Chapter 15: Osric Vane Saves Mara's Life, Sort Of

The man with the grey scarf appeared three stalls before the knife did.

Mara had been in the market district for forty minutes, moving along the eastern row where the salvage traders set up under whatever they could nail overhead — sailcloth mostly, and two lengths of singed tapestry that still showed hunting scenes if you didn't look at the corners. She had come for lamp oil and ink and had found oil at the third stall and ink at none of them, but the walk itself had purpose: she had learned, in the weeks since the burning, that the market told you things the ledgers didn't. What people were trading. What they weren't trading anymore. What they were asking for that no one had to offer. She walked the rows the way she once walked the Citadel's reference shelves — methodically, reading the gaps.

The man with the grey scarf had appeared first as peripheral weight. Not following her exactly. Moving in the same direction with the slightly too-casual quality of someone who has rehearsed an absence of purpose. She had noted him the way she noted everything now, filed him under *possible,* and kept moving.