Caim reached into his tunic and took out a leather purse. It was the last of his money. The rest had been hidden in the floors and walls of his apartment.

"This is for taking in the girl. See that she gets some learning. And I don't want her working a room here, Sanya. Not ever. I'll have your word on that or I'll take her somewhere else."

Madam Sanya made the purse disappear inside the folds of her gown. "I promise. She can fetch and cook until she's old enough for schooling. I know just the right teacher. He's retired from the university, a real scholar and a gentleman. No, she'll be fine as a spring rain, but what about you two? Need to borrow Kira's room for a while longer?"

Caim looked over at Josey, sitting across from Angela with her head nestled in her arms. She looked almost like a child herself, despite the blood and soot marring her borrowed clothes.

"No," he said. "It isn't safe here, for us or you. We'll be moving on."

Madam Sanya observed him over the rim of her cup. "By the way you speak, doesn't sound like you intend to be back."

"You never can tell, can you?"

Caim went over to Josey and woke her with a gentle nudge. She looked up with squinty eyes. "Hmm?"

"It's time to go."

Madam Sanya gave them each a hearty embrace before they shuffled out the back door. Outside, the deep purple of night's final hour lightened into the faint glow of dawn. Umber streaks etched the sky, forecasting poor weather ahead.

Caim led Josey out the fence door and down the narrow alley behind the brothel. Their situation was bleak, to say the least. They couldn't trust anyone now, couldn't go anyplace he normally frequented. Not even his secret bolt holes in dives across the city were safe. He was known throughout the underworld, and his passage would go noticed. Disguises wouldn't hide them forever, not as long as they stayed in the city. The only thing left was to leave.

It wasn't an easy decision. Josey opposed it, of course. Caim put himself in her position and understood why. This was her home, all she had known since she was a little girl. But he had to rely on his instincts, and they screamed that as long as Josey remained in Othir, she was sitting in the jaws of a bear trap, just one ill-fated moment away from being snapped up. So he was taking her to the only place in the world he thought she'd be safe.

Josey started to shake off her drowsiness as they paused outside a chandlery on Fafstall Lane. "Are you sure about this?" she asked.

Caim peered down the street. Folks would be rising soon. He didn't want anyone remarking on two people seen hurrying through the predawn streets.

"No," he said. "But it's what your fathers would have wanted. Both of them."

"We'll return as soon as it's safe, right?"

"Sure." He let it go at that. Would it ever be safe in this city again? "Come on."

They stole across the street and down another alley. As they came around the next corner, they almost walked into a desperate melee. The ancient walls and cul-de-sacs of Low Town sometimes played tricks with noises. Caim didn't hear the fighting until they were upon it. In the middle of a crowded street, a score of militiamen, rural conscripts by their mismatched brown coats and crude wooden pikes, struggled to hold off a mob. Angry cries on both sides were punctuated by the clash of arms. Blue scarves dotted the crowd, but Caim didn't see anyone he knew. He drew Josey away.

Four blocks eastward, she grasped his wrist as the cemetery's dingy walls appeared from the night fog. The stonework was cracked and pitted like old cheese, caked with clumps of moss and climbing vines. Fallen chunks of masonry were scattered about. Wrought-iron spikes, now rusted and bent, lined the top. Once, there had been a contingent of watchmen assigned to protect the final resting spot of Othir's citizenry, but it had been deemed a waste of resources.

"What are we doing here?" she asked.

He nodded to the gate, slouched in its crumbling hinges. "This is our way out. Trust me?"

She pulled herself up straight and nodded. Caim opened the corroded lock with a quick twist of a knife point, and grimaced as he heard a snap. The hinges squeaked as he shoved it open. He ushered Josey inside, then shut the gate behind them. There was nothing for the lock; it was busted well and good. How long before someone noticed that? Maybe were the only ones out here tonight. Sure.

Josey shivered beside him. Caim put an arm around her shoulders, partly to comfort her and partly to keep her from stumbling. The atmosphere of the boneyard was pungent with a miasma of noxious vapors. Swirling fingers of fog wafted across the sparse, gray grass through storm grates in the River Wall.

They didn't dare risk a light, but Caim knew the way. He navigated a winding path through the rows of gravestones. Some were so old their dates couldn't be read. A dozen centuries of corpses lay in repose beneath their feet. A sobering thought and not something he pondered often, but these past few days had illustrated his mortality in ways he'd never thought about before. He doubted whether either of them would survive this fiasco. Where will I be put to rest when my time comes? Dumped in an alley for the street sweepers to take out with the morning trash? Or thrown in the Memnir with stones tied around my neck?

Caim stopped Josey at an old mausoleum near the east end of the cemetery. The words carved into the stone lintel above the heavy bronze door were faded and eroded by time, but still legible. Pieter Ereptos The Last Honest Man of Othir, From His Grateful Brothers.

Caim smiled at the private joke as he heaved on the door. Flecks of verdigris came away in his hand from the handle, but the door opened without a sound. Its hinges were kept well oiled by the deceased's large family of "brothers."

Caim drew Josey inside. Her hand was cool and slick in his grip. He squeezed to reassure her as the door shut behind them. The inside was as dark as the proverbial tomb, but Caim was able to make out a stone ledge with several objects. He found a wedge of flint and struck it against the iron plate resting beside it to produce a spark. After a couple attempts, the old storm lantern flickered to life.

Josey pressed against him as he turned. The interior of the crypt was cramped by a massive sarcophagus in the center of the floor. Great attention to detail had gone into the bier. Upon the lid was carved the likeness of a man in white marble. He was of middling years, dressed in plain but well-cut clothes.

Caim gestured with the lantern. `Josey, meet brother Pieter."

To her credit, she didn't shy away from the crypt. "I take it he wasn't really your brother."

"In a manner of speaking."

There had never been a man named Pieter Ereptos living in Othir, or anywhere else to Calm's knowledge. About fifty years ago, some elements of the city's underworld sought a reliable and secret means to enter the city. Gate sentries could be bribed, of course, but human agents were vulnerable to sudden attacks of conscience. So the various thieves, con artists, sellswords, and other scum pooled their resources to have a fictional "brother" interred in the cemetery. Workers were smuggled inside the crypt night after night for many long months to work on the clandestine project.

Caim reached out with his free hand to toy with the decorative shapes carved into the side of the sarcophagus. He found the one and pushed. Josey yelped as the lid of the stone coffin slid away. Caim caught her hand and drew her closer to the sepulcher. Instead of holding the moldy remains of a corpse, the interior was hollow. Steps disappeared down into the darkness of a long tunnel. A cloying smell rose from the aperture, not fetid and charnel, but the smell of clean, moist earth.

"Come," he said.

He held the lantern before them as they went down into the darkness.