He looked unharmed, staring empty-eyed at the sky above, his arms and legs spread, his fingers digging deep into the grass. Wil followed his gaze, taking in the nebula stretched across the sky. The moon centred the sky, in the second half of its month-long fullness. Only in the months where the full thing was visible was the crack noticeable. It spread across the edge like a spiderweb, showing deep crevices that looked darker and wider than Wil had seen it last. A remnant of the Gods War, each shrapnel piece floating nearby as misshapen stars a representation of the Ancient Ones. According to the testaments at least. Aric was breathing heavily.

  ‘You need a minute?’ Wil asked.

  Aric’s head turned, but he didn’t quite look at Wil, not completely. In the dark of the field, he was swallowed by shadow, only visible from the lights of the palace.

  ‘Why did you hit that man?’ Mala asked. She stepped up next to Will, then crouched in front of Aric. ‘How bad was he?’

  ‘He helped raise the servants born in the palace,’ Aric said. ‘He beat the ones that kept messing up. Astra was ten years old. She was my friend. He hit her so hard her words didn’t work anymore. She started drooling. She… she couldn’t form words…’

  He sat up, breathing heavier and louder until his whole body was heaving.

  ‘He’s not going to hurt you anymore,’ Mala said. ‘He’s gone. You’re not in the palace anymore.’

  Aric glanced around, still heaving, shaking violently. He still didn’t look directly at Wil, and not at Mala either. He took in the scene around him, staring wide at the stretch of grass around them, at the endless stretch of sky, the city in the distance, the broken chasm of the Split. His breathing grew harsher still, struggling to pull in breath. He looked younger in the low light, exposed and vulnerable. Wil supposed they all were right now.

  ‘It’s your first time out of the palace, isn’t it?’ Mala’s voice was small.

  Oh, shit. Wil hadn’t considered that. Though he wasn’t familiar with how the slaves in the palace were kept, even the general rule of it felt gross in a way that made his skin crawl. The only experience he’d had with this kind of panic was with Heddwyn, but Heddwyn could be calmed with a stern word to ground him and a drink of water.

  Still, Wil knelt down next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Aric was tense, and he flinched at the contact, but didn’t pull away.

  ‘It’s too big,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s too big, I can’t… I can’t be out here. It’s wrong, everything’s wrong.’

  Okay, small steps. Wil squeezed the kid’s shoulder, then slowly got to his feet and held out his hand. ‘Do you want to go somewhere inside? Somewhere smaller?’

  ‘We passed an inn on the way out of the city,’ Mala pointed out. ‘They might have lodging.’

  ‘The guards are coming,’ Tseren said.

  Wil turned and saw that she was right, the flecks of torch light were drifting away from the drawbridge and into the field.

  Aric reached up and took Wil’s hand. ‘What have I done?’ he whispered.

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  ‘One issue at a time,’ Wil said. ‘We’ve got to go. Now.’

  It wasn’t an inn posted on the road into the city, but given their circumstances, it was better. It was instead a small farmhouse with a lantern hooked into its side, lit up and dancing away to the sound of the summer bugs. Mala was the one to approach the little wooden hut, marching up with her head high and sending puffs of dust up from the cracked earth. As she knocked, Wil considered how strange all of them looked. He was still in his royal tunic, Tseren was dressed as a royal knight in full armour, Mala wore shawls and ribbons and robes that were clearly ceremonial, and with them, a Resei of all things…

  ‘Shit.’ The realisation hit him as at the same moment another light flared to life in the window, a candle being lit. Wil regarded the stuff on them, the nothing he had on his person – he’d dropped the shears in the channel – then shrugged off his tunic, leaving only his undershirt on. He shoved it at Aric. ‘Put this on.’

  Aric stared at him blankly.

  ‘Do it,’ Wil ordered. ‘Cover the grey.’ There had just been a full-on revolt at the palace; even if they could say Aric was theirs, it was enough to draw attention. Besides, Wil didn’t want to stoop that low. Even pretending to own this kid in the middle of his crisis made him want to hurl.

  Aric quickly shrugged the tunic on, pulling it over his chest to hide the slave uniform. Wil had an entire head of height over the kid, but it worked in his favour, the tunic dropping down to Aric’s knees and covering the ratty clothes. They would need to find proper disguises in the morning.

  ‘I’m so sorry to have bothered you,’ Mala said to the creaky, hunched old farmer. ‘We’re a bit out of the way and we saw your light. Would you mind terribly if we—’

  ‘Lodging is in the barn,’ the farmer said. ‘Don’t scare the cows. Get out at first light.’

  Without another word, he slammed the door.

  ‘They’re going to come for me, aren’t they?’ Aric mumbled. He was thumbing at the sleeves of the tunic, scratching at the stitching along the hem.

  They’re coming for all of us, Wil pinched the bridge of his nose. He tried to think of any words that could ease both Aric’s and his own anxiety, but nothing came, so he pointed to the shabby wooden building just over the rise.

  Wil couldn’t tell what the farm produced; in the long shadows it looked barren and abandoned. The barn itself had seen better days, with pure wishful thinking as the only thing holding it up. Decades of termites, bad weather and maybe even the odd fire had beaten the structure crooked. It smelled how a barn should at least, like dirty animal and piss and straw. As they let themselves in, a great bull huffed from the corner, but didn’t move. Mala clambered up a dangerously rotted ladder up to the rafters, shuffling around for a bit before the strike of flint lit a small candle. There was proper lodging here, which surprised Wil. Feathered blankets and pillows laid out along hay-beds that looked both clean and fresh. The candle sat on a little wooden table along with a bucket containing droplets of dirty water.

  ‘Not bad for such last minute, right?’ Mala gave a sheepish shrug, then dropped onto the floor next to the bed. ‘I’m sorry, I just need to think, I need to – you’re injured!’

  Wil had forgotten about Tseren’s injury, but it was bleeding again, a blackened shadow in the low light of the candle. Tseren prodded at the wound in her shoulder, then hissed in pain. Wil had forgotten about the Red Guards too, pushed it out of his memory after it happened, but now all he could see was that wound closing up, a man who was dead no longer be dead. They had attacked first. Those guards – whatever they were – would hunt them down. The Royal Commander would hunt them down.

  What could he even do?

  He needed to clear his head. He needed to get away from this.

  Mala moved to inspect the wound closer, and Wil noted the bucket as she lifted the candle up to Tseren’s shoulder. He got to his feet and snatched up the little wooden thing. ‘I’ll go and get some water.’

  Mala paled. ‘You’re going outside alone?’

  What does that even mean? ‘I’ll be… I just need a minute.’

  Tseren’s voice followed him down the ladder, but he didn’t hear what she said. In a mirror of Aric’s earlier panic, he could feel his own chest tightening, his breath escaping him. It wasn’t the same as the hollow feeling that came with the split, though that had become so constant he couldn’t even feel it anymore.