The monster under my left shoulder grunted. “If you think this place holds the mad, you haven’t been paying attention, boy.”

There was fresh water waiting, and after the monsters left I picked it up in shaking hands.

“Drink,”urged my little voice, already growing fainter. I pressed the clay rim against my lips and drank it until the pitcher was dry.

6
TISALA

My aunt says that if common goals make good friends, common enemies make better ones.

TISALASAT IN THE PRIVATE ROOM OF THE TAVERNand watched the door. She’d sent out a message over an hour ago, but there was no telling when Rosem would get it. She sipped at her drink and then leaned her head against the wall. The hood of her cloak shielded her eyes from the candlelight and she fell asleep.

“I thought you were dead,” said a quiet voice, waking her. “Let me see your face.”

Tisala blinked at the man standing beside her table. He was shorter than she, but broad through the shoulders. A scruffy, bright red beard hid the features of his face except for the wide nose that had been broken more than once.

She pulled the hood away from her face. “Hello, Rosem.”

“Gods, girl,” he said, sitting across from her. “When the house you were rooming in burned down, I waited for you to turn up for a full week. Then I wrote to your father.”

“The house burned?” she said. “Did everyone get out?”

Tight-mouthed, he shook his head. Tisala swallowed and rubbed her face, as if that would wipe away the faces of the people she’d lived with for the past few years. Jakoven must have had the house burned to cover her disappearance.

Rosem reached out and caught her hand, pulling it into the dim light of the tallow candle.

“Who took you?” he said.

She pulled her hand back. “Jakoven.” She explained how she escaped and where. “So you see that I owe the Hurogmeten. Can you get me into the Asylum?”

THEASYLUM WAS A BEAUTIFUL BUILDING ABOUT Amile from Jakoven’s castle. The pyrite-flecked marble of the facade made it look more like a temple than a holding pen for society’s embarrassments. There was even a pond just big enough for the two swans in the small but meticulously groomed lawn.

Tisala’s flesh crawled as she shuffled in beside Rosem. It had taken him a healthy bribe to the woman whose place she took to get Tisala in again. No one would notice the switch because the cleaners were practically interchangeable. The woolen robes they wore were designed to let them fade into the background as they went about their work. They talked only to one another, never to the inmates or the guards. It was a system designed to keep the cleaners ignorant of what went on in the Asylum, but it kept the guards ignorant of the cleaners’ world, too.