“Oh, you are such a boy, still!” She turned to smile at him, obviously delighted at his demand. “We’ll go then. Come. The tea shop I want to try is this way, right near the intersection of Prime with Rain Wild Street.”

Hest quickened his pace. He longed to look back, to see if the man had seen him and was following. But he didn’t dare. That glance back might be just the motion that would call the assassin’s attention to him. His smile was getting stiff. “You know, I haven’t been on Rain Wild Street in a while. Let’s shop there a bit, before we have our tea.”

“Well, aren’t you a weathervane today? But we can begin on Rain Wild Street, if you wish,” she agreed easily.

He wanted only to leave the Great Market and put some distance between himself and the Chalcedean. It had come to him suddenly that the warren of small and elegant shops that lined Rain Wild Street was the ideal place for them to disappear. They entered Rain Wild Street and as he let his mother slow to a saunter to consider the various shops and wares, he glanced back the way they had come. No sign of the man. Excellent. But he’d still have words for his so-called assassin. The man had promised him a quick quiet job. He’d want a bit of his money back for that failure. It was a good thing Hest himself had a keen eye and was quick thinking enough to get himself out of danger.

His nemesis evaded, he let the magical merchandise of the Rain Wild Street shops distract him. This was the street that Bingtown’s fame was founded upon. Here was where one came to buy goods from the Rain Wilds: perfume gems with their eternal fragrances; wind chimes that played endless, never-repeating melodies; objects made of gleaming jidzin; and hundreds of other magical items. Here, too, one might find the one-of-a-kind discoveries, often at one-of-a-kind prices. Containers that heated or chilled whatever was put into them. A statue that awoke as a babe every day, aged through the day, and “died” at night as an old man, only to be reborn with the dawn. Summer tapestries that smelled of flowers and brought warmth to the room when hung. Items that existed nowhere else in the world and were impossible to duplicate.

And scrolls and books, of course. He’d lost count of how many he’d had to pay for when Alise had found them here. That damned woman and her obsession with dragons and Elderlings! Look at all the trouble she had caused him. But, if she truly had made a claim on the new city, well, perhaps she would have been worth all the nuisance she had put him through.