“Sheh! Cursed outlanders!”

The red cap bobbed past, flowing downhill. Keshad pushed past the same pair of well-dressed matrons and followed the cap down the street. The beggar ducked behind passers-by, then twisted into an alley. Kesh sprinted after him, but negotiating the confines of the alley of combs was not so easy because the artisans recognized him, Master Feden’s household having spent a good deal of coin on fancy combs and lacquered sticks and clasps. A small girl seated with legs dangling from a second story balcony watched his progress, her round face solemn as she tracked him.

Panting, he came out into the tailor’s street. He scanned up the angling terraced steps and down toward the sprawl of the outer city seen through gaps in buildings. A red cap bobbed in the crowd, then stilled as the man stopped and looked back.

To make sure he was being followed.

“Aui!”

Although similar in stature, this was a different man. He wore a subtly different twist of dirty kilted rags and had less of a bandy-legged gait, a man who had spent less time on horseback than the first beggar. Now that Kesh thought of it, where did a beggar get bandy legs from riding horses so much, unless he was an outcast fosterling raised and later discarded by the lendings?

Where had they lost track of the first beggar? It could have been at any time after Avisha had tossed two vey in the man’s bowl. Maybe down by the gold awning amid the clamor and slurp of the noodle stalls. Easy enough to slide one red cap in the place of another.

“Guards! Murder! Murder!”

The red-capped head was still turned to watch him, and Keshad knew absolutely that to run down past that man would be idiotic. He plunged back into the alley of the combs and halted in front of the stall of a woman he’d dealt with a hundred times.

“Where’s your mistress?” he asked the lad overseeing the wares. “Mistress Para!”

She was an attractive woman, her taloos wrapped around advanced pregnancy. But she was remarkably light on her feet as she emerged onto the porch with a cup in one hand and a tiny chisel in the other. “Keshad!” She smiled. “I heard you left the city.”

“Heya! My apologies. Can I cut through your house to the alley behind?” Beyond the bright opening of the alley, traffic passed on the tailor’s street.

She was Air-touched like him; it gave them a measure of kinship. She stepped aside, and he sprang up the steps in his outdoor shoes and raced through the workshop while a pair of apprentices paused in their work to gape. He ran down the long corridor that fronted the living quarters. Emerging finally in the narrow kitchen yard, he pelted through an open gate into the fetid confines of the back alley.

He cut back toward the tailor’s street and hurried down the terraced steps toward the commotion below, where men were still shouting for the guard. He hadn’t meant to cut so close to the incident, but when he saw Seren leaning against a wall, holding his side as though injured, he shoved through the traffic and fetched up beside the young soldier, who was red-faced, breathing raggedly, and doubled over, barely able to keep his feet.