Noah told Dax he'd be back in ten minutes and went down the stairs two at a time.He didn't run. He made himself walk across the wet yard with his hands in his jacket pockets, rain ticking off his collar, and he kept his face blank. By the time he reached the gatehouse the heavy man had finished charming the guard. The guard had gone back into his booth, and the big man in the good coat stood alone under the awning, thumbs hooked in his belt, looking pleased with the evening."There he is," the man said. "The champion. You look well.""You said you wanted an answer.""I did say that." The heavy man smiled. He had a broad, easy face, the kind that wore a smile the way other people wore a coat. Up close he smelled of cologne and wet wool. The ring on his left hand caught the lamplight. A signet, square, old gold, and on the face of it a small notched edge. "Not out here, though. Let's find somewhere dry."*The shed,* Noah thought."There's an equipment shed behind the gym," he said. "It

Aria had stopped telling herself it was insomnia.Four nights in a row she'd stood at that window with the lamp turned low, and four nights in a row Noah Gray had come over the back wall after midnight like a boy trying very hard not to be seen. The first night she'd thought she was imagining it. The second, that he was meeting someone. By the third she'd stopped lying to herself, because the way he moved wasn't the way a person moves when they're sneaking off to something good.He moved like someone coming home from a war.She went down to breakfast the next morning with her stomach in a knot and her hair still damp, and found him already at his usual table in the corner, Dax across from him, Priya at the end with a book. Noah had a bowl of porridge he wasn't eating. His eyes had a grey, hollowed look she recognized from the mirror. And at the cuff of his jacket, where the sleeve had ridden up as he reached for his cup, there was a white crust of dried salt.Salt. Not rain. Not sweat

Noah didn't touch the envelope right away.He stood in front of the shed door with his hands at his sides and looked at it. White paper. A single steel tack through the top corner. His name across the front in a neat, upright hand that had taken its time.He listened. Nothing. The gym, the yard, the long black line of the east wall. Wind in the wires. Somewhere far off, a patrol's boots on gravel, going the other way.**[There is no heartbeat within your sensory range,]** the System said quietly. **[This System has been scanning since Elder Corvin left. Whoever placed that envelope is not here.]**"They were here ten minutes ago."**[Yes.]**"While we were talking."**[Yes.]**That was what made his skin crawl. The shed walls were thin. He and Corvin had spoken in low voices, but Noah's hearing reached ninety meters on a good night, and Corvin, who'd been listening for patrols his whole life, had sensed someone *near.* And still the envelope had gone up on the door, three feet from wh

"That's not a reason," Noah said."No." Adrian's hand stayed on the rail. "It isn't."They stood there in the grey light, with the yard still empty behind them. Noah was aware of the ache in his arms, of the folded note lying flat against his heel. He was aware, with a clarity he didn't want, that Adrian had not once asked where he'd been."Come and eat," Adrian said at last. "You look like something dragged out of a river.""I should sleep.""You can sleep after."It was said in the old voice, the instructor's voice, mild and unarguable. Noah followed him.The instructors' wing was quiet at that hour. Adrian's rooms were on the ground floor at the far end, a small sitting room and a smaller bedroom behind it, bare as a cell. A table, two chairs, a shelf of dull books, a narrow window onto the yard. Noah had never once seen the curtain drawn.It was drawn now.Adrian crossed to it, twitched an edge of cloth back with one finger, looked out at the yard for a long moment, and let it fal

Adrian was asleep in a chair outside the dormitory door.Noah found him at first light, folded into a hard wooden seat from the common room with his coat pulled over his knees and his head tipped back against the wall. His mouth was slightly open. The cloudy eye had drifted half shut. He looked, for the first time in Noah's life, like an ordinary tired man. Noah stood over him for a long moment with a lump in his throat, then stepped past him as quietly as he could.Back in the room, Dax was a lump under his blanket, snoring in a small, apologetic way. Noah crossed to the window and took the edge of the curtain between two fingers.*No more hiding.*He pulled it open.The light came in pale and clean. Beyond the gate, the lane lay empty under a washed sky, and the curb where the car had stood looked like any other curb.Noah stood in the light and let anyone who wanted to see him see him.**[You are being deliberate,]** the System said."Yes."**[This System would like to know what yo