“Jalan!” Alain reached for me, finding only a handful of my own exquisitely tailored cape. I shrugged the garment off and let him keep it while I sprinted for the stairs, weaving a dangerous path around dowagers sporting diamonds in their hair and gruff old lords knocking back the wine with the grim determination of men wishing to dull their senses.

I have quick feet, but it’s probably my total disregard for other people’s safety that allowed me to open a considerable lead so swiftly.

There are communal privies at the rear of the opera house. For the men, a dozen open seats above water flowing in channels that pour out into the alley behind. The water runs from a large tank on the roof. A small band of urchins spend all day filling it with buckets—an activity I had occasion to note when using one of the cast changing rooms for an assignation with Duchess Sansera a season previously. I was banging away dutifully as a chap does with a woman of declining years and increasing fortune when hoping to cadge a loan, but every time I seemed to be getting anywhere a small boy would wander past the door, heavy buckets sloshing. Quite put me off my stride. And the old cow didn’t loan me so much as a silver penny.

That afternoon with Duchess Money-Buckets wasn’t a complete waste, though. After I’d let her usher me out of there with a wet kiss and a goosing of my buttocks, I chased down as many of those ratty little children as I could and kicked some arse. It’s true that my foe outnumbered me, but I am the hero of Aral Pass, after all, and sometimes when Prince Jalan Kendeth is roused to anger it’s best to flee, whatever your number. If you’re eight.

I had found three of the little bastards cowering in the tiny utility room where the buckets are stored along with assorted brooms and mops. And that was the payoff—another hiding place to add to my list.

Racing along the same corridor now, with Alain and friends a corner or two behind me, I stopped dead, hauled the closet door open, and dived in. The thing with closing doors behind you is to do it quickly but quietly. That proved a challenge whilst trying to disentangle myself from various broom handles in the dark without the teetering bucket towers crashing down around me. Seconds later when Alain and his heavies clattered down the corridor, the hero of Aral Pass was crouched amongst the mops, hands clamped to mouth to stifle a sneeze.

I managed to hold the sneeze back almost long enough, but no man can be in complete control of his body, and there’s no stopping such things sometimes—as I told the Duchess Sansera when she expressed her disappointment.

“Achoo!”

The footsteps, fading at the edge of hearing, stopped.

“What was that?” Alain’s voice, distant but not distant enough.

Cowards divide into two broad groups. Those paralysed by their fear, and those galvanized by it. Fortunately I belong to the latter group and burst out of that closet like a . . . well, like a lecherous prince hoping to escape a beating.