The city's famous bridge gleamed white in the morning sun.
Spencer had seen it in his mind a hundred times — described in the books as a single span of impossible grace, built by Aes Sedai during the Age of Legends when channelers could shape stone like clay. The reality was more impressive than words could capture. The bridge arced across the Arinelle in a curve that defied physics, its surface unmarred by two thousand years of use.
Beautiful. And somewhere in the city on the other side, something is waiting to kill us.
The Spray docked at the western landing, and Spencer's Thread Sight immediately found what he was looking for.
A cold spot. A void in the Pattern. A hole where a person should be but wasn't.
Myrddraal. At the far end of the bridge. Watching the crossing.
"We have a problem," Spencer said quietly.
Thom's hand moved to the daggers hidden in his sleeves. "Where?"
"Other side of the bridge. You won't see it until we're closer."
"How do you—" Thom stopped himself. They didn't have time for questions. "What's the plan?"
"We split. You take the bridge — create a distraction. Rand, Mat, and I go around."
"There is no around. The bridge is the only crossing for fifty miles."
Spencer's mind raced. In the books, Thom had fought the Myrddraal alone, buying the boys time to escape. He'd survived — barely — but only because the Myrddraal had been focused on killing rather than chasing.
If I change the scenario, the Myrddraal might pursue us instead. Three untrained boys against a Fade...
"Distraction it is," he said finally. "But you run when it's done. Don't try to kill it — just slow it down."
Thom's thread rippled with something that might have been amusement. "You're giving orders now?"
"Someone has to."
---
They crossed the bridge in a scattered group.
Rand walked beside Spencer, his golden thread blazing with barely controlled fear. Mat slouched behind them, sullen and watchful, his corruption-darkened thread pulsing with paranoid energy. Thom ranged ahead, his patched cloak making him look like exactly what he claimed to be: a traveling gleeman looking for his next audience.
The Myrddraal revealed itself when they were halfway across.
It stepped from behind a pillar at the bridge's far end — a figure in black, eyeless face turned toward them with predatory precision. Its thread was nothing: a void, an absence, a hole in reality that made Spencer's stomach turn.
"Run," Thom said.
And then the gleeman was moving, daggers appearing in his hands, his body positioning itself between the Myrddraal and the boys. His thread flared with desperate purpose, and Spencer grabbed Rand's arm and pulled.
"MOVE!"
They ran. Past Thom, past the Myrddraal's reaching grasp, into the streets of Whitebridge where alleys and crowds could hide them. Behind them, the clash of steel against steel — Thom's daggers meeting the Fade's black blade.
Spencer didn't look back. He couldn't afford to look back.
But he kept Thread Sight active, tracking Thom's thread from the corner of his awareness.
Fraying. Thinning. Taking damage.
But not snapping. Not dying.
He's going to survive.
The relief was bitter and sharp. Spencer had confirmed a man's fate through supernatural vision and chosen not to help. Chosen to run while Thom bled.
This is what survival looks like. This is the cost of playing the long game.
They ran until the sounds of fighting faded behind them.
---
"We have to go back." Rand's voice cracked with desperation. "Thom — we can't just leave him—"
"We can and we did." Mat's tone was flat, his thread dark with the paranoia that colored everything now. "The old man made his choice. We make ours."
"Mat—"
"He's right." Spencer hated the words even as he spoke them. "Thom bought us time. We use it or we waste his sacrifice."
"He might still be alive!"
He is alive. I can see his thread from here — damaged but holding.
"Then he'll find us. But if we go back now, we die — and he dies having bled for nothing."
Rand's thread blazed with anger and grief. For a moment, Spencer thought the young man might hit him. Then Rand's shoulders slumped, the fight going out of him like air from a punctured balloon.
"Which way?" Rand asked quietly.
"East. Caemlyn road."
They walked in silence, three boys who'd left a man behind, and Spencer counted the distance in guilt and miles.
---
Five miles from Whitebridge, they stopped at a stream.
Spencer washed his hands — they were covered in blood he didn't remember getting. His knuckles had split somewhere during the escape, probably from gripping the bridge railing too hard. The water ran pink, then clear, and the pain was sharp and grounding.
Thom's alive. I didn't abandon him to die.
But I abandoned him. That's what matters. That's what I'll remember.
Mat sat apart, watching the road behind them with hollow eyes. His thread pulsed with suspicion — of Rand, of Spencer, of the trees and the water and the empty sky. The corruption was feeding on his fear, twisting everything into threat.
Rand just stared at nothing, his golden thread dim with exhaustion and loss.
I'm in charge now. By default. Because nobody else is capable of making decisions.
Spencer finished washing his hands and stood.
"Four days to Caemlyn," he said. "We travel by day, hide by night. We avoid main roads when possible."
"You know the way?" Rand asked.
"I know enough."
I know the books. I know the geography. I know that somewhere between here and Caemlyn, Darkfriend hunters are going to find us.
And I know that if Mat doesn't hold together, none of it matters.
They started walking. Three boys on an empty road, carrying everything they had and nothing they needed.
Behind them, Whitebridge burned in memory. Ahead, the world waited with teeth.
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