“He will come to you, I am sure—hurry! The soldiers must not find you!”

She allowed herself to be drawn away up the corridor. Almost as terrifying as the servants’ screams was the low, hungry roar of the spreading fire.

She pulled away from him again as they reached the part of the residence across the garden from the main chamber. “What of your aunt and the other women?”

“The servants will lead them out! Curse you, girl, do you never do what you are told? Shaso is waiting for you!” He stepped behind her and grabbed both her elbows, shoving her forward at an awkward stumble, another dozen steps down the corridor and then out a door into the open yard at the back of the house, site of the donkey stables, the vegetable garden, and the kitchen midden. He pushed her toward the stable and had almost forced her through the doorway when she threw out her arms and caught herself. She stepped to the side so the front wall and not the open door was behind her, and put her hand into her robe.

“What are you doing?” Talibo was almost screaming, his handsome, slightly childish face as exaggerated as a festival mask. Briony could see flames now on top of the house, greedily at work in the roof. On the far side of Effir dan-Mozan’s walls, torches and lanterns were being lit in the surrounding houses as the neighborhood woke up to the terror in their midst.

“You said Shaso was waiting for me. But first you said he would come to meet me. Where is he? I think you are lying.”

He looked at her with a strange, wounded fury, as though she had gone out of her way to spoil some pleasant surprise he had planned for her. “Ah? Do you think so?”

“Yes, I do. I think…” But she did not finish because Talibo put both hands on her breasts and shoved her, bouncing her off the wall and into the doorway, then pushed her again, sending her stumbling backward to fall down in the mire of the stable.

“Close your mouth, whore!” he shouted. “Do what you are told! I will be back!”

But even as he scrambled for the door, Briony was sliding across the damp ground toward him. She grabbed at his leg and pulled herself upright, and when he turned, she shoved herself against him, forcing him back against the rough wattle of the stable wall, and pressed the curved blade of the Yisti knife against his throat. Close enough to kiss, Shaso had taught her, close enough to kill.

“You will never touch me again, do you hear?” she breathed into his face. “And you will tell me everything Shaso said to you, everything that has happened and that you saw. If you lie I will slash your throat and leave you to bleed to death right here in the shit and the mud.”

Tal’s long-lashed eyes widened. He had gone pale, she could see that even in the dim light of the single candle that someone had lit here in the stable—in preparation for her arrival?—and when he sagged Briony let her own muscles go a little slack. Where was Shaso? Was Effir’s nephew really lying? How could they escape with soldiers everywhere—and how had the soldiers found out…?