“You’re not going to look at the sergeant, are you, Princess?” Clewes asked. He must have caught the anger in her eye. “I mean—it’s a messy sight.”

“I’ve seen injured men before,” she said stoically. She looked out of the garden, over the city. The garden, a small patch of grass with trimmed hedges and a few shaped shrubs, sat within the King’s Wall, the second of the three walls within the city. From here, she could see four of the King’s Guards on the wall-walk, behind the parapet. Beyond that, to the east, lay the city market, just within the castle’s Outer Wall. The streets in the market below were a jumble—roofs of slate, some covered with a layer of sand and lead, forming narrow chasms above the rocky streets. Smoke rose from cooking fires here and there. Fourteen minor lords had estates within the city walls.

Iome studied the area where Cat’s Alley could be found, a narrow market street just off the Butterwalk. The merchants’ wattle houses there were painted in shades of cardinal, canary, and forest green, as if such bright colors could deny the general decrepitude of buildings that had been settling on their crooked foundations for five hundred years.

The city looked no different today than it had yesterday. She could see only rooftops; no sign of murderers.

Yet beyond the castle walls, beyond the farms and hay-crofts, in the ruddy hills of the Dunnwood to the south and west, dust rose in small clouds along the roads for miles. People were traveling to the fair from distant kingdoms. Already, dozens of colorful silk pavilions had been set out before the castle gates. In the next few days, the population of the city would soar from ten thousand to four or five times that number.

Iome looked back at the corporal. Clewes seemed like a cold man to have been sent to carry such ill news. Blood had been everywhere after the fight. That much Iome could see. Crimson smeared the corporal’s boots, stained the silver boar embroidered into the black of his livery. The corporal himself must have carried Sergeant Dreys up to the common.

“So the fellow killed two men and wounded a third,” Iome said. “A heavy loss, for a mere brawl. Did you dispatch the spice merchant yourself?” If he had, she decided, the corporal would get a reward. Perhaps a jeweled pin.

“No, milady. Uh, we busted him up a bit, but he’s still alive. He’s from Muyyatin. A fellow named Hariz al Jwabala. We didn’t dare kill him. We wanted to question him.” The corporal scratched the side of his nose, displeased at having left the trader alive.

Iome began to stroll toward the Bailey Gate, wanting to be with Chemoise. With a nod, she indicated that the corporal should follow, as did her Days.