Mithos glanced at the wound, slid to his feet without a word, and began to run. I followed, amazed we’d held off death this long, but still fully expecting to begin our Kingdom of the Damned tour within the next ten minutes or so. Unless they caught us and took us back for Lengthy Torture and Languid Execution, in which case the tour might start later.

What we saw on rounding the next corner suggested that ten minutes had been optimistic. This road marked the northernmost reaches of the city and, while the town lacked the fortifications of Cresdon or Ironwall, there were sentries at every exit. Stavis, you’ll recall, is an isolated bit of Empire territory connected to its lands in the West by little more than a road across the Hrof wastes. But except for that ribbon of paving across the desert, everything around the city was neutral territory. What that all added up to was that we were about twenty yards from never seeing another Empire soldier again, but from what I could see it may as well have been fifty miles.

There were soldiers everywhere. Lisha and the others may have been long gone, but we had lost several minutes in our earlier wanderings and news of the events at the Waterman had reached the city guards. A great throng of people had spilled out of the adjoining houses and inns to watch the inevitable capture of the notorious rebels as they attempted to leave. If this wasn’t bad enough, the remainder of the guards who had pursued us would be here in moments, complete with even fuller descriptions of the escapees, their probable locations, and some colorful suggestions for what to do with them. Down the street was a stone tower, four stories high and topped with a white flag with a diamond motif: inside it would be soldiers. For once, Mithos’s instinct matched my own. He found the first open tavern door-an inn called the Fisherman’s Arms-and made for the bar.