearing up her thumb and into her wrist, stumbled a few steps, heard Birch cursing behind her, and then she was running again, the treacherous dress hiked up above her knees.

Men and women paused to stare as she raced by, faces looming up one after the next, a series of still portraits: a startled child with wide brown eyes; a canal hand holding a long hook, half his face maimed by a vicious scar; a blond Edishman with a beard braided halfway down his chest. Her hood had fallen back revealing her face, revealing her eyes. People began to point, to exclaim. A few children even ran behind her hollering “princess” and “Malkeenian.”

She risked a glance over her shoulder—whether for the Aedolians or her more mysterious pursuit, she wasn’t sure. Fulton and Birch were charging after her, but they were a dozen paces back, and, with a flash of surprise, she realized that her plan, though battered, was actually working. The men were stronger than her by far, stronger and faster, but they wore a quarter of their weight in steel beneath those traveling cloaks. Adare had only her coin purse and the blindfold secreted beneath her robe.

Just a little farther, she told herself. A little farther and it won’t matter who saw.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been running, but suddenly she was almost there, almost to the narrow spillover people called the Chute. The Chute wasn’t a proper canal. Unlike the half-dozen waterways that spread out from the Basin to the north, east, and west, all wide enough to permit the narrow canal vessels for which they had been dug, the side channel was barely six paces across, a miniature waterfall constructed to drain off the excess power of the canal’s current so that the other channels snaking through the city might flow more placidly.