Adventure of Myk

Before the collapsed storehouse exit, Letha plants herself in the passage. She draws a small strip of marked hide from her cloak, its stitches dark with old handling.

Elyra stops beside Myk, one hand near her bow. Eli and the slave princess remain behind them in the storehouse gloom, watching the hidden exit and the hide strip.

Letha folds the marked hide across her palm and blocks the last strip of gray daylight. Beyond her, the eastern approach waits, while the weighhouse remains close enough to hear if anyone raises an alarm.

Myk’s inability to lie strips the question of courtesy, leaving its danger exposed. Reads Pursuers follows Letha’s guarded answer through the likely consequences and finds the wording she has avoided.

Letha unfolds the hide, revealing a narrow pledge stitched in old trade marks. Myk understands the protection clearly, but the examination costs precious time, and voices drift from the eastern approach before he can judge their number.

Behind them, Elyra and Eli work the old prison cuff from the slave princess’s wrist. The final catch yields without bloodshed, and the slave princess flexes her freed hand, studying both sisters with wary attention.

Myk’s inability to lie makes the request stark, leaving no room for comfort or concealment. Reads Pursuers follows each likely response toward the weighhouse, separating useful advice from routes that would expose Mara.

The advice resolves into one plan: enter quietly, show the closed eye, let Mara choose her witnesses, and place Nadira before the testimony while Elyra guards the bridge and Eli watches the escape.

Myk joins the stream of marrow-haulers and debtors entering the eastern weighhouse, keeping his hood low. The crowd carries him past the clerks without demanding an accent or a lie, while his bruised hip endures the steady walk.

His Reads Pursuers gift threads through the moving bodies, identifying glances that belong to routine scrutiny and those shaped by the assassins hunting him. The marked sorcery muddies several impressions, but the blackened sword steadies his judgment.

Myk keeps the long bow wrapped among laborers’ bundles and the dagger flat beneath his robe, weapons ready without inviting notice. He avoids the clerks’ questions entirely, letting silence preserve the disguise his horrible accents would betray.

At the far scales, he spots three cuts beneath a closed eye scratched into a support post. A narrow stair descends behind stacked weighing trays, exactly where Letha said the forgotten cellar waits.

Myk slips down the drainage steps beneath the noise of the weighhouse. In the dim store cellar, a young woman in a gray work smock turns from a ledger and fixes him with wary eyes.

The sign passes between them. Mara lowers the ledgerMara, a lean young adult woman with tawny skin, cropped black hair, and a narrow, sharp-featured face, lowers the ledger and steps aside, revealing the cellar’s concealed inner room. Myk has found her, unseen by the weighhouse above, with the meeting still under his team’s control.

Myk keeps the question plain because he cannot lie, and his horrible command of accents makes elaborate cover useless. The second witness ledger supplies matching names while Reads Pursuers tests each against routes, watchers, and likely betrayals.

The ledger confirms Haskel’s porter route and Tessa’s tally marks, while Myk’s gift finds no pursuit attached to either name. Mara’s answer costs time: she must trace their safe hours and private signals in detail.

Above, the weighhouse rhythm changes as clerks rotate, and Myk loses the exact count of passing footsteps while holding Mara’s routes in mind. He has the safest witnesses and the signals to reach them, but the timing remains narrow.

Myk separates the plan beneath the weighhouse: Nadira, Elyra, and Eli will accompany him to Haskel’s west-hoist meeting, while Tessa remains away from it. The second witness ledger confirms the division.

Reads Pursuers maps the safest sequence through the weighhouse, and the ledger supplies Haskel’s route and Tessa’s private signal. Myk’s plain speech helps, though his inability to lie and poor accents leave no graceful cover story.

Nadira, Elyra, and Eli take the route toward the west hoist while Tessa’s meeting remains separate. Myk writes a concise account for Zesh and secures it to a carrier pigeon’s leg, requesting backup.

The pigeon rises through the storehouse vent and vanishes over Ashen-Hold. The plan is set: Haskel first, Tessa separately, and Zesh warned with the full account before the meetings begin.

Myk sets the second witness ledger between them, matching Mara’s terms against its entries. Reads Pursuers follows the danger attached to each answer, while his inability to lie leaves the question stark and his poor accents deny him any smoother phrasing.

The ledger confirms the protection matches the old bargain, and Myk recognizes no pursuit attached to Nadira’s role. Mara’s exact wording takes longer to establish than expected, costing them the first quiet interval beneath the weighhouse.

Mara folds the ledger shut and gives Myk the answer he sought. Nadira is accepted as her named protector, though the delayed meeting leaves less time before the weighhouse changes shifts.

Elyra slips ahead toward the west hoist, bow lowered, while Myk and Eli enter the workers’ flow. Reads Pursuers separates routine glances from the sharper attention of hidden hunters.

The blackened sword steadies Myk’s judgment as his marked sorcery paints false routes through the crowded weighhouse. He avoids speaking, since his accents would betray any borrowed role and his inability to lie leaves no safe explanation.

At the west hoist, Elyra studies the pulleys, clerk rotations, and shadowed exits. Her quiet signal confirms the meeting place is clear, though she marks one upper window where a watcher could observe the approach.

Eli guides Myk beneath the hoist’s hanging chains. An elderly man with a bent back, iron-gray beard, and stained brown porter’s coat pauses beside a stack of empty trays.

Myk presents the marked sign and the second witness ledger without speaking. Haskel examines both, then steps into the shelter of the hoist, accepting the meeting while workers and clerks pass unaware.