He had been very worried after leaving Castle Hill that he might be arrested at any moment. The torturer got a good look at his face, after all, and could have reported his description to the watch. So he had spent the predawn hours slinking from one darkened part of the city to the next, spying on every cloak-of-eyes he could find, watching them to see if they were alerted and searching for a thief. And they had been—a woman, in a velvet cloak, in a little boat. Cythera. They were looking for Cythera.

Which perhaps explained why she had not been waiting for him when he left the pipe and unceremoniously fell into the filthy river. He supposed he could not blame her for fleeing once the guards spotted her. In the midst of the confusion in the palace above, they would be unlikely to listen to whatever story she spun for them. She could have ended up in the strap herself.

He would just have to make contact with her or with Bikker somehow, and make proper arrangements for handing over the crown. Which might be difficult if they were being sought by the watch—most likely they would have gone to ground. Still, he possessed ways to find them the authorities lacked. It would just take a little digging.

On his way back from the river he decided, though, that he could afford to rest and lie low for a day. He was exhausted from his nocturnal jaunt, and his hands ached and desperately needed to be idle for a while. He was also starving, as he hadn’t eaten since the day before.

So he took his time heading home. Down in his part of the Stink, the river ran flat and wide through a district of fishermen’s homes, all built on stilts to weather the annual springtime flood. He climbed up a bank thick with salt grass, where coracles and punts lay overturned, the tar between their timbers softening in the sun. The fishermen sat in their boats, to keep them from being stolen, waiting for the tide to turn. In the meantime they laughed and joked amongst themselves as they repaired their nets with thick, scarred fingers. They eyed him warily but without comment. Surely it wasn’t the first time they’d seen a furtive figure, his clothes drenched with river water, come up the bank and slinking away in the early morning light. He hoped it happened often enough they wouldn’t remember him when he was gone.