Adare hesitated, then backed away from the basket and the soldier both. She had no idea where Fink’s Crossing was, but she understood the talk of geography and turf well enough. She was somewhere she didn’t belong, and the arrival of the soldier, this coded exchange, the way that he looked at her with those hooded eyes, put her even more on edge.

“Just helping,” Willet said, nodding. “Nothing to do with you, Lehav.”

The soldier eyed her for a long moment, looked her up and down as though she were a slave for sale on the blocks, then shrugged again.

“I suppose it’s not,” he said, then turned to the rats. “But remember: if Old Jake finds you working his streets, someone will be using that hook to fish your corpses out of the canal.”

He started to turn, but Adare flung out a hand.

“Wait!”

The soldier paused, glanced back over his shoulder.

She scrambled to think of something to say. “They’re going to rob me.”

He nodded. “That’s correct.”

His indifference took her aback. “You have to help me.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head evenly, “I don’t. You’ll be all right—these two will take your coin, but they’ll leave everything else intact.” He glanced over at the rats. “You haven’t turned rapists in the last few years, have you?”

Orren spat into the mud, then spoke for the first time. “No business of yours if we did.”

“No,” Willet said, cutting off his companion, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “ ’Course not, Lehav. We got sisters. Just gonna take the nice lady’s purse and see ’er on ’er way.”

Lehav nodded, turned back to Adare. “You’re lucky. If it were Old Jake’s men found you . . .” He raised an eyebrow. “Safe to say the result wouldn’t be pretty.”

Adare was shaking now, her breath hot and ragged in her lungs. She felt suddenly trapped, vulnerable, her feet sunk in the mud, dress hitched up around her thighs. Annur had thousands of guardsmen responsible for keeping the peace, for stopping just this sort of thing. The Dawn Palace spent tens of thousands of suns on them each year. You couldn’t stroll fifty paces through the Graves or the High Bluffs without seeing them walking in pairs, armor shining, keeping the Emperor’s peace. But then, this wasn’t the Graves.

“Wait,” she said, glancing desperately at Lehav’s sword. “You’re a soldier. You’re a soldier. From the legions. You swore an oath to protect the citizens of Annur.”

Lehav’s expression hardened. “I’d advise you not to instruct me in the matter of my own oaths. I left the legions years ago. Found a purer cause.”