The farther they moved from the capital, the fewer guilds and adventurers they saw.
At first, the roads out of the city had looked almost ridiculous. Too many armed groups, too many banners, too many people trying to look purposeful while secretly hoping someone else would stumble onto the fugitives first. Every inn, checkpoint, and crossroads near the capital had felt swollen with forced loyalty and opportunism.
That thinned quickly. The deeper they went, the more the hunt started losing shape. Groups began to split up.
Some took side roads after hearing rumors from farmers and peddlers. Others pushed toward river crossings or forest routes. A few turned south after apparently deciding that if enough people were chasing east, then the clever move must be somewhere else entirely. The larger formations broke apart into smaller search teams, and the smaller teams started drifting wider and wider, all trying to avoid wasting time on the same ground.
Which only made the whole operation look sloppier. And more suspicious. Because somehow, the pursuers had already lost sight of Rufas and the others during the first night.
That part made no sense.
It would have made sense if the trail had vanished farther east, in the mountains where terrain became ugly enough to swallow men, wagons, and intentions alike. There, paths multiplied, rock ate tracks, and enough natural obstacles existed that a careful group with good support could disappear if they knew what they were doing.
But they hadn’t even gotten that far. There were still two full days of hard travel by fast carriage before reaching the eastern mountains.
On foot, with the number of people the fugitives should have had, Rufas, Gustav’s people, children, wounded prisoners, escorts, it should have taken closer to a week or more.
That kind of group was not supposed to become a ghost while still this far from the real hiding terrain. Jennifer had been thinking the same thing.
“It’s too early for them to have vanished this cleanly,” she said, looking out from beneath her hood as another hunting party disappeared down a lesser road. “Not unless the people chasing them were idiots.”
“Many of them are,” Eclaire said.
“Yes,” Jennifer replied, “but not all of them.”
Rowan kept his eyes on the road ahead. “That size of group should leave traces.”
“Exactly,” Jennifer said.
Ludger, sitting near the front, didn’t answer immediately. Because there were only a few possibilities, and none of them were especially pleasant.
Either the Dalmorens had prepared the escape route far better than most people realized, with staged transfers, hidden support points, fresh carriages, and route manipulation from the first night onward...
Or someone had deliberately muddied the chase. Maybe both.
A group carrying wounded nobles, tortured prisoners, and children did not simply outrun the capital’s fastest first response by moving quickly. Not unless the initial trail had been obscured, split, fed with false leads, or folded into protected logistics almost immediately.
Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly. That implied preparation with depth. Not desperation.
Which, in turn, meant the Dalmoren extraction had not been some panicked rescue improvised at the last second. They had probably expected to move soon and had built enough support in advance that, once the window opened, they could vanish before the larger hunt properly stabilized.
Eclaire was quiet for a few moments before speaking.
“If they already had route support ready,” she said, “then they weren’t just planning to get Rufas out.”
“No,” Ludger said. “They were planning to survive after.”
That distinction mattered. A rescue was one thing. An escape chain was another.
Fresh horses, safe houses, controlled transfers, loyal guides, shadow routes, hidden storage, false tracks, bribed locals, intercepted reports, those required organization. Money too. Old money. The kind of influence a great house could still wield even when its official position was already collapsing.
Jennifer looked back toward the road behind them, where the signs of other pursuers had grown sparse.
“So the hunt is spreading wider because no one actually knows where to search anymore.”
“Yes.”
“And if that keeps happening,” Rowan said, “eventually people start searching based on what they want to be true instead of what the trail says.”
Ludger gave a small nod. That was already happening.
Some groups wanted glory, so they chased the most dramatic paths. Some wanted safety, so they stayed near roads and called it diligence. Some wanted imperial favor, so they followed whatever rumor sounded closest to official expectation. Every hour without a confirmed direction made the larger operation weaker.
Good for the Dalmorens. Potentially bad for Ludger, if the useful people disappeared too thoroughly before he reached them.
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The carriage rolled on, passing stretches of road that had already begun to feel less crowded, less watched, more uncertain. The capital’s will still reached here, but less directly. Farther out, the hunt no longer felt like a crushing net and more like a bunch of knives thrown into fog.
That made the silence between road groups feel sharper. Even the land seemed to agree something was wrong. Too early. Too clean. Too much uncertainty for a group that should have been dragging half-dead prisoners and terrified children behind them.
Eclaire folded her arms beneath the cloak.
“If they disappeared this fast,” she said quietly, “then either they’re much more capable than the capital wants people to believe...” Her eyes shifted toward Ludger. “Or someone else wants them hidden.”
Ludger didn’t answer right away. Because that was the real question, wasn’t it? Had the Dalmorens simply prepared well enough to humiliate the capital’s first chase even though they had to basically wait for Ludger to give them an opening?
Or had another hand entered the board after the escape and helped erase them? The possibility sat there between all of them.
Ludger looked ahead at the road stretching east.
“Either way,” he said, “the others are already wasting time.”
Jennifer glanced at him. “And us?”
Ludger’s expression remained flat.
“We’ll see whether the Dalmorens made a clean escape,” he said, “or whether someone is teaching the Empire how to lose them on purpose.”
That answer did not comfort anyone. Which was appropriate, because comfort had very little place left in this trip anyway.
Eclaire stayed quiet for a while after that, then finally asked the question sitting over all of them.
“How are you planning to search for them?”
Ludger didn’t answer immediately.
The runic carriage kept moving along the road, the wheels humming softly while the last traces of heavier traffic from the capital thinned behind them. Outside, the land had opened up more, and the gaps between travelers had grown long enough that even the hunt started to feel less like an operation and more like a rumor dragging weapons around.
“They couldn’t have vanished like this without a good plan,” Ludger said at last.
That much was obvious.
Not just a decent escape. Not just courage and loyal men riding hard through the night. A real plan. One prepared in layers. Routes, support, timing, misdirection, and somewhere in all of that, a place to disappear that the capital’s first response would fail to read correctly.
“My guess,” Ludger continued, “is that they’re either hidden inside a labyrinth controlled by one of their allies... or they’re still pretty close to the capital.”
That made Eclaire turn toward him fully. Jennifer’s eyes sharpened. Even Rowan, who had been calmly following the road ahead, glanced back.
Eclaire frowned. “Wouldn’t that be too dangerous?”
Then, after thinking about the actual shape of both possibilities, she added, “And insane?”
Ludger shrugged faintly.
“Under most circumstances, yes.”
That was what made the options attractive. He rested an elbow against the side of the carriage and looked ahead while speaking in that same dry, practical tone that somehow made dangerous ideas sound like simple bookkeeping.
“Which is exactly why no one would expect either one.”
That was the key.
If the fugitives had truly disappeared during the first night, then their route probably hadn’t been built around outrunning the Empire in a straight line. It had been built around breaking expectation. Most pursuers thought in distance first. East. Mountains. Border. Flight. Safety through movement.
But if the Dalmorens had understood how the Regent would spread the hunt, then the better answer might not have been to run far.
It might have been to run wrong. Hide in a place too dangerous or too close for most people to think worth checking first.
“It’s been almost ten days since they escaped,” Ludger said. “If they wanted pure distance, they could have reached the border by now.”
Jennifer nodded slowly. “Especially if they had support and carriage swaps.”
“Yes.”
“And yet,” Ludger went on, “it doesn’t look like the Regent warned other countries properly. Or at least not in a way that would matter. No real coordinated requests. No obvious shared pursuit.”
That part had been bothering him.
A ruler who truly believed dangerous traitors were fleeing the Empire, traitors who had allegedly tried to kill the child Emperor, should have widened the hunt beyond his borders immediately. Border lords, neighboring territories, allied states, hostile states, opportunists, spies, everyone should have been fed the same version of the story and told to grab the fugitives if they crossed.
That didn’t seem to be happening. Not cleanly. Not hard enough. Eclaire let out a small breath through her nose.
“Not like they could, even if they wanted.”
That made Ludger glance at her.
Eclaire’s eyes were distant for a second, fixed somewhere beyond the road and beyond the hunt itself.
“The Regent has been even harsher with diplomacy lately,” she said. “More arrogant. More rigid. He keeps pushing as if other countries are supposed to endure his tone just because he rules the Empire.”
Jennifer frowned faintly. “That bad?”
Eclaire nodded. “Worse than before.”
That fit. Too well.
If the Regent had been tightening his grip internally while also worsening his posture externally, then the Empire’s diplomatic reach was probably weaker in practice than its official image suggested. He could issue demands. He could threaten. He could posture.
That did not mean neighboring powers would cooperate eagerly to clean up his internal purge for him. Ludger gave a small nod.
“That would explain it.”
He leaned back slightly as the thought connected to something else.
“And it explains why it’s been so long since Linne and Dalan showed up at Lionfang.” His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Or even at the capital.”
That made Rowan glance at him more closely.
The absence of people like them had been noticeable before, but in the current light it gained sharper edges. Traders, contacts, outsiders with enough reason to keep a relationship with both the frontier and the wider political structure did not simply stop appearing for no reason. If the Empire’s diplomatic air had turned sour enough, then distance would start showing up in places far from official halls.
Eclaire crossed her arms.
“So if the border isn’t the obvious answer... you think they chose something the Regent’s people would consider too absurd to prioritize.”
“Yes.”
Jennifer thought for a moment. “A labyrinth controlled by allies would be hard to search thoroughly.”
“And politically annoying,” Ludger said. “Which makes it better.”
Because yes, if a great house had hidden assets tied to a labyrinth, especially one managed through indirect influence, searching it aggressively would require exposing names, pulling favors, or forcing local powers to reveal where they stood. That took time. It created witnesses. It created excuses for delay.
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