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though my mouth isn’t working right yet and half of it sloshes down my chin. I drink my fill, then slowly, carefully bring myself to my legs, tottering like a foal.
    “You’re safe,” he promises me, but I know him too well. He’s stern-faced and matter-of-fact, but I see the white rimming his too-wide eyes. His fingertips linger against my cheek. “Will you be all right on your own?”
    I manage a nod. “I just … need a moment to come back to myself.”
    “I can buy you a moment.” He tucks a stray curl back from my face, then stands up. “I’ll fetch the carriage and give the general and his valet another dose to make sure they stay asleep.”
    I can’t stop shaking, though I don’t know whether it’s from cold or panic. The Commandant’s guards are surely coming for us, but he shouldn’t know what I really am, what I was doing. No one beyond the Emperor, Professor Hesse, and those I work with in the Ministry of Affairs know about dreamstriding. I study the unconscious general’s chin, where a nice welt is forming, courtesy of Brandt. Please, Dreamer, don’t let him remember Brandt’s face.
    By the time Brandt returns, I’ve adjusted well enough that I can help him wrestle the slumbering general and his valet into the coach. No thunder of boots approaching the stables yet, but we’re out of time. Brandt helps me climb to the driver’s bench, and steers us away from the Citadel.
    We sit side by side for our trek back to the port village across the splintered, barren earth. Feeling has returned to my legs and arms, but my nose and fingers are still numb as though I’m intoxicated. I’m grateful for the casual riding breeches and blouse I wear in my coach-driver disguise; I haven’t the wherewithal to sit up like the proper lady I’m usually forced to play.
    Neither of us dares speak until we meet with our contacts at the oceanfront town—two coachmen and a physicker, all native Iron Winders, all of them desperate for the bags of grain we promised them in exchange for their cooperation. The Ministry had authorized us to pay these associates in gold, but we learned quickly how little value Iron Winders ascribe to things they can’t put in their growling stomachs.
    “He was having an audience with the Commandant,” Brandt tells the physicker, coaching him for when General Cold Sun awakens. “He felt faint, became violent. You’re certain it was a migraine. He had to be knocked unconscious so he would not harm himself or others.” Brandt gestures to the general’s rosy welt. “Give him clues—help him remember. Whatever oddness he remembers, assure him it is a side effect of the migraine.”
    The physicker nods, eyebrows raised but unquestioning. Brandt has that effect on people when we’re on a mission. We make our way down the stairs carved into the ocean cliffs to where our catboat waits, guarded by more bribed Iron Winders.
    Once we’re safely aboard with the sail rigged, and the Land of the Iron Winds is a gray, sullen speck at our backs, Brandt joins me on the catboat’s bench and tilts his head back, letting the setting sun spill across his freckled cheeks. He’s calm now; there’s none of his usual radiance from the thrill of a successful mission, or his grim determination when things go wrong. “I’m sorry,” I say, settling in beside him. “For getting us into that mess. I’d be lost without your quick thinking.”
    “Nonsense.” He tips his head forward and smiles at me. “There wouldn’t have been a mission if not for you. And then where would we be?”
    I clench my teeth, but make myself smile back. “Staring down a fleet of Iron Winds ships, from the sound of it.”
    “And we know all about it thanks to you .”
    Brandt wouldn’t understand what went wrong in Oneiros, but I can’t help wondering what more we’d have learned if I’d been a more skillful dreamstrider; if I could have manipulated General Cold Sun more subtly. I wonder if Brandt would be so