“Oh, you’ll arrest me again, will you?” the man wailed, his bulgy young face peeking at the ladies. “What’ll you do to me this time, trim my nose?”

His head was closely shaven, making the grotesque red stump of his left ear more obvious. Soft tissue scarred halfway down his jawbone. Arable instinctively reached up to touch the scars on her own cheeks.

The Guardsman stretched his neck. “You want to make me tell you again?”

“Or what, you’ll throw grapes at me?”

The basket hit the ground with little regard for the poor grapes, but another Guardsman ordered the first to back down. Arable didn’t know either of their names. At the far end of the Market Square, the once empty space was slowly filling with unlikely customers. Boys and young men, lingering and leaning, casually appearing from avenues and doorways. Arable could feel her heartbeat quicken. Most had short hair, some cut as close as the agitator here, while others kept longer hair only on their right side.

The Guardsman turned to Lady Margery. “If it please you, Lady d’Oily, we could return to the castle now.”

With barely a word spoken, the Guardsmen formed a channel for the ladies to travel safely, leading away from the Market Square to the south, as the crowd was blocking the direct route to the castle. Even Lady Delaney was silent as they walked. They kept their heads down and pretended to be unnotable.

All talk. There was no secret thrill in these street thugs. The ladies would not be vying to be their first target. Arable chanced a glance behind, hoping the seamstress they had just visited would not be punished for some perverted sense of class betrayal. More of the boys appeared ahead, sidling either side of the street, and Arable held her breath in fear. She wondered if they might accept the candles she carried in exchange for safe passage, even as she knew how ridiculous an idea that was.

But the young men stepped aside, abiding the Guardsmen’s orders with smug disinterest, staring back with wicked smiles. Another young man snapped his teeth at them, notably missing the lower lobe of his left ear.

Despite her fears, they passed out of the market with no altercation. The Guardsmen continued their quicker pace through the smaller streets while their commander took to describing the city casually, to calm the ladies’ nerves. “They call this street Wheeler’s Gate, as it was the main causeway for carriages to St. Peter’s Square, there ahead of you,” and so on.