He was not a fool. Compared with the Qin captain, he could be of no interest to her. He didn’t even want anything from her anyway. It’s just she was clever and lovely and close at hand to stare at, when his heart was already torn in half and thrown to the wild beasts to savage because he had lost his sister and his purpose in life in one dreadful change of fortune. Because Nasia, the slave-woman who had been his lover, had stared at him with recrimination in her face, even as he told Mai to turn Nasia away from her only hope of freedom.

“Lost him,” said Chaji as he shoved Keshad to get him moving.

“There he is,” said Umar, behind them. “Beyond the gold awning.”

As they cut past noodle shops, the singsong of the flirting ladle girls drifted alongside appealing smells: “hot and spicy! for the rains!” “best qual-i-ty, best quality,” “mushrooms and leeks, here’s your mushrooms and leeks.” At a plank table, two men chopped radishes and purple-heart; over a brazier, a girl slip-fried them with pipe-shoots and salt in smoky sesame oil.

Chaji grabbed his elbow. “There’s Chief Tuvi, walking rear guard. Get moving.”

The larger party was walking up the shoemaker’s lane, the long way around to the district where the Silvers lived if you didn’t know the city as well as Keshad did. But the beggar’s red cap moved past the shoemaker’s lane and cut up the tailor’s lane, so they climbed after him, pretending at intervals to look at fancily embroidered festival jackets selling cheap because in the wake of the attack the city had not mustered a festival this year.

“The captain is actually the half-brother of the Sirniakan emperor?” Kesh asked.

Chaji gave a curt shake of his head, which meant Keshad had stepped out of bounds by asking an inappropriate question, and kept walking.

“Lost him,” said Umar. “Hu! There he is.”

They hurried through the bone-carvers’ alley, in shadow under canvas slung between buildings. The carvings were polished to such a high gleam that they seemed alive in the dim light: winged horses, dancing lions, writhing salamanders, swimming dragons. Hugging the corner, they ventured onto a wider street. Uphill, Chief Tuvi’s broad shoulders vanished around a sharp turn where the street split into three. A red cap slouched behind a pair of matrons.

“There,” said Umar, starting forward, but Chaji caught him by the tunic and tugged him short as a barrow filled with bricks rumbled by, pushed by a sweating man wearing a linen kilt and an unlaced sleeveless vest flapping back from his torso.

“He’s working with a second man,” said Chaji. “That one with a rag tied around his left arm, standing beneath the green awning, behind the rack of sandals. He’s seen us.”

“The hells!” swore Keshad. “Two of them!”

“Maybe more. Where are Seren and Tam? Why haven’t they caught up with the captain? It isn’t like he’s moving fast.”

A whistle blasted above the street noise. Chaji bolted, Umar at his heels, shoving past anyone in their way as they sprinted after the company. Keshad found his way blocked by the barrow-man, who was swearing as he struggled to stop the unbalanced barrow from spilling. Kesh grabbed the lip and pulled, and the man thumped it down on its legs with a curse.