The two Consortium agents picked us up at the library's east door.

  They were good. Professional grey coats, no visible insignia, walking at a pace that matched ours without looking like they were matching ours. If I hadn't been watching for it, I might have missed them for another two blocks.

  Ren had already seen them. She had a whole system — don't speed up, don't look back, memorize the reflection in any gss surface you pass. Three years of practice.

  "South," she said quietly. "There's a market."

  Markets are good. Crowds, noise, lots of turns.

  We went south.

  I was aware, the whole time, of the warmth in my coat pocket. The Sealstone, doing what it'd been doing since I left Harrow's End — pulsing slightly. Responding to something.

  I was also aware that my right hand was warmer than usual. Not fire-warm. Potential-warm. The way it used to feel before I knew what I was doing.

  That hadn't happened in years. Not since the binding.

  I clenched my fist. Routine.

  We lost one of them in the market. The other one was better — kept a longer distance, used the crowd more intelligently. By the time we'd cleared the market's northern exit, I was fairly sure we had one tail instead of two.

  "There's a boat," Ren said. "I have passage arranged. Two hours."

  "Where to?" Tam asked.

  "North coast. Small port." She paused. "It was supposed to be just me."

  "We can get more tickets," Tam said.

  "I already bought all three remaining berths," she said. "In case I needed to block company."

  I looked at her.

  "What?" she said. "I've been doing this for three years."

  The woman had a system for everything. I was increasingly impressed.

  The hour before the boat left was fine.

  The half-hour before was fine.

  Ten minutes before, I felt it.

  Not the tail. Not the Consortium. Something different. The Sealstone went from a warm pulse to a high-frequency vibration against my ribs, and my mark — both the eight original rays and the ninth — went silver-hot, and Ren grabbed my arm because she'd felt something too, her twelve-ray mark bzing bright enough to show through her sleeve.

  We both looked at each other.

  "What is that?" she said.

  "I don't know," I said.

  That was a lie. I had a guess. I just really didn't want the guess to be right.

  It came from the north.

  A sound. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a low, sustained tone — below hearing, really, more felt than heard, like a thundercp that never quite nded. The kind of sound the earth makes when something very old is moving.

  And then, in the harbor, every ship's bell rang simultaneously.

  No wind. No wave. Just — all of them, together, one single clear note.

  "We need to get on that boat," Tam said, very quietly.

  We got on the boat.

  Three hours out to sea, Ren sat across from me in the boat's small cabin and said: "That sound. You know what it was."

  It wasn't a question.

  "I have a theory," I said.

  "Tell me."

  "Have you ever heard of a pce called Ash-Mordhen?"

  Her face went very still.

  "Tell me," she said again, softer.

  So I told her. All of it. Lyra's research, the residue, the ninth ray, the dreams. The way the stone had been moving. The specific way Seraphine had said it's not me you should be worried about.

  Ren listened without interrupting. That was unusual. Most people interrupt. She just — listened. Processed.

  When I finished, she was quiet for a long time.

  Then she said: "My mark has always had twelve rays. I thought it was just variation."

  "It might be."

  "Or it might mean I'm connected to whatever you're connected to." She looked at her wrist. "The residue you described — the echo of Seraphine's pattern in your mark. What if the resonance effect Lyra described isn't just the two of us affecting each other?" She paused. "What if there's a third source?"

  I hadn't thought of it that way.

  I sat with it for a moment.

  "The binding is failing," I said slowly.

  "Or something is pushing on it from the other side," she said. "And when you performed the binding five years ago, you left a piece of yourself in the ttice too. Because that's how it works — the mage is the conduit. The river shapes the stone, but the stone shapes the river." She met my eyes. "You're not just the person who did the binding. You're part of the binding. And something is using that."

  The boat creaked around us. The sea outside was dark.

  I reached into my coat and set the Sealstone on the table between us.

  It was warm. And for the first time since all of this started, it was also glowing.

  Ren looked at it.

  "What does that mean?" she asked.

  "It means we're going to Ash-Mordhen," I said.

  "You just got here."

  "I know."

  She looked at the stone for another moment.

  Then she reached out and touched it.

  The light tripled.

  And from somewhere — nowhere — everywhere — we both felt the same thing at exactly the same moment.

  A second heartbeat.

  Not mine. Not hers.

  Old. Exhausted. And trying very hard to hold on to something that was beginning to slip.

  I pulled my hand back. She pulled hers back.

  We stared at each other across the stone.

  "She's still in there," Ren said.

  "She's still in there," I agreed.

  "And something is pulling her out."

  The stone pulsed, once, in the dark.

  All the way at the back of my mind, in the pce I'd learned to quiet but never quite silence, the ninth ray burned silver.

  And for the first time in five years, I was genuinely afraid.