He risked a quick glance up at the chaos of those streets, then ducked his head, questioning once more the wisdom of sending him away to Ashk’lan for training. What he had in common with the impatient, reckless people jostling him he had no idea, no idea how he would talk to them, or make sense of their answers. They were Annurians, and he the Emperor of Annur, but they might have been exotic birds, or apes for all Kaden understood them.

Finally, Kiel pulled Kaden and Triste into a narrow alleyway off the main street. It stank of rotted food and urine, but Kaden welcomed the shadows, the relative quiet, the respite.

“We should be safe,” the Csestriim said. “We’re a mile from the graveyard, and we’ve left no trail to follow.”

Kaden looked up. People—dozens, hundreds—swarmed past the narrow entrance to the alleyway, but no one so much as glanced in their direction. They could have been invisible.

“Where are we?” Kaden asked.

“Old Sticks,” Kiel replied. “A small quarter wedged between the Silk Canal and the Fourth. There used to be some small-scale banking and a market for fresh flowers.” He shrugged. “That was fifteen years ago.”

Kaden grimaced. He’d never heard of Old Sticks, never known that there was such a thing as a market for fresh flowers. He’d returned, finally, to his city, to the center of his empire, to discover that he was a stranger in his own land.

“The monk,” Triste said, glancing toward the head of the alley. The bruising on her face, the burns on her hands, looked worse, much worse outside of the Dead Heart, in the full light of day. “Do you think he followed us? Do you think he made it out?” Kaden thought of Tan’s naczal pressed against Triste’s throat, of Tan ordering her tied up like livestock, and he wondered if she hoped he had escaped the Ishien or not.

“He couldn’t follow,” Kaden said. “Not the way we went.”

“Rampuri Tan is a formidable hand with his spear,” Kiel said, “but not that formidable.”

“So he is dead,” Triste said dully.

“He is beyond our reach,” Kaden replied, trying to move past his own tumult of emotion, to focus on the dirt beneath his feet, the stench of the air.

Triste studied him for a moment, then nodded. “All right,” she said. “Where do we go now?”

Kiel shook his head. “I kept a few rooms near here,” he said. “I thought perhaps they would still be empty, but we passed them four streets back. It looks as though someone new is living there.”

“In your rooms?” Kaden asked. “How could they just move in?”

Kiel shrugged. “Fifteen years is a long time to be gone.”