There were also her injuries to consider. She scanned the ugly stumps where her fingers had been the night before—they needed attention from this innkeeper friend of Kit’s, or infection would surely set in. Anji scowled at the woman pulling her along.

Can’t have me dying before we get to Linura.

A bell clanged somewhere distant, and the Hawk led them around the square’s perimeter, sawing at her reins as a gang of squealing children sprinted across her horse’s path. Anji watched the kids weave across the square until they joined a dense tangle of people gathered before an elaborately carved wooden box, its front an awninged window housing a trio of puppets bobbing back and forth, smacking at each other and shouting unintelligible lines. A constable stood to one side of the stage, a hand clapped around the hilt of her longsword, her face severe. And on the stage’s other side, his eyes watching the crowd like a hungry dog, a Sun Warden in bright yellow robes.

“This way,” said the Hawk, snapping Anji’s gaze away from the puppets. The crowd’s noise crawled after them through the maze of streets, finally receding as Kiva’s wall came into view once more. The sun was sinking past the wall’s crenellations now, casting long shadows on the cobbles underfoot, the cracked stones upturned and disorganized from what had once been a symmetrical design. Where the streets had been broad and clean before, they’d narrowed into trash-lined alleyways hemmed by grimy brick homes. Laundry flapped on lines strung between the shuttered windows above, and every square inch of unused wall had been plastered with posters, their moving images and words distorting the dimensions of the street, making the walls seem to shift as Anji continued on. Hardly anyone pushing past looked at Kit and Anji. The sour tang of unwashed bodies hung heavy, mixed with the stench of burning coal and oil. Aside from grungy apartments, most space was taken up by hulking buildings that belched greasy smoke from brick chimneys. A whistle squealed from above, and a large wooden door creaked open to Anji’s right, emitting a group of adults and children wearing matching gray clothes, their faces smudged with dirt, their eyes downcast.

Anji could hardly believe that only a few streets away stood another crowd of people enjoying themselves, drunk and well-fed and laughing. She felt like she’d entered a wholly different city, one where children worked in factories alongside their parents, where any semblance of joy or comfort seemed stolen from the air. There were no puppet shows here.

You think you somehow saved Yem by murdering one old man?