The crowd went on murmuring, but none came forward. The guard barked a command for the others to take the old man’s body away before resuming his spot under the archway and out of the sun. The cart was pushed aside, likely to be ransacked at a later hour, and Anji and Kit were ushered forward.

They stayed silent as they came level with the gate. Anji tried her best to look deferent and ashamed of herself, avoiding the eyes of the thickset, well-armed men now crowding around the horse. She raised her eyes a fraction and looked through the archway at Tideron’s gate-side plaza.

The sun-scorched roofs shone so bright she had to squint. Every surface seemed coated in fresh white paint. Brick and plaster houses crowded together like the spines of books stacked neatly on their shelves. A pair of well-dressed children darted across the square, skirting a pale statue at its center depicting an elegantly carved squid, its tentacles wrapped around a towering marble obelisk. The square was half-filled with townsfolk trudging to and fro, some carrying bulging satchels, others hand in hand as they passed by clean-swept alleyways. Another child, full-cheeked and jabbering, broke off from her parents to set off a congress of seagulls toward the forest of masts standing sentinel in the hazy distance.

“… this one here.”

Anji blinked and returned her attention to the voices close by, remembering to keep her head bowed as one of the constables came close. His greaves were polished mirror bright, neither dented nor scratched.

“Prisoner I’m seeing to,” came Kit’s voice, steady and solid yet tinny as it always was behind the mask.

“Yeah?” said the guard. “What’d he do?”

“I am forbidden from speaking my charges’ crimes,” Kit said. Anji looked up just as the guard’s hand flapped back to his side, near a burnished leather sword hilt. Was he about to touch me?

The guard motioned to Anji’s hand. “What happened to his fingers?”

“I cut one off for every annoying question he asked me,” came Kit’s reply. Anji held her breath to stop a laugh. “And the next time he delays me it’ll be the whole hand.” Kit held out the same letter she’d given Hectate, pressed between two fingers. The guard took it with a frown and scanned the words.

An interminable silence stretched, filled only by the murmuring crowd ahead in the square and the squalid fold behind. The guard gave a curt nod and waved them through without a word. Anji caught a glimpse of him joining his comrades at the arch’s side to let them pass, his face impassive if a little shaken.

“You scared the shit out of him,” Anji said.

“Hush,” said Kit, but whatever bark she’d had for the guard was absent now.

Chapter 36

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