“So,” Cat said, still looking at Han and ignoring Dancer, “I think you need looking out for. I think you need better help.” She curled her lip at Dancer, then shook back her mass of curls. “You planning to set up a new crew in Ardenscourt or what?” Scrunching her hair together, she tied it with a length of cloth. Her Ragger scarf. “Looked like there’d be lots of fat purses and not much competition. Trust me, nobody’d bloody-up against a jinxflinger for territory.”

She never believed we were going to Oden’s Ford, Han thought. She assumed I was going back to the Life and cutting her out.

“Look,” he said. “Dancer an’t my crew. Like I said, we’re going to Oden’s Ford, and it an’t to dive pockets. We’re going there to school.”

“Why don’t you come with us?” Dancer said, all out of the blue, even though he didn’t know about Jemson’s offer to Cat. “All kinds of people go to school there, and there’s all kinds of subjects. There’s got to be something you’re interested in.”

Han and Cat both stared at him.

“I don’t need your pity, copperhead,” Cat snarled. “You think just because you’re tight with Cuffs Alister you can—”

“Shut it,” Han said. “You can come with, but you got to get along with Dancer, and you got to go to school if you do. Don’t think we an’t grateful you saved our lives, but that’s the deal. Take or leave.”

“You’d choose him over me?” Cat said, her eyes wide and amazed.

“He an’t the one asking me to make a choice.”

Cat shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. The declining moon’s angled light only partially illuminated her face, glittering on the tears running down her cheeks.

Cat Tyburn? Crying?

“Hey, now,” Han said. “It can’t be bad as all that.”

“I’ll come,” she said, swiping at her eyes with her sleeves and sniffling. “I’ll go to the Temple School. I got nowhere else to go. Everybody’s gone. I can’t stay in Ragmarket, nor anywhere in the city.”

Han stared at her, speechless, once again crushed by guilt. In a way, he was responsible for her. He’d been the cause of all her losses.

Still, his instincts pricked him. Why would Cat want anything to do with him, when she had him to blame for the loss of everything she had—the Raggers, her territory, Velvet. She should hate the sight of him. And Cat wasn’t the forgiving sort.

Unless, like she said, she didn’t have a choice.