Mynza clung to the side of a stone tower like a bug to a wall. He was hundreds of feet above the dirt street below, halfway up to the bulging copper-plated dome at the very top of the tower. From here he could see the last few merchants of the day who camped out in front of the Mayor’s Mansion leaving their brightly colored stalls. The orange light of several torches flared to life, but it was not enough, he knew, to reveal him.

He reeked of magic.

The smell of mint, neem, clover, and other spices dripped from the carefully hand-shaped vellum gloves on his hands that were also wrapped with twine to help bind them to his wrists. The faint smell of sulfur wafted away from the stone every time the spelled gloves gripped the wall like lizard’s feet.

The climb so far had exhausted him. Sweat soaked his tunic, his leggings were scratched and torn from sharp pieces of rock cemented into the great walls, but it would be worth the climb.

Diamonds. Gold. Coins. Who knew what might be in one of the lower Majister’s chambers? They didn’t just cast spells to support the great Mayor of Alacan, they were involved in every piece of business all throughout Alacan. A spell to make sure the herds near the outer walls didn’t get hoof-rot? Get the Majisters. Protect the harvested grain and keep it fresh in the store rooms? Get the Majisters.

Each spell cost you, making the Majisters the truly great merchants of the city, for magic was used everywhere and every day. Even a small, hard-to-notice-if-you-lost-it piece of that great loot would make Mynza far richer than he currently was. It would be an end to rags and spoiled foods and hungry days, and doing things like climbing the sides of towers.

Even better would be if he were to find a spellbook, because the Majisters held the good spells tight. To prevent others from learning them, they would obscure their spellwork with unnecessary flourishes and drawings to confuse anyone trying to decipher them. This made sure the Majisters held their positions.

Yes. A good spell that he could hustle on the street, that would be something worth risking his life for, Mynza thought, glancing down at the street far below.

His arms burned as he continued up. Even with the help of the spells he wore on his hands climbing to the very top of the Mayor’s Mansion, the greatest building in all Alacan, demanded his full strength.

Not that Mynza didn’t have that. He had been climbing gutters, leaping across the space between roofs and shimmying down in through upper windows since he was able to walk.

It was hard work, but not as hard as work on a fire crew, or as a mason, or a tanner, or a butcher.

One night’s careful work, and Mynza could relax for a week.

One night’s strenuous work like this, he might be able to relax for a lifetime.

He smiled, reached higher, and then froze as he felt his hand brush something. What was that?

It was a faint tickle. A jab against his thumb.

Mynza yanked his hand free and stared at it in horror. Then he pulled himself up quickly to peer into a small crevice in what he had thought was a smooth wall.

“Oh gods.”

There it was: bramble. Just a tiny patch of it, nestled into the shadows of the crevice where it had taken root. Normally smooth, polished rock walls like this prevented it from flowering, but here was a crack, and there was the bramble.

Mynza squinted at the thready bristles, and then back at his thumb.

He had brushed against it a fairly large patch of it. He had barely felt it, but he knew he’d done it. Was that a wave of dizziness he felt? Was it a precursor to the darkness that would strike any second now? Was he thinking too much already and about to slip off into a daydream, to fall to his death?

Mynza panicked. Where was the nearest window? Or parapet? Maybe if he could find a niche, or a ledge somewhere within the next minute. He could pass out there.

He panted and all but slipped down the wall in his haste.

There! A balcony!

Mynza leapt out into the air and smacked into stone. He rolled and looked around. There was an alcove for a statue left empty and open.

He moved to crawl toward it and hide, but couldn’t find the energy.

There was…

He looked down at his thumb.

There was a single gray tendril on his thumb. It had punctured the vellum gloves. The bramble’s poison was trickling through him.

Mynza moved to brush it off, but couldn’t raise his hand. He lay on the balcony staring at his thumb in horror as the darkness descended.

Bramble. All over the city it was fought by fire crews where ever it appeared, scraped at by families keeping their house clean and safe, creeping across all the great lands. It had finally gotten to him.

A startling last thought occurred, the kind which should have gotten him to bolt upright: if anyone found him here, he’d be just as dead as if he’d just let himself slip and fall.

#

There was a faint new sensation. A pressure on his lips.

Mynza recognized it.

He was being kissed.

Well, if this was one of the infinite halls of the gods, he had been granted a good one by Borzai, the choosing god. Death, it seemed, was not so bad.

The kiss continued. Mynza smiled and opened his eyes. Let a most wonderful afterlife begin, he thought, and stirred.

Large brown eyes in front of his widened, and the round face they belonged to pulled back and screamed.

Mynza sat up.

He recognized this place.

Turning around, he saw he was still sitting on the balcony, and he blinked. He wasn’t dead.

“What is happening to me?” he mumbled. He was still fighting the effects of the bramble.

“I just wanted to see what it was like,” the girl with the round face and brown eyes said. She was dressed in loose silks, and Mynza’s well-trained eyes spotted the glimmer of a jeweled ring.

Then his thoughts returned to what had led him here, to this exact spot. He was lucky he hadn’t brushed a larger clump. That would have left him in an eternal sleep. He looked at her. “You saved my life,” he said. “You saved my life.”

“It was just a small tendril,” she said. “In your thumb. I used a pair of tweezers, but you didn’t wake. I thought…”

She took a deep breath, and Mynza realized she was not dressed for walking about on the streets. He could see her ribs expand underneath the sheer of different colored silks.

She sounded apologetic. “I didn’t think you would wake up. So before I called anyone in here, I wanted to try.”

Mynza realized what she was talking about and put his fingers to his lips. “You kissed me!”

“I wanted to know what it was like,” she confessed.

Mynza smiled at her. “You saved my life,” he repeated. “You can kiss me as much as you would like.”

She no longer looked apologetic, but straightened and glared at him. She held up the vellum gloves that had been tied to his hands. “You came to rob me, didn’t you?”

“At first. Now all I want to do is live,” Mynza said, with total, earnest, honesty.

The woman turned and walked back through the soft curtains that separated the balcony from her room, becoming a moving shadow on the other side of them. “Then come,” she said.

Mynza nervously passed through, the curtains kissing his face and shoulders.

Inside, by the light of the flickering candle, she beckoned him on. “I am not allowed out much, almost never without guards. My father chose this room, so high up, because he said unless someone had a flying carpet rescued from the ruins of Jhandpara itself, I would be safe. I would be married by now, but it is so hard to get to the city that no suitors will brave the trip. They prefer to stay away from the bramble that chokes the city’s edges.”

“Who is your father?” Mynza asked.

She looked back at him, startled at his ignorance. “My father is the Mayor. I am Nira.”

Oh.

That was the sort of realization that could give a man trouble doing what he thought it was she was going to ask him to do.

But then, Mynza thought, he was still alive. Death had come for him, and then fled with the winds. Banished by her kiss.

Every minute from now on was a beautiful, joyous minute.

That thought buoyed his mind as she whispered, “You must be absolutely quiet,” and took his hand in hers. “There are guards by the door.”

#

Radyk shook his head and slammed a table. “No, no,” he declared. “I refuse to believe it.”

Mynza turned. “You saw me climb the tower walls.”

“You went around the building, maybe you got back to the street and found some good wine. I can not believe that you lay with the Mayor’s Daughter,” Radyk shouted. “You always tell the wildest tales.”

“This one is true.”

They stared at each other. Around them, in the dim light of the bar where they usually gathered to divide stolen items and drink in either celebration or defeat, the rest of the Mynza’s fellow thieves watched the two argue.

Mynza reached into the purse tied to his belt, and pulled out a ring. He held it up like the trophy it was.

Gela snatched it from him and held it to the light of a lantern. “It has the Mayoral signet stamped into it,” she said.

The bar erupted. People jostled him, and he grinned at Radyk.

“She’s all alone in that tower or always surrounded by guards, for how many years? Maybe the guards were too petrified to do what she wanted, but I wasn’t! When she fell asleep I stole the spelled gloves back, and whatever else I could.”

Which to be honest, hadn’t been much. Someone like her had no need for coins in her room. There’d been the rings on her fingers, and a little bit of jewelry. Particularly a fetching silver necklace.

He’d melt it all down and sell it as soon as he could, and give his portion over to this family of thieves that had raised and supported him since he was a half-naked orphan stealing fruit from the market stalls.

“Why’d you do it?” Radyk asked.

“Because I could. Because I was alive!” Mynza shouted at him, laughing. “Radyk, we used to celebrate for days after a big score. You know the feeling! You should stop stealing small things and come with me some time.”

“Father?” a young voice piped up from the door. A dirty-haired young boy of six stood at the door jamb, looking inside.

“Oh come, Radyk,” Mynza shouted. “What is your brat doing here? Send him home.”

“His mother is sick.” Radyk folded his arms over his chest.

“Then go find a healer with some good spells,” Mynza said.

Radyk spat at him, and Mynza ran to throw a punch.

“She is more than just ill,” one of the other thieves said, stepping in front of him. “You know sickness is spreading throughout Alacan. The healers charge more and more, the water from our wells has turned fetid, and the air is heavy. Leave him be.”

Mynza wiped at his chest, then shook his head. “No man spits on me. We were friends once, but this I won’t let go.”

He shoved people out of the way to follow Radyk through the door, but a wiry hand grabbed the meat of his shoulder and dug sharp fingers in below his collarbone. “Hey!” Mynza spun around and shoved his assailant back, his anger flaring.

The chaos and celebratory shouting faded away in shock.

Dejan, looking older each passing week with his now parched face and black eyes, snatched the spelled gloves out of Mynza’s belt. “You were warned not to use these.”

Mynza swallowed and gave the appearance of humility. “I will pay more than my share of the take…”

“You never pay heed to my cautions,” the old thief hissed, poking Mynza in the forehead with a bony finger. “These spells, shared between us, have allowed us to eat at a time others are going hungry. But your selfishness puts us all at risk. Irritating the Majisters, the Mayor? Are you insane? We are just dogs to them. They will put us down and lose no sleep over it.”

“You are just scared,” Mynza said, stepping forward. He would never have done this in the past. But he was feeling bold and full of fire. “Are you afraid to plan, or dream, or…”

Dejan shook his head, looking more sad than angry. “I can not have you here anymore, Mynza. I don’t mind if you risk your life, but you can not be allowed to risk ours as well. You have lost your mind. It is time for you to leave us and make your own way.”

“I’m the best,” Mynza shouted at him. “You have always made good commissions off the things I bring back. Are you going to turn your back on that?”

“All the wealth of the city is no use if it brings down the Mayor’s Guard to slit our throats. Get out!”

Three men surrounded Mynza. He was too stunned to struggle as they grabbed his arms. “I can still climb better than any of you,” he spat. “Spells or not. I will keep all that I find, and you will feel the loss. I promise you that. You have lost your mind old man.”

Dejan blinked. “And how will you sell your gains,” he asked, “when the marketplaces find out we have banished you, and that doing business with you will mean not doing business with us?”

“You dried up old relic. All you have are a few useful spells that you hold over us. You lost any talent you had half a lifetime ago. Now let me go, I will walk out on my own.”

“Keep what you took,” Dejan said as Mynza adjusted his roughed up tunic, and walked for the door. “We would rather the Mayor’s Guards didn’t find his daughter’s own signet ring here when they arrive.”

“Mynza!” Radyk followed him out onto the cobblestones of the street. “What are you doing? Dejan was a father to us both. You can’t do this!”

“Don’t feel pity for me, Radyk. Tonight I will eat like a Majister, banishment from Dejan’s house or not. There are other thieves in Alacan.”

“None as good to us as Dejan,” Radyk said.

Mynza waved that away wearily. “It has long since past time for me to go alone,” he said. “And we are well past apologies now, aren’t we?”

Radyk nodded. “Maybe.”

“Maybe I’ll leave Alacan,” Mynza shouted over his shoulder.

“You don’t have enough to leave,” Radyk said. “Even after stealing from the Mayor’s daughter. You’re good at the taking, but you’ve never been good at the planning, Mynza.”

Mynza turned back, furious. “What do you know about me anymore, Radyk? You are no longer a part of my life either.”

And that was how they left it, Radyk standing by the door, saying nothing more, and Mynza walking angrily away.

#

Radyk was right, though, Mynza thought to himself hours later. He wandered through Alacan: up the slopes of Butcher’s Quarters while breathing through his mouth to avoid the stench of tightly penned animals about to be slaughtered. In the tight and winding streets of the Rainbow Roads he walked under ropes stretched across the roofs holding drying fabrics, dripping their deep red and purple dyes onto the road. And finally he walked out onto the dirt roads leading to the cramped farms out past the crumbling old city walls.

He climbed up the cemented bricks of sturdy old road marker and looked out over the dilapidated farms and out beyond the patchwork fields.

There was a dark line out there. A boundary. It was a wall of bramble, thick and twisted as high as the old city walls stood where they weren’t crumbled away, made of the same tiny tendrils that had almost killed Mynza. Impenetrable. Ever encroaching.

The wall of bramble was black from repeated burnings. Men were paid to go out there to burn it when they weren’t fighting the scourge inside the city. But fire had just turned the bramble into a thick wall instead of destroying it. The bramble had solidified into a wall around Alacan.

Some roads remained open. The same fire crews that fought the bramble in the city also kept these openings cleared. That was how expensive wines and fine food still trickled into the city. But it was dangerous to travel the roads if you weren’t part of a fire crew.

The merchants who traveled those roads used boxy wooden wagons to protect them from the sleeping death of the bramble. The wagons were pulled by armored oxen, or pushed by Majisters who charged dearly for their magic.

And it was that very same magic that caused the bramble, the Majisters said. The stench of every spell, every piece of magic, invited bramble and spread its seeds.

So the more they used magic to push through the bramble wall, the more bramble appeared.

Of course, you’d scrape bramble from your windowsill and keep it clean. But the fallow edges of land far off around the city? They had been ignored long enough that the wall had continued to thicken and grow… and creep.

The Majisters didn’t use extravagant spells. There were no flying carpets or floating buildings here in Alacan. But nonetheless, the bramble grew. It was a vice that held the city in its jaws.

Soon, maybe in weeks, maybe months, the city would become cut off from the outside world. Or maybe it would just continue to limp on, trade but a trickle, like it had the last half of Mynza’s lifetime.

It was smart to leave.

Mynza jostled the coins in his hand that he’d gotten for the stolen jewelry and turned his back to the farms.

He couldn’t leave. But there was still food and drink to be found in Alacan. He was alive, he reminded himself. He had brushed bramble and lived.

If he couldn’t leave, it was time to live it up in Alacan, Mynza decided.

#

The coins lasted him three solid days of drinking, celebrating, and eating the best foods laced with the most expensive spices. He resisted melting down the signet ring, though. That was a prize. He kept that wrapped in cloth around his heel, hidden by his boots.

He would only melt it down when things got desperate, he thought.

There were crowds in the street at nights with him, which he noticed only fuzzily through a drunken filter as he shoved through them. There was a lot of shouting and anger, and some brutal fights that broke out on street corners, which Mynza avoided because they usually brought out the City Guards.

Even though he felt a bit fuzzy from drink, he still managed to cut free some purses from the belts of the loudest shouters in the streets as he passed through the crowds.

On the fourth day, while eating an early meal of curry paste and flat bread, doing his best to nurse a throbbing headache as the market swirled about him, a familiar bony hand grabbed Mynza.

Mynza turned, wincing as the early sun hit his eyes. Dejan’s ruined face looked back at him.

“What happened to you?” Mynza asked.

“Are you paying no attention to what is happening in the streets?”

“What?” Mynza looked around at the half empty market. People moved about in bursts of energy, like nervous insects, then slowed down and fell quiet. This was strange, he realized, because usually that market was a hive of nonstop energy. And it was always packed full. Never half empty.

“The wells have run dry.”

Mynza waved the old thief away. “The Majisters will find new water. They’ll drill the wells deeper. Once they wring enough money out of us.”

“The Majisters are leaving,” Dejan cuffed the side of Mynza’s head, dizzying him. “You would have noticed the panic as everyone heard the news if you weren’t drinking your way into the ground, Mynza. Everyone who can afford it is trying to leave. People are desperate.”

Mynza looked around at the empty tables, missing tents, and empty buildings.

He laughed. “Alacan is falling. Like old Jhandpara? People will tell tales about us, trapped behind the bramble, making ghost noises to frighten the little children. Is that all you came to do? Warn me to leave? I already counted my coins, I’m trapped.”

Dejan shook his head and crooked a finger to someone standing in the distance. “No. I am making good on a promise to a dying man before I leave.”

A small child stepped forward from around a corner. Mynza saw that he’d been crying. He rubbed the corners of his eyes with the sleeve of his dirty brown tunic and looked up at the two men.

“Dejan, what is this?”

“Radyk used his last breath when he asked me to deliver the boy to you,” Dejan said.

Mynza closed his eyes in pain. That was the dying man’s last wish Dejan had spoken of. And although Mynza and Radyk had fallen away from friendship, hearing about his death felt like a thrust from a spear.

“What happened?” Mynza asked after a long silence.

“He was knifed to death outside a Majister’s office,” Dejan said. “He was trying to buy stronger spells for his wife. He fought someone over their place in the line.”

“And she is…” Mynza started.

“Borzai will be choosing a hall for her eternity now as well. The boy is all that is left to this world.”

“Radyk must have been addled to ask for me. What do I know about taking care of little boys?”

Dejan shrugged and turned to go.

“Dejan!” Mynza shouted. “I’m not someone who takes care of little creatures. What good is this?”

“Radyk knew the others were leaving, or too dangerous to leave his son to. And I’m far too old. Goodbye, Mynza. My obligation here is over. There is a wagon I need to board to get through the Myr Gate Road.”

Before Mynza could think of another thing to ask, Dejan had hurried away.

The boy looked at the bowl on the table.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“I have no more coin,” Mynza told him. He’d lost his appetite anyway, though, and shoved his meal over. “Eat what’s left in this bowl.”

#

He led the boy up and down the gentle hill between the market and the outer farmlands. With the advantage of the height, they could see the entire exodus.

Hundreds of hastily built wagons cluttered the side of the Myr Gate road. Men in armor designed to protect them from the bramble clanked around and directed teams of oxen.

The wagons groaned with chests and carpets and chairs lashed to their tops as well as anything else that people could figure out how to save from their households.

Fire crews up ahead, also wearing thickened leather armor, walked the lengths of the Myr Gate, torching bramble to keep it back from the way out of the city. From here, the gate looked the beginning of a tunnel through the blackened mass of the bramble.

Which, Mynza supposed it was.

The Myr Gate was the best maintained one. The merchants had worked hard to keep it free and open. It was the city’s main link to the outside world.

Those same merchants now stood at the gate with the City Guard, taking tolls from everyone who passed.

This was what people fleeing a war would look like, Mynza imagined. Only there were no foreign armies coming from the other side of the city.

Just bramble surrounding it.

“Three days ago everything was as it always had been,” Mynza said, half in wonder, half in fear. “There was bramble appearing in cracks and corners. But you could scrape it carefully off, trust the fire teams to burn it away in the streets, and go on about your life. Now…” he trailed off.

This was chaos.

And what happened to those left behind?

#

The boy followed him back into the depths of the East Quarter, like a sad dog slinking along after its master for the long walk. The sun was at the midday mark now, blazing down on them, making them sweat.

At Vredik Inn, where he’d been ensconced for over a year now, he found the doors boarded up and had to break them down to get them in. His small room on the upper floor had been broken into. His roped bed had been tossed to the side, the bedding cut and slashed. A chair broken apart. Floorboards around the room had been randomly pried up.

“What happened?” the boy asked in a whisper.

“The owners knew I was a thief,” Mynza said. “They were looking for whatever they could find before they left for the Myr Gate.”

He righted the bed and stuffed hay back into the lumpy sack of his bed, then sat on it.

The window was boarded. He stood up, walked over, and hit it until it broke open. Pieces of wood fell to the street below.

“Won’t you get in trouble?” the boy asked, staring at him.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Mynza said. “None of it does.”

The boy seemed to agree. He stood by the door, looking past Mynza, waiting for something that would never come back.

Mynza sighed. “Take the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“It’s daytime.” The boy’s expression didn’t change. It was less a protest than just a mechanical statement of the facts as he saw them.

“That’s when I prefer to sleep. I get more done in the late hours.”

The boy thought about that, then moved over to the bed and lay down.

As Mynza lay down on the floor near the window, he looked over. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Radyk,” he said in a very small voice.

“Like your father?”

Radyk didn’t answer. He rolled over to his side facing away from Mynza and began to silently cry.

Eventually he fell to sleep, softly snoring. Through the window Mynza listened to the distant sound of wagons creaking along streets and the blat of oxen complaining about heavy loads.

The occasional burp of fire from the brass and leather fire throwers of a fire crew punctuated the gentle muted crowd sounds of the exodus.

#

He woke before Radyk, who remained deep in sleep. The boy twitched and mewled, probably reliving the misery of his last few days.

Moonlight filled the room, which was one of the reasons Mynza liked it so well. That and the window that led out onto the secondary roof.

It would be easy enough to slip through that window, out onto the roof. He could walk along the tiles easily by the moon.

And do what, then?

What responsibility would he escape? The city would be still hemmed in by bramble and he was trapped inside.

The boy’s fate and his were intertwined then, he decided. He might not like it, but there it was.

It seemed that Radyk had still known Mynza’s character well enough after all these years. Mynza would not abandon the man’s son.

He woke little Radyk when he used his hammer to crack the stone behind which he’d cemented in his savings. A handful of copper coins.

“Come on,” Mynza said. “We need to go look for some water and food.”

“It’s night time,” the boy said, rubbing his eyes as he sat up. “The market is closed.”

“We’re not going to the market,” Mynza said.

#

“No water,” Zakim said, looking at the coins Mynza held out. The flickering lanterns of the makeshift tavern made his eyes dance. “But I can sell you a barrel of wine.”

Mynza grinned. “Wine?”

“Cheap watered down wine, but wine nonetheless.”

“I’ll buy it, but I only want a few cups of it right now. I’ll come back for the whole barrel later tonight.”

They shook on it. “A smart decision,” Zakim said. “Who knows how many barrels will sell by the time you return?”

He poured two tall cups. Mynza handed one to Radyk. “Drink it slowly,” he said.

“It’s not water,” Radyk said in a small voice. He looked around at the other men whispering at each other, resting on crude benches and throwing dice at the floor. “It smells sharp.”

“It’s something to drink,” Mynza said, and raised his cup to drain it. “It’s all we have.”

Zakim refilled it.

The boy began to drink, at first hesitantly, and then faster. All the walking had apparently given him as much thirst as Mynza had.

When Radyk finished his cup he blinked, and then vomited all over Mynza’s boots and the floor.

Men clapped and hooted and stomped their feet. “That’s what happens when you bring a boy in here!”

Mynza took his half full cup and the boy out to the street. “Rinse your mouth out,” he ordered. “Then take three sips, no more.”

As Radyk did so, Mynza kept thinking, how long could something like this go on? What was a kid going to do trapped in the city with him, other than slowly die along with him?

Because, although Mynza hadn’t really ever thought about it too much, he guessed Alacan had always been about to fall. It was just a matter of time.

Everyone had known that one day the bramble would be too much. Everyone had heard how Jhandpara had fallen. And the other cities.

But you just didn’t think it would be this week.

#

One single barrel of wine wouldn’t let the two of them live more than a couple weeks, Mynza guessed. And that had eaten up most of his savings.

So now came the second part of his plan.

“You should stay outside, Radyk,” he said. “I need to go inside and look for anything that can help us. Do you understand?”

Radyk nodded, but said nothing.

Mynza clapped his shoulder, and then walked inside the tiny hut that the older Radyk had once proudly called home.

There was a carefully wrapped female body lying on a crude table, abandoned because nobody was left to care for it. Or to even realize that it needed burned. Mynza stood for a long moment before it, rubbed the corner of an eye, then reached out touched the slender foot hanging over the edge of the table.

He grunted, like he’d been kicked in the gut. After that, he cleared his throat and got to business.

It took him a mere few minutes to find Radyk’s hiding place. Always the corner joist. Predictable even in death.

Mynza untied the small wooden box from its hiding place and sat down on the dirt floor with it. He cracked it open and looked at the five copper coins inside.

“He used it all for my mother,” Radyk said, startling Mynza. He’d walked quietly inside. “He paid for all the best healing spells. It used to be full of coins.”

Mynza sighed. “I’d hoped there’d be more.” Maybe enough to get Radyk out of the city. Safe… and no longer on his conscience.

He scooped the five coins into his purse, retied it, and stood up.

“We should leave,” he said.

“Where are we going now?” Radyk asked.

“Haven’t you always wanted to see the inside of the Mayor’s buildings?”

Radyk’s eyes widened under the scraggly hair. “We’re going to the center of the city?”

“They fled. Maybe there will be water stored there.” Mynza smiled down at him.

#

They were not the only ones with that thought. The Mayor’s Mansion had already been broken into. The great doors hung ajar, smashed open by what looked like explosives.

People quietly moved about the insides of the great halls, ripping sconces from the walls or taking furniture out on their backs.

Mynza led them to the basements and kitchens under the halls, but most of the good foods had already been looted. And there were no barrels of water or cisterns.

“They took most of the good stuff for their journey,” a large man eating figs in the corner of one storage room told them. “Nothing to drink down here.”

As they left, Mynza stopped at a small office at the head of the storage rooms.

Inside, tossed to a side near a guttering torch, was a sheaf of fresh, official, vellum.

Mynza carefully rolled it up and slid it under his tunic, and then continued their wandering.

Up the large spiral stairs of the interior they walked past more looters, everyone oddly polite, bowing little hellos as they passed each other.

With each step, a small smile grew on Mynza’s lips. He practically floated down the corridor, peeking in at different rooms.

He was looking for something in particular. He wasn’t interested in the amazing kestrel wood furniture that would probably soon be kindling, or the men on a ladder pulling down a glittering chandelier from a roof.

But a room full of tough looking men standing on a pile of clothing got his attention. He stopped outside the room looking in.

“Ours,” grunted a thick-face man who slid in front of them at the entrance.

Mynza flicked his purse free and threw it into the middle of the room. “I want the clothes on the floor,” he announced.

The men looked down at the soft, silken tunics and robes they’d pulled out of the solid drawers and thrown aside.

They started laughing and threw clothes at Mynza until he got what he wanted. He walked away down the hall with an armful of them.

“We would have left them for you anyway,” they yelled out after him.

As they joined the line of people snaking back down the stairs with their treasures, Radyk said, “That was the last of our coin.”

“I know,” Mynza said. “Trust me, I know.”

#

They walked across the dried up Fountain Circle, where water usually bubbled up from between the rocks and was flung into the air in random geysers that the kids ran and screamed through.

Now the spells buried into the rocks couldn’t work, as there was no water. Occasionally a gust of dirt would surprise them, spitting emptiness into the air with a sigh.

“Your father and I used to run through the fountains almost every day when we were your size,” Mynza said.

“He said you hated each other, though,” Radyk said.

“Not then. We were the closest of friends then.”

“So what happened?”

“It sounds silly to think about these things now. But someone we both loved came between us,” Mynza said. “And she left me for your father. And then, sometimes, your feelings for someone are so strong that you end up hating them in the same way you loved them.”

#

The building he was looking for was well locked up. But Radyk was small enough that Mynza boosted him up into a tiny porthole and Radyk wormed through and dropped inside.

A moment later the iron locks clanked, and the door opened.

“Why are we here?” Radyk asked.

“For these,” Mynza said, and took the boy over to the walls full of quills and inks, seals, and even stamps. “The man who used to live here was an excellent forger, and he has the inks we need in order to fake an order from the Mayor.”

He spread the vellum he’d stolen out on a table, and then reached to his heel and unwound the piece of cloth that bound the ring to it. “Go, find me wax, or a candle,” he ordered.

#

The camps full of people waiting their chance to pay to flee through the gate had dwindled by early in the morning, but the Mayor still had City Guards protecting the last way out of the city.

Mynza had bathed them both using the cask of wine, and then combed and carefully cut their hair. Now they wore the light, airy tunics and over-robes of the city rich. “Walk as if you own everything you see,” Mynza told Radyk. “And trust me.”

“Hold!” Three men with spears stepped forward, challenging Mynza, while a smirking Kapatya merchantman stood behind them.

“What coin are you offering for your passage?”

“No coin.” Mynza pointed at Radyk. “This little brat ran away, and I was sent back into the city to find him. His father is an important Majister who works for the Mayor. He waits for us on the other side.”

Mynza handed over the rolled up forgery. It was sealed with the Mayor’s seal, the wax dripped over the edges.

After consultation the guards passed the official-looking note onto one of their officers, who cracked the seal and read it.

Mynza held his breath as the man imperiously scanned the contents, then pointed at a line nearby. “Over there. You are lucky. This is one of the last wagons before we cross over.”

There were still crowds of people standing in a semi-circle around the way out. Occasionally they tried to all rush forward, and the guards would poke someone with a spear, and the crowd would retreat.

Mynza and Radyk were shoved tightly inside a wooden wagon. There were no windows, and the air was stale and heavy.

More and more people climbed in and shoved their way against them. Crammed together, elbows digging ribs and people cursing, the door was shut and fastened.

“I’m scared,” Radyk said.

“We’ll be fine,” Mynza whispered.

The last man inside reeked of old papers and spells. He was a Majister, and powerful enough he didn’t need to write down his magic. He held his hands up in the air and grunted, and the smell of fresh flowers and the familiar scent of sulfur filled the inside of the wagon.

The vehicle lurched forward, in time to the breathing and pushing of the old Majister.

Halfway through, though, they began to slow.

People whimpered.

Something smacked the side of the wagon and slowly dragged down the side. Branches of bramble, stiff and strong.

The Majister grunted and waved his hands, his arms trembling from some sort of inner effort, and the wagon slowly struggled its way through the tight embrace of bramble.

Mynza squeezed Radyk tight to him, and several people began praying to gods of their choices.

Then the wagon broke free. For the next ten minutes they rolled steadily on, until again they coasted to a stop.

“What’s wrong?” Mynza asked.

“Nothing,” the Majister replied. “We are through the bramble.”

The rear door dropped open and sunlight streamed in.

“Be careful getting out,” a City Guard said, looking in at them. “There’s some bramble stuck to the outside of the wagon.”

Mynza held Radyk’s hand as they stepped down into open air and looked around.

The other side of the great bramble wall loomed over them, shading the wagon. The forest here was thick with bramble, sure, but a long road lead out of the forest. Turning his back to the bramble wall, Mynza could see clearings full of temporary tents, smoke from campfires, and a crush of people.

A line of people along the road stretched for as far as he could see.

They’d made it out of the city. They’d really done it.

“Hey, thief!” shouted a familiar, and very angry, voice.

Mynza turned and found himself staring at the face that had hovered over his when he’d woken up from the bramble sleep’s depths.

“Nira?” he said, shivering.

She stood near a pavilion, covered with a gauzy cloth. Servants and City Guards surrounded her. There were purple-dyed tents clustered around the pavilion. The Mayor must have camped here in order to be in a position of importance as he directed the exodus in the manner he saw fit. A ruler even in the city’s defeat.

“I recognize you,” Nira said, putting down a pitcher of wine. She waved at the guards and pointed at Mynza. “Grab him.”

Mynza glanced around, looking to run, but there was nowhere to go. He edged away from Radyk. “Go from here,” he muttered so that only Radyk could hear him. “You are free. Get away from me before they capture you as well. Flee and live your life.”

He’d done at least this, Mynza told himself: saved an old friend’s child. He would have died in the city eventually anyway. At least this way… at least this way someone would remember him well.

Borzai would take this into account. He would die not just a thief.

Radyk bit his lip, his large eyes full of pain at losing yet another guardian and looking no doubt terrified at the thought of being on his own, but he was smart enough to do as he was told. He melted back into the crowd around him.

Mynza had been the same age when his parents had died and left him to a life on the street.

The boy could still survive, Mynza thought, watching the recently combed hair slip further and further away.

#

The guards beat him with clubs until he passed out. Then they held peppermint oil under his nose to jerk him back awake so they could beat him some more.

Eventually Mynza could bear the pain no more, and he told them to unwrap his feet, slide the soles of his sandals apart, and they would find the signet ring.

Nira slid it onto her finger, and then turned to the guards. “Make an example of him,” she told them. “Death by bramble alongside the road. Let the others see that the Mayor still rules the people of Alacan, even if we are retreating for Khaim and a new life.”

They stripped Mynza down to nothing but his breeches and tied him to a pole. They dug a hole for it alongside the road. Then they raised him, upright, on it.

Then, at Nira’s orders, they hammered a piece of wood between his legs and placed a sprig of bramble on it.

When they cut the rope holding his waist to the pole at his back, Mynza sagged forward. He tensed his legs and arms and stopped his crotch from hitting the bramble.

For now, he could hold this position and not sag forward into the bramble.

But eventually the burning in his muscles would begin to overcome him. Eventually, it would be a relief to sag and let the bramble hit him in the most delicate area. And within minutes, he would be in that permanent sleep, and then soon after, death.

But not first without the pain of trying to live for as many more minutes as he could before giving up to the bramble.

People who passed by looked up at him nervously, then scurried past.

#

Mynza’s muscles cramped in places he didn’t realize he could cramp. The pain seared through his limbs, back, torso, and chest.

He focused on counting every single person who walked past him, until no one remained on the road anymore. Only the dust remained, hanging in the air.

Night fell.

It was getting harder and harder to fight to stand away from the bramble. It would not hurt, Mynza knew, to relax and let the feathery tendrils of bramble sink into him.

He would then finally be able to rest.

Tiny fingers grabbed his hand. “Don’t move,” Radyk said. He started sawing at the tight knots.

“You should leave,” Mynza hissed. They were alone, but suppose the City Guards came back? Or another wagon came through the gate?

“You don’t understand. I have to save you,” Radyk said softly, still sawing away.

“Why?”

Radyk kept sawing for a miniature eternity. Then he cleared his throat. “My father came into my room one night. He had been crying. He was drunk and hardly able to walk. He woke me up when he sat next to me. He scared me. But he didn’t seem to notice. He said that I would be a man someday, and so I should know something.”

Mynza twisted slightly and looked over his shoulder. He could only see that the neatly combed hard had become tousled once more.

“He said he would always be my real father, but that I also had another. The man who truly fathered me. And that I should know his name, even if he was my father’s greatest enemy,” Radyk said, and the ropes parted that held Mynza’s hands.

He grabbed the piece of wood in front of him and pushed it until it cracked, then threw it away into the woods, bramble and all. He could have cried when the ropes around his feet burst apart and he stumbled onto the ground and collapsed.

“Radyk?” Mynza finally asked when he was able to breathe without coughing or crying from the pain still etched into his limbs. “He really told you this?”

“He believed it,” Radyk said. “I was prepared to hate you, when I was taken to you. You might have fathered me, but you never so much as looked at me or spoke to me before. But where else could I go, when my whole family was dead? And now, I know you are not an evil man. You saved me from the city. I couldn’t just leave you.”

Mynza buried his face in his hands. Grateful to be alive. And not sure how he could look at this boy that he’d considered a burden.

He had a son.

“It’s true. I loved your mother. We were very close, back then. When Alacan was beautiful and our worlds were full of promise.” He laughed. “But then, so was your father. I never thought you were mine, I’m sorry. I never would have dared thought. I only hated them both so much, because they had what I would never have. It ate at me.”

Radyk sat and watched Mynza as he rubbed his muscles.

“I tried to do what you told me, but I couldn’t just leave you,” he said. “You’re all I have.”

#

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Mynza woke not with the moon, but with morning sun. The better to navigate a road near forest and bramble by.

Thirsty, sore, tired, they began to walk the road together.

“I’m hungry,” Radyk told him.

“So am I.”

“Where are we going?”

“Not Khaim,” Mynza said. “That’s where all the Alacan refugees are going.”

“And that’s bad?”

“It’ll be another city, like Alacan,” Mynza said. “And they’ll use magic. All those Majisters with the Mayor? How can they not? And all that magic will add up, and bramble will grow even faster in their new city. It’ll turn into Alacan, you’ll see.”

“So we’re going somewhere else.”

“Anywhere else,” Mynza confirmed.

“Can I live with you, when we get there?” Radyk asked, quite serious.

“I was counting on it,” Mynza said. And then he frowned. “I don’t remember giving you a knife, or seeing one on you when we left Alacan. How did you get one to cut me free?”

“Oh, that was easy,” Radyk said. “My father taught me that. I picked it up when everyone was looking at something else and slid it into my sleeve.”

Mynza snorted. “Your father taught you that, did he?”

“Yes.” And then Radyk held up a small purse. The cord which the owner had used to tie it to his belt had been cut. “I also stole some coins. In case we needed to get something to eat on our way to somewhere else.”

Mynza took the purse and thoughtfully passed it from hand to hand.

“Maybe Radyk taught you a little too well,” he finally said. “I think, wherever we end up this time, we might be better off to learn a new trade.”

Radyk thought about it. “I can do that.”

“But in the meantime, at least we won’t starve while getting there,” Mynza said.

Somewhere later that morning they broke out of the forest, crested a hill, and turned left at a fork, heading away from Alacan and Khaim in a whole new direction.