normal except for the man in the street. Standing on the manor doorstep, pulled equally by his urge to see to the beaten man’s health and to protect his own, Nate could hear desperate cries and a steady percussion of splintering wood and breaking glass. The smoke in the air was denser than usual. In the distance, something exploded.
The guard who’d spoken followed Nate’s gaze to the fallen man. “Don’t worry about that. Someone will be along to get that eventually.”
“Is he dead?” Nate said.
The guard laughed. “Oh, yes.” Then, reassuringly, “You just go back inside, magus. Seneschal sent us to stand guard. You’ll be safe enough.”
“What’s happening inside the Wall?” he said.
“Nothing for you to be concerned about,” the guard said.
If the courtier was dead, there was nothing for him to do. If Judah was—
Nate went back inside.
Around three, he heard a faint but insistent tapping on the back door, and opened it to find Bindy, wearing Canty on her back and surrounded by three other girls who looked very like her: one a few years older, and the other two considerably younger. Their eyes were all wide and exhausted. He hustled them into the kitchen. “Oh, magus, the city’s gone mad!” Bindy burst out before he could even say hello. “Things are burning and people are killing courtiers, and—”
“They deserve it,” the older girl said with bitter satisfaction.
Bindy ignored her. “We stayed in the house but none of us could sleep. And there’s a moneylender near us, they hung him. Right from a lamppost. And he wasn’t a courtier at all, he just did business with some, and Rina and me started to think that people might—because I run errands to courtiers—” She glanced at the little one holding her hand, and clearly amended what she had been about to say. “Well, anyway, Ma’s at work. And I figured you’d be safe. So we came here.”
“I’m glad you did.” Nate discovered that he meant it. His throat felt tight and his eyes burned. “Is your mother working the long shift?”
“She’s all right. I ran to check,” said the older one, who Nate guessed was Rina. Her face was rounder than Bindy’s, her eyes wider, and her hair fiercely curly. Different father, probably. “They’re taking the factories back from the courtiers. The managers are going to run them now. The managers are going to run everything. And they’re appointing workers’ committees and they asked Ma to be on one and I want to be on one, too. Isn’t it exciting?”
The young girl clinging to Bindy’s hand started to cry. “It will be, maybe,” Nate said. Then he crouched down to the crying girl. She didn’t seem to be hurt. In her arms she clutched a grubby doll with a matted thatch of badly-dyed red hair. Nate’s heart hurt to see it. “What about you?” he asked the girl as gently as he could. “Are you all right?”
“She’s fine,” Rina said, but Bindy gave the girl an encouraging nudge and said, “Say hi to the magus, Kate.”
“Your name is Kate?” Nate said to the little girl, who nodded. “Well, Kate, I’m Nate. Our names sound the same, isn’t that funny?” He pulled his face into an exaggerated beam of surprise and delight. “Nate and Kate! We’ll have to be friends, with names like that.”
Some of the fear melted out of Kate. She smiled. Then she yawned.
“Are you sleepy, Kate?” he said, and she nodded.
With Bindy’s help, he got them all settled in the three guest bedrooms upstairs. Rina caught sight of the dead man in the Square and kept going back to the window with a regretful expression, as if she were sorry she’d missed the murder itself. “Ignore her,” Bindy said quietly when Nate frowned. “She worked for a courtier for a while. He was nasty to her. She’s a good person inside.” Then, fatigued as she was, her face broke into a grin and she covered her mouth to hide a giggle.
“What’s funny?” he said.
“Nate,” she said. “I knew you had another name besides Gate Magus, but—Nate.” She giggled again. “Sounds like a little boy with a slingshot.”
“Once upon a time, I was a little boy with a slingshot.” He bowed low, like he’d seen the courtiers do. “Nathaniel Clare, at your service.”
“Belinda Dovetail, at yours,” she said with a small, merry curtsy, “but I’m still going to call you magus.”
When she and the others were all breathing quietly in their beds, Nate still didn’t go to his.