Obligingly, amazingly, the driver reined in the horses right in the middle of the intersection, fifty paces ahead. The driver and another man scrambled down from the box.

I took in a breath to hail them, but stopped. There was something familiar and disquieting about the carriage.

It was a hearse.

My steps slowed. The two men slid a coffin from the back of the hearse—an empty one, by the way they carried it. Working in silence, they laid it in the street.

Then they turned to face me.

Oh, Hells.

“Take her,” the man following me said.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I stepped into a recessed stone doorway and drew my dagger. All three men came at me, closing in a tightening arc.

This was the best chance I was going to get. I closed my eyes and flipped open my flare locket.

My eyelids reddened from the flash of intense light. The three men swore in surprise and pain. I opened my eyes the instant the light ceased. My attackers reeled, blinking, blinded.

It would only last a moment. I pushed between two of them, slashing at one’s midsection along the way. My knife sliced his leather doublet and turned harmlessly on a rib, but I didn’t care. I was past them.

As I drew in a sharp breath to scream for help, a wet rag hit the back of my neck. It reeked of peppermint.

Sleep potion. I hurled it away, but already the world swayed sickeningly. My scream died on my numb lips, and my knees buckled under me.

The strangers caught me before I hit the flagstones. I tried to fight them, but I couldn’t move; my body was limp and useless. It was all I could do to keep my grip on my knife.

If I released Zaira, she’d know I must need help, assuming she noticed the return of her powers at all. But given how we’d parted, she might laugh and keep running.

“Careful,” one of my captors said in a clipped Ardentine accent. “The Owl wants her unharmed.”

Another grunted as they dragged me toward the hearse. “We taking this one to the same place as the brats?”

“No. This one gets special treatment.”

“Exsolvo,” I tried to say. But it came out as a soft, breathy “Ehhhhhhhhhh.”

“Quickly now. We can’t be seen.”

They bundled me into the coffin.

Terror blazed in me like balefire at the thought of the lid closing, and it burned through the numb cloud of the potion. I managed to swing my knife arm wildly up at the men bending over me. One of them cried out and reeled away, clutching his face.

“She’s not out!” Another lunged and pushed me back down into the coffin before I could more than raise my head, his face snarling with frustration around a nose crooked from previous breaks.

“Quick, the potion!”