“You must be Cuffs Alister,” the wizard said, spitting his name out like it tasted bad. “I’ve been looking for you for some time. You are amazingly evasive.”

Han swallowed hard and tried to keep from looking at Taz. “I don’t even know you.” And I don’t want to either, he thought. Though there was something familiar about the wizard’s finely planed face and the falcons on his stole.

“True,” the wizard said. “We’ve not met. But you have something I want. Something that was stolen from me.”

“You’re mixing me up with someone else,” Han said. “I got nothing of yours.”

“There was some confusion at first. I’d been told that a boy named Shiv stole the amulet. Imagine my distress when, after considerable persuasive effort on my part, and pain on his, I learned that Shiv, in fact, knew nothing. That I’d been misled.”

Han’s heart stuttered. “You sent the demons,” he whispered. “The ones that killed the Southies.”

The wizard examined his hands, shimmering with power. “Wizard assassins, actually, cloaked and glamoured up. Hysteria can be a useful tool in forcing a community to give up its own.”

Why had this wizard gone after Shiv? What could he have done to draw the attention of this monster?

And then the memory surfaced, like gas bubbling up through a mud pot—that day on Hanalea, the encounter with Micah Bayar when he’d taken the amulet. Bayar had asked Han who he was, and Han had told him, “They call me Shiv, streetlord of Southbridge.”

It had been a thoughtless throwaway lie. Though some would see it as payback for years of bitter competition for a few nasty city blocks.

He hadn’t meant it that way, had he?

Horrified, Han recalled that last meeting with Shiv, the streetlord on his knees offering his allegiance, begging, Call them off.

Han had walked away from him. And Shiv’s bloody, beaten, tortured body had been found two days later. Now Han knew that it was, after all, his fault—the dead Southies were dead because of his lie.

Han judged the distance to the back door. There was no way to get there without being fried, same as Taz.

“Who are you, anyway?” he asked, fighting off a growing suspicion.

“I’m Gavan Bayar,” the stranger said. “Lord Bayar to you.”

Bones, Han thought, struggling to keep his face a blank. Not just a wizard, but the High Wizard, the most powerful in the Fells. Father of Micah Bayar.

“Well,” Han said, swallowing dry spit, “there you go. I’d be a fool to steal something of yours.”