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They should have exposed me.”
    “You’re too old to expose,” said Flint, watching the crows in the treetops. “And if they tried I’d stop them.”
    “You always look for me, darling brother. You always know where to find me.”
    Flint looked at her now, as she finally reached for her tattered vest. “Only because you’re so bad at hiding,” he assured her.
    ... only because you’re so bad at hiding . Now, drifting in lucid-trance, those words hung around him.
    “If you’re so bad at hiding then why can I not find you now?”
    “Amberline is older now. Her ways are more sophisticated. Also, it is easier to find someone when they want to be found.”
    There was usually reason behind Oracle’s ramblings, Flint knew.
    “Amber was more disturbed than I realised, wasn’t she? Yesterday, on the hill and in the market. Is she hiding, then? Somewhere I haven’t looked?”
    Oracle’s silence was answer enough. He had looked everywhere she might hide, asked everyone she might be with. He had failed. He had protected her for so long–they had protected each other, in truth–but now he was powerless.
    She might have run away, he would believe that of her. She might even have been foolish enough to take the Tallyman up on his offer of travel and adventure.
    The stupid child did not understand the dangers beyond the safe confines of Trecosann.
    Or perhaps she did. He remembered her as a young girl, curled up and naked at the summit of the Leaving Hill, trying to find a place with the spirits of the Lost.
    Perhaps she understood the dangers all too clearly.
     
     

Chapter 4
    He came to the decision without really thinking much about it. Without Amber what else was there for him in Trecossan? A drunken and violent father. A mother so self-obsessed that he might as well not exist for her. His work on the holding–his father would just as well buy another mutt...
    He spent the rest of the morning revisiting their old haunts and hiding places, asking relatives and friends if they had seen her, making absolutely sure that she had gone.
    And then he set out to follow her.
    Whatever was out there–on the road, in the wilds between settlements–Flint was certain that it would be worse for Amber, a child who had barely set foot outside her home town before now. He, at least, had travelled and had some idea what he was getting himself into.
    And so, now, he stood on the jetty close to Tessum’s brewhouse, having filled his belly with flatcake and fleshfruit. Leda’s ferry would be in soon, and he would be on his way.
    She could, he knew, have set out in any direction from Trecosann, but there was a logic behind his decision to cross the river Elver and head east.
    Not only had Oracle shown him that Amber may well have been more disturbed than he had realised–enough so to run away, perhaps. But Oracle had also reminded him of a time when Aunt Clarel had been a regular visitor, always a calming influence in the family home, always a favourite, in particular, of young Amber.
    If Amber had, indeed, decided to run away, leaving the only place she had ever known, then her most likely destination would be the home of someone she trusted, someone she loved. Clarel lived two days east of Trecosann in the Treco settlement of Greenwater: distant enough to be safe, yet near enough to be a sensible goal.
    It was Oracle’s way to reveal truths obliquely like this, and Flint felt certain that it had drawn his attention to Clarel for a reason. He wondered if Amber had gone to Oracle, too, if Oracle had shown her Clarel, hinted at refuge with a loved relative...
    Or was he clutching at false hopes?
    Another reason to head east was simply that, for part of the way, the road to Greenwater coincided with one of the main trade routes heading south: it would be an obvious way out of Trecosann, and he might find someone who had seen her.
    And if she had been taken–or sold–into the mutt trade, then there were two main routes: if she was