"And you're absolutely positive that these will work?"

Zayr, a black market merchant specialized in enchanted objects, threw Arran a nasty look. "Have I ever let you down?"

Arran chuckled. "No, you haven't. All right, how much will they cost me?"

"A hundred silver coins."

Not exactly cheap, but Arran hadn't expected otherwise. After all, the gloves he was buying were enchanted with a spell that gave the fabric the same characteristics as an octopus's suckers. One didn't find such an accessory in a regular souvenir shop, and Zayr's products were always of outstanding quality.

While Arran searched his belt pouch for the correct amount of coin, Zayr whipped his head around in all directions before leaning forward. In a conspiratorial tone, he whispered, "You know, Arran, a new face approached my stall today to ask about you. Well, not exactly about you, but they did ask about a tall man with turquoise eyes, and I only know one person who that description can apply to."

Arran froze. "What? Who were they?"

Zayr shrugged. "I don't know. They wore a hood to hide their face." His voice grew even quieter. "You should be careful. Whoever this stranger is, they're rich. Their clothing left no doubt about that."

Merda. Arran raked his fingers through his hair, his eyes flitting around the market. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary, but that didn't necessarily mean no danger lurked in the shadows. Someone might be watching him at this very moment.

"Thanks for telling me, Zayr," he said, flashing a weak smile. He scattered his payment on the stall. "I'd better get going, then."

He said goodbye to the merchant and spun on his heel, weaving between the countless market stalls toward the nearest exit. Both merchants and customers called out his name as he passed them, but he was too distraught to pay any attention to them.

The gods be damned, the last thing he needed was more mysterious strangers asking about him for reasons he could care less about. Tonight was the big night: after a week of careful observation and intense preparation, he would execute his plans to rob Onshra's temple in the Silver District. He already felt tense enough as it was.

"Arran!"

Arran looked up and spotted Basat near the back door, waving at him. For a brief second, he considered ignoring the merchant and resuming his way, but as Arran's best buyer, Basat enjoyed certain privileges. He wouldn't respond well to a rude dismissal.

Arran put his hands in the pockets of his drawstring pants and strolled to Basat's stall. "Salaam, Basat. Can I help you with something?"

"Well, not me." Basat scratched the back of his neck, hopping from one foot to the other. "Look, Arran, I don't care whether you sleep with every woman in this city, but I'd appreciate it if you left me out of it. Your girlfriends scare my customers away." The corners of his mouth turned down with disapproval.

Arran frowned. "What?"

Basat pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "Some girl came to ask me about you earlier. Said I should tell you to meet her in the yard behind the warehouse."

Arran's heartbeat stopped, then rebooted at a higher, furious pace. "What did she look like?"

"Don't know. But she wore pretty clothes, too pretty to be a local, and she had a sophisticated accent. Have you been fishing in more exclusive ponds lately?"

Arran quelled the urge to roll his eyes. "Thank you, Basat. I'll handle it from here."

He ignored the other man's grumbling answer and strode to the back door, which would take him straight to the yard. As it happened, he wouldn't be able to avoid his bad luck today, so the sooner he dealt with this stranger, the faster he could go back to testing his new gloves.

His eyes took a few moments to adjust to the light outside, but he noticed the tall woman's figure almost immediately, standing in the archway in the crumbled wall on his left. Since she blocked the only other exit, his escape routes were limited to retreating back into the warehouse.

Arran comforted himself with the thought that whatever she wanted from him, it couldn't be worse than the contract he had already signed.

The stranger approached him with slow, confident steps. She had a way of swaying her wide hips like a tiger stalking prey. Under normal circumstances, he would have admired her for it.

However, these weren't normal circumstances.

"Are you Arran Dir Akhta?" Her voice was rather low for a woman, and smooth like velvet against naked skin. Goosebumps popped up on his arms, and he wondered whether they were really only a reaction to the slight panic breathing down his neck.

"That depends." He crossed his arms, widening his stance to appear more self-assured. One step closer and she would stand within arm's reach, although shadows still veiled her face. "Why are you looking for me?"

"I know about your plans to steal the Amulet of Doom."

His mouth dropped open. This time, he was a hundred percent certain that the shiver rolling down his spine resulted from growing dread. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

She scoffed. "Really? Because your face tells me otherwise."

He quickly schooled his features until his face was a blank slate. "I think shock and disbelief form a normal reaction to such a ridiculous accusation."

She moved incredibly fast. One moment, she just stood there watching him, fists clenched by her thighs, and the next his back was pushed against the wall with brute force. Her fingers tightened around the collar of his shirt. Arran was awkwardly aware of the fact that her chest brushed against his with every breath he took.

This close to her, he noticed that her eyes were a perfect golden hue. A shawl covered most of her face, but those eyes pinned him to the ground in a way a hypnotizer would have applauded.

"I had a vision of the future," she hissed, her tone low and venomous. "You'll doom us all if you steal the Amulet."

He licked his lips, racking his brain to come up with a plausible answer. His train of thought came to a sudden halt, though, when a snake's green-scaled head slithered out of the woman's hood. He bit his tongue to stifle the scream working its way up his throat. "Get that thing away from me!"

The stranger cocked her head as though his frightened outcry puzzled her. "Zazi says you're an adorable liar. I agree, at least for the liar part."

"Z-zazi?" So this crazy woman kept a snake for a pet. Awesome.

She ignored him and brought his face within a few inches from his. A distant part of Arran's brain noted that she smelled like blooming flowers. "Listen to me very carefully. You cannot steal from the god of death without feeling his wrath afterwards. If you proceed with this robbery, you will be punished in a way far worse than a simple execution."

Arran stared at her for a few long seconds, then threw his head back and laughed. "The gods haven't acknowledged my existence even once in all these years. Even if I were to steal that stupid amulet, at least I'd have the attention of one of them for a while."

She growled and slammed his head back against the warehouse's wall. Black stains spread out across his vision as he fought to regain his focus. Magic prickled against his skin, and it wasn't his own. "You fool. If you dare talk about the gods like that, you deserve everything that's coming for you."

His mouth crimped upward into a cruel smile. Though their physical proximity made him uncomfortable, he pressed his nose against the woman's for emphasis. "Threaten me all you want. I have committed no crime. You can't hand me over to the guards based on a premonition."

Her nails dug into the tender skin of his neck, drawing blood. "I should have known better than to try and talk some sense into a criminal. You lot are all the same: only thinking about treasure and about yourself, never about the consequences."

That pissed him off. "All right, you're about to cross a line here-"

Their dialogue was cut off when the stranger slumped in his arms, her limbs as weak as a dead man's. The snake let out a sharp hiss, but then it too shut its eyes and dropped its lifeless head. Arran stiffened, alert for danger, yet the pressure on his chest lightened when he spotted a familiar bent figure with frizzy, gray hair standing in the archway that led back to the streets.

"Zohra! Are you the one who did this?" He gestured with his chin at the unconscious woman in his arms. She was heavier than she looked like.

The elderly woman tsked and shook her head. "You are one lucky man to have me as your friend, Arran. I had quite some trouble breaking through that woman's mental defenses, and I might not even have succeeded if she hadn't been so angry. What kind of trouble have you been getting yourself into this time?"

A guilty blush warmed his cheeks. "Oh, I ... uhm ..." She narrowed her eyes at his stammering, and he took a deep breath to calm down. "She caught me inspecting a house in the Cobalt District that I was going to raid. I escaped, barely, but she seemed to have tracked me down all the way to the black market." He shrugged in a manner that said, What can you do about it?

Zohra's skeptical gaze made him feel as if he stood naked before her. "Hmm. I guess we'll have to take care of that problem, then." She waved a hand in the stranger's direction. "I suppose you can carry her? If someone starts asking questions, we tell them she fainted and I'm going to fix her up, all right?"

Fine by him, although his unease refused to wear off. While Zohra already spun on her heel to march out of the yard, Arran failed to suppress his curiosity any longer and moved the woman's shawl out of the way so that he could take a look at her face.

What he saw almost made him stagger backward.

"Zohra, wait!"

She glanced over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised to a spectacular height. Arran's mouth opened and closed like a fish's when it gasped for breath out of water. She rolled her eyes. "Get on with it, boy."

"This is the goddamn princess, Zohra," he exclaimed. "This is princess Serafina."

Despite her at best debatable physical condition, the older woman hobbled toward him at a surprisingly quick speed. She peered into the woman's hood and let out a string of curses that would have rendered a hardened sailor speechless. "Oh, I'm going to kill you, Arran. Do you have any idea how many crimes I've already committed by using that sleep spell on her?"

He cast down his eyes. Gods, he had worked himself neck-deep into a terrible mess, hadn't he?

Zohra threw up her arms, her gaze lifted skyward, and beckoned him to follow her. "Come on. No use standing here and waiting for the guards to arrest us. Cover her face and hurry up."

Arran did as he was told and swept the princess up in his arms. He was about to run after Zohra out of the yard when the fortune teller swiveled back around, fishing something out of her pocket. She held the item up for him to see it: a small talisman in the shape of a monkey, dangling from a thin silver chain.

"Before I forget, I made this for you," she said, reaching up and fastening the necklace around his neck. "It will protect you against any more attacks from mind warpers. After your adventures down in the tunnels, I figured you might appreciate the gesture."

"Thank you." He smiled at her. The talisman's subtle warmth against his skin provided silent comfort as he tucked it under his shirt. Too bad the mind warpers have already manipulated me into consenting to their plans.

Zohra started walking again and Arran followed in her wake. Though his arms soon grew sore, not used to the physical strain, he avoided to look down at the heavy weight in them. As they sped through the labyrinth of alleys to Zohra's house, his mind tortured him with one image after the other of the many ways in which his mother-and probably the Shah too-would make him suffer for kidnapping a royal.