"You don't have to tell me if you don't want," Josie said.

"Veluk," I told her. "My name's Veluk."

"Is that northern?" she asked. "You look a little northern. With your cheekbones, I mean."

I touched my face, like I wasn't sure if I had cheekbones, and noticed my shirt sleeve. Gray fabric with blue stitching, completely spotless ... and not my tunic. For that matter, the hand barely looked like my hand, because it had been scrubbed clean.

I was lying in a bed with a patchwork blanket covering me. More of a bunk than a bed, attached to the wall of a cramped rectangular room--except it wasn't really a room, either. It was the cabin of a wood-paneled carriage or coach, the kind of thing that was probably drawn by a team of horses.

So I was in the back of a traveling coach, but we weren't moving. Light shone through a half-opened hatch on the ceiling, and also through a door behind the girl--Josie--who was watching me look around.

"I don't know," I told her. "You washed and dressed me? Where am I? How long ... what's going on?"

"You were dirty," she said. "You slept through the night and most of the morning and I bet you're hungry."

"Starving," I said.

She swiveled on the stool where she was sitting, and lifted a basket from the floor behind her. Inside, I found a big hunk of black bread, a whole mess of carrots, an apple and a mug of what looked like ale or mead.

"You eat," she said. "I'll talk."

"That's my favorite kind of plan."

When she smiled, her eyes shone. "You're in our wagon. Me and Erni's. It's our home. We took you here after ... everything. Uh, that was Horge. He, um ... it's a long story."

I swallowed a bite of bread. "Are we in a rush?"

"Well, no." She smoothed her skirt. "So Erni and I were part of a group of players. A traveling theatre troupe? A small one, just eight of us. We came to the city last year, thinking to settle down, and, uh, me and Erni got left behind because, um--"

From the doorway, Erni said, "Most of the others are dead."

"Yeah," Josie said. "So all we had was the wagon, and the caravan yard outside--which paid for a year, which is almost over--so we started stealing, but Horge, he caught us, and made us work for him, and then ... you saw how that ended."

I wiped my mouth. "That's not such a long story."

"She left out all the really horrible parts," Erni told me, stepping into the wagon and refilling the mug--which was cider--from a pitcher. "Which is most of them."

"I like to focus on the happy bits," Josie said. "And right now, the happiest bit is, we're alive, we met Veluk, and we've got fifteen copper and six oaks from Horge's pouches."

"Fifteen copper," I repeated, rummaging through my borrowed memories for thoughts on the local coinage.

Hm. 'Oaks' were the most common coin, at least for a slum kid. They were made of copper despite the name, but a flimsy and third-rate copper. Ten or twenty of them, depending on how flimsy, made a proper copper coin, which was called a 'copper.' A hundred copper made a silver, though I didn't think I'd ever seen one of those. And after that the memories got hazy and disbelieving. There were rumors of jade 'beads' and gold 'crowns' but only vague ones.

I knew that a couple oaks were enough to buy a kebab, though. So a copper meant a full belly for days. Even split three ways, fifteen copper was a great haul.

"They're yours if you want them," the girl told me.

I eyed her, feeling an odd worm of worry. Though I didn't know why. If they'd meant any harm, they would've abandoned me in a room with a dead guard. Instead, they'd taken me to their home. Maybe that's what worried me. They should know better than to drag a stranger--apparently a murderous one--into their lives.

"Why wouldn't I want them?" I asked.

"Because you might want to share them with us," she said. "In exchange for a place to live. And, uh, whatever stuff we didn't sell."

"Like the clothes you're wearing," Erni told me.

"You don't have to decide right now." Josie stood from the stool. "Stay here for a tenday while you recover and, uh, the heat cools down."

I chomped on a carrot. "What heat?"

"The Guard is tearing up the streets looking for you," Erni said, scrubbing his curly hair.

When I looked more closely at him, he seemed older than nine or ten. He seemed different, somehow. Not just the lack of nose-picking: he stood different. Straighter, more confident.

"Well, they're looking for a filthy, scrawny slum-boy about your height," Josie told me. "Some old women saw you and, uh, the guards are ..."

"Upset," Erni said.

"Homicidally peeved," Josie agreed. "They're raiding all the likely spots, but they won't look here. And in a tenday, you won't stand out so much."

"'Cause of my cheekbones?"

She laughed. "Because of your face. A black eye like that? If you take two steps in public, every Guard within the city walls will jump on your throat."

Black eye? My left eye did feel a little swollen, but I didn't think it was too bad. At least not until Josie showed me my reflection in a bowl of water and damn. It looked more like an eggplant than an eye. I didn't even remember when it had happened, but she was right. An injury like that would attract Guards like dung attracted flies.

Other than the eye, I looked okay. Shaggy hair, a wide mouth--also bruised. A nose, only scraped, a couple of ears along with eyebrows and a neck and such. The regular package.

"We'll give you time to think," Josie said, and she hustled Erni outside.

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I didn't need time to think. Showing my face would obviously be a mistake, probably a fatal one. Still, I didn't mind the privacy. I stood from the bunk and almost hit my head on the ceiling. It was a nice cabin, like a little bedroom with the bunk and one stool and a little shelf-table and a bunch of built-in cabinets. Which were empty except for a bunch of clothes; they must've sold everything else before they started thieving. I wondered why they'd kept the clothes.

Then I finished the carrot greens and said my name a few times. "Veluk, Veluk. Veluk."

That was the first gift the idols had given me ... other than this life. I didn't know what it meant, but if you name something, it becomes yours. At least in some ways. So I thanked them with a curt little prayer, crossed the wagon to the door--and swayed with exhaustion.

Or weakness. I didn't know if it was caused by starvation or the rite or both, but even if I didn't have a black eye I wouldn't have left yet.

Not until I got stronger.

So what I did was, I took a nap. When I woke, there was a stack of flatbread beside me and chopped radishes and--I almost couldn't believe my eyes--half a roast rabbit and the entire pitcher of cider.

I made short work of the meal and when I stood that time I felt ... still terrible. But at least I could stand.

Moving slowly, I went outside into the 'caravan yard.' I guess I'd been expecting something ... bigger. It was just a patch of weeds and dust barely wider than the wagon, through three times as long, with room for a now-absent horse team in front of me. A high wall surrounded the yard on every side, which I liked. Privacy and safety. The big wooden gate at the far end was barred shut, and secured with wooden shims that had clearly been in place for a long time.

I didn't see whatever exit Josie and Erni actually used, but the two of them were sitting on a reed mat beneath an awning that stretched from two poles, cooking flatbread on flat griddle over the embers of a fire. A few baskets and buckets were jumbled beside them. Against the wall, I saw a pile of broken wood, a pile of rocks, a few dingy barrels.

Erni raised a flatbread in greeting when he saw me. "We spent the oaks on flour."

"Good choice," I said.

"He didn't want to spent your money," Josie told me.

"Our money," I said. "I'm staying."

She unleashed another one of her smiles. "Then tomorrow, I'm buying chickens!"

"Eggs," Erni said, reverently.

"Eggs," she agreed.

"Eggs?" I asked.

"Eggs!" Erni said.

"We've been missing eggs," Josie explained. "We never got two oaks to rub together without Horge taking them both and--and once we tried growing a little garden but he tore it up so now we're going to spend his money and have eggs and potatoes and--"

"Our money," I said again, just to hear her laugh.

Which wasn't a great sign, so I ducked my head and started exercising. Which at the moment meant 'walking around the edge of the yard four times before I needed to sit down.'

Still, the next day--after a night with all three of us in the wagon, the two of them on the bunk, me on the floor--I walked ten times round. Erni joined me for a few laps, telling him his full name was Ernsento but Josie loved nicknames, and thanking me again. He was sort of serious and earnest, nothing like the dull-eyed nosepicker I'd first seen.

After I rested up from my long march, the three of us cobbled together a makeshift chicken coop. It wasn't much, just barrels and scrap wood, but it would keep the hens dry and laying. The final result looked like crap, because we didn't have the right tools or materials. Still, it was the first time in my new life that I'd been happy.

I didn't understand the two kids. They weren't scarred like I expected. Sure, they were wary enough not to share all the details of their past, but they weren't broken in that way that turns your heart sour. Maybe because they'd always had each other to trust or maybe ... maybe I was thinking too much.

So I walked around the yard ten more times, like an absolute conquerer, then I collapsed on the mat and stuffed my face with the food that Erni had bought that morning.

I'd watched Josie send him to do the marketing, though he'd said she took care of the bigger items herself. When he got ready to leave, he put on the same outfit I'd seen him in the first time. Then he stood there for minute, at what they called 'the little door,' which was a goat-sized gate in the back corner of the yard, as his shoulders slumped and his eyes turned dull.

Finally, he picked his nose and looked like a different person. Two years younger than his actual twelve, and as dumb as a drowned sheep. He gazed at me with a complete lack of recognition, then squeezed through the gate.

"How did he do that?" I asked Josie, as she barred it behind him.

"Acting," Josie said.

"It's like magic."

"That's what we do," she said. "Act."

"You can do it too?"

"You saw me doing it."

"I'm pretty sure I'd remember if I saw you picking your nose."

She laughed. "Watch. This one's useful."

She pulled her scarf over her dark hair and fiddled nervously with the fringes. Then she ducked her head and changed her stance somehow, and looked like a timid girl who'd bruise if you stared at her hard. "Th-the good thing about this is that I don't look like a threat," she said, in wavering, apologetic voice. "Or like anyone w-worth looking at. But th-the bad thing is? I look like a victim."

"Damn," I said, impressed.

She straightened with pride ... or with acting, I suppose. She set her shoulders back and her chin high and her eyes turned cold. "Don't you swear in public, young man!" she said, in an accent so upper crust that I wanted to tug my forelock.

"Damn," I said.

She grinned cheekily and walked toward me, her skirt swishing and her eyes bright and she looked like the girl from the market again, like the whole sky was pouring beauty into her.

"That one," I said, "I remember."

"Helps if I'm in the right clothes," she said.

"Oh! That's why you kept all this," I said, plucking at the plain cotton longshirt I was wearing.

"Yeah, if I ever needed to play a man."

I snorted.

"What?" she demanded.

"You couldn't pass for a man if you grew a beard and pissed standing."

"You might be surprised," she told me. "If you want, we can teach you. To act, Vel, not to piss standing."

I waited a moment for guidance, then said, "I don't know. I'm not sure acting is my gift."

"And what do you suspect your gift is?"

"I reckon I'm still waiting to figure that out."

She gave me a look I couldn't decipher. "You broke Horge's neck with your elbow."

"I got lucky," I told her.

"Mm," she said. "How're you at digging? We started the garden over here, to catch the early sun ..."

So I dug rows until I got dizzy, and the next day I walked thirty times around before tiring and stuffed myself stupid at every meal.

Especially after Erni brought home some pickled fish that he insisted he hadn't stolen. "I bought it fair and square from Celia after she stole it."

Josie pursed her lips. "Long as she didn't follow you home."

Two days after that, I ran the perimeter. The other two teased me for running from a invisible Guards, but some instinct from my previous life told me to keep going. And two days later, the same instinct told me to take down an awning pole for practice. A kind of dance, maybe? Moving slow, from one position to the next while the chickens clucked and pecked around me. Definitely a dance, and not combat training. Lunging, spinning, blocking, switching the pole from left side to right, squatting, twisting, jabbing ...

On the tenth morning, we ate eggs and roasted onions for breakfast and Erni said, "So your eye is better and we're wondering if you're going to stay."

"If you'll have me," I told him. "I'd--"

"Wait," Josie said. "There's something we have to tell you first."

"Uh-oh," I said.

"It's not that bad," Josie said.

"It's not good." Erni scratched his curly head. "Actually, it kind of is that bad."

"Two things," Josie told me, ignoring him. "One, the people who killed our troupe? They're a local gang called Punchblade. They're small, but they're part of the Dearborn organization, and the Dearborn is ... big. City-wide, maybe bigger."

I frowned. "They're still after you?"

"No," she said. "We're after them."

"Punchblade," Erni explained. "Not the Dearborn."

"What, how ..." I took a breath. "What are you going to do to some ruffian gang, act at them?"

Hurt flashed in Josie's face. I regretted my words, but only a little. It sounded like the worst kind of stupid to me.

"We've been watching them," she said. "Their members, their hideouts, their signals. But we ... we didn't have a hitter."

"Ah," I said.

"Exactly," she said.

I didn't want to think about that, so I said, "What's the second thing?"

"The second thing is, when we searched Horge's boots? We found the key to his lockbox."

"Huh. Do you know what's inside?"

"Twenty-five silver coins," she said.

"At least," Erni said.

I gaped at them. "Silver?"

"That's what's Horge said." Josie grabbed the last roasted onion. "He got a little too drunk one night and started babbling."

"And, uh, where is this lockbox?"

"That's the thing," Erni said.

Josie pointed the onion at me. "It's somewhere inside Guard headquarters."