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shackled before,” Fos said. “Wait, what happened to Inannis?”
    Fos whipped his head around but could see nothing of the thin man. Nor had Fos heard him walk away. In the pulses of firelight, the empty stalls looked like stilt-legged creatures.
    “He’s getting a mallet and chisel,” Emesea said. “Or getting savaged by Feasters.”
    A scream ripped out of the darkness. It wobbled between low notes and shrieking, the sound of a man being unmanned. The cries were only interrupted by sounds of urgent pleading.
    “We have to help him.” Fos tried to rise. The block scraped his knees and held him down. For the first time he felt vulnerable, with no sword and nothing but a few feet of firelight for protection. He knew enough not to trust his chain armor to stop a Feaster.
    “That’s not my Inannis.” Emesea gazed in the direction of the wailing. “Lungs are too strong. What a shout! That Talrand had some pepper in that barrel chest of his.”
    “They left him to die on the street?”
    “He tried to steal from them,” Inannis said, appearing beside Emesea. “No one forgives a thief.”
    “Less talking. More unlocking.” Emesea lifted her shackles. She cocked her ear, grimacing at the screams that were now broken up by echoing sobs. “Burning worlds! We have to hope the Feasters linger over him. They’ll take our escaping as an insult, and even I wouldn’t want to fight more’n one.”
    “One may be too many,” Inannis said. The shackles clicked open. He flipped a pick into the air, handed Emesea a mallet and hammer, then caught the spinning shine of metal.
    Fos asked, “You’re going to hammer through this granite?”
    “Why would we do that?” Emesea lowered the chisel into the shadows below the block. “When the plaza under our legs is limestone. Soft as llama yogurt.”
    The hammer cracked down. Fos could only guess she aimed by feel. The following blows made jaw-clenching pings.
    “They must be coming now.” Fos was not one to be frightened of a brawl with men, but right then it felt as if ice shards were scraping their way through his veins. At night, Feasters might as well be gods.
    “They’ll hear it, sure.” Powder sprayed over Emesea. She scrunched forward to position her next blow. “They’ll think it’s us banging our shackles against the block again.”
    “We’ve acclimated….” Inannis broke off in a wheeze. He scrounged in the darkness beneath Emesea. Stone scraped.
    “Slide this chunk out. I think we’re close.” Emesea pushed against the block. She yanked something in the shadows—her leg, perhaps—and stood free. “Ha! Lost some skin there. Now for the big man.”
    Inannis strode toward Fos. The thief’s eyes flicked to where the merchant screamed. Had been screaming. The silence frightened Fos more than anything he had heard before.
    Emesea pounced on Fos. She angled the chisel between his knees, swinging the hammer behind the metal spike.
    “Tuck in your cock,” she said.
    Fos winced but felt nothing worse than stone shards digging into his trousers. Inannis stooped over him, sliding a pick into a shackle. The single curving instrument became two, then three in the lock, and Inannis flicked his wrist to open it. When the thief moved on to the shackle around Fos’s neck, breath heated Fos’s cheek. It smelled of metal.
    Emesea smashed down again. “Did they teach you how to fight Feasters?”
    The chisel pinched off skin from his leg, but he did not let himself grunt in pain. “Mainly they taught us to keep our enchantresses inside at night.”
    “Yeah. Hard to surprise Feasters. Hard to close with them.” Emesea ripped a flagstone out from under Fos. “Their magic can outrun us, so that makes it simple. We win or we die.”
    The last shackle fell from Fos. He could shift his legs but not yet get them out. Reaching below his calves, he pulled out rubble. Shadows writhed around the circle of the fire. Nothing stalked into view yet.
    He understood a normal