toward the circle, as if afraid that their payday would leave.
The scrubs were talking among themselves, trying to figure out strategies. If Teia was doing the arithmetic right, she and Kip had almost two hours before it would be their turn. When she thought about how many thugs could be gathered in that time, her mouth went dry. They would come for money like sharks came for blood.
She was still thinking about it when she noticed that Kip had walked away.
“Where are you going?” Teia asked.
“Where all of you should be going,” Kip said.
“What?” she asked.
Every scrub’s eyes were on Kip, and no few of the crowd’s, now that he had been called out. “Scouting,” Kip said.
The scrubs looked at Trainer Fisk. He shrugged. “No rules but the rules you were given,” he said, bored.
Kip was brilliant. He’d seen it in a second: don’t obey what the rules mean, obey what the rules say. That was the test as much as getting the coins through safely.
Within another ten seconds, all the scrubs scattered, except those who were up next. Ferkudi and Daelos went from looking excited to be going so early to looking stricken, keenly aware of their sudden relative ignorance.
Teia and Kip made a slow circuit of the nearby streets. They didn’t speak.
After a while, they heard the sounds of a fight one block over. Teia ran toward the fight. Kip followed close after, though he was slower than she was.
“We don’t even have the money yet, you morons!” a wide girl whose name Teia didn’t know was shouting at some bloody-nosed tough on the ground in front of her. “Do you see the red kerchief?”
The girl’s partner, Rud, a squat coastal Parian who wore the ghotra, didn’t look angry or triumphant. He looked scared. He was bleeding from a deep gash in his shoulder.
“I should kill you!” the scrub girl shouted.
The tough scrambled back on all fours, then turned and ran.
Teia said, “We need to get you back to Trainer Fisk, Rud. Right away.”
He nodded, and together the four of them walked briskly the four blocks back to the square. Rud leaned on his partner and then on Kip, too, as his blood loss made him nearly faint. Teia walked ahead of them, on the lookout for threats.
On catching sight of them, Trainer Fisk ran to meet them. The Blackguard scrubs were only steps behind him. They took Rud, made him lie down, and instantly began tending to the cut.
Teia heard someone say, “Bite down on this, Rud. This is going to hurt.”
Then there was a quick flash of fire, and the stench of burned flesh and tea leaves and tobacco as they cauterized the cut with red luxin. Rud drummed his heels against the dirt and made a high-pitched whimper that trailed off quickly into deep, fast breaths.
One of the best boys in the class, Jun, came back into the square, pressing through the crowd. The next team was just about to leave, two skinny brothers who were in the bottom third of the scrubs.
Jun kept his voice down, but Teia heard him tell the brothers, “Don’t take Low Street. There’s a roadblock there. Twenty thugs, some of them armed. They already got Pip and Valor.”
Oh, lovely, that was where Teia was hoping to go. Well, that left only “Corbine Street’s blocked, too,” Jun’s partner Ular said.
Jun said, “The alleys through Weasel Rock looked clear, but they’re so narrow, two men could hold them.”
After making sure Rud was okay, and checking the wound, Trainer Fisk made his announcements again and handed the money to the Oros brothers.
“I’ve got a plan,” Teia said.
“Huh?” Kip said. “What is it?”
She made a noncommittal noise. “You’ll see.”
“Teia? Teia, you’re my partner. That means I’m your partner, too. You should tell me the plan.”
She grinned. “And spoil it for you?”
He glowered. “Fine, then. You have any food while I wait? I’m hungry.”
“No!”
“No, really, I am hungry. I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”
“Don’t be thick,” she said.
Kip held his hands up to himself as if measuring his thickness. He sighed. “Can’t help myself.”
She cracked a grin despite herself. “Give me your coins, when we start.”
“So I can’t buy a sweet roll?”
“No!”
“Yes, sir,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“It’s a good plan,” she said, suddenly defensive, suddenly aware of who she was teasing. You’re a slave, Teia.
“Mm.”
“It’ll work,” Teia said. “Promise.”
“Betcha anything it won’t.”
“What’ll you give me if it does?” Teia challenged.
“A kiss,” Kip said. Then his eyes got round. Like he couldn’t believe what he’d just said.
Teia felt totally frozen. Was he making fun of her? Wait, a kiss if she was right?
Kip saw the look on her face. He said, “I… um…”
“Kip, Teia, you’re up!” Trainer Fisk said. “Rud getting hurt put us behind schedule. Let’s go.”
Trainer Fisk ran through the announcement again, but Teia barely heard it. She handed her coins to Kip, not looking him in the eye. Trainer Fisk bound the red kerchiefs around their brows, and then Kip took off.
Despite his bulk, Kip seemed to have no trouble keeping up with her as she snaked through the crowd. She went down one block and then turned into a cooper’s shop, then through a smithy’s yard connected to it, and then ducked into another shop.
Teia was already at the counter when Kip joined her. “At the Great Fountain within two hours?” she said.
“Our man’s headed up that way in half an hour, so that’s no problem,” the grizzled old man behind the counter said.
Teia put the coins on the counter. “Delivery either to Kip here or Trainer Fisk, or Commander Ironfist?”
Kip tugged at Teia’s sleeve. “What are you doing?”
“It was your idea that got me going. Now shut up.”
She gave brief descriptions of Trainer Fisk and Commander Ironfist. Then she paid the courier fee-one danar-and asked, “Do you have a back door?”
The old man waved toward it.
“Thank you,” Teia said. She took the red kerchief off, and motioned for Kip to do the same. It wasn’t exactly a disguise, but with the Blackguard scrubs garb, she wasn’t going to be able to get both of them into disguises. “Kip, take off your kerchief.”
“Huh?”
“Off. Unless you want to get jumped.”
Kip took off his kerchief, getting it.
“Hold on,” Teia said.
“What?”
She licked her lips. “This was your idea, understand?”
“My… what? You know, I usually feel smarter than this.”
“I want you to act like all this was your idea.”
“Why?”
“Just do!”
He stood there, as mobile as a sack of paving stones, nonplussed.
She grimaced. “It’s part of my strategy to make it into the Blackguard.”
