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his," Reed Katie added. "He comes in looking all innocent, you know sommat's in the wind."
    Mayhap I've been worrying over Ersken for naught. Seemingly he's building some repute for himself. I prodded Reed Katie's purse. "So what were you up to in there, you three? Gaming? Winning silver?"
    They laughed and showed me four silver coins between them. "We don't gamble, not in the Bottom," Fiddlelad said. "Play's too rough here."
    "We was havin' but a cup of ale, whilst Fiddlelad earned coin playin'," Bold Brian told me.
    All of their coins were cut to show they were silver clean through. The three of them were earning better since Rosto became Rogue, but most of their purse coin was still copper.
    "Since when do you cut your silver?" I asked them. "Or were you given these already marked?"
    "Checked 'em ourselves." Bold Brian had given me two silver nobles. "Aniki warned us about coles this afternoon."
    "Just mind who you tell that to," I said, worried. "We need no panics."
    "Aniki said the same," Fiddlelad told me. "Brian only mentioned it now a'cos we're talkin' with you, Cooper."
    Bold Brian said, "You don't mind, Cooper, we'll clear out. Time we let you be about your business."
    In case I run into trouble, I thought, but I waved them on. Five more mots and coves came through the door, but only one of them carried silver, and that was true coin. I was starting to get bored when I saw a reflection in my charmed mirror – a fat Yamani fellow inside a curtain of magic. I turned as if to look inside. When he eased by me, I checked the mirror a second time to make sure I knew his height and where his head would be. Then I snapped my baton around his neck from behind. Whilst he choked, I threw him against the side of the building and groped for his hands so I could tie them. With that done, I felt for the magic charms at his neck and cut the cords they hung on. He started cursing me then.
    Once I saw him clear, I hobbled his ankles with a second thong, then searched him for weapons. He carried only a pair of daggers and a dice box. Seemingly he relied on magic to keep him out of trouble. Though his skin and features were Yamani, he wore his hair like any cove of the Eastern Lands, cut along the sides of his head instead of in a topknot. His clothes were the tunic and leggings most local coves prefer.
    As I went through his pockets, he complained, "How might such a pretty lass be so cruel?" His accent was that of Port Caynn.
    "Compliments do you not one whit of good," I said as I took the purse from his belt. I inspected its contents in the torchlight. It held a few coppers and at least ten silver nobles. A search of the rest of him gave me another purse, hidden inside his tunic. It was stuffed with silver coins. "And I hate colemongers."
    "I know naught of coles!" he protested.
    I took out a silver coin from the hidden purse and cut its face with my dagger. Brass gleamed at the bottom of the cut. I dropped that coin on the ground and fished out another, cutting it as I had the first. It, too, was a cole.
    He was sweating. "I won them in play on the boat from Port Caynn."
    "From who?"
    "Some fellows. Decent enough, but – they'd not like my giving their names to the law in Corus, I'm certain."
    I grabbed his hair and banged his head against the wall. "You'll not like what will happen to you if you don't tell me who you won those coles from."
    "I cannot tell, Guardswoman! I must have played five people on that boat!"
    "Then we'll round all of them up," I said. He shook his head and kept shaking it, though he wrenched his own hair in my hand as he did it. "Very well, then. Who are you?" I asked.
    He refused to speak.
    "Tell me or tell the cage Dogs, it makes no difference. They will get the truth out of you sooner or later," I warned him. Sometimes just the threat of the cage Dogs will make a Rat spill. Not this one, though. He was still holding his tongue when the other Dogs came for me. They'd caught another cole-monger, a mot built