After a brief negotiation, Raisa left the shop with eight sticky buns in hand, her hair tucked up under the boy’s cap.

I’ll probably end up with the itches, she thought.

Cuffs was waiting for her outside. He gripped her wrist and yanked her into a doorway. “What. Are. You. Doing?” he hissed, his face inches from hers. Close up, she saw that his blue eyes were flecked with gold, his lashes thick and pale, the angry bruises on his face fading into pastels, a bit of blond stubble on his chin.

She held up her sack of buns. “I’m a bakeshop girl,” Raisa said.

“This an’t a game,” Cuffs said. “You need to turn yourself in to the bluejackets on the bridge. Tell them you’re the girl that was stolen from the temple. And go home.”

“I’ve got something to do first.”

“Look. I can’t cross the bridge while it’s swarming with bluejackets,” he said. “I can’t help you if you get into trouble in Southbridge.”

“Fine. You’re done with me. I’m on my own, all right?” Raisa said, thinking, You can’t help me where I’m going.

She wrested free of him and headed for the near end of the bridge. She looked back once to see him staring after her, hands stuffed into his pockets, a scowl on his face.

It took a good ten minutes to get through the line. Raisa tapped her foot impatiently, anxious for the encounter to be over. She wasn’t used to having to wait.

At the checkpoint, she bowed low before the guardsmen, as she’d seen others do.

“What’s your name and business, girl?” the guardsman demanded, scratching himself in a rude place.

“Rebecca Morley, Your Honor,” Raisa said, staring at the ground, still worried about being recognized. “Mean to sell bakery goods cross the river.”

“Bakery goods, you say? Let’s see.”

Raisa mutely opened the sack of buns and extended it toward the soldier. He reached a filthy paw in and removed one. He bit into it, grinned approvingly, and took another.

Raisa’s cheeks flamed, and it took all of her self-control to keep from snatching the bag back. If she were truly a bakery girl, the cost of the buns would come out of her own pocket.

“These is good,” the soldier said, handing back the depleted sack and swiping at his mouth with his sleeve. “Save me a couple for when you cross back.” And he waved her on, grinning.

Raisa fumed all the way across the bridge. So this was the queen’s face to the people. A common thief and bully. No wonder Amon considered rebellion a possibility.