The man striding toward her was over seven feet tall. Half-starved, she thought, like he hasn’t eaten in weeks. He waded through the snow as though it were ankle-deep water, his tattered gray-and-black leathers snug against long, knobby limbs. He wore a stone mask of deep polished blue, its features long and sloped, the black meshed eyeholes wide-set over a prominent muzzle. Stubby horns curled from the top and over tufts of red hair spotted with gray.

The Goat.

Freckles spattered the bits of pale skin between mask and leather. His belt held a slender dagger in a faded leather sheath. A bandolier of glass tubes hung at an angle over the belt, glowing with a weak purple light. A wicker-woven quiver hung from a taut strap around one bony shoulder. And cradled in wiry gloved fingers: a crossbow, the gleaming tip of a bolt pointed at Anji’s chest.

“Toss the sword. Nice and easy, girl,” the Goat said, his voice muffled by the mask.

If one more person calls me “girl,” she thought. She clenched her jaw, squeezing the sword’s hilt so hard it hurt her fingers, then threw the sword into the snow at the Goat’s feet.

“Hands up.”

Anji raised her hands, then lifted herself to one knee.

“Ah, ah,” the Goat said, mirth dripping off his words. “Slow. Nothing clever now.” He gestured with the bow, and Anji got to her feet, her muscles tightening in protest.

Crossbow still trained on her chest, the Goat scooped up the sword and slipped it into a loop at his hip.

A bead of freezing sweat trickled down Anji’s neck. She inched toward the bag lying in the snow near her feet.

“None of that,” said the Goat, twitching the crossbow. “Let’s go for a walk. Just the two of us.” He tapped at the bolt. “Try to run and this goes in your back.”

Anji’s brow furrowed, hands still raised. Why did the Goat have a crossbow? He’d always been depicted as the Maxia, the navigator. In fact, in all the tales she’d heard of the Menagerie, he’d never even drawn a blade. The Hawk and the Ox were the warriors, the blade masters. None of this makes sense. She chanced a glance at the length of steel at his belt and pushed down the lurch in her stomach—the acid taste of vulnerability.

He must have cut the tether, she thought, but not with that sword.

“I’m worth twice as much alive,” she said, embarrassed at the quaver in her voice.