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went with Lord Ramiro and an escort of his guards, as well as Jean-Richarde and Donan, the men-at-arms of Verreuil.
    It was a night streaked with torchlight and steel, the air filled with the tang of salt water and the protests of desperate men. Captain Vitor’s troops were ungentle, travelling in mass, rousting ship after ship in the harbor, turning out the inhabitants of dockside inns and flophouses and putting them to question at sword’s-point.
    I sat astride my steady mare, shuddering as three members of the Harbor Watch took to clubbing a poor Carthaginian sailor about the head and shoulders with the pommels of their swords on suspicion of lying. “My lady!” he shouted with a blood-reddened mouth, catching sight of me. “Gracious lady, I cry you mercy!”
    Would that I had not understood the pidgin Aragonian he spoke-but I did. My ear was good enough for that. I turned my head and looked away, murmuring to Lord Ramiro, “Can they not question him more gently?”
    To his credit, the King’s Consul looked ill, though not so ill as Luc. “I’ve invoked Count Fernan’s aid, Comtesse. I must let him proceed as he sees fit.” He raised a silver flask and took a healthy swig of brandy, then passed it to me. “Here. It helps.”
    So we watched, and the methods of Captain Vitor and the Harbor Watch, brutal though they were, proved effective. One rumor, gasped from a split-lipped Carthaginian mouth, led to another. Under duress, an unspoken code of silence crumbled. Members of the Watch converged from every vector, bearing blood-stained scraps of gossip and hearsay. There was a man-no, two men, or three-who rented lodgings in the mean alleys, Carthaginians, yes, of a surety, eking out rent in copper coins, known to have met with the Menekhetan slaver Fadil Chouma, yes, known to buy opium in significant amounts ...
    Among all of us, I daresay it was Joscelin who bore the investigation with the most composure. While I averted my eyes and Luc leaned over his mount, retching, and the men of Verreuil breathed hard and grew pale, and Lord Ramiro gulped at his flask, Joscelin’s features were set with Cassiline stoicism.
    I had seen him look thus in the early days, when he escorted me to assignations.
    By the time dawn broke sullen and grey, the smiling dolphins breaching in the harbor, blowing spume from their blowholes, Captain Vitor Gaitán had his answer. He grinned like a wolf as he led his men through the twisting alleys, his eyes gleaming above his pock-marked cheeks. A blowsy woman emerged on a second-story balcony, shrieking protests and imprecations as his men lent their shoulders to the door below. The Harbor Watch ignored her, heaving to with all their muscle. The lock burst, flimsy wood splintering around it.
    We sat our mounts in the alley, watching as two Carthaginian men were shoved out into the grey light of dawn, blinking with shock and dishevelment, shackled half-unawares. Captain Vitor strode toward us.
    “My lord,” he said in Aragonian, bowing to Ramiro. “My lady.”
    He turned to me, and I saw in his fierce, pitted face a father’s fury. “You will want to see this.”
    Needing no translation, I slid down from my mount, Joscelin an unthinking half-step behind me, following with his hands on his daggers as I raised my skirts and stepped across the threshold.
    Inside, it was dark, and stank of cabbage and near-spoiled meat. There was a table and chairs, a few personal effects in the front room, an empty jug of wine tipped on its side. A member of the Harbor Watch sidled past me, a torch raised high. I saw the back room it illuminated, shrouded in darkness, reeking like a kennel. Two pairs of eyes, low to the ground, reflected the torchlight. I gasped, unable to help myself.
    They were children, two of them, their fine-boned features marking them clearly as D’Angeline. A boy and a girl, ten or twelve at most. They clung to one another, scrabbling in the urine-fouled straw given them for bedding, pale-skinned with lack of sun, the irises of their eyes swallowed in the vast, dilated blackness of their pupils.
    Behind me, I heard Joscelin utter a curse like it was a prayer.
    Ignoring him, I knelt slowly, letting the skirts of my riding gown fall heedless over the filthy straw. “Agnette Écot?” I asked softly, keeping my gaze on the girl’s face. I had seen, in her hollow eyes, her hungry cheekbones, an echo of the dairy-crofter’s wife.
    Pushing herself into the corner as hard as she