Dagan turned back to me, a question in his eyes, but other guardsmen surrounded Gala, clapping him on his back, congratulating him on his choice, and one kicked Dagan in his backside, sending him sprawling into the dirt.

“You stink, beggar!” He yanked him up by the back of his tunic and looked in his face. Really looked. “You look familiar to me. Who are you?” He furrowed his brow in concentration.

Dear Selu.

Dagan pretended to retch, acting stupidly drunk, fear in his amber eyes, and disgusted, the guardsman shoved him away. Sweating, Dagan stumbled back to me and plopped down, breathing heavily.

“That was too close. He nearly caught you.”

“I know. I’ll have to try again. At his house. Privately. But she can’t leave him, Kammani. Not without a justifiable reason. And being taken to bed by force will not be considered one.”

“I know, Dagan. I know it well.”

Guardsmen encircled Iltani like a pack of mangy dogs, but she stood bearing their congratulations, the briefest flicker of grief flitting across her face before it was replaced again by rage. No one else would’ve noticed it but me. She always kept such a brave veneer, laughing away any hurt or insult, mocking anyone’s sensitivity, but that one glimpse gave me a hint at how she really felt inside.

And it was up to me to save her now, too.

Save the city. Save my friend. Save little Rish’s arm. All of it was a pressure, building up inside me, a burden I was forced to bear. But bear it I would.

There was no other option when people’s lives were at stake.

Clutching my healing satchel under my cloak in defiance, I watched as Gala pulled away from the group to whistles and indecent suggestions. When Iltani stood her ground and refused to follow, he simply picked her up and carried her, then stalked away from the gifting with his prize.

And though Iltani lay quietly in his arms as they receded from my sight, her face was anything but docile.

Her eyes were full of murder.

BEFORE WE WENT to Gala’s home, dodging guardsmen, hiding in shadows and beneath overhangs, scuttling into scrub and behind barrels, we sneaked to the northeast doorway where the disloyal guardsman was supposed to be waiting to let us through.

But no one was there.

“Where is he?” I asked Dagan as we ducked around a corner to avoid a pair of young guardsmen walking past. “He was supposed to be here!”

Dagan wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow. His stench, heightened by the heat of the day, almost knocked me over.

“I’m not sure. We’ll just try again after we rescue her, Kammani,” Dagan said. “Don’t worry.” He rubbed my arm and smiled, but both of us knew something was wrong.

By the time we got to Gala’s home in the outskirts of the wealthy neighborhoods bordering the huts and hovels near the wall, they’d beaten us there. They stood inside his little one-story house with a few scraggly bushes in front by the cookfire and a roof that badly needed repair.