“Did you see that?” a street urchin whispered, crouched behind a stack of crates in the market. “The bridge… it moved for them… and not for the guards.”

“They’re learning,” Nessa Vale said, crouching beside the boy. Her ink-stained fingers traced a faint glyph on the edge of a crate, one she had improvised hours earlier. “Not because anyone told them. Because they’re noticing, helping, listening to each other.”

Jorin Ashfall appeared from a narrow alley, carrying a ...