Han wanted to blame Bird for discouraging him from following her to Demonai. Maybe if she’d allowed him to come, he wouldn’t have been desperate enough to try to sell the amulet. He wanted to be mad at her, but his heart wasn’t in it, and when she pulled him into her arms, it was a welcome distraction, at least.

The Demonai would stay until Dancer left, but that time was fast approaching. Then Bird would leave for Demonai. After that, Han saw nothing ahead, nothing to look forward to.

Willo, who was usually so serene, seemed edgy, almost distraught. Han attributed it to the way Dancer was acting and the prospect of his forced departure for the south. And maybe it was a little about Han’s situation, because she treated him differently than before, almost as if he were fragile—or as if he might explode if she looked at him the wrong way.

Some days it seemed just possible he might—that the alchemy of pain and rage and guilt and frustration would combust inside him. Mam and Mari had been no threat to Gavan Bayar, or Micah Bayar, or the bloody queen of the Fells.

Han might fancy himself a powerful streetlord, but in truth, the bit of swag he’d managed to take off the rich was mere crumbs from their table—so little as to be scarcely noticed. For that he’d been beaten in the streets, pitched into gaol, hunted all his life.

He’d thought Shiv was his enemy. Shiv was just another victim of the queen and the Wizard Council and all the rest. The streetlords spent their time battling each other when they should have been fighting those who had the real power.

It would serve them right if he gathered his quiver and bow and blades and climbed Gray Lady to the Bayar compound and showed them what it was like to be hunted.

He was likely to fail at that, as well. There was no chance he’d get anywhere near his real enemies, the ones that pulled the strings. At most, a few bodyguards and servants would die.

Willo held long meetings with the elders in the Visitors’ Lodge late at night, which was surprising, because such meetings were usually held in the Matriarch Lodge. Maybe, he thought, they didn’t want him and Dancer to be privy to their deliberations.

He could stay with Willo and study healing, make a little money as an apprentice, and see Bird now and then when she traveled to Marisa Pines. If, after a year, he wanted to leave, he’d put the money he’d saved toward the warrior school at Oden’s Ford. It was that or back to the streets. Either way he was unlikely to have to worry about growing old.

Finally, one sultry night when Dancer was within a week of leaving, Willo called a meeting at the Matriarch Lodge.