At the gates, I gave the guards their orders. Keep watch, look out for strangers, know where the Emperor is but don’t step on her heels. There were no more shipments or workers expected today, so it was an easy task I left them with.

I studiously avoided the gazes of the food stall merchants as we entered the city. By day it was bustling. A butcher passed me on my right with a bucket full of gutted fish, apron stained with bloody handprints. On my left, the owner of a drinking hall unfolded a couple of tables outside, taking advantage of the rare good weather in a wet season. Mephi trotted at my side, waiting for some sign I would stop. “I’ll get you something on the way back,” I told him. “I’ve got places to be.”

He grumbled a little but said nothing.

The back of my neck itched, as though someone had brushed their fingers across it. I tried to surreptitiously glance back and thought I saw someone duck behind a building. Could have been my nerves – I’d just survived an assassination attempt and had chased off a construct spy after all – but I tightened my grip around my staff and put my hand on one of Mephi’s horns anyways. “Stay close,” I told him.

I was in a precarious position. I couldn’t afford to get caught sending information to the Shardless Few. The messages were coded and stamped with what looked like the Imperial seal, only with an extra feather in the phoenix’s crest. Most people wouldn’t dare tamper with an Imperial letter. But if someone dug deeply enough, they’d start asking questions about why I visited the docks so often and why the Emperor might want to pass messages to a stall merchant. Lin had been kind to me, but I’d read enough to know the brutal history of Emperors. I’d lose my head at the very least, but I might lose a few parts before that.

The stalls and shops changed the closer I moved to the docks. Down here, the air was thick with the scent of brine and captive fish. Boxes of freshly caught squid nearly spilled into the street; barrels roiled with sinuous eels.

I doubled back and wove my way through two unnecessary streets before finally making my way to the merchant’s stall. “Keep an eye out,” I said to Mephi. A white flag flew at a stall selling bread. Steam obscured the back of her stall, rising to join the clouds above. Several large pots boiled over fires, stacks of bamboo baskets piled high next to them. A woman was using a pair of tongs to set rounded bundles of fluffy white bread onto the trays at the front of her stall. She was a thin woman, with long black hair she kept tied in a plait.