“And?” Arcolin said when Tam seemed to have stopped.

“Well, Captain, you know it’s not safe for civilians to have weapons they don’t know how to use, so I tried to make the streets safer by disarming them. But sometime in the altercation the one with the club split the skull of the one with the knife, just as the one with the knife sliced the one with the club. I’m lucky to have got off with just a cut.”

“The night guard arrived, didn’t they?” Arcolin said.

“Yes, and I explained very carefully,” Tam said. “They thanked me for my intervention, but suggested I might want to return to camp. It was all polite.”

“I’m sure,” Arcolin said. “Did you by any chance hear anything useful?”

“Yes, Captain.” Tam’s expression changed from one of false innocence to that of a competent soldier. “I thought the fellow at the first tavern was overanxious about us, though we were just drinking quietly and saying how good it was to be back in the south, where it’s warmer and the food is better and the girls prettier.”

Arcolin glanced at the others. “You agree?” They nodded. “Go on, Tam,” he said.

“I noticed there weren’t any girls in the tavern, the way they were three years ago. We used that as an excuse to move on, and that’s when we split into three and two. I was with Jenits. We went on to the Blue Pig. It was more like it had been, there: three pretty girls, two of them from down the street, where there’s a house. They all kissed Jenits, but he’s younger than me.”

Jenits, Arcolin noticed, turned red.

“One man asked if we’d been hired to chase bandits, and we said yes, and he said good luck in a tone that didn’t mean it. Made the Trickster’s sign where he thought I couldn’t see. Jenits said he’d rather chase women than bandits, and the girls were all over him.”

Most of the stories were the same, but for Devlin’s. He had abandoned the pretense of drunkenness as soon as he was alone, and walked to the east gate of the city, where—on the pretext of trying to find some soldiers who’d overstayed their leave from the camp—he chatted with the gate guards. Then he’d gone outside the walls and walked back around the long way, noting which windows still showed light at the wall.

“I nearly ran into something,” he said. “Some men standing around a hole in the ground … and out came another, and handed over a bag of something that clinked.”

“A tunnel,” Arcolin said. “Think you could find the entrance again by daylight?”

“Certainly, Captain. By daylight or dark. I’ve no doubt it’s concealed, though.”

Arcolin considered telling the militia captain about it, but he’d been hired for a different job and past experience with Vonja suggested it would be more profitable to let the Vonjans deal with any smuggling themselves. Likely some of the militia were involved.