Ahead in the darkness, still off a ways on the narrow street, she saw a group of men coming toward her. They weren’t carrying any lamps, so it was hard to tell how many there were, but the bunch of them looked to be a goodly number. She stared with wide eyes, trying to tell who they were.

And then, as they passed a shop with candlelight coming from a window, she saw the glint of light off swords at their hips. Several men had upright pikes.

They were soldiers, probably a patrol of the Home Guard. There looked to be maybe eight or ten of them.

Before the patrol saw her, Magda quickly ducked into the alleyway to her left. She ran a map of the city through her head and realized that, rather than following the route she’d been planning on taking, she could actually take a shortcut to Merritt’s house and probably save some time, as well as stay out of sight from the patrol. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before. She guessed that she was so drained of strength that it kept her from thinking straight. She reminded herself that her survival depended on thinking clearly.

She hurried up the alley, trying to put distance between her and the end of the alley where the soldiers would pass by. She knew that patrols sometimes took gifted with them to sense people who might be hiding. When she heard them approaching the intersection where she had gone into the alley, she slipped into the narrow space between two buildings to hide. She held the lantern behind her in case there was any crack in the metal door that might be spotted if one of the soldiers looked her way.

Magda peeked out with one eye. She could see them, off in the distance, as they passed by the end of the alley. It was hard to tell, but she was pretty sure that she was right, that there were eight to ten of them. She hadn’t thought that patrols were typically that large.

She saw, then, that one of the men in their midst appeared to be restrained with some kind of device around his neck with a bar in front. It looked like maybe his wrists were manacled to the end of the bar.

That explained the number of men. They had taken someone into custody. Soldiers typically took a larger contingent when they went to apprehend a criminal. She supposed that it was easier to catch a man in his bed than to try to run him down in the day.