But because this spy business was everything.

“Zsst, zsst,” she heard Chu’s low signal.

She adjusted her place, her gaze, and saw them coming down the alley in the white robes and golden belts of the Go’Doan.

She positioned, kept the blanket about her, and shuffled out when they got close.

“A piece for a pauper,” she muttered, affecting the Dellish accent to hide her Nadirii birth, and keeping her head ducked under the blanket.

“Begone, woman,” one of the priests spat, kicking out at her with his foot.

So much for their god Go’Vicee, who demanded service, she thought, avoiding his kick, staying low, and maneuvering around him, pulling at his robe, as was her directive.

This was to get their attention, and keep it, so that Chu could drop down in that utterly silent, stealthy, remarkably appealing way of his, whereupon he would pick from their robes whatever they carried and be away before they even knew he was there.

“A piece for pauper who has not eaten in a week,” she begged.

The one who had addressed her stopped, turned, aimed a kick that she allowed to land, expelling a surprised and pained, “Oof,” for the arsehole packed some power.

“Begone, bitch,” he hissed.

She crawled back toward him, grasping the hems of his robes, beginning to chant, “Piece for a pauper, piece for a pauper…”

But she barely got that out before Chu ruined their ploy by dropping soundlessly from the eaves, taking the priest who had kicked her by the head, and slamming it viciously into the stone wall.

He fell unconscious to the cobbles as the other one started to whirl, saying, “What on—?”

That priest got no more out as his head was slammed into the opposite wall and he dropped, out cold, to the ground.

Chu swiftly started searching the folds of the priest’s robes as Serena took her feet, dashing off the blanket and pressing it into a ball, snapping under her breath, “That was practical, but hardly our plan, Chu.”

He tipped his head back to look up at her from his squat, and she saw his face.

Therefore, she fell quiet.

He found nothing of worth on the one priest, but he took his purse, she knew, so this would appear as a robbery, and not what it was.

He then moved quickly to the other, searched him, and she saw him take some missives bound together with silver string.

Silver was not the color of Go’Doan.

Gold was.

A frisson slid over her skin.

The letters disappeared in Chu’s cloak, along with both priests’ purses, and before she could say anything, he had her hand and was dragging her down the alley.

She decided to remain quiet as he pulled her out of that lane, down a wider road, into a narrower passageway, and finally he shoved her under the lintel of an unlit doorway.