Wads kept his maps open until the wagon's wheels thudded into a steady rhythm and the morning light steadied into a clean line across the road. For the first hour he did nothing but think—really think—the way he had learned to think in the quiet places of his life: break the problem into its pieces, list possibilities, eliminate impossibilities.
He spread the parchment on his knees and smoothed it, fingers tracing the inked roads to the Forsaken the way a musician traces a score. Rooks Run. Gallowsbright. Bell Tine. Three towns, three nights—timing, fuel, the pace the horses could bear without breaking. He ran a checklist in his head and checked it again: water sources, watch rotations at dusk, market hours so they could eavesdrop for rumors, which inns were ramshackle and which had town criers who repeated everything for two pence. He rehearsed the terrain—where the road narrowed, where hedgerows opened into ambushable ditches, which fields would rustle with the whisper of hiding men when the wind changed direction. He pictured their small party: who would scout ahead, who would hold the wagon in a pinch, where they would set the fallback point if something went sideways.
Contingencies layered over one another. If a patrol asked, show the National Science permit—if they probed further, present the Royal stamp Kaizer had secured. If they smelled the drug, pull back and mark the site with three discreet chalk strokes on a stone—an agreed sign to return with backup. If anyone was caught alone, press the tracker; if the signal vanished, converge on the predetermined hill outside Rooks Run. He worked through solutions as if arranging chess pieces, each alternative folding into the next until the map seemed less like lines and more like a set of levers he could pull.
The mental rehearsal steadied him, made the knots in his stomach loosen into manageable cords. He could see where things could go wrong—and where they could be right. He had promised to bring them all back. Strategy was not sentimental. It was necessary.
A shout cut through his plan—Klyden's voice, raw and delighted: "Look! We're outside the walls of the capital!"
Heads turned. At the front of the wagon, Ashborne leaned forward on the bench and pushed his cloak back; Klyden, flushed with the thrill of the road, pointed down the ribbon of the highway. They fell quiet then, the sound of the horses the only punctuation. The land opened like a lung: broad, rolling meadows wore a quilt of greens, a smattering of wildflowers like careless coins, hedgerows slicing fields into tidy parcels. A river silvered somewhere to their left, and low hills rose in soft gradients toward the north, shifting a little darker where trees gathered like watchful crowds.
Wind came in slow breaths. It lifted Wads' hair—messy, untrained, catching at the sides of his glasses—and tugged at the collar of his cloak. It carried the smell of wet earth and new-cut hay, a smell that steadied something in him more honest than maps: the tangible world he was sworn to protect. The sight of the open country thinned the tension in his chest until his overthinking softened into quiet observation. The edges of the mission felt further away now. The road was simply a road; the plan, for a time, a safe thing in his bag.
Liora's voice threaded through the lull, bright and casual. "Did you hear about the butcher's boy in Rooks Run?" she asked, settling back on the bundle beside her. "Apparently he can throw a stone into a pail two towns over and never miss."
Klyden made a face and scoffed, but laughter loosened the wagon's mood. Liora's gossip drifted—local dramas, who had married whom, a disagreement over a widow's garden—and conversation slipped easily from one small human thing to the next. Reiyell listened with the faintest of smiles, the way someone hears and files the world without being undone by it. Keiya said nothing, but the corner of her mouth quirked in a way that suggested amusement rather than disdain. Ashborne gave a small, almost involuntary grin when Klyden mimed the butcher's boy, which made Klyden crow and perform it again to raucous approval.
Wads let himself be held by the ordinary speech. They were students on a soil project—once the town's gates would accept their paper, that lie would sit easy and harmless. Small human things kept their edges from going sharp.
When they crested the last low rise, the stonework of Rooks Run rose to meet them: two squat towers set like rook statues flank the narrow causeway that served as the town's gate. The towers were carved in hard, dark stone and topped with notched battlements shaped—if only in a town's half-fancied telling—like a rook's feathered crown. Between them the road tunneled into cobbles and a portal hung with dried herbs; the name suited the place—Rooks Run—because the towers looked, for the casual eye, like two great chess rooks watching the road and because, by old stories, rooks nested in their crevices at dusk and called the town to its beds.
A guard in patched but respectable mail stepped forward as the wagon rolled to a halt. He smelled of smoke and horse sweat; when he inspected the wagon he took his time with a grunt that might mean curiosity or might mean boredom. Wads handed the permit without theatrics. The ink looked official, the Royal stamp impressed as chill as a coin. The guard squinted at the paper, ran his thumb along the edges, and finally tipped his chin. "Science lads, huh?" he said. "Observe the soil, eh? Be mindful of the trackers on you, those the captain's not fond of fiddling with." He lifted a palm, then waved them through with a practical nod. The gate cracked open like an old thing relieved to move.
Rooks Run unfolded with the familiar ease of a village that knew itself. Smoke rose in pale threads from bakery chimneys; a cart rumbled by with barrels of ale; children chased a pig through the square and the pig seemed to laugh. Market stalls lined the main street in an orderly bustle—linen, ironworks, baskets bright with apples. Everyone knew everyone else's business, and for the most part the business was small and kept to itself. Wads noted faces: a cobbler with the pricked thumb of long work, an old woman with hands like folded maps, a stable-boy with hay in his hair who looked younger than his chores.
They pulled up in front of Greg's Inn, a low building all dark timbers and a battered sign depicting a smiling man and a tankard. Inside, a central hearth took up half the room; benches were scarred by decades of elbows. Greg himself emerged from behind the bar—solid, round of belly and generous of moustache—with flour on his apron and keys jangling at his belt. He took them in with a look like someone cataloging newcomers and then clapped his hands in a good-natured sort of way.
"Rooms for travelers, are ye?" he asked. "Two big rooms I have. One for the lads, one for the lasses. Comfortable as we get 'round here."
Klyden claimed three packs as if they were his by right—he hefted them with dramatic grunting, a pack for him, one for Keiya, and one labelled in his grin as "special for Reiyell." Keiya rolled her eyes and took one silently; Reiyell accepted hers with a small, formal nod. Ashborne bore his own with a measured expression, more efficient than theatrical. Wads handed the money in even, precise notes; Greg counted with a warm, habitual speed and slid two large brass keys across the bar.
The rooms were up a creaking flight of stairs. The boys' room smelled faintly of leather and oil; three beds lined up, plain wool blankets folded at the edges, a basin with a pitcher and a bowl. Boots left their prints on the floorboards. The girls' room—a few doors down the passage—was neater, curtains drawn, a washstand with a small cracked mirror. Each space carried the honest scratch-marks of travelers who had slept there before and left their small signatures behind: a carved initial on a bedpost, a coin tucked under a mattress.
Before the others dispersed to claim their spaces, Wads gathered them at the threshold, the map folded back into the place he had left it.
"You can roam freely," he said, voice steady. "Gather information—ask about patrols, who comes through at night, who buys strange things. But be back before sunset. We meet here and share everything we find. If anything seems wrong, the trackers. Understood?"
A chorus of acknowledgments met him. Klyden puffed up like a rooster. "We'll be careful and nosy," he promised. Liora shot a look that meant she'd be nosy on purpose, and Keiya inclined her head in a way that meant she would be efficient about it. Reiyell did not change her expression, but the slight lift of her chin said she would follow the rule.
Wads watched their faces, committing small details to memory: the way Klyden's grin crinkled his eyes, Liora's impatient twitch when she wanted to be first, Keiya's quiet measured nod, Reiyell's experienced poise, Ashborne's silent oath. He let himself feel the weight—the leader's weight—but not as a choke. As an alignment.
When the group dispersed into pairs and solos to unspool into the town's safe anonymity, Wads remained at the inn's doorway a heartbeat longer. He closed his map again, not because there was nothing left to plan, but because plans were always best when they were also allowed to rest. The sunlight on his skin felt clean. The promise he had made—to bring them all back—sat warm and honest inside his chest. He shouldered his pack and walked into the market with the others, cataloguing, listening, ready.