Old flags. Paintings. The marble heads from statues of old men that had had their heads knocked off and found their way into her shop at the mouth of the river, where collectors came to buy history and scavenge.

Her mother had a tiny shop on the storefront, where she studied potential buyers. But it was the warehouse that was truly astonishing. She’d installed it in the belly of a huge building near the city center, several apartments that she’d bought and then carefully bricked up, hiding them away from prying eyes. It was there that she brought her best buyers.

When Mahlia was small, she was sometimes allowed to watch as men and women surveyed the paintings leaning against walls, the statuary of presidents, the murals chipped from government buildings and transported whole to the warehouse.

Her mother said that was how she met Mahlia’s father.

He’d had a passion for history, just like her. He’d bought little silver snuffboxes from revolutionary times, and quill pens that had signed famous documents. Handwritten letters. All sorts of things. He’d kept coming back, again and again, until her mother finally understood that it wasn’t just antiquities that her father loved. And that was where Mahlia had come from.

“You think you have a path?” Tool asked, breaking her thoughts.

Mahlia startled. For all his bulk, the half-man was silent. It was spooky to have him suddenly appear. “Yeah,” she said. “There’s a way.”

“Undetected?” the half-man pressed.

Mahlia bristled. “Well, if it ain’t, we’re both dead pretty fast, right?”

Tool smirked. “Escape is simpler than infiltration, girl. Just because you managed to flee that place doesn’t mean that you can reenter it. The direction of your passage is not the only variable. Where will you lair once you have passed within? How will you survive until you find your brother?”

“He’s not my brother.”

Tool growled at that. “Then leave him to the Fates.”

Mahlia knew what Tool was getting at, but she didn’t like his bringing it up again.

“I owe him,” she said.

“Debts are a heavy burden. Throw them off, and you walk free.”

It was tempting, for sure. Just run away. Pretend that the licebiter who had cracked the jokes and played the pranks and who had rooted up an entire nest of pigeon eggs when they were starving had never existed. That he’d never saved her from all the pain the soldier boys had wanted to slash into her.

“Can’t.” She grimaced. “Anyway, why are you helping me? Why don’t you just run off? No one’s keeping you here.”

“I have my own reasons.”

“It’s not because I saved you?” Mahlia taunted.

Tool’s bestial face swung back to regard her. “No.”