23
THE FIGHT
Nobody noticed the siblings walk out of Myrion’s Revenge. Once, just a few steps out of view of the docks, A soldier had stumbled from an alley, shouted something, and began running toward them through poisonous, ankle-deep mud. He got within a few dozen strides from Anna and Pasha when a crossbow bolt passed through his neck and out the other side. His body fell and slid through the reddish muck a half-dozen hands before coming to a rest face down. They never saw who had shot him, nor another soul before they found the rutted, narrow path leading up a steep canyon on the far side of town.
They climbed into the barren crags of the Dry Mountains. Pasha and Anna had been so relieved to have found each other, to be free again against hopeless odds, that they were getting along
