Chapter 35. Count the Barrels

June's POV

He knew me.

I saw it happen. His eyes passed over my scarf, my ledger, my plain clerk's coat. They kept going. Then they came back, slowly, the way a man's eyes come back to a coin he almost walked past on the road.

A small, thin smile curved his mouth.

My heart stopped.

Behind me, four women were folded into salt barrels with boards over their heads. If he opened one, they were his. If he called his guards, Ines and Brenna were his too. And I was standing in the yard of a man who'd paid forty thousand dollars to have me condemned, miles from anyone who could help me.

Think, Sorrel said. Not fast. Clear.

Everyone in the yard was watching him. Workers with their rakes. The overseer. A dozen traders from across the lowlands, Ines's new friends from last night, standing by their own trucks with their mouths open.

A dozen people from a dozen packs. All looking this way.

Eleven