Every instinct in the pack said take Harrow. He was a traitor caught in the act; you arrest a traitor. That was the clean move, the satisfying one, the one Bron pushed for the moment he heard.
I refused it.
"If we take Harrow, we take the cart and lose the hand," I told the council. "A kind old granary-keeper isn't organizing a resistance he's carrying grain for someone who is. The moment we arrest him, whoever's above him knows we're looking, goes still, and buries himself so deep we'll never find him. We'll have caught a courier and warned the spymaster." I laid it out flat. "We don't take Harrow. We watch Harrow. He's not the enemy. He's the thread. And you don't cut a thread you can follow."
"You'd leave a traitor free," Bron said, "feeding the resistance, on the theory he leads you
