It was tempting to believe she had escaped, had eluded il Tornja’s reach when she slipped the boundaries of the city, but whenever she glanced over her shoulder she could still see Intarra’s Spear, surface dazzling with refracted sunlight, a glass needle bisecting the northern sky. It had been her home for twenty years. Now the sight of the tower made her hands sweat. She tried not to look back.

Oshi rode atop the wagon, wrists protruding like sticks from his golden pilgrim’s robe, eyes fixed on a pear he had been holding, uneaten, for hours. He chewed at the inside of his slack cheek and hummed tunelessly as he considered his fruit. Nira walked alongside, occasionally clucking her tongue at the team of water buffalo. They had fallen into a wide gap between the pilgrims ahead and those following behind, a space large enough that Adare could almost forget that in order to flee from one foe, she had surrounded herself with a group of others. It would have been nice to forget. Unfortunately, Nira was having none of it.

“Get going, girl,” she said, thumping her cane against the side of the wagon.

“My name is Dorellin,” Adare said wearily. “My father is a merchant. . . .”

“What does he sell?”

“Cloth.”

“What kinda cloth?”

“Si’ite silk, primarily, although he supplements his trade with double-dyed wool from up north.”

Nira blew out an exasperated breath. “Meshkent’s great buggering cock, but you’re a thickheaded bitch.”

Adare colored with confusion and anger.

“What, exactly, is the problem with importing wool and silk?” she demanded, her irritation getting the better of her fear.

“Primarily,” Nira replied, ticking the word off on a gnarled finger. “Supplements. Importing.”

“They’re hardly obscure words,” Adare replied.

“Not if you spent your life pampered and petted in a palace.”

Nira’s accent and idiom seemed to shift as she spoke. In general the woman’s speech was crude, crass, piled high with colorful expletives, but some times, as now, she slipped into a more polished idiom, as though she knew deep down how a woman ought to speak, but couldn’t be bothered most of the time.

“According to the story, my father is rich. It’s plausible that he educated me.”

“Oh, it’s plausible, all right, but we ain’t shootin’ for fuckin’ plausible—which, by the way, is another bright, shiny word you ought not let slip past those pouty lips. We’re shootin’ for utterly forgettable. These cretins”—she waved a gnarled hand at the golden-robed faithful before and behind—“are near as thick as you, but they’re not utterly without brains. You want ’em sayin’ to each other, ‘That Dorellin certainly is a bright young woman. She speaks so eloquently, so insightfully.’ ” She raised an eyebrow. “You want that?”

“The empire is filled with eloquent, insightful young women.”