“Get off, old man!”

Mop’s arms flailed. His twisted mouth and cheek twisted further. He crumpled backward, his head hitting the earth with a muted, sickening thud.

“Mop!” Rae cried. She leapt, scrabbling to get out of the basket. Ness grabbed her, holding her back.

“Stay put, child!” she pleaded. “Don’t let the guard see you!”

The guard, the crowd, their eyes all fixed on Mop struggling to rise from the mud and on the girl struggling in the guard’s arms, did not see Rae, though she was now standing fully upright. But the struggling girl in the billowing garment did.

For the briefest of moments, Rae met the girl’s eyes.

Some look of wonder, strange, almost jubilant—and grief, desperate, also strange—passed over the girl’s face. Her lips, parting, seemed to be holding a word. You, she might have half mouthed or even half smiled, but as she stared at Rae, her whole body grew suddenly still and complacent.

Held fast in the guard’s arms, the girl lifted her chin. “I am the one you are seeking!” she cried, her voice carrying over the crowd.

Startled, the guard loosened his grip, and the girl, in her moment of freedom, knelt beside Mop. She took his hand; she helped him sit up. The girl was small, perhaps even smaller than Rae, but as she knelt there, holding Mop’s hand, she seemed larger than the guard towering over her. The girl nodded at Rae, a brief tender tilt of her head, then stood as though waiting for the guard to take her again.

“I AM THE ONE YOU ARE SEEKING!” she cried. It seemed impossible for a voice so large to come from one so small. “I AM THE ONE WHO THREATENS THE REA—”

Before she could finish, the guard grabbed her, his hand over her mouth, dragging her away from the crowd.

Rae gasped. “No—” But Ness pushed her down into the basket.

“Hide yourself, child! Stay quiet while I help Mop.”

Before Ness could reach Mop, though, there was Myntas, pushing his way through the people. Putting his arm around Mop, helping him from the ground, he half carried him past Ness and Rae—“Wait, wait, I’ll be back for you in a moment”—to the edge of the woods, then returned for the cart, rolling Rae in a great lurching rush back to where he’d left Mop resting against the trunk of a tree.

The moment they reached the safety of the forest shadows, Rae leapt to her father’s side. “Mop!” she cried.

Myntas and Nessa, too, hovered over him. “Mop. Are you all right? My airmonger, can you tell us you are all right?”

But Mop, propped against a tree, skin beaded with sweat, had the most peculiar look stretched across his face.

“Mop?” Rae took his hand. “Mop?”

“Daughter,” Mop managed with the half of his mouth still working.

And that, as Rae held his hand, was the last word of sense he ever said.