“They’ll pay. If there’s one thing the Wardens and the remnants of the Senate are known for, it’s paying their debts in a very public way. This is all a show, Anji. They intend to make an example of you, of the futility of your crimes. You will become the ultimate caution against revolt. They’ll take you to Laurelside, right to the center of Mudtown, and execute you to prove their hold over Yem. They’ll prop me up, the loyal bounty hunter who ensured Rolandrian’s killer was brought to justice. And then I’ll use their own money to topple their regime.”

Anji bit at her lip, her mind working. There had to be a hole somewhere in this plan for her to squeeze through. She just had to find it.

“What about the Bear? Won’t she tell the Wardens that you left? That you killed the others?”

Kit shrugged. “There’s no shortage of bounty hunters in the world. We were simply the most well-known, but past our prime. The Wardens won’t care if a few old killers for hire are dead. Besides, our tenets hold for each other as well as anyone else trying to take a charge. They’ll see it as infighting, nothing more, so long as you’re delivered.”

“But the Bear—”

“Is now the Menagerie’s last remaining member, and she’ll not stop until she has you. She’s likely following our tail right now. We have her scrying sheet, so she’ll not be able to contact the Wardens from the road. Even if she did, the embarrassment of losing you when you were in her grasp, of losing her fellows … of losing me.” Kit scoffed. “She could never endure the shame. No, she’ll die before giving you up, especially to me.”

The thought of seeing that pearl-white mask again sent a chill down Anji’s spine. She sat straighter against the rock. “And you’ll be the one to kill her?”

Silence pressed between them. Kit sniffed, and though she’d gone through her stretches a few moments before, her body seemed to tense like a bow string before she looked at her gloved hands. “I will.”

A thought occurred to Anji then, her last desperate grasp at freedom.

“I’ll tell the Wardens then,” she said, hardly believing the words as she said them, but she went on despite the grave look on the Hawk’s face. “Before they torture me. I’ll tell them you’re aiding the Tide, unless you let me go. Right now.”

To Anji’s surprise, Kit laughed, that bell-like burst she’d heard for the first time in Jared’s inn.