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“Athe.” Grant touched his hat at the newcomer, but she barely stopped walking. Instead, she prodded him forward like an unruly child. Mary fell into step and they passed out of sight.

“What?” Grant protested, his voice echoing back towards us.“Athe—unhandme. What’s the matter?”

“Hartis here.” I caught the big woman’s words just as they passed out of earshot. “Time for bed, pups.”

Their voices and footsteps faded and, across the alleyway, Fisher’s eyes gouged into me.

“We should have moved sooner,” she hissed.

I let out a long breath, mentally bracing for the displeasure Slader would unleash upon the both ofus—andthe prospect of yet another night without my proper Mereish coin.

“It was not a complete loss,” I pointed out. From the corner of my eye, I watched the pirates cross the bridge, illuminated by lanterns and surrounded by revelers. “Grant intends to bring her back here. We know Mary’s connection to Lirr nowtoo—hehas her mother. And Mary has a bargain with Demery to rescue her.”

I said all this factually, but the words felt like lead on my tongue. Lirr had Mary’s mother. Mary had gone to Demery out of desperation, trusting a pirate over me. She had stolen from me in the process, yes, but understanding her situation dulled my anger.

“Perhaps we can help her,” I ventured. “Strike a similar agreement and convince her to join us.”

“You are not subtle, Samuel Rosser.” Fisher’s chin dropped so she could eye me more judgmentally. “Keep your breeches buttoned.”

I shot her a flat look. “Are you jealous?”

“Always,” she returned, softening her words with overdone, and entirely falsified, longing. “You stir me so, Samuel Rosser.”

Before I could contemplate just how uncomfortable that made me feel, my companion stepped out of the alleyway and started to trail the pirates. Yes, we needed to follow them back to Demery’s ship. I had to get my head together.

“The woman they mentioned, Phira, the one hosting the party next week,” Fisher said in a low voice. We fell into step far behind our quarries. “She’s sister to the Usti queen.”

I leapt on that. “And Demery will be in attendance, looking for investors.”

Fisher nodded, smiling that flat, steely smile again. “Slader will want to hear about this.”

The Girl from the Wold

The Girl from the Wold has a spent pistol, bloody clothes, and no idea where she is. She stumbles through the forest, instinct driving her away from the body of the highwayman. His friends will come looking for him, after all, and if they findher…

She spends a night sleeping on a bed of moss between two rocky outcroppings. In the morning she feels a little better, but she also feels much worse. She is lost in a forest she does not know, a forest thick with brigands. She is hungry and aching and farther from home than she has ever been. Worse, she has no money and all her possessions are gone.

She has no choice but to start walking. Around noon she stumbles onto a road, disheveled and clutching the pistol she took from the dead highwayman.

“Saint!”

The girl turns, and there in the road is a man. He doesn’t look rich, but he doesn’t look poor,either—hisclothing fits well and isn’t outworn. He wears a brown cocked hat and looks lost, his boots slathered in mud to the knee.

The girl instinctively levels the pistol, though it’s not loaded and she hasn’t a clue how to use it. “Stay back!” she shouts, bracing herself for an attack.

“Do not shoot, I beg you!” The man drops his satchel and backs off, his eyes fixed on the girl’s weapon. “I know who you are, madam, and I’m no fool!”

Perplexed, she shifts her grip on the weapon. “You know who I am?”

He misinterprets this question as a threat, though he looks confused as well as petrified. With one shaking hand, he digs into his pockets and throws down a coin purse with a solid, revelatory clink.

She looks from him to his bulging satchel, then back to the gun. Practicality sweeps aside her lingering surprise and hardens with the clink of discarded coins.

She tightens her grip on the pistol and darkens her voice. “I should hope you know who I am, you tallow-licking goatherd.”

That night the girl settles down to sleep with enough coin in her pocket to put herself up at aninn—shouldshe find onesoon—butshe is starving and her conscience aches.

Still, when she spies a peddler on the road the next day, she gathers her courage. She steps out of the brush, facing him down the barrel of her useless pistol.