Others came, people Croy did not know. The news must have spread quickly that Hazoth had fallen and his treasures were up for grabs. Footpads, rogues, and bravos combed through the wreckage and took away what they desired—loot and weaponry, mostly. A papermaker and his apprentices came and carried off great sheaves of scorched and torn paper and cloth, which they would pulp down for raw materials. Half of the chandler’s guild came and took all the broken glass away, and sawyers took those beams and wattles that had not already been ground to sawdust in the collapse. Just before dawn gleaners from the Stink came and carted away that which no one else deemed valuable.

It seemed impossible that anything would remain, yet one last looter did come. Gurrh the ogre, who had been sitting on the grass outside the gates the whole time, rose at dawn and made his way into the ruin. He picked through the debris until he found a leaden coffer, still sealed and barely dented. He tucked it under his armpit and then headed west, toward Swampwall and his home.

All according to plan.

As the sun came up, Cythera and Croy greeted it together, alone again. “It’s Ladymas,” Croy said, and Cythera kissed his cheek. “We prevailed,” he said, because he couldn’t quite believe it. “We won.”

Meanwhile, inside the Ladypark a wolf snarled and snapped at the air. Behind it a dozen more circled, waiting their turn to attack. Malden held his hands out toward the beast, trying to calm it. He wished it didn’t look so hungry. He wished he’d kept Acidtongue as a prize, so he wouldn’t have to rely on his laughable bodkin. He wished so many people didn’t want him dead. He wished he knew better how to fight.

He wished he could go home and go to sleep.

Instead it looked like his short career as a thief was going to end with him being devoured by a pack of wolves. All this for nothing, he thought.

The wolf took a step forward, its paw patting at the ground as if it were afraid of something, afraid to lunge. A hundred birds cawed and squawked behind Malden then, and he nearly jumped out of his own skin.

Then an old woman in a dark robe stepped around him. She held one hand down low where the wolf could sniff at it. The animal licked her palm, then laid down in the grass and rested its head.

“I think I know you,” Malden said to his rescuer. “I’ve seen you before.”

“Yes,” the woman agreed.

“Of course, at the time your complexion was more . . . barky.” He put his bodkin away. “You’re free, then. It worked.”

“Yes.”

“So . . . it’s over,” Malden said, because he devoutly wished that could be true.

“No,” she said.

“No,” he repeated. “No, I don’t suppose it is. Not quite yet.”

Chapter Ninety-Seven