As she prattled on he nodded politely. He’d been trained in how to attend such meals, and knew which salt cellar to use, and when it was permitted to belch, and how to keep his fingers from getting too greasy. One couldn’t be a knight and not be versed in polite manners. He had never enjoyed any meal that took half the day, however, and his legs were falling asleep from sitting in one chair for so long.

And his thoughts, of course, were elsewhere. He kept seeing the face of that thief again, the one he’d followed from the Ladypark up into the Stink. Malden, his name was. Cythera had been waiting for him in her boat, Croy recalled, when he had jumped from the wall of Castle Hill. What possible business could that sort have with Cythera? He needed to find out.

“Sometimes I imagine I’m a magistrate, and as the condemned men kneel before me and ask for clemency, I— Oh. Oh, I do beg your pardon,” the merchant’s wife said. She had gone quite pale.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his attention dragged back to her at once.

“It’s just—here I am going on and on about that man they’re going to hang, and you . . . you were just on those gallows yourself. Even now you’re a wanted man, in hiding from the watch. Why, at any moment they could come and—and—it’s so exciting, I was quite overcome. But I’ve been tactless. You forgive me, don’t you? Please tell me you do.”

The doors at the far end of the chamber opened silently and a face peered through. Croy’s hand automatically started to reach for the swords at his back—though of course they were safely locked away up in his rooms. He was getting jumpy. Inaction and worry were making him a bundle of nerves.

“Of course,” he said. “Will you take some of this sauce?”

“Mmm, please,” she said, and stared deeply into his eyes. “You say you forgive me but I know I’ve been cruel. Perhaps there is some way to . . . earn your forgiveness?”

A footman in livery came into the room and scanned the table. Moving quietly so as not to disturb the banqueters, he moved around the table and over to where Croy sat. He hemmed and hawed for a while before bending down to whisper in Croy’s ear. “Sir Knight, there is—there is a situation.”

“Hmm?”

The footman licked his lips in apprehension. “Normally I shouldn’t like to interrupt your meal, but—but there is a situation. An uninvited guest, er, that is to say—someone came to the door just now, I would have turned her away, but—”

“Speak freely, man. You’re interrupting nothing of importance,” Croy told him, keeping his voice low so the merchant’s wife wouldn’t hear.