The cart wobbled. Mop wheezed.

“Are you all right?” whispered Nessa. “Do you need to rest?”

“I’m… fine,” Mop panted. “We can’t… stop… here.”

Through the haze of sorrow and darkness, Rae was vaguely aware of the strain in Mop’s words. How much he was struggling. She found herself clutching the pelt, pulling it close to her, half holding her breath against its nightmarish stench. She felt as though she were deep underground, earth and stone and root sinking heavy around her, smothering her. Please be all right, she murmured into the fur. Where are you? Where are you?

The pinpricks of sunlight that shone through the weave of the basket—small white flecks everywhere—seemed to wriggle and squirm with the motion of the cart. Grubs and worms, she thought inexplicably, tears springing to her eyes. Here for the pelt. Here for the unpicking of the hide. She clutched it tighter, not knowing what she was thinking.

The walk through the market seemed to take forever. The cart rocked, and the wheels squeaked and sank into the soil, and Mop grunted through the crowds. But Rae, dreaming or delirious, she did not know, was aware only of the hide and the smell and the darkness and the squirming specks, so that Mop and Nessa’s voices scarcely reached her.

She hardly heard Nessa plead with Mop to stop, hardly heard Mop gasp he was all right, hardly felt the cart rolling across the field, bumping slowly over turf and hassock and stone, hardly realized when they stopped. But there was a sudden clamor, voices shouting—

You there!

Let her be!

She’s the one! I saw it, I did! Marking up the posting!

Do not put your hands—

—and Ness pleading, “Mop, please, no. Wait for Myntas.”

And the fear in Ness’s voice startled Rae enough that—still reeling—she lifted the lid, just enough to see Mop, mouth and cheek twisted strangely, limping away from them.

“I have t’, Ness. ’Sth’ goa’erd’s girl. I can’t let ’er be ta’en,” he mumbled, his words as strange and slurred as his cheek.

“Mop!” Ness cried, then, seeing Rae looking, she pushed on the basket lid. “Rae! For goodness’ sake—stay hidden!” she hissed.

But Rae, gulping cool air through the haze of pelt, could not look away. Leg dragging, Mop was moving toward the carts at the edge of the market, toward the shouting voices. A struggle—the booted guard was straining to hold a figure in his arms, someone small and swathed in a billowing garment. A crowd of onlookers had gathered to watch, and a short, bald man was pleading, “Let her go!”

“Let her go!” Mop echoed the man, or echoed something like that. His words were garbled, peculiar.

For a half second, the billowing garment wrenched itself free—a girl. She burst away from the guard, but he, leaping, caught her again.

Mop put his hand on the guard’s elbow. “Let h- go.… S-’s t’ daugh- of a goat -rd,” he tried to say, but the guard, striving to contain the wild, writhing girl, pushed Mop away.