"We shouldn't go out by the main door," Kite said as they hurried down the steps.

"No problem." Saryth stopped at one of the windows that lit the narrow stairwell. Kite inspected it. It was small, but not too narrow, and she thought it was the right height from the ground. She gave Saryth a lift up, then hauled herself to the narrow sill and followed him through the window passage to jump to the ground, a drop of about ten feet. It was a short run to a nearby copse, where she could duck out of sight of any guards atop the castle walls. Saryth followed her. He was smiling, but the smile had an odd edge to it she couldn't interpret.

"Won't they come after us?"

"Yes... Let me give them something to do." She raised the staff in her hand, forming the spell in her mind and calling on the power stored within the slender shaft of wood. Somewhere in the bowels of the castle, a coal shifted in an oven. A spark fell from the half-open door and landed on a piece of paper left on the floor. The shouts of the guards, dimly heard in the night, were overtaken by the shrieks of the cooks and kitchen warders as they struggled with the sudden blaze. It should keep them busy, Kite hoped, without being too much to handle.

Saryth was watching her, silent. If the presence of a mage who did not bear the telltale white hair fazed him, it didn't show.

"What about the sun?" he asked. "The one you're looking for?"

"There's nothing shining here." She tried and failed to keep the disappointment from her voice. "I should have known."

"Am I... am I your slave now?" He had turned away, hiding his face behind his hair, which was glinting cream and silver in the moonlight.

Kite was honestly appalled that she had let him think such a thing, a logical assumption from his point of view. She opened her mouth to say something, but then instead reached to the collar and identified the lock. A small, subtle lock, but not one proof against picking. Saryth held still as she worked, tense and wary. It did not take long.

"No," she said in belated reply, as the collar snicked open and fell from round his neck into her hands. She passed it to him. "You belong to you, like you always should have."

Saryth gaped at her. He started to speak, and stopped, looking down at the collar, lying inert and empty in his grasp.

"Where are you going?" he asked finally.

"I'm still looking for the sun."

"Why?" he asked again, as though the answer would be different from what he had heard before.

"Because it's lost," Kite said, and then, by way of elaboration, "it's a terrible thing for a world to lose a sun." She turned away from the castle and the shouts and commands of its inhabitants dealing with their unexpected fire.

"A world... Kite, can I -" he hesitated; she stopped, looking back at him. "Let me come with you?" he asked. "Please!"

She hadn't expected a companion on the journey, certainly not one not of her own people, unfamiliar to world walking. But she wasn't going anywhere outside this world just yet, and it seemed a little unfair to just abandon him in the middle of nowhere, in a world where he was at such a disadvantage already.

"We can walk in the same direction," she offered a compromise. "If you wish."

He dropped the collar and fell in beside her at once, willingly following her direction, although she hadn't said where she was going, nor why. On the other side of the trees, the full moon lit their path away from the castle and its attendant villages, towards a range of hills that stood out even at night. It was a cool, clear night, and walking was easy under the moon.

After a while, he asked:

"How will we know the sun when we see it?"

"It will shine," Kite said, unsure of how literally the phrase should be taken, but certain that it was true. "It's the sun. Nothing else can be quite like it."