much roomier and much quieter environs that customers of the Port Authority could not access.
He was therefore surprised when someone not wearing the teal of the Port Authority entered the lunch room and came directly over to where Terrick now sat, bread and its crumbs scattered over the table’s surface. He had water in a tin mug, and half of a round cheese, although the cheese was well-aged. The meat, cured and smoked, was spare, as it often was during the colder months. The rich could afford the various spells of preservation and enchantment that meant their food was less seasonal—but if the Port Authority kept a roof over his head, it did not propel him into their ranks.
He did not recognize his visitor for a minute, although he rose instantly; the visitor was carrying a bundle—a blanket wrapped around something that was clearly not conventionally wrapped in such a fashion. The Port Authority guards might not have recognized this disguised burden; Terrick did. Instantly. But the young man carrying it did not unwrap it, did not draw it, and made no threatening moves. He simply gazed at Terrick, and then, past him, to the remainder of his lunch.
Terrick laughed.
He seldom laughed, but it was that single glance that made clear who his visitor was. “Angel.”
Angel nodded. He had filled out over the past decade and a half; he no longer looked the boy. The awkward slenderness of youth was gone.
So, too, the Weyrdon crown. Terrick had seen Angel with his hair down before, but only after cleaning; he did not leave the apartment—any apartment—with his hair down. But there was no identifying spire, now. Nothing at all to mark the boy as Rendish; even the Southerners wore their hair in the nondescript braid that Angel had chosen. At least he had not sheared his hair, the way many of the Essalieyanese did. Terrick dragged a chair over to the table; he sat, and indicated Angel should join him.
He did not ask about the hair. It was far too personal a question.
Angel said, “I can’t stay. I wasn’t sure whether or not I should bother you at work—but I wanted to give you warning.”
“Warning, is it?” Terrick asked, as he ate. He offered Angel food—bread and cheese—as he had unexpectedly lost his appetite. He had been alarmed, the first time he had seen the Weyrdon styling on Garroc’s son—but he felt its loss as an unexpected blow. The chick had, at long last, left the nest.
He saw no shadow of Garroc in his son’s face.
If Angel was aware of how Terrick felt, he showed no sign; instead, he ate. He could reliably eat, Terrick was certain, in any circumstance. The well-stocked larder and kitchens of the very patrician Terafin manse had not cured him of this habit.
“Warning,” Angel said. “I don’t know how much notice you have to give the Port Authority to leave without censure.”
Terrick raised a brow. He glanced at the bundle Angel had set on the ground beside the chair. “What word have you brought, boy?”
Angel was old enough now that he did not stiffen with resentment at the word. “It’s for you,” he said, chewing with haste and swallowing just as quickly, as if suddenly remembering his manners. “I think you’ll need it, where we’re going.”
“We?”
“Jewel needs to leave the city,” he replied, his voice heavy with gravity. “I’m going with her when she leaves. And, Terrick, I want you with me.”
“Why? Is she daft enough to travel to Arrend?”
“Not on purpose, no. But if I understand things—and I don’t—she won’t know where she’s going until she gets there.”
“You’ll tell me more.”
“I can’t. I’d tell you everything but you’d miss the end of lunch call. And dinner. And possibly breakfast.”
“So you say you want me to go with you—but you can’t tell me where.”
“Or when,” Angel replied, grinning slightly. “I know in the old days you had to be ready to move with almost no notice. This is like those days. The only normal guards she’ll have are us.”
“Us, is it?”
Angel nodded. “She means to hold this city against the—”
Terrick held up one hand. “Let me see what you’ve brought me.”
Angel laughed. His laughter was nothing like Garroc’s. But there was a look in his eye, an excitement, a focus that had meant, on his father’s face, that the waiting was done. It was time, at last, for action. Angel bent, the braid batting his cheek as he retrieved the bundle. He pushed what remained of