Nathan made the decision before the tray had reached the tower door.
"Tonight," he said.
Faen looked up from his notebook, and for a moment it seemed he would argue, but then he looked across the water at the village on the lake road, where thirty new threads had appeared that afternoon, and he closed the book instead.
"Tomorrow there will be two hundred more," Nathan said. "And the day after that, two hundred more again. Every day we wait, he wins a little more."
Nobody disagreed with him.
He went over the plan once, quickly, while Agnes untied the barge. The summons would come with him into the tower, all five of them. Faen would stay on the barge with Agnes, Rose, Edmund and Amelia, and if anything came near it, they would push off and go.
"I could help you inside," Faen said.
"You can help me more out here. If I don't come back down, somebody has to get Amelia to her brother and tell the prince everything we know." Nathan held his eyes. "That's you."
