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Dev!” Cara cantered out of the settling dust cloud.
    Fucking finally. “Come on, Kellan.” I waited impatiently while Kiran climbed back on his horse. “I owe you one,” I muttered to Cara.
    She vaulted onto the wagon’s outboard. “I know.” Her smug smile said she’d collect on it, too. She flipped a hand in a mocking little wave. “Have fun, boys.”
    I had Kiran ride in front of me, ostensibly so I could watch how he handled the horse. In truth, I wanted to keep an eye on the drovers’ reactions as the heavily laden wagons rumbled past us. Several drovers raised their hats to me, but their eyes slid off Kiran as if he weren’t even there. His look-away charm was working, all right.
    Pello’s wagon was the second of five marked with the circle and hammer of Horavin House, near the end of the line. Pello himself sat slouched on the frontboard with his mule team’s reins dangling idly from one hand. He studied Kiran with undisguised interest as we approached, unaffected by the charm. Kiran shifted uneasily in his saddle and shot a glance back at me. I willed him to stay silent.
    “Dev, I never thought to see a man like you with an apprentice,” Pello called out.
    “There’s a first time for everything, Pello.” I’d wanted a clue about whether his interest in Kiran was specific or only the result of a shadow man’s finely honed curiosity, and I supposed he’d given me one. Surely if he’d been hired to ferret out our plans, he wouldn’t be so damn obvious about it. Unless he’d guessed my intent, and was playing to my assumptions? I cursed under my breath. Mind games like this had always been Jylla’s specialty, not mine.
    That thought didn’t improve my mood any. I scowled at Kiran’s back for the rest of the ride past the convoy. Soon as we passed the final wagon, I led the way off the trail and into a gully whose steep sides were dotted with spiny blackshrub. The syrup-sweet smell baking off the branches in the midday sun was chokingly strong. Nobody’d follow us here without good reason. I slowed my horse to an amble.
    “We need to talk,” I told Kiran, grimly.
    “So I gathered.” His shoulders had tightened up again. “What’s wrong? Is this about that man who spoke to you?”
    At least he wasn’t totally oblivious. “Got any ideas why a shadow man’s interested in you?”
    He blinked at me. “A what?”
    “Freelance spy. Sells information to the highest bidder, with a ganglord as middle man.” Though in Pello’s case, if he’d gone to all the trouble of joining the convoy, he must be on retainer for a specific job. “Pello’s here for a reason, and I need to know if it’s you. If there’s anything you failed to mention back in Ninavel, now would be the fucking time.”
    Kiran looked honestly taken aback. “He can’t be here because of me. I told you, no one knew I was leaving Ninavel.”
    Oh, for Khalmet’s sake. He couldn’t be that dumb. Right? “No one, huh? What about that banking house of yours? You know for a fact nobody let something slip by accident?”
    His eyes had flickered at my sarcastic emphasis on “banking house,” but he raised his chin and met my gaze straight on. “He doesn’t know who I am. Unless your employer was indiscreet.”
    I snorted. Bren hadn’t run a successful smuggling business all these years by being sloppy. “Fine, let’s say Pello’s here on another job. That won’t stop him from seeking a little profit on the side. The minute he figures out you’re no streetsider, he’ll sell you out in a flash to Suns-Eye or Koliman, long before we reach the border.”
    Kiran jumped as if I’d stabbed him with the business end of a piton. “You mean, Pello can send messages back to Ninavel? How? I thought convoy workers didn’t have access to such powerful charms!”
    Interesting. Back in the city, Kiran had claimed he was most concerned about the Alathians at the border. The horror on his face now told a different story. “Ordinary