“So you never worked for the Bayars?”

Rebecca shook her head. “My family is quite wealthy, although I don’t have ready access to the money.” She paused. “Or I didn’t, at least,” she added, almost to herself.

So she was more than just an upstairs servant. She’d been a true gilt-edged lady slumming in Ragmarket? Was that what she was saying?

Apprehension roiled Han’s stomach. He knew something about gilt-edged ladies and what they expected from him.

“When you abducted me from the temple, I didn’t want you to know who I really was,” she went on. “So I kept on with the pretense. I didn’t know you—but I’d heard that you were a thief and a ruthless killer.”

She paused, and Han wondered if she was thinking about the eight bluejackets he’d just done.

“I never had the chance to tell you the truth, even after I went into the Southbridge Guardhouse after the Raggers. I didn’t want anyone to trace what happened back to me. Anyway, I never thought I’d see you again.” Rebecca looked down at her hands.

It was a peculiar conversation. Emotion crackled in the air, much more than seemed called for. Rebecca was practically down on her knees apologizing for lying to a former street thief about whether she was a little rich or a lot rich.

“Well,” Han said cautiously, “I guess I knew, going in, you were a blueblood. To someone like me, nearly everyone is.”

Now that Rebecca had begun this story, she seemed determined to finish it. “When I went to Oden’s Ford, I was running away from a forced marriage, and I didn’t want my mother to find me. Rebecca Morley had served me well before, so I used the name again.”

Han’s neck and shoulders prickled. This story was familiar. Where had he heard it before—a story about a blueblood running away from a marriage?

“Who were you running from?” Han asked, his mouth dryer than ever. “Why were those bluejackets trying to kill you? If you’re not Rebecca Morley, then who are you?”

Leaning forward, she gripped his right hand and looked into his eyes. “I ran away to avoid marrying Micah Bayar,” she said. “My mother, the queen, insisted.” Turning his hand palm-up, she dropped a coin into it.

He looked down at it—a girlie coin, the familiar portrait in profile glittering in the light from the lanterns. He looked up at Rebecca, down at the coin, and the holes filled in. Why hadn’t he seen it before?

It was like she thought if she fed him poison in little bites, it’d be easier to swallow.

“My real name is Raisa,” she said. “Raisa ana’Marianna, soon to be Queen of the Fells.”

C H A P T E R  F I F T E E N

THE PRICE OF
DECEPTION