“The Adventure Society has been pressuring the duke to stay out of it,” Belinda said. “I haven’t been able to find out why, but it’s been good for us. That’s over now. The complaints from his high-society friends must have outgrown his unwillingness to push back against the Adventure Society.”

“We plan around it,” Sophie said.

“Do you even understand how lucky you were to get out of there?”

“This time it was luck. Next time will be preparation.”

“Next time you’ll probably get killed.”

“The Duke getting involved buys us time,” Sophie said. “Ventress can’t accuse us of slacking if we take extra time to adapt. There’s only so blatant she can be about setting us up. Whatever she’s up to, she won’t burn her reputation to get it.”

“You do realise she’s not the only one trying to set us up now,” Belinda said. “The pressure is mounting and old friends aren’t as reliable as they used to be.”

They reached a solid metal gate in a high wall. Belinda leaned Sophie against the wall and cautiously pushed on the unlocked gate to peer inside. There were a handful of labourers in the yard, moving materials through a newly made hole in the wall to the yard next door.

“Those adventurers aren’t here,” she told Sophie, “but there’s some kind of construction happening. Just stay there, and I’ll go get him.”

She ducked inside the yard, the workers not looking up as she walked past them and into the back of the clinic. She saw Jory escorting a patient out of his exam room.

“…just apply the salve every morning,” he was explaining, “and you shouldn’t have any trouble through the day.”

“Jory,” she called out.

“Belinda!”

Jory’s eyes lit up as he turned around, then narrowed on the blood staining her clothes. He quickly ushered the patient through a doorway.

“Janice,” he said through the door, “no new patients for the moment. No one is to come back here until I say otherwise, understood?”

He closed the door and rushed over to her.

“Are you hurt?”

“Not my blood,” she said. “Sophie is out back.”

“Show me.”

* * *

In an Old City restaurant, Jason was served a dish of rice dumplings in the shape of a three-sided pyramid.

“They have this shape because of how they’re wrapped in the bamboo leaves to cook,” he said, picking up his chopsticks.

“I could never get the hang of chopsticks,” Humphrey said as the waiter placed bowls of dumpling soup in front of Humphrey and Clive. Cheap and easily replaced chopsticks were the primary utensil in the delta and most of Old City, but Humphrey grew up with silverware. Jason had been amused to discover the most common utensil in the high-society was the spork.