Outside the door of the training room, John Farren sighed as he watched Perry’s anger explode. He leaned heavily on his cane, the barely healed scars on his back preventing him from standing upright, part of his mind still chained in the bloody dungeon of the Borderlands. He understood the depth of the young man’s pain, and he saw a reckoning ahead with the man who had wounded them both so deeply. Sir Douglas Mercator, Perry’s father — and the Shadow Cartographer who had tried to make a blood map from John’s own skin.
An alarm sounded suddenly, a deep note of warning.
John turned from the window and limped away down the corridor. In years past, the sound had been unusual but these days, it seemed the borders were tested several times a day, the Borderlanders pushing against the limits of
