“Why on earth would I unhand you?” He yanks me closer. His lip curls into a sneer as his foul breath wafts over my face. “Do you think a pretty face will get you anything you want?”

“From the looks of you, beauty is the least of your concerns. But I take it money is more to your liking. Whatever Esmeralda paid you, I’ll double it if you let us go.”

The man snorts.

“I have no need of your money, girl. Save your change.”

I scoff, purposefully dragging my boots over the uneven cobblestones just to make this unpleasant man’s life marginally more difficult. “Do you have any idea who my father is?”

Ana makes a terrible retching noise. She’s also being dragged out but she stops putting up much of a fight just for the sake of shooting me an incredulous, slightly disappointed look. “I cannot believe you just said that.”

“I’m not proud of it either but”—I struggle to pull my arm from the man’s grasp, but he’s far too strong, and I’ve expended far too much energy battling those brutes at Esmeralda’s—“needs must.”

Ana snorts. “Yes, well, how is that working out for us?”

“Not excellently.”

The city guard bundles us into a carriage. Ana strikes out with her foot before they can close the door, catching one right on his chin and forcing him to stumble away. The victory is short-lived. The man’s cohort slams the door shut and locks it. From the outside. The sound of the bolt sliding into place feels abysmally loud in the sudden silence of the carriage. It’s not even so much a carriage as a rolling cage, with heavy iron bars on the windows and nothing to sit on besides cold hard floor.

Ana huffs as she plops down on the floor. “Well, this is a piss-poor turn of events.”

“Where do you think they’re taking us?” I ask.

She looks at me as if I’d just said something incredibly daft. “To prison, you dolt.”

“Yes but…” But there’s something else that’s bothering me. “Why?”

Ana shrugs, picking at the dried blood crusting under her fingernails. Not hers. Probably from the man who nearly choked her to death. “Because we got in a fight in one of the most well-connected brothels in town?”

I shake my head. “If they arrested everyone who rumbled at a brothel, the entire population of Potosí would be behind bars. There’s something else. Some other reason.”

Ana arches an eyebrow. It’s hard to tell in the near dark of the coach’s interior, but the flickering lights from the city illuminate just enough of her face for me to be able read it. “This makes me think someone really didn’t want anyone poking around Rosalita’s room. Or asking questions about her whereabouts.”