“Yes.”
“You’re going to tell her?”
“Not yet.”
He shakes his head, though there is no real resistance in the motion. “This is going to go poorly.”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he mutters again, almost to himself.
The morning stretches forward, quiet on the surface and strained beneath it. The wards hold. The yard remains undisturbed. The road beyond the corpse marker carries only distant movement, none of it crossing the reinforced boundary.
Above us, Sable’s pulse shifts as she moves toward the stairs.
The tether tightens slightly in anticipation.
I do not turn.
I remain at the entrance. Guarding. Watching.
Waiting.
9
SABLE
The market district looks almost normal if I don’t let myself look too long.
Morning crowds press through the narrow lanes in the usual restless churn of elbows, baskets, damp cloaks, and muttered complaints. Fishmongers shout prices over the slap of wet scales against cutting boards. A baker fans steam from trays of dark rye loaves, and the scent of hot crust briefly wins against the stink of gutter water, horse sweat, and the bitter smoke that coils from the charcoal braziers. Somewhere, a child laughs too loudly, the sound bright and careless enough to make my chest ache.
Then the shadows bend wrong beneath the awning of a spice stall.
I stop so abruptly that Corin nearly runs into me.
“What?” he asks, already scanning the crowd.
I nod toward the stall. “Look at the ground.”
He follows my gaze, and the humor leaves his face. The awning above the spice merchant hangs still, but the shadow beneath it twists as if wind is moving through it from underneath. It stretches toward the lane, thins to a hookedshape, then snaps back into place when a woman steps through it with a sack of onions on her hip.
Corin shifts closer to me. “That’s new.”
“That’s bad.”
“Those two things do like traveling together.”
I should tell him to go home, but the words die before they reach my tongue. Corin stands beside me with his shoulders squared, his eyes alert, and a knife hidden beneath his coat where his hand can reach it. He no longer moves like a man recovering from death. He moves like something death tried to claim and failed to keep.
It frightens me more than the shadows.
“Stay close,” I say.
He gives me a sidelong look. “You say that like I’m the one who wanders off to test demon mechanics.”
“I had a theory.”
“You nearly dropped Rhazek like a sack of flour.”
