“After today, I will never see you again. So it really doesn’t matter if I care for you or despise you, does it?”

Malden stretched his hands out at his sides. “Life is long, and the city is not so big. Only a fool says ‘ever’ or ‘never.’ ”

“Then think me a fool.” She moved her hands through the air, and it felt like a cloud passed through Malden’s body and was gone. “There. The barrier is down. Go, and do not return.”

She held out one arm and pointed toward the gate. But he didn’t move. Not until she looked at him, as if to see what was the matter with him and why he didn’t flee.

He caught her eye, though she tried to look away. She sighed and rolled her eyes, but he held her gaze until she stared back at him defiantly. Still he looked into her eyes, the only part of her he could see that was not covered in the images of sorcery. He held her gaze until something behind her eyes softened, if only for a moment. Softened, and looked back into his eyes, and did not flinch away.

“Just as I thought,” he said. Then he touched his forehead in salute and left without awaiting a reply.

The back garden gate brought him out a hundred yards from the towering Parkwall, which cut off the sun and left him in deep shade. He hurried along the wall’s length until the houses surrounding the common swallowed him up again, and only then did he allow himself to relax. As long as he had been in sight of the house he was certain he was still being observed. Once he was in the Stink proper, though, he headed toward a tavern several streets away and immediately headed into a private room in the back. A serving boy brought a flagon of small beer and some sausages when he called for them, then left him alone. Malden sat back in a chair to wait.

It was only a moment before Kemper walked through the wall and sat down next to him. “How went it, lad?”

“Like a charm,” Malden told him. “They let me in with barely a question, and Cyth—that is, his servant—showed me half the house without meaning to. I even offered to come and work there, though I was rebuffed.”

“A job! Y’asked fer a job!”

“Of course,” Malden said. “Think on it—after a day inside those walls, I would have learned more than I can studying it from the outside for a month.”

Kemper laughed heartily. “A bolder scalliwag I ne’er yet met. Ye’ve cased the premises, and him none the wiser, ha ha!”