He cut to his left at the second crossing he came to. He fumbled in his coat, still running, grabbed the caltrop in its bag, and threw it away. Kept the scarf. He wouldn’t want to have it found and identified as belonging to the woman who’d given it to him.

He did note where the object landed. Then swore because one of the spikes had cut his finger. A battle wound! he thought. How amusing. If it was such, he had been injured running from the field.

Well, what else was he supposed to do? He skidded right at the next small street, almost falling, then left again at the first laneway. A tavern he knew lay ahead. There might be—there might be—safety in a crowd. And there’d be people in The Fife now, surely?

There were. He could hear the noise. Thierry stopped running at the door, under the signboard, drew several deep breaths. Didn’t want to burst inside and draw attention to himself. He wasn’t sure where his pursuers were now. He did have a good idea who they were.

He opened the door, walked into the tavern.

Heard a loud voice, almost immediately—no quiet entry today, it seemed. “In the name of the god’s drowned son!” cried Fermin Lessieur. “It’s Thierry Villar, come to grace our poor corner of Orane.”

Fermin was a bad poet, and a fool. The latter because, in part, he was prone to saying heretical things. He thought it made him a bold, dangerous man. There were people who didn’t like him, and who might happily report heresies to the clerics. Believing Jad had a son who’d drowned in his father’s chariot of the sun was a sacrilege. Could get you burned, not just hanged.

Also, poor corner of Orane? The Fife was one of the most respectable taverns in the city. Solid wooden floor and tables. Chairs, not just stools and benches. High ceiling, decently reliable wine and ale, three fireplaces. Better quality of whore, too. Thierry doubted the proprietor would appreciate his resident poet’s remark. This was actually, he thought, the sort of place he could take Marina di Seressa, if she was serious about coming to a tavern. If he lived to do so.

He wouldn’t bring her here, though, he thought. He’d take her farther west, maybe back across the river, to his own parts of Orane. The Lamb. Where he’d been sleeping in his friend Silvy’s bed last night before he woke in the darkness and went out and everything changed.

Not just for him. Though he was now being pursued by men who probably wanted to kill him. That was hard to imagine. What cause could anyone have?