“So this is your hideout?” Rebecca said, looking disappointed. She seemed rather the worse for wear—like a street waif gone wrong. The hair that had been tucked under the cap had come down and hung in long wet strands around her shoulders. Green eyes shone out from an olive-skinned face suggesting a mixture of bloods: clan and Vale, maybe. A lush, kissable mouth was centered over a stubborn chin. Her long skirts were smeared with mud all around the hemline, and her blouse appeared to be soaked through.

But when she turned her head—in profile—she looked somehow familiar. Perhaps he’d seen her at the markets, or…

“Have we met?” he asked.

“I am sure we have not,” she said, sniffling a little, looking miserable.

Blood and bones, he thought. Please don’t go crying. As if things aren’t bad enough.

“Hey now,” he said. “I’m the one should be crying. Thanks to your bluejacket, I’ve got no home, no job, no prospects.”

“May…maybe you should have thought of that before you killed those people.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” he said, stung. “I told you. That wasn’t me.”

She said nothing, only wrapped her arms around herself and shivered a little.

“If you’d like some dry clothes,” he said, “you can look through the trunk and see if anything fits. I could…um…turn my back or go back outside.” Into the rain. He was really going above and beyond with this girlie.

“I’m fine,” she said, too quickly. She sank into a puddle of skirts in a defensible corner, watching him with big, wary eyes.

“Would you like something to eat? Biscuits? Or biscuits with jam?” He gestured expansively, the proper host. “Biscuits with sugar on?”

“No.”

He sat, cross-legged, at a distance that he hoped would make her comfortable. “What were you doing at Southbridge Temple?” he asked.

She paused long enough to make up a lie. “Applying for a job.”

“Really? What kind of job? What are you good at?”

Her expression said, Cutting the hearts out of thieves and kidnappers.

He tried again. “Where do you live?”

Another pause. “Near the castle close. On Bradbury Street.”

“That’s rather posh,” he said, surprised.

“I’m a servant. A…um…tutor. In the…Bayar household.”

She lied in little fits and starts, making it up as she went. Either she wasn’t very good at it, or she didn’t care to be convincing.

But she’d got the name Bayar from somewhere.

“Lord Bayar’s the High Wizard, right?” he said, aiming for casual.

She nodded, looking surprised that he’d heard of him.

“So what are they like, the Bayars?” he asked, gnawing on a hard biscuit. “Is it true they’re really decent sorts, once you get to know them?”

She narrowed her eyes, reappraising him. “Why did you bring me here?”