They rode north.
Not toward the border — that was the obvious direction and every checkpoint in the Liang territory would know it within hours. Lian took them east instead, into the interior highlands, where the roads were bad enough to slow organized pursuit and good enough to keep their horses from breaking legs.
The facility alarm faded behind them.
The ley line suppression field did not.
Xin could feel it receding as they rode but it receded slowly, the territory-wide dampening still pressing against his channels. The white fire was at sixty percent of normal. Enough to function. Not enough for anything sustained.
Lin rode between Yara and Wei Tao, gripping her horse with the competence of someone who had ridden before and the wide-eyed attention of someone processing seventeen th
