"I'm coming," Agnes said.
Nobody had asked her. She was already pulling on her boots.
"Agnes—"
"You don't know her face," she said. "Gerald saw her once, in the light, from across a kitchen. You've never seen her at all. There are forty people asleep on that straw, and they all have threads, and they'll all look the same to you in the dark." She laced the second boot. "I'd know her with my eyes shut. I'm coming."
Nathan didn't argue. She was right.
"Edmund," he said. "Can you hold a barge against a dock?"
"I held a wall for seven months," Edmund said. "I can hold a barge."
---
They crossed the lake an hour after midnight, with the lantern out and the oars wrapped in cloth.
Agnes rowed. Edmund sat at the stern with the pole. Faen stayed in the middle of the barge beside Amelia, whose hands were still tied, with one hand resting on the rail in case he needed his ice. Mirko and Shiro stayed with them, in their humanoid forms, sitting on either side of the princess.
