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contemplated edging inside the temple itself, but feared the movement might draw the strangers’ attention. He studied them covertly, noticing both their height and the way the tallest man’s hood was constantly moving. That fascinated him—until he realized that the leather of the soaked boot was already dry. He would have bolted then, except the boot’s owner turned and stared straight at him from within the concealing hood. The chill around Faro intensified and he tried hard to look past the hood, rather than directly into the face beneath it.
    â€œGuttersnipe.” The man spoke in the River tongue, which was also the language of Grayharbor, but still with the unknown accent. Faro recognized the lordly tone, though, from listening to the mercantile nobility of Ij. “Do you know where the Ship House may be found?”
    Faro regarded him warily. “D’you mean Ship’s Prow House, sir?”
    â€œShip, Ship’s Prow,” the man returned. “Surely it’s all the same?”
    â€œNossir.” Faro kept both face and tone neutral. “The Ship House is an inn down harborside. Ship’s Prow House is a merchant’s place that gets rented out to River folk with business here. It’s not far,” he added, when the man remained silent. “You go up Awl Lane, off the top of this street.” He shivered, rubbing at his arms, and wished the rain would stop so his uncomfortable companions would leave.
    â€œYou will take us there,” the stranger said.
    Not for nothing, I won’t, Faro thought. The nearer of the other two, the one without the moving hood, turned as though overhearing his thought and held up a copper coin between black-gloved fingers. Faro hesitated, aware of the sharpness within his stomach and that an Ijiri penny wouldbuy him both a meat pie and an unblemished apple at the market.
    â€œWell?” the first man demanded, and Faro nodded reluctantly, snatching the coin out of the air when the second stranger flipped it to him. After that it was a matter of waiting for the rain to slacken sufficiently to venture out, while trying not to look at his companions at all. Once they did set out up Sailcloth Street, the cobbles still dark with rain, the two strangers walked to either side of him, with their companion in the moving hood immediately behind. Silently, Faro cursed himself for having given in to the coin’s temptation.
    Awl Lane was steeper and narrower than Sailcloth Street, hemmed in by tall stone walls with narrow gray houses rising behind, which forced them to walk single file. The first stranger trod close on Faro’s heels, a heavy hand resting on his shoulder. Once he closed his fingers, steel biting into flesh and muscle, and Faro bit the inside of his mouth so as not to cry out. I won’t give him the satisfaction, he resolved, but was conscious of the accelerated thumping of his heart, and the chill sweat filming his skin.
    The lane ended in a small square, with more of the tall, narrow houses set around it and short flights of steps up to wooden doors. The fountain in the middle of the square was dry, except for the water left by the rain. A bronze archer rose from its central plinth, suggesting that this must have been a prosperous quarter once. Now all the houses, like the fountain, had a slightly shabby air, the paint on their shutters and doors faded.
    The ship’s figurehead that gave their destination its name was set over the door of the largest house on the square. It always made Faro shiver, because rather than being the usual depiction of a heroine or hero out of story, it was a fierce-eyed mer-horse, with a long horn spiraling from its forehead and ears pressed flat to its skull so it looked half serpent. The colors of the savage head and horn, and the scaled body, must have been brilliant once—gilt and scarlet and deeps-of-the-sea green—but had grown as faded as the house’s flaking