He couldn’t hear the pirate’s voice over the crowd, but his lips curled into an unmistakable ‘You!’ as he pointed at the three of them. That’s when Zander noticed the dozen or so other pirates with him.

“Zander?” Theo said, snapping his fingers in front of Zander’s face as if to wake him up. Zander looked at him, then back at the pirates, his eyes wide.

“Run!”

They took off into the crowd, the pirates screaming curses behind them. Zander dodged carts and donkeys, leapt over steaming cauldrons of food, and slipped between tents, mindful of Theo and Yarrow’s presence like shadows as he ran. They moved further inland, zigzagging through the crowd in an attempt to lose the pirates, canvas tents and clouds of spices blocking their vision as they ran blindly away.

When they came to the edge of the crowd, Tarifa’s commerce district flattened from tall tents and administrative buildings into squat houses and farmland.

“There!” Yarrow said, pointing ahead of them to a large stable.

They continued to run, and as they got closer, Zander looked behind him to see nearly a dozen pirates emerge from the crowd and look around, their weapons unsheathed.

“Go!” Yarrow said, pointing to Zander and Theo, then to their left and right, signaling for the men to split up and circle around the back of the property. Zander did so wordlessly, turning left and making a wide arc around the fenced property while Yarrow approached the man at the main gate, wailing loudly and speaking French.

While the bewildered man tried to calm down the seemingly hysterical person at his gate, Zander met Theo at the back of the stables. They nodded at one another silently, then slipped inside, where they knocked two young men on the back of the head and another across the face, leaving them unconscious on the straw-covered floor before securing three horses. Zander dropped a handful of gold coins on the ground near the front door as they bolted out of the stable toward Yarrow, who pushed the unsuspecting man to the side to save him from being trampled by his own livestock.

Then, like a vision from the pages of a storybook, Yarrow crouched, balancing on the balls of their feet, before jumping up and grabbing the reins of the horse Theo led beside his own, swinging themselves expertly into the saddle. The whole thing happened in a matter of moments, and Yarrow was spurring the horse forward before it even had time to slow down.

The three pirates rode past the open gate at a furious pace, veering North, away from the ocean. Zander looked back to see the pirates chasing them reach the edge of the fence surrounding the stable. They drew their weapons, but before they could shoot, Theo had turned himself around in his saddle. With the calm focus of a man standing at a shooting range rather than riding backward on a stolen horse, Theo drew the pistols from his vest one by one, ringing out seven shots in the direction of the pirates. One by one, seven pirates fell to the ground.

Theo shot until they were out of range, whereupon he holstered his pistols and turned himself back around on the horse like a trained acrobat. Zander marveled at him. His mouth hung open slightly as he beheld his two remarkable friends, riding proudly side by side against the glorious backdrop of rolling Spanish hills, like two gods among men. Theo, fully aware of the aesthetic appeal of he and his partner’s many talents, looked sidelong at Zander and winked.

18

Zander didn’t remember horseback riding being such a literal pain in the ass.

It had been years since he rode a horse, the last time being when he was sixteen, just after his sister Martha was married to her husband, Philip. Philip had a stretch of land in the countryside, and one day a carriage showed up unannounced and took him to visit his sister. As it turned out, her husband had left the country for several months, and Martha used his absence as an opportunity to steal her brother away from the city for a few weeks.

His father had been furious when he got back home. Zander’s explanation as to why he’d failed to show up to his apprenticeship was met with a belt, but he didn’t care. He’d spent two weeks with his favorite sister, drinking wine and riding her wealthy husband’s horses across his lush estate in the countryside. It was two of the best weeks of his life, and the last time he ever saw Martha.

Now, having ridden hard and fast along the coast for nearly an hour, then veering North, he didn’t feel like a carefree teenager. He felt like a crotchety old man with a severely chapped ass—perhaps due to the distinct lack of expensive wine.

He was grateful when Yarrow found a spot they deemed suitable to begin the off-road portion of their journey, announcing they’d be venturing into the forest up ahead instead of remaining in the open. He longed for shade, the afternoon sun having made him drowsy enough to nearly fall off his horse.

He occasionally glanced at Ace’s compass as they traveled, but it was more for comfort than function. He truly had no idea where they were without a map, and he’d only ever learned to navigate on the water, by the stars. But Yarrow seemed to know what they were doing, and they were undoubtedly more well-traveled than he, so he followed Theo’s lead and trusted Yarrow blindly as they entered the thick wall of trees.

The horses picked their way slowly through the dense forest, and Zander passed the time with a mix of sightseeing and crippling anxiety. The open countryside they’d ridden through provided beautiful scenery—rolling hills, flowers in bloom, and the occasional group of wild pigs—but he couldn’t shake the feeling that each time he turned around, he’d see someone chasing them. Here in the forest, the sights were squished into smaller spaces—insects, fungi, tiny birds—at first, he felt relatively safe in the cover of the trees.

That is, until he saw a spotted cat the size of a bloodhound with pointed ears and long patches of fur that hung down on either side of its face like jowls. It lay prostrate at the base of a tree, its legs flexed as if to pounce, its long teeth peeking out of its mouth as it snarled silently at the passersby. A chill ran down Zander’s spine at the sight of the beautiful animal. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen, and he was glad to put distance between himself and it before they stopped for the night.

They made camp in a clearing next to a stream with enough room for the horses to graze before they slept. A small waterfall, tucked behind a tangle of trees and bushes, fed the stream.

Once they’d all drank their fill and settled the horses, Theo announced he’d be walking the perimeter to ensure they weren’t near any predators’ dens or other unforeseen dangers. Yarrow began removing various herbs and flowers from their pockets, then got to work on their satchel, from which they produced a veritable abundance of green things. Zander had no idea how they fit so much in that little bag.

“Well,” Yarrow said, crouching over the materials laid out before them and assessing their merit, “it’s not much. At least, nothing filling. But we could scrape together a decent broth. I’ve got a sturdy leather pouch we can string up to boil water in, courtesy of our former captors.” They looked up at Zander and shrugged. “We’ll be hungry come morning, but at least we’ll be able to sleep with something in our bellies.”

Zander nodded, then looked at the stream behind them. His stomach rumbled loudly, and he put a hand against his torso as if to quiet it.

“Maybe we could catch some fish?”

“We could try if you fancy spearfishing. I don’t have anything to fashion as a hook.”

Zander mentally scolded himself for not taking the sailmaker’s needle from the pirate ship with him. He imagined himself trying to spear fish out of the stream, and in his exhaustion, he almost laughed out loud.

“Perhaps it would be easier to find some mushrooms or roots. I can help you look.”

Yarrow nodded and stood, and Zander followed them into the trees. For the next several minutes, Zander listened as Yarrow pointed out various plants, explaining their use in remedies or recipes, occasionally warning him against a poisonous variety using some version of a rhyme or acronym, usually in French. When they came upon a large patch of watercress, Zander busied himself gathering the leafy green vegetable while Yarrow cleaned the dirt off a handful of thick roots in the stream.

“Where did you learn to forage?” Zander asked. “You’re quite wonderful at it.”

“My mother,” Yarrow said, smiling. “She was a healer of sorts. Not officially, but that’s what people knew her as. Every time someone had a cut, or a rash, or a bump on the head, they came to my mother. She used to take me and my brothers out with her to forage for medicinal plants, but we always came back with dinner, too. She believed the land would always provide what we needed to live.”

Zander’s stomach growled again, and he hoped their dinner of wet salad and herb broth would be enough to keep the three of them alive long enough to find Ace.

“That sounds like a nice way to grow up.”

“It was,” Yarrow agreed. “She did well, my mother. Raised us well. But once I’d grown, a quiet life in the country wasn’t enough for me.”

“What came next?” Zander asked, eager to know more about his friend, who rarely talked about their past.

Yarrow looked sidelong at him, and Zander thought perhaps they wouldn’t answer. Finally, they smirked and continued talking.

“I went to Paris. Spent a year or so being young and reckless. Drinking, sleeping around. Then I met Nicolette. My first love.”

Yarrow gazed at the stream as they spoke, as if Nicolette’s face was projected on top of the water. Zander stayed silent, waiting for them to continue, his hands frozen midway through tearing away a handful of watercress.

“Nicolette opened up a whole new world to me. She was part of an underground group of intellectuals. They became my friends.”

Yarrow paused, then looked at Zander. When they didn’t go on, he made an impatient gesture with his hands. “Well, go on. You can’t just casually mention some underground society and not tell me more.”

Yarrow chuckled and continued scrubbing at the roots. “They used to meet in secret in the back of a tavern. It was a dark, smoky room filled with the greatest minds I’d ever encountered. Poets. Philosophers. Scientists. They would gather and talk of revolution. Of progress. Some of them had traveled across the world. Others sat in the halls of kings. Still others made dark inventions—some for the pursuit of justice, others for their own amusement.” Yarrow’s mouth tilted up at one side.

“I learned much from my new friends. But I soon grew sick of talking about ideas in the back of a dingy tavern. I wanted to spread my wings, to apply my new skills elsewhere. There was something else out there, something calling to me. I could feel it in my bones.”

“What was it?” Zander asked.

Yarrow looked up and smiled, shaking droplets from the now-clean roots grasped in their hand.

“It was Theo.”

A gunshot rang out, then another, and the two of them shot to their feet in alarm. Yarrow took only a moment to ascertain the direction of the noise before they took off running. Zander followed close behind.

When they found Theo, he was clutching two dead rabbits in his fist, a wide smile on his face as he walked casually toward them.

“I found dinner!” he announced, lifting his hand to show off his catch. Each one had been shot directly through its head, leaving the rest of the meat intact.

Yarrow’s shoulders visibly relaxed, and Zander chuckled in relief knowing Theo was safe, and that he wouldn’t have to live off watercress and broth for the night. He held out his hand, gesturing for Theo to give him the carcasses.