Heath hadn't told any of the other students about the experiments the Professor wanted to subject him to. Not even Norma and Ken, and Heath usually told them everything.

However, it was harder to speak to his friends, the Laoch realised, when it came to telling them important and possibly dreadful things. Heath had barely shared parts of his past, which they both guessed at, because Norma was very analytical and Ken listened to everything Norma said.

Were they in a normal college, Heath could have told Jack, who was the leader of the students and self-appointed man of the moment. However, the relationship between Heathcliff and Mister Tenney was not business of his classmates. First, they were family, related though not by blood. And second, if the man wanted to run some studies on the Laoch, the future spies should be ruthless enough to understand his motives.

Surely, Heath thought, Jacob Edens, the greatest spy and best student, the one who named his study group 'the Rogues' might have nothing to object to something like that. He kept saying that Heath should become a better Laoch, too.

So, even though Heathcliff had just stumbled on one of Jack's secrets, and could never find something as threatening to hold over his head if he tried, he didn't feel safe enough to ask for help. He'd already made up his mind, that he was going to leave.

He was going to miss Norma and Ken. He doubted he would ever find friends like that again.

And begrudgingly, he admitted he would miss Jack too. It would be even harder to find a rival that he wanted to challenge quite as much.

Heath couldn't stop fidgeting on his way to Norma's door. He debated until the very last minute what he was going to tell his friends.

His first idea was writing a little note to Norma, pink writing on white paper, that said,

'I'm off to see the world. Please, try not to miss me too much. Give Ken a kiss for me. You kow how much I'd like to give it to him in person.

Your best friend,

Heath'

He decided to stick with it, even though it looked childish and a little shallow in retrospect. But Heath second-guessed everything he did, so he liked sticking to his first ideas. Besides, Timothy Lewalski had made a career out of writing books with no drafts and edits, for he claimed your first idea was always the most genuine.

Heath slipped the note under Norma's door. Luckily, Mister Tenney had them train to be as silent as possible. He'd developed his own technique, using the monks' teachings. He could shift all the weight from one foot to another very quickly by using his chi, and with the same method, he could feel how hard he was pressing down on his soles and try to walk with a lighter step.

The real reason Heathcliff had settled for the note, though it would never beat talking to Norma and Ken and explaining face to face, was that he couldn't tell them the truth without having Mister Tenney find out. And as far as lies went, Heath wanted them to feel at least reassured that he hadn't been kidnapped by anyone.

Were they going to find his explanation that he needed to 'see the world' suspicious?

Obviously. Norma and Ken were trained secret agents.

But at least, it sounded like the light-hearted bullshit the Laoch could pass off for a real explanation. Someone's henchman who could take him away for their motives would never be able to fake the Laoch's writing so well, and it didn't sound like something they'd tell him to write with a weapon to his head.

Or at least, Heath had calculated it to look authentic, and he'd been trained as a secret agent, too.

The worst was that there were many people out there who like the Laoch for themselves --- to kill him, harm him or study him. 

And that the Professor was one of those people.

Mister Tenney's School For Spies owned ships. They were docked near the school and designed as to look like a normal fleet, as not to draw suspicions. They weren't the most modern model, the one imported from Oroto, because that would have caught too much attention. 

I guess, Heath grumbled as he approached the dock, that Jack Edens Senior has one of the modern ships that are capable of carrying a town's population.

But the size of the vessel didn't matter, for Heath was travelling alone, and thinking about Jack Edens Senior was useless too, because while the Laoch had always known that his son was estranged from the father, it actually became clear to him when he saw Jack the other day that Jack Edens was poor. Not as much as Heath had been when he and his mother basically lived on the streets and begged for food, but close to it.

Heath had a migraine when he was reminded of what he'd learnt days before. It gave him the strange feeling that everything was now different, as if reality was a kaleidoscope and he and Jack could only see bits and pieces of it before. But now, if Heath changed the position of the kaleidoscope in his hands he could see something different.

Well, that could have happened had Heath stayed at school. But he left, decided to cut ties.

Heathcliff settled for an old-looking vessel even by the standards of Everende. It still had white sails. It was still made of wood. Only a handful of ships in the dock were made of iron and had engines and there was a reason the Laoch had chosen the old vessel.

He didn't know how to sail a modern ship with a running engine, but he knew that, with his magic, he could move the wind as he pleased, steering the ship and moving the helm with the help of his powers.

In fact, it was probable Heath would do almost no manual labour at all. The only downside was that his magic was going to hit him, from time to time, with those dangerous shocks of euphoria that went right to his brain.

But if he had to be completely honest with himself, Heath was looking forward to it at the moment.

At the end of the first day, Heath got tired of sailing aimlessly and stopped into a near dock.

"I haven't got as far away as I would like to," he told the man in the first pub he found. "I would like to leave Everende by..." Heath pretended to think about it. "Tomorrow, same time as now."

"The open sea is not the right place for a newbie without experience," the man arched an eyebrow.

Heath was wearing his hair tied up under a sailor's hat. He supposed he looked weary, tired and possibly younger than his actual years. He certainly didn't want to be recognised as the Laoch.

"When you leave the shores of Everende Island for good," the man added, passing Heath a tall glass of beer. "There is no going back."

"I've always liked running away," Heath said. It was a self-deprecating comment, and the truth. Running was easy, and he was able to turn off quite well the voices in his head calling him a coward. But at the same time, he ran away from his mother and his responsibilities years before, and that still stung. "I ran away from home the first time when I was five. My father had just landed on the Southern Shore with his fleet, back from the Baicaran war, and I wanted to see him."

Heath tried to smile fondly at the memory, as if everything had turned out alright, because he wanted the other man to believe it, and he wanted to believe it, too.

"Either way," he added. "I'm not a beer kind of guy. I don't like the smell. I'm more sophisticated."

The man shrugged. "I was about to say it was on the house, because you look lost and a little too young to be out here alone, and I see you have no crew of your own."

Heath tried his best to smile. "In this moment, though, I am an everything kind of guy."

When Heath went back to the table with his glass of beer, he considered asking the bartender to join him for a drink. He wasn't his type, rough-looking and with a beard, but the Laoch supposed the other man might as well be flirting when he offered him the beverage.

The truth was that a long time before Heathcliff might have asked him, and it might have turned into more, but at the moment he couldn't remember very much what it was for, except for being one of those things that intoxicated you for some time and then left you feeling a little meaningless, like using his magic. 

He'd realised it recently, but it still had to dawn on him how true it was --- he'd always done what he figured would get people to like him, or at the very least keep him around and pity him, and he'd never done anything for himself.

Except running. Heath was very good at saving his hide, and he tried really hard to pretend this didn't faze him and it didn't make him feel alone.

Like his magic, and how much of it he had to keep a secret he had to keep from his best friends, too. And just like Jack Edens, whom Heath liked to outsmart and be outsmarted by, but with whom he could never build a safe friendship.

Everything Heath liked made him more alone.

Before Heath had noticed, the man had decided to sit at the table. Up close, he looked in his fourties. 

"I came over because you looked about to fall asleep," the man said. "Or pass out."

It was true, Heath noticed with shock. His arm was propped up lazily on the table and his head was about to slouch on his elbow. He sat straight.

"I didn't mean to scare you when I said that if you sail further away from Everende Island there is no going back," the bartender added. "It's just that there are many miles between our shores and Pavoa's, or Baicar's. You'll find yourself sailing into open sea for days, possibly months if you're not good at it or if there are storms."

"I will circumnavigate the island," Heath replied. "I have no idea where to go, but I didn't mean to go to one of the other Kingdoms." It was true, for he couldn't wear a hat forever, and the Laoch would be recognized. "I can turn back on my steps, go east or west. Even go north. I just don't want to be found."

"Besides," he added, a little pettily. "I might look like desperate, but I know my geography. I go to a very important... school of spies."

He slurred out this part before he recalled that Mister Tenney's was the only school, and while the bartender didn't know the names of the students, if he asked around many people would know Heathcliff was one of them.

But he was already far from the academy, and for anyone who didn't know that the Laoch studied there or just how advanced Mister Tenney's project were, there wasn't any real interest for the school.

"And how is it?" the bartender asked. "Studying in a school for spies?"

"Oh, spies, secret agents, whatever! It's the same thing! I'm pretty sure the plaque in the aisle that leads to the dining hall reads 'spies'. Spying on people isn't as glamorous as it might look in movies. It actually makes you feel like a jerk."

The bartender looked at Heath strangely. "Okay," he wagered a guess. "You're really drunk."

"Me? Getting drunk on a glass of beer?" Heath couldn't help but sound a little whiny. "I don't get drunk on this... on this stuff."

Maybe he did, a little bit, but having magic beat all of the other intoxications that those merely human flirted with. But Heath couldn't say that.

"I'm serious alright? Spying is hard work. Can you imagine watching someone from afar, and at the same time hiding from the person you're watching? And sometimes you're not far --- sometimes you're pretty close. It's the most difficult thing I've ever done."

Heath understood how Ken felt when he ran into his brothers and tried to explain his lifestyle, but lacked the words. Heath had always narrowed it down to Ken simply being almost estranged from the family and his brothers' coldness, like the time he came back to the academy an emotional wreck because they accused him of 'being secretive', 'witholding information' and 'possibly suffering of amnesia' when it concerned his first year of study.

Heath knew that it was because the year before the students had to sign endless NDAs not to leak everything that happened in the building. Still, Ken being Ken meant that no one had to see him at his lowest, so Heath and Norma nursed him back to health before anyone else at school even knew what happened.

That was to say, yes, Ken's relationships with his brothers sucked. But at the same time, Heath found himself in that position with the bartender, a perfect stranger.

He couldn't tell him that the hardest thing about hiding from people was that if they found you, they were going to keep you locked up, hurt you or torture information out of you. He couldn't possibly say that Mister Tenney had made sure each one of his pupils was painfully aware of that, and he couldn't disclose just how many times that happened when missions went bad.

So, he didn't say anything. People who hadn't studied at the school couldn't understand that. People who didn't come from their common background of poverty and having to fend for themselves couldn't either.

It wasn't the first time Heath realised that even being with Jack Edens, like they had been paired in the recent missions, beat being alone. Jack would have understood, and he probably would have said something sarcastic that Heath couldn't come up with, because it's not easy arguing with oneself.

He might have reminded Heath to decide where the heck he was going, because what use was it running around, and to exploit the bartender's kindness and get something to eat, too, because it was the kind of sly person Jack was.

But Heath wasn't Jacob Edens, and that had been clear before. At the moment, he didn't see his path ahead but he was sure he couldn't turn back.

Alright then, Heath thought, another night steering the ship, not sure in which direction. I hope I am not too weak to work my magic.

But as soon as he left the tavern, he felt someone gripping at his arm, and had the distinct impression of the person nail's digging softly into his skin.

Before he could turn around, someone yanked the sailor's hat from his hat, and let his pink curls fly all around his face.

There was a young woman with long brown hair staring back at him. He'd never met her before in his life.

"I knew it!" the stranger exclaimed, a fierce expression in her eyes. "I knew you were the Laoch!"