“Give me the address of Duraugh’s house and I’ll find it,” she said. “I have to stop by and let the people I was staying with know that I’ve found somewhere else to stay.”

“Do you want me to accompany you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’d rather go alone. The people I stayed with don’t like strangers.”

He rattled off an address in a genteel district close to the Residence. “There’s a park nearby with an oak tree the children climb on. Meet me there and I’ll see that you get in unobserved.”

“It may take me a while,” she warned.

“No matter. Come when you’re ready.” He settled their tab with a few coins on the table, then left.

Rosem’s home was a fair walk from the tavern, but when she got there, she continued to walk past it. She had a pilgrimage to make.

The buildings on the streets grew smaller and less well kept. Businesses were mostly run out of single-room dwellings without public licenses or signs. Here an old woman sold bruised fruit purchased at a discount from a regular merchant, while across the street a younger woman advertised her trade with bared breasts and fluttering eyes.

Tisala pulled up the hood of her cloak as if she were cold and turned down an alleyway to find the place where she had lived. It had been a small building built behind a narrow two-story house that faced the street. The only way into or out of it had been through the alley, and even then it was easy to miss behind the tall, old stone structure that had once been a part of an outer city wall.

She stepped behind the wall and stared at the scorched timbers that were all that was left of her home and the people who’d lived there. She’d sent a message to tell Haverness she was alive, but he wouldn’t get it for a few weeks yet.

Death hung over the blackened ruin.

She’d lived with nine other people here, mostly actors and whores. They had shared cooking and cleaning—the small chores of living together. Tisala’s nose burned and she rubbed it furiously: She would not cry for them. Their deaths would not be a small deed—little remembered—but another crack in the wall that held Jakoven on his throne. Her determination gave her little comfort.

Cold and depressed, Tisala walked back to Rosem’s home, a basement apartment below a chandlery. She opened the door without knocking and found him in front of the tiny fireplace stirring the contents of a pot hanging over the fire.

“Find your man?” he asked without looking up from his task.

“No, but he said he’d get me into the mage’s section tomorrow.” They didn’t use Kellen’s name outside the Asylum.