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“I hear it’s a good likeness.” She remembered how quickly the officer in Bartolo had recognized her.

“It is.” He stared.

“So, I’ll make you a deal. Put down the flare and you can take me with you. You’ll be rewarded, not killed.”

“Ava, what are you doing?” Luc turned to look at her.

“What will it be? An agonizing death for everyone, or you going back with the prize the Herald has been searching for for months?” She lifted her hands as she ignored Luc.

“I won’t get far with you, not with these three after me.” The officer lowered his hand, though. “Although . . .”

He shuffled around Luc, holding the flare out. “Move, or we’ll see what happens if I splash some on you.”

Luc moved slowly out of the way.

“Ava, what’s going on?”

“When I was in Bartolo, one of the Kassian officers recognized me. Apparently the Queen’s Herald sent a drawing of me to the senior officers with instructions to be on the lookout.”

He said nothing, and she looked over at him.

His face was impossible to read.

“Better to be in enemy hands than for all of us to be dead, and the hills burning.”

He couldn’t argue with that. Although, she saw with a surprise that punched the air from her lungs, he looked like he wanted to.

“If you follow me down, I’ll douse her in the stuff.” The officer waggled the bottle, then thought better of it and held it still.

Ava started to slide her hand into her pocket, but he gave a shout.

“Don’t move. Keep your hands up.”

He reached her and put the flare into her hands, then pulled her up against his chest. “You spill it, we both die. You try to attack me,” his gaze went to Luc, “she spills it on herself.”

He fumbled with something on his belt, and came up with the thin restraints Ava had seen carried by every Kassian soldier at the fort where she’d been held.

He looped them around her wrists and pulled her back against him.

They moved in an awkward shuffle down the path, and when they reached the first body, Ava’s cloak let her know the man holding onto her had become even more dangerous.

“I would think long and hard before you take the flare from me and toss it down on the path.” She spoke quietly.

“And why’s that?” He didn’t deny he was considering it.

“Because I’ve heard it reacts like water, and water flows downhill.”

He hesitated and then tightened his grip so he was hurting her. “These are my people lying dead here.”

“And you were planning to burn my people to death. Including the ground beneath their feet.” She waited for a response, and when none was forthcoming, she shrugged.

He loosened his hold a little and kept pulling her back. The path was uneven, and he kept stumbling. “Keep a good hold on that flare.”

Her heart lurched as they slid down a little way, and she tightened her grip on the glass canister.

Luc would be following them, scarf on, she knew. And Oscar and Deni wouldn’t be far behind.

She wished she’d had time to work more protection into her cloak. She had added a working for flare fire this afternoon, to hers and to Luc, Oscar and Deni’s clothing, but she hadn’t really known what the flare light was when she’d done it, and she didn’t know if her magic would stand against the magic in the canister.