“That’s why I’m not asking.” Bastian glanced over his shoulder. “You are.”
Next to her, Gabe stiffened.
“I can’t,” Lore stuttered, steps faltering until she stood still in the shallow rush. “People there might know me—”
“Which works out in our favor.” Bastian continued forward, waving a hand as if her protestations were just so much noise. “If they ask why you’re looking for a new job, you can say something went south with the team you were running for. You switched jobs quite a lot, didn’t you? That’s how a spy does their spying.”
Lore pressed her lips together and didn’t protest further.
They splashed through to the end of the tunnel, to the slick stone platform jutting from the wall and the crossbars of the culvert, replaced since they last used this route. Bastian climbed up and loosened the screws, then offered a hand to Lore.
She reached for him, and at the moment his fingers closed around her arms, Gabe’s hands gripped her waist. The two of them hauled her over, and being caught between their bodies made heat flame across her cheekbones.
Lore scrambled through the open culvert and onto the street beyond, not turning around as she listened to Gabe and Bastian make their way out behind her. Bastian grunted; Gabe made a sound like a swallowed snort. When they walked into her field of vision, Bastian was shaking out his fingers like they’d been stepped on.
They walked in silence down the nearly deserted street, the orange glow of the harbor lights and the distant sounds of shouting heralding when they grew close to the boxing ring. “Eyes peeled,” Bastian said, then they were in the crowd.
It was thicker tonight than it had been before, far more bodies pressed together around the hay bales, and they all seemed more intent on getting closer. The night Bastian fought Michal, the boxing ring had seemed more like a convenient meeting place than a draw in and of itself, with spectators lurking on the fringes in groups, talking and laughing and barely paying attention. Not so tonight. Tonight every eye was fixed on the fighters, and the stares were intense.
When the crowd parted, Lore saw why.
Two femme-appearing figures fought viciously in the center of the hay ring, hair braided back and breasts tightly bound. Blood dyed one’s pale hair nearly pink, and the other wiped at a split lip with the back of one linen-wrapped hand.
“Lightweight Night!” bellowed a man who saw her watching, clearly on the fast dip toward drunk. “Fancy a spar? You’ve a bit too much curve to be a lightweight, but we could find someone about the same size to make it a fair match.”
“I’m fine, thank you.” Lore backed up until she hit another warm form—Bastian. She could recognize the hand that came to rest on her shoulder.
The drunk man shrugged and turned back to the ring. The blond fighter launched at the bruised one, fist curving through the air to connect with a kidney. The other fighter fell to the hay-covered cobblestones.
Lore whirled on Bastian. “Did you know it was Lightweight Night?”
“Truthfully, I didn’t know such a thing existed.” Bastian grinned beneath his mask, craning his neck to see over the crowd. “How marvelous.”
She cursed under her breath and turned away from the ring to scan the masses of people who’d gathered to watch. It was harder to get a feel for the crowd when there were so many of them, but most were focused enough on the match that it should be easy to spot someone slipping off for a whispered conversation. Gabe slumped a few feet away from her and Bastian, facing the fight, but with his one blue eye scanning back and forth through his mask.
The boxer with the bruised lip feinted to the side. The blond one stumbled, a punch overthrown.
“There,” Bastian said.
He didn’t point, but angled his chin toward the shadows on the far edge of the ring, a place between streetlights where the dark was deepest. Three figures huddled, angled away from the match. The one whose face Lore could see looked like he was listening intently to whatever was being said. The figure speaking had their back turned.
Bastian and Gabe exchanged a look. Gabe nodded, then started moving toward the group, pushing through the crowd like a shark through a school of fish.
“Come on.” Bastian took Lore’s arm and tugged her after him. “I don’t think our pet monk will need any backup, but we should stick close, just in case.”
A roar went up from the ring. When Lore looked back, the blond boxer was on the ground.
The group in the shadows broke apart before Gabe could reach them, the figure who’d been speaking fading into the crowd without Lore getting a good look at them.