Someone in the group of unhurt Camelguts in the corner yelled, “I can’t believe you! They killed Hammit! Pilib’s dead, now, too!”

Briar frowned. Evvy wondered why. He might be caring for these people, but their squabbles weren’t his.

“They’ll kill us all,” another boy argued. “If they don’t, you know Snake Sniffers and Rockheads will move in and pick us off. Look around! Half of us can’t even fight!”

“The Vipers have the takameri to buy weapons for them,” added Douna, the girl who had led Briar and Evvy here. “What’s she going to get them next? Axes? Swords?”

A youth added, “If she’s paying out that coin, I say she ought to pay it for weapons for us, too.”

Evvy was impressed. None of the gang people she knew had the sense to think of things like this. They were too tied up with honor and protecting their ground.

“They want us to join and I don’t want anybody else dying,” said a male voice. “Hands. For joining?” Most of the walking Camelguts’ hands rose. Other hands were raised as the kids in beds, those who were awake, cast their vote.

“Come on,” Briar told Evvy, disgusted. “I’d've fought till the end of time before joining a gang that killed a mate of mine. We’re finished here.” He waved to those of the gang who looked at him, and led Evvy out into the open air.

She followed, dazed. Was it possible she’d been wrong, that he really had belonged to a gang once? That was just the kind of thing she’d expect a gang boy to say.

It was the first time that Ikrum Fazhal had visited Lady Zenadia doa Attaneh’s home before sunset, but she had ordered that he was to come the moment there was word on the Camelgut matter. As her expressionless servants admitted him through the tradesmen’s gate and led him to the patio and garden where the lady usually saw him, Ikrum wondered what they made of her interest in thukdaks like the Vipers. He could tell that they were as much in awe of her as he was, or they would have found their own ways to end his visits.

They left him standing before the couch where she usually sat. They had placed a pitcher of wine, a cup, and a bowl of fruit there for her. Ikrum was not even tempted to help himself. The one time he’d been so bold, he’d discovered that she carried a thin, bladed crop in her expensive draperies. It had left a broad scar across the back of his right hand, right between his Viper initiation scars.

Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he and some other Vipers hadn’t mistaken her for an overpriced prostitute wandering the Grand Bazaar one night. They’d grabbed her and dragged her into a nook between closed stalls, meaning to strip her of her jewels and her silks. Instead they had discovered her shadows, the armsmaster and the mute, and the lady’s own tiny dagger, which she laid against the big vein under Ikrum’s jaw. He had thought he was dead. Then he had told her, “Cut hard and fast and get it over with,” and she began to laugh.

She liked his courage, she had said. She took him to a shop that sold coffee, buying him pastries and cups of that bitter, expensive drink. Her armsmaster and the mute sat Ikrum’s friends on the carpets in front of the shop and kept them from running away.

Terror-sweat poured from his body when he had learned that she was the amir’s aunt, a lady from one of the great noble houses. He saw his headless corpse and those of his friends dangling from Justice Rock. Instead of calling the Watch, she asked about him and the Vipers.

She asked and listened so well that Ikrum found himself telling her his troubles. He even talked of the slight he had been dealt by the city’s richest and most powerful gang, the Gate Lords, who held all the territory between the Grand Bazaar, Golden House, and the Hajra Gate. Ikrum had foolishly fallen in love with the sister of the Gate Lords’ tesku, or leader. The tesku had told Gate Lords and Vipers alike that he would never allow his sister to go with the tesku of a pack of glorified errand boys.

“I like you, Ikrum,” the lady had said on that vital night. “You are no dirt-person. You have ambition, courage, pride. I will help you.” She had left with orders for him to report to her house the next day around sunset.

He had gone, because no one could refuse her. He had expected that she had lied about her address, or that she had been drunk and had forgotten all about him. Neither was true. The mute had taken him to the garden after checking him for weapons. The lady waited for him there, with plans to make the Vipers great.

“I’m bored,” she told Ikrum. “My children are grown, my husbands dead. I wish no other husbands or lovers. My grandchildren are tedious. It suits me to help the Vipers to greatness, if they can make the journey. If they can accept discipline. If you cannot —“The lady shrugged. “I will find another way to amuse myself. We begin by giving your people a better sign of fellowship than that rag.” She pointed to Ikrum’s gray armband. “And we shall make the new token one it requires courage to get.”

Ikrum was about to protest. He had killed the last Viper tesku for this armband, gray with yellow beads stitched to it. The words were in his mouth when a giant arm circled his neck; a slablike hand pulled his head back. Arm and hand belonged to the mute, who held Ikrum as easily as Ikrum might a kitten.

“Stand still,” the lady had remarked sharply. “Will you disappoint me already?”

Ikrum obeyed. The lady’s healer moved in to pierce his left nostril and thread the brass ring with its garnet pendant into the opening. Only Ikrum got his piercing and nose ring from a healer. The other Vipers got theirs from Ikrum, who added the ring supplied by the lady and a dab of ointment that both cleaned the hole and stopped its ache.