The foot traffic evaporated around Abbee. One constable stepped out onto the bridge in a pincer movement, baring his sword. The constables exchanged worried glances. Abbee knew neither of the men was a mover, because both looked nervous. She also knew they both wished they had more than two constables to make an arrest.

She licked butter and sugar off her fingers. Kept her arm with the bolt thrower turned away from them. “Can I do something for you, gentleman?”

“There’s an arrest warrant out for you. Murder.”

“Murder?” Abbee echoed.

“Don’t be coy. There’s a dead man at your place in the quarry. Blood all over. And look, you’ve got dried blood on you.” The constable in front made a cautious step forward. “Don’t make a fuss, yeah?”

So. Just the one. Davo was pinning Ipsu’s body on her to get rid of her. It was what Abbee would’ve done, but still obnoxious. No mention of the hunters. Davo was keeping that to himself. Also what Abbee would’ve done. Keep prying eyes away from the quarry proper. Abbee wasn’t going anywhere with these constables. She wasn’t going back to Graywall. “Why would I leave a body in my apartment?”

“Quarry foreman said you ran when confronted.”

“Foreman seems to know a lot,” Abbee said.

The constable on the left was left-handed. He’d have to turn and draw his sword, or draw it and turn, in which case he had to do some thinking to get to Abbee with it. “Maybe he killed the man. Fishy things happen at the quarry. I’ve not been home since yesterday. Shamus Potts was on the Southwest Gate. He can tell you I spent the night inside the walls.”

“You can tell us,” the constable said, “at the precinct. You gonna come quiet?”

“No.”

Abbee ran straight at the constable doing the talking, the one on the left. He jumped and pulled his sword. Too slow. Only got it halfway out by the time she reached him. She broke left and squeezed between him and the stone bridge’s railing. Two steps, and she was at a full sprint.

Behind the constables, a crowd was forming to see the show. The onlookers were all toward the center of the bridge. A couple of children stood on the railing. Abbee ran past them and angled right, to put the crowd between her and the constables. Shouts said they were several paces behind her and losing ground.

Abbee weaved around startled people, several carts, and got off the bridge. She ran across the intersection into the River District, across the faded blue and red stones forming the giant X on the ground. She angled left onto Porter Road, heading northeast. She whizzed past two constables coming out of an Arold’s with foil-wrapped bread. They gave her curious looks. Shouts behind her. Abbee didn’t look back, but she knew there were now four constables chasing her.

Porter Road ran parallel to the Charrin River. About a hundred meters north of Charcer Bridge, the river bent in one of three curves. Porter Road bent too, into a thick cluster of alleys and side streets called the Narrows. Reconstruction had made most streets straight, but the Narrows were in the rough overhang of ground smooshed up against the riverbank. Porter Road ended in a mishmash of narrow paths and picked up on the other side, as if ignoring the knot of buildings and alleys in the middle. Plenty of places to get lost in.

Abbee turned three successive corners, jumping over obstacles and dodging open shop tables. It reminded her of that time she’d run from Parn Trippers, back when he had been a regular constable and had walked a beat. Back before he’d turned into an insufferable, stuck-up bureaucrat. She’d met Randall that day. Abbee vaulted past a cart and its surprised drover. She wished she’d had more than one day with Randall.

A glance behind her told her she’d put enough distance between her and her pursuers. Which was good, because the place she wanted was up ahead. The building had a sign on it that said Right Done Laundry. Abbee hooked into the alley. The back door to the building was wide open. A thick cloud of humid air billowed out. Abbee caught a glance of the laundry inside, big vats of hot water with workers on gantries around the edges. They pushed into the water with long poles. A few people wandered around the floor, touching vats every so often. Torches.

Abbee ran past the laundry door, down to the back edge of the building, where it pressed up against the adjacent one on the corner, a tailor’s shop. A thick wooden door sat recessed into a heavy frame. A big copper pipe came out of the wall and ran up the corner of the building to the roof. Abbee caught a faint whiff of cinnamon.

She skidded to a stop in front of the door. Pounded on it. Three times, a pause, followed by two more knocks. A thick slat in the door slid back. Dark eyes in shadow peered out.

“Yeah?” a rough voice said.

Abbee didn’t recognize the voice. Ramaro had gotten a new doorman. “Open up.”

“Who’re you again?”

Abbee didn’t have time for this. “Tell Ramaro that if he doesn’t let me in, I’m telling everybody what happened that night in Morat. The one with the goats.”

Eyebrows shot up. “You know? I heard about it, but nobody’ll say.”

Abbee looked up the alley. No constables yet. “If you don’t open up this door, I’ll be telling his story to the whole world—except you, of course.”

Three heavy locks turned inside. Slow. So slow. The constables were going to round that corner any second—the door creaked open. Abbee pushed inward and slipped past a monster of a man dressed in light woolens and a purple fabric vest. The air was thick with smoke and smelled strongly of cinnamon and a tangy sweetness. The doorman moved with the slow, measured pace of someone who spent their entire day inhaling draat smoke. Abbee helped him close the door, and it slammed shut. She got the bottom two locks while he turned the third.

“What’s the rush?” the doorman asked.

“I’ve got some friends behind me. Don’t let them in. If they get pushy, at least try to stall.”

“These friends of yours,” the doorman drawled, “they got badges?”

“Yeah. Where’s Ramaro?”

The doorman pointed over his shoulder with a meaty thumb. “In his office.” Thick brows lowered. “You’re not going to tell me about the goats, are you?”

“Sorry,” Abbee said. “That’s Ramaro’s story to tell.” She grinned. “I will say that it’s wilder than you can imagine.”

“I dunno. I can imagine quite a bit.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Abbee walked past the doorman, down a short staircase, and into a narrow hallway riddled with doors. Half the doors were open, and as she went past, she saw lots of people in various states of stupor. Rich people, poor people, and those in between, all trying to escape the stress of their lives with a little induced relaxation. Each room had a hookah in the middle, and the sound of bubbles, coughs, and giggles filled the basement. A few conversations spoken in the tones of people convinced their inane babble was the most important thing they’d ever said. Some of the sounds emanating from closed doors said smokers were enjoying draat’s more stimulating effects before it rendered them semi-comatose.

It seemed strange to Abbee that Akken had so many rules about how people worked and had even more about how they relaxed. Draat dens were illegal, and even though the constables knew where all the draat dens were, they didn’t shut them down. Nobody cared about a talented person taking draat. It smoothed them out. It was jaara dust everybody worried about. Nobody needed a mover or an elemental high on jaara dust. Those the constables had to put down.

Abbee couldn’t imagine ever feeling safe enough to dull her senses with draat. It was a foreign concept, one she couldn’t ever partake in even if she wanted to. She couldn’t get high on draat, the same way she couldn’t get high on jaara dust or drunk on alcohol. She didn’t emit mote while purging alcohol or draat from her body, but it still made her hungry. She’d just had breakfast. Twenty minutes in this place, and she’d be starving all over again.

Ramaro’s office door was open. The thick, hairless man was dressed in a purple silk robe. He lounged in a vast bag chair with one beefy leg draped over the side. He was wearing glasses that looked a bit too small for his giant head. Dainty, even. Ramaro was reading a ledger. He looked up when Abbee appeared in the doorway. He smiled and put one finger in the ledger to mark his spot.

“Abbee,” Ramaro rumbled. “What a pleasant surprise. I thought you didn’t like it in here. Oh, you’re running from somebody, aren’t you?” His movements weren’t slow, like his doorman’s. Ramaro had long since built up a tolerance for draat smoke.

“Sorry, Ramaro,” Abbee said, and meant it. Ramaro looked depraved, but he was a big teddy bear. He liked running draat dens because lounging around fit the decor, and Ramaro enjoyed lounging. He’d even had that big chair of his made custom, after seeing something similar in the draat dens of Morat. “I would’ve gone somewhere else, but you’re the nicest.”

Ramaro sniffed. “Flattery will get you no—okay, it’ll get you pretty far. Who’s chasing you this time?”

“Constables,” Abbee said. “For murder. I didn’t do it.”

“You do have blood on you.”

Abbee wished she hadn’t gotten Ipsu’s blood on her clothes. It could be some time before she washed her trousers, if ever—the stain had long since set into the wool. She remembered the obscene wealth on her person and realized she could buy a new pair of trousers every day for a year and still not run out of money. “I didn’t murder anyone.” The hunters didn’t count. Self-defense.

“Either way,” Ramaro said, “hiding in a draat den isn’t the smartest thing to do when running from constables. They’ll look in the places they know about, and everybody knows about the dens. Wait, when you say they were chasing you, did you mean literally?”

“Yes, but they didn’t see me come into your alley. And besides, your doorman is enormous. Though he did let me in when I said I knew about the goats.”

Ramaro stiffened.

“Relax. I didn’t tell him anything.”

“He’s not going to work out if he lets in just any riffraff off the street,” Ramaro growled.

“Riffraff?”

“I’ll deal with him later. You’ll want to use the basement, then?”

Abbee nodded. “It’s time to spend a few months in a different city.”

Ramaro looked over his glasses at her. “What’s that thing you’re trying to smuggle under your bracer?”

Abbee turned her wrist away from him. “A souvenir. The less you know about it, the better.”

“That only makes me more curious.”

“You don’t want to get involved, Ramaro,” Abbee warned. “Believe me. I don’t want to get involved with it either.”

“You’ve come to my doorstep. I’m involved.”

“No,” Abbee said. “You’re not. You don’t know, so you can’t talk about it. Or give it up to a telepath. Leave it. Please, Ramaro. I like you and don’t want to see anything bad happen to you.”

Ramaro pursed his lips. “I’m going to keep trying to see what it is, you know.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. The basement?”

“Fine, fine.” Ramaro stuck a scrap of paper as a placeholder in his ledger and left it behind. He heaved himself off his bag chair. It wasn’t graceful and involved more rolling than standing. As he clambered to his feet, his robe fell open.

Abbee rolled her eyes and averted her gaze. “C’mon, Ramaro. What do you have against smallclothes?”

Stolen story; please report.

“They ride up and pinch,” Ramaro said. “It’s safe to look now.”

Abbee risked a glance. Ramaro had closed his robe and tied the sash.

He chuckled. “How has your reputation survived you being such a prude?”

“I don’t feel the need to see people naked,” Abbee said, “or dwell on what they do together.”

“You should, you know. You could learn to like—”

“I know what happens,” Abbee snapped. The last thing she needed was Ramaro spreading rumors about her. “I’m not an idiot. It’s a distraction, and distractions get people killed.”

“Wait, are you a vir—”

“If you utter another word on this subject, Ramaro, nobody will ever find your body.”

“Okay, okay, never mind.”

Abbee dug into her money pouch for payment, fishing around the gemstones, and pulled out her wad of bills.

Ramaro wrinkled his nose at them. “Do you have coin?”

“Not as much as I have in bills,” Abbee lied. She counted out payment for using Ramaro’s basement. “Here.”

“Fine, fine.” Ramaro took the money, thumbed through it, and tucked it into the ledger lying on his bag chair. He straightened. “You know the way. After you.”

“You first, Ramaro. I don’t need you sneaking looks at my wrist. And I don’t need to turn around and find another robe malfunction.”

Ramaro smirked and walked past Abbee into the hallway. She followed him around a corner and down another corridor lined with doors. Most were open. Abbee glanced in a couple and was rewarded with mostly unconscious people in various stages of undress. Ramaro turned a corner, and Abbee lost sight of him. When she caught up to him, he was having a whispered conversation with someone. A man wearing a rumpled robe like Ramaro’s. The man glanced at Abbee and scooted past her.

“What was that about?” Abbee asked.

“Don’t worry,” Ramaro said. “That’s just Dren. I asked him to take a look at room fifteen. The client looks like they may have smoked too much.”

“All of your clients smoke too much, Ramaro.”

“Yes, well, there is an upper limit, and she seems to have gotten there. This way.”

The doors had numbers on them, etched into the wood with a blade. Door twenty was next to Abbee. She looked over her shoulder. Dren walked right past door fifteen. Didn’t look inside.

Abbee’s hackles went up. She followed Ramaro. Head on a swivel.

***

Ramaro’s draat den was built on the edge of the river. The building had a private pier in the basement with a modest pleasure boat. Some of Ramaro’s clients liked to float around on the river on a hot day. The boat allowed Ramaro to run a side business smuggling people and things past the city gates.

Ramaro led Abbee down a set of stone stairs and through a heavy door. Abbee caught a whiff of the river, and it grew stronger on the way down the steps. Strongest when Ramaro heaved the door open. Abbee followed him out onto a narrow stone pier. She had never thought she’d be happy to smell the Charrin, but she was glad to escape all that draat smoke.

A short canal ran about thirty meters and out through an arched opening. Thick stone pillars, spaced every few meters, held up heavy rafters overhead. The pleasure boat sat moored at one end of the pier. Daylight from the other end of the pier lit half the boat, and torches lit the rest. The boat was ten meters long and had a colorful canvas roof tied to posts. Abbee spotted several bag chairs and carpets on its deck. No pilot.

“Where’s your spout?” Abbee asked.

“That’s the other thing I asked Dren to do,” Ramaro said. “Fetch Mims.”

Abbee wondered if that was why Dren had walked past door fifteen. To fetch the boat’s pilot. She relaxed a little.

“Though maybe you want to wait until nightfall,” Ramaro continued. “If the constables are after you, they might check the boat if they see it out on the water. It’s a risk. Up to you.”

Abbee still wasn’t sure about Dren’s real task. She didn’t think Ramaro had sold her out to the constables. It would damage his smuggling business if word got out that he had exposed his client. And Ramaro was right—the constables would search the boat if they saw it out on the water so soon after chasing her.

A short, squat woman with long black hair and beady eyes came out onto the pier. Mims, Abbee assumed. Mims wore leather trousers and a shirt with a purple fabric vest. She looked Abbee up and down. “I’ve heard of you,” she said. “You look just like the stories say.”

“Oh?” Abbee asked, knowing full well what the stories said.

“Short hair, black leather, no weapons, looks annoyed,” Mims said. “Won’t have a scratch but probably has blood all over her.” Mims turned to Ramaro. “Bobo says the constables came to the door. They were hot to trot after our friend here. Bobo waved ’em off for now.”

Ramaro looked at Abbee. “You sure you don’t want to wait until dark?”

Abbee sighed. It was still midmorning. Nightfall was a long way away. She thought about what Ramaro had said, about constables stopping the boat. “Yeah, I’ll wait. I’ll stay out here, though. Fresh air. Well, fresher.” Her stomach grumbled. “You got anything to eat? I’m starving.”

Ramaro nodded. “Mims can fetch that for you. I’ll leave you here. I have business upstairs. I’ll come back down to see you off.”

“Thanks, Ramaro.”

Ramaro went back inside and took Mims with him.

Abbee walked the pier. Occasional waves rolled in through the opening and rubbed Ramaro’s boat against the pier. The river saw a fair amount of traffic up this way. Glass Island was downstream from here, and plenty of supplies left warehouses in the Central District to float down to its docks.

Abbee looked around for a place to sit down. The boat had a half-dozen bag chairs on it. Abbee climbed over the boat’s railing and found her balance. It wasn’t a wide boat, and it moved easily with her weight. She nudged a bag chair with her foot. She’d never sat on one of the things before.

The pier’s door opened, and Mims came out onto the pier with a plate.

“How do you sit on this thing?” Abbee asked.

“You don’t sit on it,” Mims said. “You sit in it. Flop on it, like you’re falling into a pile of hay.”

Abbee was worried about taking an impact to the jobs case pressed up against her back. She squatted in front of it and sort of rolled backward. The chair’s fabric was soft, and it enveloped her. It felt like she was sitting on some sort of puffy throne. Her legs stuck out onto the deck of the boat.

“Pretty good, eh?” Mims said. “Next time, you gotta commit. Fall back into it. You’re too close to the edge. You need to get your legs up onto it.” She leaned over the railing with her plate. “Here, I brought you some food.”

Abbee tried to sit up. Her center of gravity was too far back. She rolled to the side and tipped off the bag chair. Getting off the chair in a hurry would be a challenge. She stood up and took Mims’s proffered plate. It was stacked with bread, cheese, sauced meat, and a couple of pieces of frosty bread with what looked like the works in terms of toppings. Abbee wasn’t a fan of the works, but her growling stomach wasn’t picky. “What kind of meat is this?”

“Chicken,” Mims said.

Abbee moved to get the best light on the plate.

“Don’t worry,” Mims continued. “It’s cooked all the way through. I had some when I got in this morning, and I ain’t died yet.”

Abbee wasn’t worried about food poisoning per se. It wouldn’t kill her, but it would still hurt a lot. Fighting with terrible gas and bloating on Ramaro’s pleasure boat wasn’t her idea of a fun afternoon. “Thanks,” Abbee said around a mouthful of bread.

“You’re welcome,” Mims said. “You need anything else?”

“Any water?”

A grin tugged at Mims’s cheek. She held up one hand. A tiny spout of water leaped from one fingertip, arched over the side of the boat, and splattered onto the deck.

Abbee arched a brow. Torches and spouts were always so fascinating to watch, conjuring fire or water from thin air. “You want me to drink water off your finger?”

Mims laughed. “Ha! No.” She dropped her hand and gestured at the front of the boat. “There’s a cask of water tucked under the prow. It’s not from the river. It’s clean. I filled it last night. Cups are stacked next to the cask. I cleaned those too, when I filled it.”

“Water?” Abbee asked. “Would’ve thought Ramaro’s pleasure boat only had alcohol on it.”

“We have that too, but we keep water on the boat because if someone’s been smoking draat all day, giving them alcohol can put them into a coma. Even kill ’em if they’re chronic smokers.”

“Really? I didn’t know that could happen.”

“Most people don’t. What’s the saying? Too much of a good thing ain’t so good?”

Abbee walked to the other side of the boat with her plate. Sitting on the bag chairs was tactically dangerous. She leaned against the railing and finished off the bread while keeping an eye on both Mims and the door behind her.

Mims watched Abbee eat. “What’s that thing you got on your arm? A hidden blade?” She shrugged at Abbee’s frown. “Ramaro told me to get a better look at it, but I ain’t good at sneaky. Figured I should just ask instead. Plus, your body language pretty much screams ‘Stay away from me.’”

Abbee turned her wrist away from Mims and kept eating.

“Are all the stories about you true?” Mims asked.

“Dunno,” Abbee said. “I haven’t heard all the stories.”

“Did you hijack a bank cart in broad daylight?”

“No.”

“Really? I heard—”

“I didn’t hijack it. It was a misunderstanding.”

“Oh … so you did—”

“And that was a long time ago,” Abbee said.

Mims gave her a considering look. “Is it true that you broke the first constable’s nose?”

Abbee chuckled at the memory. “How did you—I didn’t break his nose, but I did punch him in the face. I wish I’d done more, but I got tackled after that.”

“So it is true,” Mims said. “My cousin is a constable and heard about it. How did that happen, anyway?”

“I apparently made him look bad,” Abbee said. “Hitting him seemed like a good idea at the time, but he sent me to Graywall over it. Well, that and killing a couple of bank guards. After I laid the bastard out on the floor, constables tied me up and threw me on the prison cart.”

“Is it true they put you in the pit? The one in the men’s wing?”

“Yeah,” Abbee said. She pushed away the memory. “I was only in there for about five minutes, though, not the whole time.”

“Oh,” Mims said. “The stories make it out like you were in with the men for ten years.”

“No,” Abbee said, shaking her head. “Solitary confinement, for the most part.” Five minutes had been plenty long. Nobody had ever wanted to fight her again. It had taken months to get a bout after she’d gotten out, and even now, only newcomers would fight her. Abbee didn’t explain that this was the reason she went to the bouts to find the biggest, meanest-looking person to fight. Or that it had taken her a year to stop treating all men like the ones she’d encountered in the pit. Or that men still made her uneasy if she was caught in tight quarters with one. “But I don’t correct the stories, or stop people from calling me the Butcher. It’s good for my reputation. Gets me work. Speaking of work, how long have you worked for Ramaro?”

Mims rotated her hand back and forth. “Few months, maybe. I used to work in Central’s fire brigade, but I had a, um, falling out with my station chief. I had to find alternative employment.”

“In a draat den? You couldn’t work in a different district?”

“Yes, well, I might have set him on fire a teeny bit,” Mims said. “They frown on that in the brigades. We’re supposed to put out fires, not set them. And definitely not on people.” Her face darkened. “Bastard deserved it, though. He—”

The door opened behind Mims. Dren stuck his head out. “Mims, boss wants to see you upstairs.”

Mims rolled her eyes and looked over her shoulder at him. “What for?”

“He doesn’t tell me everything,” Dren said. “But he said it was important. C’mon.”

Mims grunted and pushed off the railing. The boat dipped with Abbee’s weight, and she lurched up to both feet. Mims walked over to the door. Dren pushed it open and let her through.

As he started to close the door, Abbee asked, “How was the mess in room fifteen?”

Dren paused. Frowned. “What?”

“Room fifteen. Wasn’t there a mess?”

“There’s always a mess,” Dren said with a grunt. “We hardly ever clean the rooms.” He hesitated, blinking. “Oh, right. Room fifteen. Yeah, still gotta clean that.” He grimaced and pulled the door shut.

Abbee blinked at the heavy door. Anxiety seized her. She looked around. No way off the pier except the boat. Or back upstairs. No telling what might be waiting for her up there. She suspected she didn’t have long. Dren had come down to get Mims because somebody was here for Abbee. She spat a dark curse with Ramaro’s name in it. She couldn’t believe Ramaro had given her up to the constables.

Abbee set her plate down on a bag chair. She moved toward the pier, intent on untying the boat. She was leaving. Now. She had moved to hop over the railing when the door opened and three people burst out onto the pier.

Not constables.

They were dressed in all black. Black coats, trousers, and boots. They wore masks. Hoods with fine mesh across their eyes. All three of them held small crossbows in one hand, and two had a bared sword in the other. Abbee stared at them in astonishment. Ramaro had sold her out to the Murder Guild.

Abbee stood like an idiot at the boat’s railing, trying to halt her forward momentum onto the pier. She felt pressure around her shoulders, like someone was wrapping her with stiff leather. The pressure intensified as her feet left the boat’s deck. It hurt. A mover. No. Abbee’s legs banged into the railing as the mover dragged her through the air toward them.

“I’ve got her,” the mover said. A woman, by the sound of her voice. She raised her crossbow. “Shoot her.”

All three pointed their crossbows at her. Abbee tensed as they shot. She felt three sharp pinches across her belly. She looked down and saw darts sticking out of her. Not bolts. She blinked. Poison, maybe. Her gift would deal with poison, but it would make her sleep. Abbee struggled against her invisible bonds. Her legs flailed in midair. She slapped at the darts and realized her arms were free below the elbow. She was able to reach two of the darts, but the third was too high. Slapping at them bent the needles in her skin, and it hurt.

The assassin in the middle gestured at Abbee. “You left her hands free.”

The mover shrugged. “She’s not going anywhere, and this is more fun. I like it when they wiggle. I never get to see them wiggle.”

“Can’t we just kill her?” another asked. “This capture business is boring.”

Capture. This was worse than poison. Abbee hadn’t ever stopped looking over her shoulder after getting out of Graywall—she had presented the night of the golems, and she had known it would just be a matter of time before the university came calling. She hadn’t realized they contracted out to the Murder Guild, though. They’d given her enough to make her sleepy. Woozy. Her mind didn’t work right.

“Something’s wrong,” one said. “She should be out by now. My dart was loaded for someone four times her size.”

“Four times?” the mover snapped. “Orders were to bring her in alive, not kill her.”

“Then they should’ve sent someone else. We don’t do alive people.”

“Quit complaining and shoot her again.”

Abbee was so tired. She wanted to sleep. The guilders pulled new darts from sheaths on their arms. Reloaded crossbows. Abbee watched. Some idea pounded on her drugged brain. It was important. They were reloading crossbows. Crossbows. Oh. Right.

Abbee bent her arm at the elbow. Her arm came up. Slow, as if she were covered in lead.

The complainer froze. “Look out! She’s got a—”

Abbee thought about shooting the mover.

Clack-clack-clack. Three bolts snapped out of the repeating bolt thrower. The mover took all of them in the chest. The pressure left Abbee’s upper body as the mover collapsed like a puppet with cut strings. Abbee dropped like a sack of rocks onto the side of the boat. She tipped forward and managed to get her hands out before she landed on the pier.

The guilder in the middle dropped his weapons and stepped toward Abbee. Hands thrust out. Fire wreathed his fingertips and gathered around his palms. A gout of flame roared across the pier and hit Abbee. She forgot about her small injuries as the fire seared across her legs and set her trousers on fire. Flames raked across her abdomen and hit her hands. Abbee screamed in agony. She couldn’t see anything and held up one arm to shield her eyes. Her arm was on fire. She rolled away, trying to escape. The fire followed her. Abbee aimed her arm at the source of the fire. She couldn’t see the torch. She thought about shooting the fire.

Clack-clack-clack. The torch went down, and the flames winked out. The last guilder shot her again with his crossbow. Abbee barely felt the pinch as her whole body screamed in furious pain. She was on fire. The river. Water. The boat was in the way. Abbee half rolled, half crawled away from her attacker. She scrambled across the pier. She felt another pinch on her back. Another.

“Go down!” her attacker snarled.

Abbee gasped and wept. She twisted and thought about shooting the last man.

Clack-clack-clack. Abbee didn’t look to see if she’d hit him. She couldn’t see. Everything was black. Her hands slipped off the boat and off the pier, and she tipped forward into the river.