Elias landed on his feet, if somewhat on an angle. More specifically, he landed on a single-story building beside Adelbury City Hall. A sleigh of broken snow slid down the gable roof behind him, but Elias only slipped for a second on the slate shingles, steadying his balance before creating more distance between him and his crime.

Carefully, he crested the roof's sharp peak before checking the window he had jumped out of seconds earlier. One of the city guards appeared inside its frame. The man put a foot on the window ledge. Elias doubted him. He examined the jump. It wasn't actually a difficult one. The man need not be a collector to follow his trail.

Elias abandoned caution in favor of haste. He ran down the roof and jumped a few feet onto another. Buildings in Adelbury were packed closely together, if not quite as tightly as they were in Sailor's Rise. He heard the guard land less elegantly than he had, though successfully all the same. The man stood up, scaled the same peak, and sprinted onward. Elias did likewise, one roof ahead of him. He jumped again.

They ran in shadow. Streetlamps did not illuminate the tops of buildings, though the nearly full moon reflected brightly off sparkling snow. Elias was making powder of it. Was Briley witnessing this from below? Was anyone else? It must have been quite the sight: two men leaping across roofs as if putting on a performance.

There was, in fact, someone Elias noticed keeping up with them on the cobblestone street. It was the other guard, ready to apprehend him if he jumped down. He had no time to think. Instinct had led him here, and instinct would have to find him a way forward.

The sight had never failed him before, he told himself, except when he missed.

Elias finally slowed when he neared the next jump, which looked about ten feet across, a path below dividing the two buildings. His pursuer would catch up with him if he dallied much longer, leaving him with two choices. He could stop and fight or he could speed up. Choosing the latter, Elias sprinted, sprung, and soared from the roof edge with a collector's strength and a dreamer's hope.

He crashed onto the far roof and fell on his elbows—but not on the ground below. He had made the jump. He picked himself up and peered back to see the roof-hopping guard pause before the ledge, astonished and evaluating his own acrobatic prowess.

Elias skipped onward, pleased with himself if not yet out of danger. And then, just as he stepped out of sight, he felt a shingle crack underfoot. Shale and snow slid down the gable roof like an avalanche down a mountainside, and he slid with it.

A pile of shoveled snow at least made for a softer landing this time. Elias brushed himself off as he regained his bearings. He had fallen into an alley between two parallel roads. Before he could ask his sight which direction he ought to run, however, the decision was made for him. The second guard appeared to his left, a tall woman who had been trailing him from the ground, and so Elias ran rightward.

She was fast, but Elias was a little faster, even with his twisted ankle. Still, he was worried she might shoot him, and so rather than running out of town, he weaved around strangers toward the faint patter of a distant crowd. The route took him over the bustling Laurel Canal, where families skated beneath the stone bridge he crossed like airships swerving for supremacy in The Emerald Cup.

The female city guard was still on his heels, though he appeared to have lost the other one. Was the poor guy still stuck on that roof, he wondered, debating that ten-foot jump? Or had he already tried and failed? Would Elias be morally responsible for the man's injuries?

The Elm Theater loomed ahead of him.

People were pouring out of the colossal building, meaning a show must have just ended. How serendipitous, Elias thought. There was no bigger crowd in all of Adelbury than the crowd outside the Elm Theater.

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He ran faster, ignoring the pain shooting up his ankle. He joined them—hundreds of theatergoers, tall and small, laughing and hollering as friends gathered and children burst into chase—like a lone bird weaving back into its flock. He slowed his pace. He made himself an inch shorter.

And then he spotted a sharply dressed snowman. Had this been Sailor's Rise, Elias did not doubt that the scarf, pipe, and top hat adorning the frozen fellow would have been promptly procured by an opportunistic sort about as soon as the sun slipped from view. This was not Sailor's Rise, but Elias was a man of his adopted city.

He swiped the black hat, fitting it onto his human head like a man on the town. A child somewhere behind him protested the crime—"That's not yours!"—but no one seemed to pay her any mind, or perhaps they simply did not believe, as children do, in the inanimate ownership of property.

Elias stayed close to a large, disorganized group, peeking over his shoulder with the slightest turn of his neck. It took him a moment to find her again. There were two guards now, wading through the crowd, both of them headed in the wrong direction.

That was good, but he still needed to lose his wool coat. He was confident he'd kept enough distance to conceal his face, for he had not properly seen theirs, but the clay-colored garment was a problem. It was far too cold to simply abandon, and a coatless man would stand out, besides.

Unless he was inside.

When the gaggle of theatergoers passed by a warmly lit pub, Elias swung open its parsley green door and sauntered in like a regular patron. He settled into a seat along the far end of the U-shaped bar, maximizing his distance from the front door as he removed his coat but kept on his recently acquired hat.

Like The Peddler's Compromise, The Pig and Pickle—that was this tightly packed pub's name—was festively decorated for Solstice Eve, and Elias felt as if his night had somehow come full circle. This would prove even truer in a second.

For the first person he recognized to step through that front door was not a city guard but a friend—a partner in business and, evidently, crime. She did not spot him immediately, searching the room, budging her way past shoulders, and he took this as a positive sign that his casual disguise was working. She furrowed her brow when they finally matched eyes.

"Fancy seeing you here" was Elias's way of saying hello.

Briley dragged over a free stool from a nearby title, positioning herself in front of him. "I figured you would lay low in a tavern," she said.

"There's no better place," he replied.

"I lost you out front the Elm Theater, so I imagine the city guards lost you too, but don't be surprised if they come barging through that door in a moment. They're still searching for you."

"Aye. Thus, the hat and lack of coat. I couldn't exactly take it off outside. I don't think they saw my face."

She nodded. "Nor mine, but let's not stand out." She knocked twice on the beer-stained bar and ordered them each a pint.

Elias could have sworn it was the same ale they had imbibed earlier that evening, not that he was complaining. He was as thirsty as he was desperate for a drink. He chugged back half his beer without thinking about it, his body taking over. He supposed he had run a minor marathon across the city. He was parched. "Perhaps I should order some water," he said.

Briley shook her head. "No one else is drinking water."

"Right. Don't stand out. I've no choice but to pound back these beers."

And then, just as Briley foretold, the front door swung open as a familiar city guard stepped inside, the one who had chased Elias across a dozen roofs. The man had not broken any limbs at least. Elias assumed he'd abandoned their last jump, though clearly not his pursuit. His conscience lighter, the former man buried his nose in his pint, head bent like a dog scavenging for table scraps at the bottom of a bucket.

"Don't be weird," Briley told him. "Laugh at my joke."

"What joke?" Elias's voice echoed inside his glass.

"Laugh," she said again. "Don't overdo it."

Elias chuckled, artificially and then for real. "That was a good one, Briley."

"Eyes me on me," she said, grinning, and he couldn't quite tell whether hers was entirely a performance.

They exchanged more empty words and awkward laughs that seemed to grow in sincerity for what felt like an immeasurable stretch of time, until at last they subtly confirmed that, yes, the guard was gone and Elias—Elias was free.

He sighed his relief. "That was close."

"Too close." Briley said. "Imagine how stupid we would have felt if you'd been caught. Imagine Bertrand's clever disappointment."

"He need only know the positive outcome." Elias removed his top hat, leaving it on the bar (where it would remain upon their departure). "Good thing we already have the beers we so desperately need. Be glad for once, Briley. It's done. Not only my escape, but our… situation. The audit. We won't lose our seat, and I won't lose my leverage with the Valshynar and my tenuous freedom along with it. Not today anyway."

Briley slackened her stiff spine and raised a glass between them. "Today is all we can ever ask for, I guess."

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