Brennan joined me after a few minutes.

  “You’re worried,” he said.

  “I’m realistic.”

  “Same thing from where I’m standing.” He pulled out his flask but did not drink. Instead, he just held it in his hands like a talisman. “I’ve seen this pattern before. Watchers show up. Questions get asked. Then something happens.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “Depends on who’s doing the watching.” Brennan’s voice held a weight that suggested old memories. “Could be a warning. Could be a test. Could be the quiet before a storm.”

  “What does your gut say?”

  He was silent for a long moment. The water lapped against the pilings. A fish jumped somewhere in the darkness.

  “Storm,” he said finally. “These people don’t watch for fun. They watch because they’re planning something and they want to know the ground before they move.”

  “How long?”

  “Could be tomorrow. Could be a week.” He finally took a sip from his flask. “But it’s coming, lad. Whatever they’re planning, it’s coming soon.”

  Chapter 24

  Numbers Game

  The morning started like any other.

  We left the inn with the sun already warming the harbor. Kieran had asked for help calibrating the secondary smokehouse wards. It was a routine task. The kind of work that had become normal over the past weeks.

  The watchers were still there. I counted three on our walk from the inn. They made no effort to hide. They stood in visible positions and observed our movements with the patient attention of people who had nowhere else to be.

  “Fewer today,” Roderick murmured. He walked at Adrian’s right side with his hand near his hammer. “Either they’re getting confident or they’re planning something.”

  “Neither option is comforting,” Felix said.

  We turned onto the main street that led to the harbor. The fishermen had already started their morning work. Boats moved across the water. Workers carried baskets between the docks and the smokehouses. The sounds of a functioning economy surrounded us.

  Then Henrick’s hand audibly tightened around his axe handle.

  “We have company,” he said quietly.

  I followed his gaze. Three men loitered at the mouth of an alley ahead. As we approached, they spread out across the road and blocked our path. They wore road clothes and carried clubs. Their faces held the blank expressions of people preparing for violence.

  “More behind us,” Roderick added. His voice stayed calm, but his stance shifted.

  I turned. Four more men had appeared from the direction we had come. They spread across the street and cut off our retreat.

  “Coordinated,” Adrian said. His tone held recognition rather than surprise. “They’re definitely not here for a pleasant conversation.”

  The men ahead of us advanced. More emerged from side streets. I counted at least a dozen now. All armed. All focused on our group.

  Adrian moved before I understood what he intended.

  He grabbed my arm and Felix’s shoulder and shoved us toward the nearest building. A fishmonger’s shop with a heavy wooden door.

  “Inside. Now.”

  “Adrian—”

  “Now.” He pushed us through the doorway. “Stay there until it’s over.”

  The door slammed behind us. Through the clouded window, I watched Roderick and Henrick take positions on either side of the prince. Their war hammer and battle axe came out with practiced efficiency. The tools of men who knew their work.

  The brigands closed in.

  The fishmonger who owned the shop had disappeared into the back. Smart man.

  I moved to the window and pressed my face against the glass. The first brigand reached Roderick and learned immediately why princes traveled with guards. The war hammer caught him in the chest and sent him sprawling backward into two of his companions. Roderick moved forward and did not stop. Every swing connected. Every strike cleared space.

  Henrick worked the other flank. The battle axe was slower but harder to avoid. A brigand tried to duck under the swing and caught the haft across his shoulder. He went down and did not get up.

  Adrian fought between them. I had not seen him draw a blade, but suddenly it was there. It was shorter than the guards’ weapons, and significantly faster. He parried a club strike and returned it with a cut that opened a gash across the attacker’s forearm.

  “They’re good,” Felix said. He had joined me at the window. “Really good.”

  They were. But they were also outnumbered.

  More brigands kept arriving. For every one that went down, two more appeared from the side streets. The original dozen had become twenty. The guards and Adrian found themselves back to back pressed into a tighter formation.

  “We have to help,” I said.

  “With what? Our extensive combat training?” Felix’s voice held frustration rather than fear. “We’d just be in the way.”

  He was right. I hated that he was right.

  The tide began to turn against us.

  The brigands had learned to avoid the guards’ heavy weapons. They darted in, struck quick, then retreated before the counterattack could land. It was a strategy designed to exhaust the guards rather than overwhelm them. Death by a dozen small cuts.

  Roderick took a hit to his left arm. He switched his grip on the hammer and kept fighting, but the wound bled freely. Henrick had a cut across his forehead that dripped into his eyes. Adrian’s movements had slowed.

  Then Dag stepped out of a side street.

  The fisherman carried a gaff hook. The curved metal blade gleamed in the morning light. His face held the same hard anger I had seen since the explosion.

  He didn’t hesitate. The gaff caught a brigand in the shoulder and pulled him off balance. Dag followed with a kick that sent the man sprawling.

  “Veldros!” he bellowed. “They’re attacking Veldros!”

  More doors opened.

  A shopkeeper emerged with a hammer. Two fishermen followed with oars held like staffs. The woman who ran the smokehouse appeared with a gutting knife in each hand. Workers and merchants and ordinary people who had decided they would not stand aside while strangers attacked their town filled the roadway.

  The brigands faltered. They had planned for two guards and a prince. They had not planned for an entire community.

  “Keep coming!” someone shouted from the brigand ranks. “There’s only a few of them!”

  But more townspeople emerged from shops and homes. They were all armed with whatever tools and implements they could grab. They poured into the street with the fury of people who had suffered enough.

  I watched through the window as the numbers shifted. The brigands were no longer overwhelming. Instead, they were surrounded.

  The fight ended faster than it had begun.

  The brigands broke. First one turned and ran, then another, and then a dozen fled down the harbor road with townspeople chasing them past the edge of town.

  I pushed open the door and stepped out with Felix behind me.

  The street looked like a battlefield. Groaning brigands lay where they had fallen. Townspeople stood over them with weapons ready and expressions that dared anyone to move. Roderick and Henrick still held their positions near Adrian, but their stances had relaxed slightly.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked Adrian.

  “Nothing serious.” He had a cut on his cheek and blood on his blade. His breathing came hard, but his eyes were clear. “The guards took the worst of it.”

  Roderick’s arm wound still bled, but he waved off concern. “Had worse in training.”

  “Liar,” Henrick said. He pressed a cloth to his forehead. “You complained for a week when you cut yourself shaving.”

  “That was different. That was my face.”

  The banter held the edge of relief.

  Dag approached with his gaff hook still in hand. Blood stained the curved blade. “Everyone accounted for?”

  “Everyone’s fine,” Adrian said. “Thanks to you. Thanks to all of you.”

  The fisherman shrugged. “You helped us. We help you. That’s how it works.”

  Around us, the townspeople began the work of securing the fallen brigands. Ropes appeared. Questions started. The anger that had driven them into the street transformed into the grim efficiency of people handling a problem.

  We gathered at the harbor office an hour later.

  Nels had taken charge of the prisoners. Fifteen brigands in various states of injury sat bound and guarded in an empty warehouse. More had escaped, but the ones who remained would have questions to answer.

  “This was organized,” Nels said. He stood at his desk with the same weathered authority he brought to everything. “It looks professional. Someone planned this.”

  “Someone with resources,” I agreed. “And someone who underestimated what Veldros would do.”

  Adrian sat near the window with his wounds cleaned and bandaged. Roderick and Henrick flanked him as always, though both bore visible signs of the fight.

  “I don’t think they were trying to kill us,” Roderick said. “They brought clubs, not blades. If I had to guess, they wanted prisoners.”

  “They wanted Adrian,” Henrick corrected. “The rest of us were just obstacles.”

  The prince’s expression didn’t change. He had known it before the guards said it aloud.

  “I’m the political protection,” Adrian said quietly. “Remove me, and you remove the authority backing this work. Duncan’s support becomes theoretical. The trade commission gains leverage. The towns we’ve helped become vulnerable again.”

  “So they tried to grab you in broad daylight,” Felix said. “In a town full of people who owe their recovery to our methods. That’s desperate.”

  “Or confident.” Adrian looked out the window at the harbor. “They thought the watchers would intimidate everyone into staying inside. They thought the numbers would be overwhelming. They thought Veldros would fold like it has been folding for months.”

  “They thought wrong,” Dag said from the doorway. The fisherman had not left our group since the fight. His gaff hook rested against the wall within easy reach.

  “They did.” Adrian turned to face us. “But they’ll learn from that mistake. Whatever comes next will be worse. Less subtle, and likely better planned.”

  The room fell silent. The victory felt less complete in light of what it implied.

  “They’re not going to stop,” Adrian said. The words carried the weight of certainty. “We’ve proven we can’t be scared away. We’ve proven the community will fight back. So they’ll try something else. Something we’re not expecting.”

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “We keep working. We finish what we started here. We show them that every attack makes us stronger, not weaker.” Adrian’s voice hardened. “And we prepare for whatever they try next.”

  Chapter 25

  Ink And Distance

  The town buzzed with energy that had no outlet.

  Fishermen gathered in clusters and told stories of the fight that grew more dramatic with each retelling. Shopkeepers stood in doorways and discussed what they had seen. Children ran through the streets and reenacted the battle with sticks for weapons and boundless enthusiasm.

  The brigands were gone, but the threat remained.

  “We need to report this to Duncan,” Adrian said.

  We had gathered in the harbor office an hour after the prisoners were secured. Roderick’s arm wound had been properly bandaged. Henrick’s forehead cut had stopped bleeding. The guards stood ready despite their injuries because that was who they were.

  “A direct attack on a prince,” Roderick added. His voice held the flat tone of professional assessment. “In broad daylight. In a town under crown protection. That’s not something we keep quiet.”

  “It’s also not something they’ll try the same way twice,” Felix said. “They expected intimidation to work. They expected overwhelming numbers. They got neither.”

  Adrian nodded slowly. “Which means the next attempt will be different. Something smarter and better planned.”

  “All the more reason to get you back to Valdmere,” Henrick said. “The capital has walls. Guards. Resources.”

  “And I’ll be trapped inside them.” Adrian shook his head. “Running back to the castle doesn’t solve anything. It just proves they can scare us off.”

  “Running back to the castle keeps you alive,” Roderick countered. “Which is our primary goal. Everything else is secondary.”

  The argument had the feel of familiar territory. Guards who wanted to protect their charge against a prince who refused to hide. I had watched this dynamic play out over the weeks we had traveled together. Neither side ever truly won.

  “Fine,” Adrian said finally. “We go to Valdmere, report to Duncan, and reassess the situation. But we’re not running. We’re regrouping.”

  Roderick and Henrick exchanged a look. The compromise satisfied no one, which meant it was probably the right choice.

  Saying goodbye to Veldros proved harder than I expected.

  The townspeople gathered near the harbor as we prepared to leave. Fishermen and workers and ordinary people who had fought beside us stood and watched. Their faces held the complicated emotions of people who had won a battle and knew the war continued.

  Kieran approached with Hamish beside him.

  “The systems are stable,” Kieran said. “The apprentices know what to do. We can maintain everything you built without you here.”

  “That was always the goal.” I clasped his hand. “You’ve learned more than ward techniques. You’ve learned to adapt, to improvise, and to solve problems with whatever materials you have available.”

  “Dunmarch Brown,” he said with a slight smile. “Ugly as sin and twice as effective.”

  “The name is growing on me.”

  Hamish stepped forward. His expression held the uncertainty of someone making a difficult decision.

  “I should stay to help Kieran,” he said. “The redundant wards could use an extra glyphwright for the time being.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Veldros needs support more than you need an extra glyphwright on the road.” He offered his hand. “When things settle down, I want to come south. See Millbrook. Learn more about what you’re building there.”

  “You’re welcome anytime.” I shook his hand firmly. “Thank you, Hamish. For everything.”

  I was loading supplies into the wagon when Dag approached.

  “You’ll be back,” he said. His tone left no room for doubt.

  “When we can,” I said. “The work here matters.”

  “The work everywhere matters.” The fisherman’s expression held something I had not seen when we first arrived, something that looked like real hope. “You showed us that. Whatever happens next, we won’t forget.”

  “Neither will we.”

  He nodded once and stepped back. Around him, the townspeople raised their hands in farewell. Some called out thanks and others simply watched with the quiet gratitude of people who had learned to believe in tomorrow again.

  The wagon rolled forward. Veldros shrank behind us.

  The road to Valdmere stretched through highlands that looked different than I remembered.

  We passed the same hills and the same scattered villages under the same autumn colors spreading across the landscape. But something had changed. The watchers were gone, or at least invisible. The tension that had built over weeks had broken with the failed attack.

  Now we traveled in a strange quiet, the aftermath of violence that had not yet settled into whatever came next.

  Adrian rode at the front with Roderick. Their conversation carried fragments back to the wagon, talk of strategy and contingencies and the endless planning of men who expected more trouble ahead.

  Felix sat across from me with his notebook open. He had not written anything for an hour. He just stared at the pages with the unfocused gaze of someone lost in thoughts he could not quite articulate.

  “You’re worried,” I said.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Same thing from where I’m sitting.”

  He almost smiled. “Someone hired those men and pointed them at us. Someone with resources and reach and the willingness to assault a prince in public.”

  “Gray’s consortium.”

  “Probably. Maybe.” Felix shook his head. “But we don’t know. Not for certain. We have suspicions and patterns and evidence that points in a direction. We don’t have proof.”

  “Does proof matter at this point?”

  “It matters when we report to Duncan. It matters when decisions get made about what happens next.” He closed his notebook. “We can’t just accuse a major trade consortium of attempted kidnapping without evidence. Not if we want anyone to take us seriously.”

  He was right.

  “So we report what happened. The attack. The watchers. The sabotage. Let Duncan draw his own conclusions.”

  “And hope he draws the same ones we did.” Felix looked out the window at the passing hills. “The alternative is that whoever organized this gets away clean and tries again when we’re not expecting it.”

  “We’re always expecting it now.”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it? Living like that? Always waiting for the next attack.” His voice held a weariness I had not heard before. “I just want to fix wards, help people, and build things that matter. When did it become so complicated?”

  “When we started succeeding.” I thought about the pattern we had traced and the monopoly built over years. “We threatened something that someone spent a long time building. They’re not going to let that go.”

  “No. They’re not.”

  We made camp that evening in a clearing beside the road.