Emme's face was pressed against the floor of the rocking kint, and every crashing bump and violent shudder shook her from her sleep and made her head ache. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes to the blinding light issued from the skylight. Above her the treetops were moving, and the clouds following slowly behind them; they were clearly on the road once more.

The kint was cramped like a closet, without room even for a bed and barely enough for her to sleep on the floor. She felt her legs prickle as the blood rushed to them, and she sat up clumsily on a crate, eyeing herself critically in the ornate mirror on the door.

She touched her cheek and pulled her skin taught, and rubbed at the black marks on her face. Looking down, she could finally see what she had been sleeping on - newspapers.

There were dozens of them, probably not intended for use as bedding; she could see the Kingsway Post, looking decidedly worse for wear and more letter-heavy than she had remembered it, as well as the Vienda Weekly. It was strange to see those papers again, and she felt a pang of homesickness that caused her to pick one up.

Emme was not a good reader; she had taken clandestine lessons from her auntie when she was young, but it had never seemed important to her. Now she felt frustrated by the impassable wall of words before her, so full of information she could barely access, and began to sound out words to herself in the half-lit kint, barely audible over the rattle of the wheels.

The first thing she noticed about the Kingsway Press was the header; the cheerful, inflammatory design was gone, replaced by an economical and efficient format. Three long columns of solid text - no pictures. Tiny words, legible but barely, written in shorthand with simple diction, clearly made to be read by humans. She passed her eyes over the headers and became engrossed with the puzzle of the words themselves.

Prison camps, said the paper to her; prison camps outside of Knowles, holding dissidents and outspoken above-ground protesters and captured freedom fighters. Torture, said another paragraph; Emme would have never believed it a few months ago. The words spoke of editors that had taken over the more respectable newspapers, and had shut down the Post itself before it had gone underground. They spoke of wick settlers moving into - what was this word? Anhau? She sounded it out, but it was unfamiliar to her. She learned of taxes, the Mugrobi troops being used as an excuse to justify any amount of spending and domestic spying. With a jolt, she read the name William Azmus, and how he had just been reelected by a majority vote.

She hurriedly flipped to the other paper, the Weekly, which was a galdori publication. Apart from the usual fluff pieces on the theatre and the future system of locomotives (whatever that was) there was article upon article discussing politics, foreign policy and law. Most used words larger than Emme was prepared to deal with, but she got the gist after a difficult fifteen minutes. The galdori were upset as well, upset with the spying and the internal dissent among the Chairs of the University, how the government didn't trust its own citizens anymore, how statements signed by the Queen indicated her opinion that many of the basic tenets of the Anaxi Pandect were "advisory by design"...

The headline that had smudged off onto her face remained, and she squinted closer to the mirror to read them. A-N-H-A-U. There was that word again.

She sat up again and knocked on the wall of the kint, and after a moment a small window opened on the side of the driver's seat.

"Ye fair benny back there, chippie?"

"Er, yes," she said. "I was wondering what this word is, Aldego."

Aldego squinted against the morning light, while his grandmother Susan huffed and snapped the reins beside him. Emme drew her face closer.

"Anhau," he replied after a moment, and Emme drew a puzzled expression. "Cor, ye really have been livin' under a rock, gel. Anhau, the city of the wicks? Hatchers up 'n' leavin'?"

"I don't know about any of that."

He told her.

Emme blinked a few times, then looked up at Aldego. "Are you going there?"

"Fast as I can dust, sweetheart. Granny's burnin' up the road."

"Will you take me?"

Aldego chewed his lump of tobacco thoughtfully for a moment, eyeing her. She tried to look plaintive, but her face refused to beg; it had been impossible for her since her stay in Silas Hawke's manor. They had been on the road for a few days now, traveling to Dorhaven, the only place she knew anyone would take her in, and she had hoped to find a way to send word to Hania and Jott once she was there. She had paid them the five coins she'd stolen from Ceres' pockets. Had they any idea of the risk they were taking by transporting her, she knew they would have never agreed to it.

"Guess so," said Aldego after a bit, looking suspicious but pleased. "Want to start a new life, I 'spect? Nobody leaves Old Rose in that kinda hurry without powerful need for a blank slate."

"What better place than Anhau?" agreed Emme, relieved; her emotion clearly showed, for Aldego reached back into the kint and ruffled her short hair.

Her mind was buzzing. The world seemed on the brink of a vast chasm, unstable as though a stiff breeze could send them all plummeting into chaos. She had never been involved in politics, not having the time nor patience, but every attempt to escape them had only brought her more into the fold. She had met Jon Serro and the King of Old Rose; she was the daughter of the High Judge. That wasn't going to go away by leaving, moving to some mythical, strange city she'd never heard of before that day.

One last selfish choice, she reasoned with herself. One last escape. I'll be safe there, surely. Among wicks, I'm a face in the crowd, no more interesting than the next woman. Her eyes hardened as she thought of leaving behind the world that had betrayed her, finding a new life, forgetting everything - even Willy, even Hania and Jott, even her mother.

(( OOC comments welcome! ))