Han stared at her. Cat had a lot to answer for, but he wasn’t going to let her take the blame for that. “No,” he said. “That one is mine. My fault.” He remembered how distraught Cat had been the night of the fire, how she and the other Raggers had kept him from going into the stable after Mam and Mari. She had saved his life that night, too.

“There’s no way you could’ve saved them, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said, softening a bit. “You can’t blame yourself.”

She just shook her head. “You don’t know nothing.” She sat up, then, swaying, looking like she might topple back over. Dancer put an arm around her to steady her, and for once she didn’t jerk away.

“Who did you think you could sell it to?” Han asked. “The amulet, I mean.”

Cat rolled her eyes as if Han were an idiot. “The Bayar jinxflinger came to see me a few weeks ago. He threatened me. He said he’d tell on me if I didn’t steal the jinxpiece back for him. He said it was his to start with, that you’d taken it from him.”

That would have been after Bayar and his cousins had been evicted from Hampton. After the dean had told Bayar to back off.

Something was missing, something Cat was talking around but not saying. “What was Bayar going to tell me?” Han asked. “What didn’t you want me to know?”

Cat took a deep breath, and the words came out in a rush, like she’d been waiting forever to confess. “It was me,” she said. “I was the one told the young Bayar where you lived, when they were hunting you in Ragmarket. They’d took Velvet; they said they’d kill him if I didn’t tell. So I did. I figured it was him or you, and I loved Velvet, and I didn’t love you. I figured they’d toss the place, find whatever it was you’d stole from them, and that would be that. I never thought…I never expected they’d…” Her voice broke, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

“You never thought they’d burn up Mam and Mari,” Han said.

He backed away from Cat until he came up against the wall. He flattened himself against it, wishing he could disappear, that he could just blink out like a cinder so he wouldn’t have to hear any more.

Tears pricked at his eyes. “You didn’t know who you were dealing with.”

“I found out,” she said, her voice bitter as chicory. “They killed Velvet anyway. Then they come and killed everyone else. It was a slaughter. They were looking for you, trying to make somebody tell where you were. I’d be dead myself if I was there.” She took a shuddering breath. “I wish I had been.”