The horse skidded to a stop some distance away, whipping her head up and down before turning back to where Anji lay in a shivering heap. The mare snorted and stood over her, one eye gazing down as Anji lifted herself to one elbow and slapped a hand to the frigid earth.

“Fuck,” she said through gritted teeth. Tears stung her eyes. She was twelve again, humiliated and bruised after trying to jump the small gap between the chandler’s shop and the butcher’s across the alley. All the other kids had managed it, but she’d smacked her chest against the lip of the opposite building and tumbled to the cobbles below, snapping a bone in her wrist that had needed six weeks to mend. The same hot flush of embarrassment seared through her now. She whipped around in the dirt, sure someone was watching, ready for the Hawk’s rebukes or a blow to the head. But the street was silent and dark and still. She groaned and got to herfeet . Putting weight on her knee made it sting with a sharp pain, but it didn’t feel broken. She tested a step and released a shaky breath. She could still walk.

The mare nuzzled her shoulder. Anji patted the matted hair of her flank, took the reins in one hand, and began the short trudge back to the tavern.

“Why’d you fall off your horse?”

Anji whipped around, reaching for a dagger that wasn’t there.

A little boy stood behind her, keeping a wary distance from the mare. A spattering of filth etched his thin face, his hollow cheeks, watery blue eyes blinking up at her. One of his feet was shod in what she could only describe as a bundle of rags. The other was bare, caked in dirt, and lined with a nasty black wound gone far past infection.

He held a knot of fabric close to his chest, and in the dim light Anji could make out a sort of face on the shock of white cotton that may have constituted a head. A doll. The ugliest doll she’d ever seen.

Anji had never been any good with kids—even when she’d been one. She clicked her tongue at the horse and walked a bit faster, hoping the boy would take the hint, but he matched their pace, favoring his bad foot and glancing sidelong at her. He trailed along in silence until they came back into the tavern’s sickly yellow light.

“I was tied up,” Anji said. “I thought I could get away, but…” She stopped the mare once more in front of the vacant hitching post.

“Why were you tied up?”

A shout issued from inside the tavern, but the doors remained still. Anji scratched at the tether, then eyed the boy standing solemn and shivering at her side.