“I don’t, and I couldn’t say if I did.”

“That’s fair enough.”

The neighboring vendor, selling noodles, broke in. “Our defenses are strong enough to hold off that cursed army.”

Under cover of this conversation, Pil tugged at her sleeve. “I think we should go back,” he muttered.

“My thanks to you,” said Nallo, “greetings of the dusk.”

She slurped down the last bits and set off, Pil striding alongside. “What is it?” she asked.

Then she heard shouts rising over the twilight clamor.

Pil edged into a trot as folk looked up from their shopping and eating and chatting; foreheads wrinkled; a man harrumphed irritably; a child whined, “Come on, Ma, come on.” The knife sharpener’s whetstone creaked to a halt as he forgot to pump. A noodle vendor’s ladle tipped sideways as she strained to hear, and the steaming noodles slithered out to plop on the ground.

“Move.” Pil broke into a run, pulling out his reeve’s baton.

She fumbled as she slipped hers out of its loop. A tumult of shouting lifted as in a wave to wash over them. Dogs began barking and howling, the cry taken up throughout the city. Something had gone horribly wrong.

As they reached the Silk Street gate, Pil used his baton to shove folk aside as they cut across to the brick-paved walkway reserved for official business and hopped over the dividing rail. At first, the lane ran clear of traffic as far as they could see alongside Canal Street, and Pil ran full out with Nallo pounding along behind.

She glanced back. A surge like a rains-swollen flood roiled in their wake, people rushing toward Guardian Bridge. Was that a person crumpling to the earth, trampled by the press of those stampeding behind? The hells! They’d be crushed.

The approach to the bridge lay in the open space where Bell Quarter and Flag Quarter ended at the locks. A crowd was always waiting for passage over the bridge. Pil ruthlessly drove through the people clogging the walkways, using the baton as leverage to prod people out of the way.

“Heya! Watch that—”

“Cursed reeves—”

One side of the bridge was roped off for official traffic, but the press of people trying to get over the bridge had spilled over. Pil tucked up beside the railing and smacked bodies to move them out of the way so he and Nallo could squeeze past. The bed net caught on something, or someone, and was dragged off her shoulders. She let it go.

It took forever to get over the span, and as they pushed down to the spur where the stairs that led up to Justice Square began, panic hit the square in front of the bridge. Screaming drowned all other sounds. Flailing bodies plunged into the spillway pool and the empty locks.

“Let in the water! Let in the water!” a voice cried.

“Release the locks!”

“They’ve breached the gates!”

Like a storm, riot crashed down: the clatter of weapons, the dogs gone wild, and most of all the terror of thousands wailing and roaring until she thought her heart would burst from fear. Within the bodies pushing toward the single gate guarding the stairs, she had lost Pil.