They watched the group melt into Shahr's crowd.
Yami waved until they were completely out of sight, his whole arm going back and forth. "Goodbye. Come back safely, and don't get lost."
Then he turned back to the shop with the businesslike efficiency of someone whose sentiment has a timer on it.
Mina stood at the edge of the stall a moment longer, watching the space where they had been.
After a while Yami appeared at her elbow. "Auntie."
She looked down at him.
"You should go sit inside. You'll get tired standing here," he said with the particular directness of a child who hasn't yet learned to wrap concern in anything softer.
Mina lowered herself slightly to his level. "Thank you for asking, Yami."
She went inside and sat in the small back room where they had talked before, and the noise of the shop drifted through the thin wall.
Haqi's voice greeting customers, the clink of coins, Yami's smaller voice chiming in occasionally.
Mina listened and replayed the last clear image she had of Mayo, trying to hold it still.
A customer was talking to Haqi just outside the room.
"You see today's news sheet?"
"Haven't had a chance," Haqi said.
"They caught one of the Glimmers, one of the people involved in the princess's kidnapping. Brought him in late last night."
A brief pause, then the soft clink of something set on the counter.
"The Six Heirs are out searching now. Anyone who looks even slightly out of place is getting pulled in for questioning."
"How did it escalate this fast?" Haqi asked.
"That's the world for ya." The man let out a quiet breath. "Anyway, I should get going. Be careful out there."
Footsteps faded into the distance. Then came silence, followed by the ordinary sounds of the shop settling back into place.
Mina stepped out from the back room. "Can I help with something?"
"You don't have to do that," Haqi said.
"I'd like to, if you tell me what to do," she said. Not pleading, just sincere.
Haqi glanced toward Yami, who was sitting nearby sorting through a basket of dried fruit and picking out the spoiled ones.
"Well, if you really want something to do," he said, pointing toward him, "you can help Yami with those."
She walked over and sat beside Yami, then began sorting through the basket with him. Her hands kept moving, but her thoughts were somewhere else entirely.
He'll be fine, she told herself. They would find him.
She kept working.
Toviro and Aryan moved toward the official quarter of the city, following directions Haqi had given them that morning along with a warning to keep their questions careful near anything that looked like authority.
The streets here were wider and quieter than Shahr's market district, the buildings more uniform, the people moving through them with more purpose and less conversation.
Guard posts stood at regular intervals, each one staffed by soldiers wearing the same familiar armor they had seen on others throughout the city.
They stopped at a vendor positioned near a barracks wall, the kind of stall that exists everywhere soldiers work because soldiers need to eat.
Aryan approached the vendor. "Hello."
The man looked up and gave a polite smile. "Hello, sir. What would you like to have?"
"Actually, we wanted to ask if you've seen a young man around here," Aryan said. "reddish-brown hair, black eyes."
The vendor brought a hand to his mouth and looked upward in thought. "Hmm. A boy with reddish-brown hair—"
"He's tall and lean," Toviro added. "And he wears unusual clothes."
The vendor's expression softened into an apologetic smile. "Sorry, boys, but I haven't seen anyone like that."
"Thank you, sir," Toviro said.
They moved on.
Up ahead stood a large stone building guarded by armored soldiers. They couldn't read the words written above the entrance, but the atmosphere around it made its purpose obvious.
Aryan looked toward it. "That must be the police station of this place."
Toviro studied the building for a moment. "Yeah. It's probably called the Guard Station or something similar."
"Shouldn't we go there and ask for help?" Aryan asked.
Toviro was quiet for a moment. "They'll ask us questions in return. Who we are, where we're from, what our connection to the missing person is. We have no answers that hold up."
He looked at the building. "The better choice is to keep searching ourselves first. If we still can't find him, then we'll come back with Haqi and ask for their help."
Aryan accepted that, and they continued through the official quarter, giving the same description and getting the same replies—each one adding to the weight settling over them.
Ozair's approach to searching was completely different from Aryan's.
He would stop at a stall intending to ask about Mayo, only to end up twenty seconds later holding some strange object in his hands, turning it over while asking what material it was made from.
Then Elina would appear beside him and pull him away, and Ozair would insist he was focused. Thirty seconds later, they would reach another stall, and the exact same thing would happen with something else.
"Ozair," Elina said, for what felt like the ninth time.
"I know."
"Mayo."
"I know. It's just that these wind chimes are made from a mineral that only forms near the base of the western mountains, and they resonate differently depending on which moon is—"
She pulled him forward.
They had worked their way toward the edge of the market near the city gate when Elina noticed a beggar sitting against the wall. His clothes were worn thin in several places, and the bowl resting in his hands was cracked along one side.
There was something steady and watchful about him, like someone who spent every day in the same place, quietly observing the people who passed by.
"He seems to be here every day," Elina said quietly.
Ozair followed her gaze, then nodded. "Let's ask him."
They crossed over to him.
Ozair crouched down to meet the man at eye level. "Hey. We're looking for a friend of ours. Young guy, about this tall," he said, standing briefly to demonstrate before crouching again. "reddish-brown hair, black eyes. Have you seen anyone like that?"
The man lifted his cracked bowl without saying a word.
Ozair and Elina exchanged a look.
"We don't have any money," Elina said carefully. "We lost our friend, and we're trying to find him. If you know something, please."
"Hard to know things when nothing's coming in," the man replied.
Ozair pressed his teeth together and stayed silent.
Elina looked down at the bracelet around her wrist. It was thin and simply made, but the metal was good, and the clasp was real silver.
Her mother had given it to her on a birthday that now felt very far away.
She unclasped it and held it out toward the man.
"Elina," Ozair said immediately. "That's worth more than..."
The man's hand closed around the bracelet before Ozair could finish the sentence.
Ozair started forward, but Elina placed a hand on his arm. "It's alright," she said quietly.
Then she looked at the man. "Now tell us."
He looked at the bracelet once, confirming it was what it appeared to be, then pocketed it.
"Last night," he said. "Late. A group of mounted soldiers came through the gate from the eastern forest road. They had someone draped across one of the horses. Hands chained, feet chained. I couldn't see his face from where I was, but the hair matched what you're describing."
Ozair exhaled through his nose. "Where did they take him?"
"First night, anyone arrested goes to the district Guard Station. That's procedure. After that, if the crime is serious enough, they move the person to the Garrison."
"He's not a criminal," Ozair said, his voice tightening.
"I'm not saying he is. I'm saying what I saw." The man paused. "One more thing. If the Heirs took personal interest in this case, then may God help him—"
Ozair was already standing and turning when his eyes caught someone nearly thirty feet away, moving with the flow of people toward the inner market. The build was right. The height was right. The hair was the exact shade of reddish-brown he had been describing to strangers all morning.
"That's him," Ozair said.
He took Elina's hand and moved, pulling her with him into the crowd, angling toward the figure. Elina looked and felt her own pulse jump.
"Ozair, the man was still—"
"Look at him, Elina. Same height, same hair—"
The figure turned into a narrow passage between two buildings and Ozair went in after him, Elina right behind, and they were halfway through when the figure reached the far end and turned.
It wasn't Mayo.
It was a man twenty years older with the same reddish-brown hair. He glanced at them and walked on.
Elina didn't have time to stop.
She walked directly into someone coming from the opposite direction and went down, her hands catching the ground.
The person she had walked into stepped back, and when Ozair turned to help her up he found himself looking at four boys in matching uniforms. White tops, a red cloth folded at the collar, dark trousers, a small emblem on the chest he didn't recognize.
One of them, standing slightly ahead of the others, looked down at Elina on the ground and let out a low whistle. "Now that's something," he said, his gaze drifting over Elina like she was scenery. "So sexy."
The word had barely finished leaving his mouth before Ozair turned to face them fully. "You got a problem?"
The boy smiled, lazy and unbothered. "Not with you." His eyes drifted back to Elina. "We've just got a little—love for the girl over there."
Something shifted in Ozair's chest, quiet and controlled, but unmistakably hot. He took one step forward.
Elina placed a hand on his arm. "Don't do this."
Then she looked at the boys. "I apologize for not watching where I was going."
Another one smiled, though there was nothing polite in it. "Forgiven, pretty girl."
Ozair spoke with visible effort to keep his voice even. "You boys in school?"
The first one looked mildly surprised at being addressed. "Big Lore Academy. First ranked in the whole kingdom. Wasn't it obvious from the uniform?"
"Good," Ozair said. "Then you're young enough that I'll let this go." He looked at Elina. "Let's move."
He had turned halfway when the water hit him.
A wire of it, thin and fast, came from behind and caught the side of his head, not enough to hurt seriously but enough to make a point.
Elina's sharp inhale came first. "Water—"
Ozair turned around with Nyro already forming on his right hand.
He raised his palm and pushed, expecting earth to surge forward.
Earth came up from the ground beside the passage, split left, and hit the wall of the adjacent building, accomplishing nothing.
The boy who had thrown the water glanced at Nyro clenched in Ozair's fist, then raised his own hand. A controlled column of earth surged up from beneath the stone walkway and slammed into Ozair's jaw.
He went up and back and hit the ground with his shoulders, Nyro gone, breathing hard.
Elina's voice cracked across the air, "Ozair!"
One of the boys looked at Nyro fading and said, "A summoning tattoo. On someone like you."
She looked at him, crumpled on the ground and motionless for a moment, then turned back just as one of the boys broke away from the group and started toward her.
Unhurried. Smiling.
"Hey." He raised a hand, reaching toward her cheek. "Baby. Come on, now."
Inside her mind, Elina's thoughts were moving faster than her breathing.
How are they using powers like ours?
She didn't have time to answer the question.
Atar answered before the thought had even fully formed.
It crystallized into her palm, her bow taking shape from condensed air as the familiar tension of the string settled between her fingers.
She pulled it back, feeling the arrow begin to form, compressed current gathering into something sharp and focused.
It didn't hold.
The shape frayed apart. The air scattered instead of sharpening, slipping from her grip before it could fully form. A rough gust burst forward anyway, more wind than weapon.
The boy raised both hands and fire appeared in front of him like a flat wall and the push dissolved against it.
"So, you also have summoning tattoo." He clicked his tongue, stepping forward again. "How useless for people like you."
He stepped toward her.
She stepped back, reforming Atar, the bow coming together better this time, an arrow of air building tighter.
She released.
It hit his shoulder and he moved sideways from it but kept coming, and his hand came up toward her.
Then a rough line of earth erupted from the passage floor between them.
Not powerful. Not the clean controlled surge any of them could have produced at full strength. Just a barrier, uneven and knee-high, that broke the space between the boy and Elina and made him stop.
Ozair was on one knee now. Blood had wet the corner of his mouth. He wiped it with the back of his wrist and thought, Why can't I use it properly?
He forced himself to his feet. Nyro appeared in his right hand once more. He licked the blood from his lips and said, "Doesn't matter. I still have my fists."
The fire user boy charged forward.
Before the flames could reach him, Ozair's right fist slammed into the boy's face. The fire vanished instantly, as if it had never existed.
The boy was sent flying sideways and crashed hard against the cobblestones, unconscious and bleeding.
The three remaining boys stared in shock.
"He took Zech down with one hit—"
They attacked at once.
The earth user dropped low and slammed both hands against the ground. A wave of stone ripped forward across the street, aimed straight for Ozair's legs.
Above it, the water user drew his arm back, a compressed sphere of water spinning above his palm, growing denser and heavier with each second.
And the second fire user was already charging forward, hurling fireball after fireball ahead of him, streaking the air with orange and gold.
"Huh," Ozair said. "There are two fire users?"
Three attacks. Three directions. All converging at once.
Ozair turned his back on them and sprinted straight at the wall.
The attacks closed in behind him, earth tearing across the street, fire racing through the air, the water sphere spinning toward his back.
His boot hit the wall.
One step.
Two.
Push.
He launched himself backward just as the fire and stone slammed into the wall beneath him.
On the way down, his heel crashed into the fire user's temple, knocking him out instantly before Ozair landed in a crouch.
By the time Ozair landed, the water sphere hit him like a battering ram.
The impact lifted Ozair off his feet and slammed him into the wall. The full weight of the water slammed into him, crushing him against the stone.
He couldn't breathe.
Couldn't move.
Water pinned his arms, filled his vision, roared in his ears.
Then it collapsed, splashing apart and raining down around him.
Ozair slid down the wall and dropped to both knees. Blood ran from where his head had struck the stone. He pressed a hand against the ground and forced himself to breathe.
"Think you're so tough, huh."
The water user walked toward him slowly, hands loose at his sides, confident. Behind him, the fire user staggered back to his feet, blood running from both nostrils.
Ozair looked up at them.
He spat blood, grinned through the cut, and said, "You bet I am," before pushing himself back to his feet.
His feet found their rhythm before his head had fully cleared, the old footwork returning automatically, the fighter's bounce, weight shifting heel to toe and back again, fists raised and elbows tucked in.
He circled once.
Then he rushed the water user like he had something to prove.
The boy's hands shot up, water rapidly forming into a shield, but Ozair's first punch blasted through it and smashed into his nose.
Water exploded apart.
The second and third punches smashed across his face before the fourth crashed into his right eye.
By then the boy's guard had completely fallen apart, his arms flailing while water sprayed uselessly around him.
Then the fifth punch came so fast it blurred, slamming directly into the bridge of his nose and sending him crumpling sideways.
Behind Ozair, the fire user was already swinging, a burning slash cutting toward his back hot enough to scorch the air itself.
Ozair grabbed the collapsing boy by the collar and yanked him into the attack.
The flames slammed into the water user's back. He let out a broken sound and went completely limp.
The fire user's mouth dropped open.
Ozair was already moving.
He crossed the distance in two strides and drove a kick into the side of the boy's skull with a sharp crack that echoed through the alley.
The boy dropped.
Silence returned to the alley.
Ozair stood between the bodies, chest rising and falling, blood running down from the cut at his hairline.
He turned his head.
The earth user was still standing, frozen in place.
Ozair looked at him. "You want some too?"
The last boy, the one who had been working earth, looked at the three on the ground and looked at Ozair standing over them and ran.
Ozair watched him disappear around the corner.
Then his knees finally gave out, and he dropped to one knee, breathing hard like someone who had just spent more strength than he actually had left.
Elina was there immediately, crouching in front of him. "Are you alright? I'm sorry, this happened because of me—"
"Don't apologize," Ozair said. "I let them talk like that. That's on me."
He looked up at her and managed a grin through the blood. "You really think those sorry guys can beat me?"
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it, small and warm, relief slipping through the edges of it.
"Of course not," she said.
Elina smiled despite everything and pulled a piece of cloth from inside her jacket. She pressed it gently against the cut above his ear, and Ozair let her, his breathing slowly beginning to steady.
Then a shadow fell across both of them.
They looked up.
A soldier stood at the entrance of the passage in full armor, a spear held upright in one hand, looking at the three unconscious boys, then at Ozair and Elina, then back at the boys.
"What happened here?" the soldier asked slowly.