Corayne got the sense her warning was mostly for Dom, who barely understood a proper mortal city, let alone one run and ruled by outlaws. And for Andry, who gaped at their surroundings.

“Kill a man in the street if you like, but know you can be killed just as easily. Cut a purse and be prepared for a cut in return. There are no guards, no city watch. Only the wardens on the bridges, walls, and gates. And their objective isn’t to protect you; it’s to protect Adira.” Sorasa waved her fingers, gesturing back the way they’d come. Like she said, there were no more wardens to be seen, a stark contrast to every other city Corayne had passed through. “Nothing and no one else. Anything can be taken, from every direction. Keep your eyes up. Don’t lose sight of me.” Then she reached, tugging on the bridle of Corayne’s horse, so that the mare huffed and drew in close. Sorasa met Corayne’s eyes with a stare to bore through steel. “Don’t wander off.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Corayne answered like a child accused. I can’t exactly explore with the Spindleblade between my shoulders, balancing the salvation of the Ward with its impending doom.

“Good,” Sorasa cut back. “And before you start in on your questions, we’re headed to the Priest’s Hand.”

Andry blanched. “There are priests here?”

Sorasa grinned. “Not the kind you’re used to, Squire.”

The Priest’s Hand was a church, or had been sometime in the last two centuries. Now it was a marketplace, the pews long since removed to make room for stalls. Smoke wafted overhead, trapped by the domed roof of a former shrine to Tiber, the god of trade and craftsmen. His face was painted on the walls, wearing his usual crown of coins. Corayne knew him well.

There was little order to the place. The smell of muddy soup wafted from a cook stand, while a Tyri sailor with gold teeth displayed a cage of beady-eyed ravens. A man sold animal bones next to twin sisters praying over glittering lengths of jewels and beads. There were cloth merchants, fishmongers, fruit vendors, and stalls with no obvious purpose but to sell bits of junk. Stolen goods, Corayne knew, eyeing the displays as they passed. She saw her charts again, weaving the lines of trade through the Long Sea. She smirked at the telltale oily sheen of Treckish steel at a workman’s table, though Trec kept a tight fist on their mines and craftsmen. She wanted to linger, but Sorasa drew them through the church as if they were all tied together. Only Valtik halted. Naturally, she went to a spread of ribs, spines, and femurs, pawing through them with a slack grin. She even tested a few, tossing them between her hands and over the ground like a gambler playing at dice.

Perhaps that was the idea. So far, my fate seems like a bad turn of luck.

Dom kept close at her back. For once, he wasn’t so out of place. While the streets were quiet, the Priest’s Hand was busy, and many Adirans were as large as Domacridhan. Bruisers, bandits, pit fighters, sailors with sun-damaged cheeks. Lean thieves and beautiful courtesans from all over the Ward wove among them. A man with diamond-pale, glowing skin even winked at Dom, blowing him a kiss with a beckoning hand.

Corayne stopped searching stalls and began searching faces, hoping to spot whoever Sorasa intended to recruit to their quest. She nearly halted before an Ibalet man, his look similar to Sorasa’s, with a belt of daggers and eyes like a falcon. But Sorasa passed him by without a second glance. Soon the long walk through the church was finished, and they stood before the abandoned altar. Instead of a droning priest reciting godly scripture, a pair of dogs lounged around it, panting with slobbering smiles.

“Are they here? Have we missed them?” Corayne said, looking back down the church. A few eyes trailed them, watching carefully. The two most obvious were a pair of men in long gray robes, their boots new leather. They had the look of a religious order, even if there was no religion under this roof. “We’re being followed,” Corayne said flatly.

“I’m being followed,” Sorasa replied with a sigh. She even waved a hand in their direction. “They’re nothing. The Twilight Brothers are a joke.”

Andry’s jaw dropped. He looked from Sorasa to the robed men, not bothering to drop his voice. “The Twilight Brothers? They’re killers, assassins—”

“And what am I? A milkmaid?” Sorasa smirked, once at Andry and then at the Brothers. They sneered, turning tail with a dramatic spin of their robes. Steel flashed beneath, their swords naked with no sheaths. “Like I said, a joke. They’re waiting to get me alone, make me an offer again. All so I can refuse again.”

Sorasa declined to elaborate.

Dom cared more for the stone tiles beneath them, flat and worn, making up the raised the dais of the altar. He scuffed a boot over them.

“There’s more beneath us,” he said sharply.

“Nothing gets past you, Elder,” Sorasa said, waving them all past the chipped altar. The dogs panted in their wake, watching with baleful eyes. Andry stooped to give one a scratch.

He caught Corayne watching and shrugged. “A criminal dog is still a dog.”

A narrow stair hid behind the altar, cramped between the dais and the exterior wall. Another image of Tiber, his mouth spilling coins, loomed over the stairway. Sorasa gave him a familiar pat on the nose as she descended the steps. Corayne did the same, hoping for a blessing.

A square chamber, once a crypt, opened up below. Three of the walls had long rectangular openings, vaults for coffins. They were blissfully empty. Corayne swallowed, put off by the vaults, but at least no skeletons leered in the dim light.

On the only flat wall, a single torch burned, off center against the brick and mortar. When it flickered, Corayne could make out something like a doorway, nearly blending into the wall, visible only at the edges where it couldn’t lie completely flush.

But Sorasa didn’t go to the door. Instead she reached into one of the vaults, never hesitating, and rapped her knuckles on the back wall inside. It sounded like wood. After a hasty second, it slid back, and a pair of eyes appeared where a body once rotted.

“Five—” Sorasa said to the eyes, then stopped herself and checked their number. Valtik was still upstairs. “Four. The witch is mingling.”

“You know the rules: no more than two,” came a raspy reply. The eyes darted. They were green and watery, surrounded by fat, pink flesh.

Sorasa bent closer. “Since when have rules meant anything around here?”

Before the eyes could answer, another voice sounded behind the sliding panel.

“Is that Sarn I hear?” a male voice said.

The eyes rolled. Before Sorasa could say another word, the panel snapped back into place, slamming shut.

Dom rumbled out a low laugh. “You have that effect on most people.”

There was a grinding, a gear turning somewhere in the wall as a pair of latches pinged open. Corayne jumped when the door in the brick wall swung forward, heavy on great iron hinges. The chamber beyond was long, well lit by torches and streams of daylight.

Sorasa smiled in the Elder’s face, or as close as she could reach. “I certainly do,” she said, passing into the next room with a bounce in her step.

The original crypt extended the length of the church above, set with fat, cobwebbed columns and high, flat windows to bring in at least some natural light. It shifted, blue and white with the passing clouds. There were more vaults along the walls, all stuffed with crates, tools, and food stores, as well as miles of parchment and gallons of many-colored inks.