As dawn rose, Wyn stood inside a covered courtyard in the palace, watching the snow fall lightly onto the practice yards in front of her, though her eyes didn't see much of the flakes that scattered and danced in the wind. She was in her sparring clothing but wrapped up in a winter cloak to keep warm, leaning against a pillar as she watched the snow pile up on the ground.

She did her best not to move despite the initial intention to work out, knowing her steps would pull her towards the harbour, where the Aupanan ship had departed a few hours before. She felt more alone than she had in a long time, despite knowing that she had friends still around her and wondered if this feeling was perhaps the same that had been eating at Nerini the past several weeks. She had grown accustomed to Nerini being with her over the past months and knew that her friend had made the effort to stay for as long as she had, even despite whatever was clawing mercilessly at her. 

Nerini had been drifting since they got to the capitol, where Nerini's duties and purposes had dwindled down to sparring in the mornings. Though it wasn't the reason why Nerini was now racing away from Sellexu as quickly as the winds could take her. Wyn felt guilty for all the time she had spent without her friend here, when she could have made a little more effort. Taken a few less moments with Caelur or Lyana, perhaps spent a few more days with her friend while she had been here.

"Is Nerini on a long run this morning?" Lyana asked curiously as she walked up to stand beside her, looking up at the sky, then over to Wyn.

"Yeah, a pretty long run. We're going to have to practice without her." Wyn said softly, unable to hide the melancholy in her expression as she finally pulled her gaze up off the ground and back into the present moment.

Lyana debated that answer, looking out into the yard, then back to Wyn as she finally came to a conclusion. "She left, didn't she?"

"She was the best person for the job and his sister." Wyn offered weakly, her expression progressively sadder with each passing moment as she accepted what was happening. That whatever had held Nerini here so long had snapped with the pressure of Kanny's disappearance.

"Alone though?" Lyana's voice was a whisper, glancing out in the direction of the harbour, worry marring her features.

"Who could go with her? She's learned things I can't do, she can go places and be a completely different person, be invisible. She knows how to find things out, without being found out." Wyn shrugged. "She's not going as Lady Nerini, even in her own lands she can move unseen."

"She wants to hunt the hunters." Lyana said thoughtfully, understanding dawning, though her gaze still searched out the distance, as if she could see the harbour and the departed ship beyond.

Wyn nodded, offering the other woman a tremulous smile. "How long do you think it will take the court here to notice her missing?"

"Day, maybe two." Lyana frowned, shaking her head. "There was two Aupanans here yesterday. Now there's only one. Things like that are noticed around here, especially with Nerini being the one missing."

***

Nerini stepped inside the main cabin, shaking off her dull brown cloak before she crossed the threshold of the door, to get rid of some of the moisture from the wet snow that had begun falling not long after she had boarded the ship. She glanced around the room, before walking to the table where Denzlin was poring over a map. He didn't glance up at her, merely pointing to one point on it that was in the North of Aupana. "That's the last place your brother was heard from, M'lady."

She vaguely knew the area, having travelled through it several times herself and it being part of her family's holdings. It was on a road between Lansen and the next larger town that ran through an ancient forest that most of the locals refused to enter after dark. If you listened to the older tales, it was haunted by demons of past battles long forgotten. She would be surprised if anyone had bothered looking for Kanny within those dark depths, if he had gone missing along the road there.

"Alright, can you land here?" She pointed to a port about half way up the coast, a smaller one that was attached to an even smaller village, it wasn't ideal to land in any civilized area, where the enemy could be watching for newcomers. 

She had to enter without gaining too much notice, until she could figure out who was playing in the game, who she could trust and who she needed to find to get more information. Nerini knew of several mercenary and street runner bands that would take contracts in the lesser populated parts of the country and she didn't think she could trust any of them.

"I think the water there is too low for the Maria. She's an old ship, compared to these shallow hulled behemoths they have now. I can get you here though" He pointed a bit further south, to her relief, to a place that wasn't a marked town and merely looked like a random spot on a map along the coast. On closer inspection, it appeared that there was a secondary road there, which wouldn't be well travelled at this time of year. "I know a cove where we can row you ashore with your horse, it is calm enough he should be able to swim. It is dense forest along there, but it's a short ride to the nearest town. And if you circle south, you can come up the main road and look like you've been travelling by land for a bit, with no one the wiser." Denzlin had been playing the game of smoke and mirrors long before she was born, he knew what she needed to do.

"Cocoa is going to kill me." Nerini chuckled softly, imagining her desert horse dealing with the cold winter weather, even when he wasn't soaking wet from a swim in subzero temperatures.

Denzlin laughed at that and shook his head. "I still can't believe you named that demon of a magnificent beast Cocoa. And then made me transport him while he was kicking a hole in my ship, all the way to Alliance."

Nerini smiled softly, offering a shrug as she forced herself to be drawn into a lighter conversation. "More of a nick name. Most people can't pronounce the name the tribes gave him. I call him Cocoa just to bug him, because I know he hates it."

"You need more friends, if you're talking about your horse." Denzlin chuckled, his dark eyes laughing at her, flashing a grin.

"C'mon, you're my friend, aren't you?"

Denzlin shook his head and laughed. "I'm not sure what the prudent answer is to that question, to be honest."

"Alright, maybe we'll work on it. How long till we reach there?" She motioned to the cove on the map, drawing both their attention back to the task at hand.

Denzlin looked down at the map, his lips moving silently as he calculated the answer for her, "Five days on a good wind? We're travelling light, so we're making good time."