Ragmarket was waking up around them as they headed uptown. Somehow, Han needed to shed the girlie before they ran across a nosy bluejacket or some other troublesome person. Only now he felt somehow confident she wouldn’t turn him in.

Every time he looked at Rebecca, she was studying him through narrow green eyes, like he was a cypher that needed solving. He was beginning to think he preferred the wide-eyed terrified look. How much of the conversation with Cat had she overheard?

“That Cat, she was your sweetheart, wasn’t she?” she asked him, as if she were privy to his thoughts.

“Not exactly,” he replied.

She rolled her eyes, in that way girlies had.

“What?” he said irritably, skirting a large pile of potato peelings at the curb. Could be worse, in Ragmarket.

“Obviously she thought so.”

“Well, she’s with Velvet now.” Why was he telling her this? Han decided to change the subject. “You know, you look good in breeches,” he said, running his eyes over the display. “Very—ah—shapely,” he added, grinning and demonstrating with his hands.

That shut her up. She blushed bright pink, and there was no more talk of sweethearts.

She did look good in breeches, in fact, and it wasn’t that he was dazzled by the novelty of it. Clan girls wore leggings, after all.

In the camps they told stories of tiny beautiful wood nymphs that would catch you in their snares and challenge you with riddles. Rebecca could’ve been a character in any of those. Her waist was so small, he could have spanned it with his hands, but there was a wiry toughness to her that appealed to him.

Glancing sideways at her, he wondered what it would be like to kiss her.

Leave it alone, Alister, he thought. You got trouble enough. Whoever she was, she had powerful friends.

“I’m going to leave you on the Way,” he said, pulling her by the hand, pushing between the delivery wagons and crowds of laborers and shopkeepers in the narrow street. “There’s lots of traffic this time of day, and it should be safe. You can easily walk back to the castle close.”

“I’m fine on my own, you know,” she said, putting her nose in the air.

He snorted. “Right. You were fine when I found you in the alley. Cat and them would’ve eaten you alive.”

“Why’d you save me?” she asked. “I mean, I ran away.”

Sometimes Rebecca seemed plenty sharp, and other times she’d say the stupidest things. “I was the one that dragged you off from Southbridge Temple,” he said. “You end up with your throat cut, I’ll get the blame. I got enough problems as it is.”

“You’re going to try to rescue the Raggers, aren’t you?” she said. “The ones taken by the Guard.”