Shiv stared at him a moment, his eyes narrowed. “What is it about you? People can’t stop talking about you. Telling stories. It’s all I hear about. Cuffs Alister this, Cuffs Alister that. It’s like you’re golden.”

Han was speechless. Golden? He’d just faked his own death and was sneaking out of town with the Guard on his heels. He couldn’t even support his mam and little sister.

Shiv rattled on. “I need to know. How’d you do it? Conjure them demons? Did you sell your soul to the Breaker? Did you make some kind of…of deal?”

Shiv looked desperate to make a deal of his own.

Han was growing impatient, eager to bring this awful encounter to an end. “Look, it don’t matter how many ways you ask it; I got no idea what’s chasing you.”

Shiv stared at him defiantly for a long moment, then his body kind of settled, almost shrunk into itself. “All right. You win.” He took a deep breath, then fell to his knees in the streaming street. He looked very small amid the shadows of the buildings. Bowing his head, he extended his knife, hilt-first, toward Han.

“I, Shiv Connor, pledge fealty to Cuffs Alister as streetlord of Southbridge and Ragmarket. I…pledge my loyalty and my blades and weapons to his use and place myself under his protection. I promise to bring all takings to him and to accept my gang share from his hands as he sees fit. If I break my promise, let me be torn apart by…by…” Here his voice faltered.

If it was possible to feel more miserable, Han did. “I can’t protect you,” he said. “I’m sorry. My advice is to run.”

He left Shiv kneeling in the rain.

C H A P T E R  S E V E N T E E N

PARTY
WARFARE

There was a spate of name day parties in June, because most who shared Raisa’s birth year preferred to avoid competing with the princess heir’s festivities in July. Some, perhaps, hoped to secure matches before the stakes were raised by her entry into the marriage market, while the more optimistic among the boys might be saying, “Why not me for royal consort?”

The gifts still came thick and fast, and it gave Raisa a fierce pleasure to redirect them to her father and, through him, to the temple school. Not that it was easy. Queen Marianna was most displeased with her husband, following Raisa’s supposed “visit” to Demonai Camp. She made it clear that Averill was not welcome at court in all the various ways available to queens.

So even though her father was back in the Vale, Raisa didn’t see as much of him as she would have liked.