“I hope you took good care of it,” he said.

He examined the bones that made up the weapon, checking for scuffs and scratches.

“If there’s a mark on here anywhere, then you’re cleaning it off.”

“Your precious little murder weapon is fine,” Tavia said. “I’m glad to see your priorities are still in check.”

Wesley shrugged and placed the gun into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, right where his heart was.

“Do you think Karam is okay?” Tavia asked. “Saxony looked really worried earlier.”

“Aren’t you?”

“She’s good at fighting her way out of trouble,” Tavia said.

Only, she was still just as worried as Saxony was. Karam could fight, sure, but that didn’t mean that she could fight anything Ashwood threw at her. It didn’t mean she was invincible, and Tavia cursed herself for thinking otherwise. She’d always seen Karam as unstoppable, unkillable, but that was a lie and now that she wasn’t here, Tavia couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d let that lie comfort her too often.

She hoped desperately that Karam would come storming back into camp, angry that Wesley had escaped before she’d had a chance to rescue him.

“There are a lot more people here than I thought there would be,” Wesley said.

He peered over the edge to look down at the camp below, brimming with buskers and Crafters.

“Yeah.” Tavia took the bottle from Wesley and downed another swig. “Saxony contacted all the Lieges in the four realms and a bunch of them agreed to send us more Crafters. It’s not much, but including Saxony’s and Asees’s Kins, we have eighty Crafters already. When the others come, it should bump that up to a hundred and fifty or so.”

“And the buskers?” Wesley asked.

“A little deal I made with Casim,” she said. “We’ve got fifty of his buskers and he’s negotiating with the other underbosses of Uskhanya to send us their forces too. So that gives us ninety altogether so far, with more possibly on the way.”

Wesley looked vaguely impressed.

“I used your name to threaten him, by the way,” Tavia said. She passed the bottle back over to Wesley, neither of them bothering to use the glass. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“Go for it,” Wesley said. “I’m glad my name still strikes fear in the hearts of my cowardly colleagues.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Underbosses really are all chickenshits.”

Wesley laughed and the sound jittered amid the rain, like it was a storm in itself.

“What was it like?” Tavia asked him.

He looked at her in questioning.

“Where you were,” she said, and then, softer, “What happened to you?”