His uncle nodded. “Felix and I used them, but his wasn’t on him when he died, and it’s never been opened since. If you can find it, we can easily stay in touch.”
“We’ll hunt for it,” Rayna promised. “There’s a lot of mess in the workshop. It could definitely still be there.”
“If you can’t find it,” Hayn said, “I’ll meet you back here at this time the day after tomorrow.”
And with that plan made, none of them could afford to linger. They exchanged another long, long hug—Anders hadn’t hugged someone so much larger than himself many times in his life. Or, he realized, perhaps at all, before he had met Hayn. He liked the way his uncle’s arms wrapped him up tight, went all the way around him, and he rested his head against the big man’s chest for a moment.
Then it was time to go.
“The day after tomorrow,” Hayn promised. “And I’ll be watching my mirror until then.”
He slipped away into the crowd, and the three children watched him go.
When Anders looked back at the others, he saw the wistful expression on Sam’s face as the other boy tracked Hayn until he was out of sight. Sam was wishing for his own reunion, of course.
“Well,” said Anders, trying to sound cheerful, “we came here because we thought Jerro might be around, right? Because this is the smartest place to look if you want to pickpocket anybody. So let’s look.”
The three of them spread out a little to mingle with the crowd, making themselves unremarkable, keeping their hoods up and moving easily, exchanging glances to silently communicate. In a strange way, it actually felt good to do something so familiar.
And then a quarter of an hour later, the unexpected happened: they actually found Jerro. It was Rayna who spotted him, and she flicked one hand up in a discreet signal to draw the boys’ attention to him.
Jerro was following one of the mayor’s advisers, his hands in his pockets, his walk casual. His face had been scrubbed clean, but despite the loss of his usual dirt, he wasunmistakable. Sam made a quiet noise of pure relief, and Anders felt like a huge weight had lifted off his shoulders.
“Well done, Jerro,” approved Rayna. One of the first rules of pickpocketing was that you shouldn’t stand out, so Jerro had cleaned himself up to fit in.
He was edging closer and closer to his mark, clearly preparing for a highly risky attempt at an in-transit lift, when he spotted his brother standing with the twins and stumbled abruptly. He fell straight into the man he was trying to steal from, and though the adviser turned around with a frown on his face, Jerro’s quick and embarrassed apologies settled him down. With a gruff “No harm done,” the man was on his way.
Jerro nodded at a giant, haphazard pile of firewood, and they hurried around to meet him behind it.
He didn’t let Sam get a word out before he threw his arms around him, squeezing him tight.
“Where’s Pel?” he asked urgently.
Sam wheezed and tried to reply, but it was left to Anders to speak.
“He’s safe,” he promised. “He hurt his leg, but he’s back at our, uh... camp. We have medics who looked him over too. They said he’ll be fine, but he can’t go anywhere right now.”
Sam thumped on Jerro’s shoulder with one fist, and his big brother finally realized what was going on and released him.
Sam took a great, heaving breath and then grinned. “Sorry to spoil your lift,” he said.
Jerro snorted, reaching into one pocket. “Spoiled what?” he asked, pulling out a handful of coins. “Just a different opportunity.”
Sam laughed, and Anders felt himself grinning.
“You can come with us,” Rayna said. “We’ll take you to Pel. Is there anything else you brought out of the city that you need to get?”
Jerro opened his mouth to reply, paused, closed it again, opened it, and hesitated. “Um,” he said eventually.
“Um?” Sam asked. “Jerro, you have to come. Pel can’t leave. And anyway, it’s better there. It’s safe.”
“It’s not that,” said Jerro. “It’s just not that simple. I haven’t been sticking around here for fun—if I could, I’d have been back in the city, hunting every second for Sam and Pel. Instead, I just had to hope they’d come here. You’d better follow me.”
He led them through the camp once more, leaving the prosperous area and moving through the muddy parts where families were camped, cooking over fires, trying to gather together or protect the few things they hadmanaged to take with them from the city.
And then they moved into the really poor part of camp, where the inhabitants simply huddled in their cloaks, without shelter or cooking fires.
It was there, clustered in the protection of a boulder, that Jerro showed them what the problem was. When he rounded the big rock, half a dozen small faces turned up toward him, like a nest full of baby birds waiting to be fed.
