Tiny barbs of fear pricked Adare’s skin. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Who is it?”

“Yes, and I don’t know. Two tall men. They just stepped into a ta shop.”

Instead of glancing back, Adare stared at the crowd moving and shifting around her. She had no idea how Fulton had picked two faces out of the chaos. There must have been thousands of people in the wide plaza—porters, bare-chested and bent nearly double beneath their loads; knots of garrulous women in bright silk, down from the Graves to pick over the newest goods before they reached market; beggars prostrated beside the fountains; wagon-drivers in broad straw hats prodding indifferent water buffalo through the press. Half an Annurian legion could have been following her through the crowd and Adare might not have noticed.

“There were hundreds of people moving west along the canal,” Adare whispered. “This is the busiest hour for the Basin. It doesn’t mean they’re all stalking us.”

“With due respect, Minister,” Fulton replied, herding her surreptitiously to the south, toward one of the smaller streets leading out of the broad square, “you have your business and I have mine.”

“Where are we going?” Adare demanded, risking a glance over her shoulder despite the Aedolian’s orders. Birch had taken a dozen steps back, his boyish face serious as he scanned the storefronts. “We’re headed south, not west.”

“We’re not going to the Lowmarket anymore. It’s not safe.”

Adare took a deep breath. Her entire plan hinged on going west, on getting through the broad plaza, then over the large bridge spanning the Atmani Canal. The fact that someone might have seen her leaving the Dawn Palace, that men might even now be tracking her through the city streets, only increased her urgency.

“Well, if someone is following, we have to go on,” she said. “We can lose them in the Lowmarket.”

Fulton glared at her.

“The Lowmarket is an assassin’s dream—constant crowds, miserable sight lines, and enough noise that you can’t hear yourself talk. I didn’t want you traveling there in the first place, and you’re certainly not going now. You can have me removed from my post when we return to the palace. Have me stripped of my steel, if you want, but until we return, until you do, it is my charge to guard you, and I intend to keep that charge.” His grip tightened on her elbow. “Keep moving. Don’t run.”

He glanced over his shoulder toward Birch, who flicked a series of hand signs, too quick for Adare to follow. The younger Aedolian looked grim and Fulton nodded curtly as he shepherded her toward the nearest street.