"You there! Move along or I'll be takin' me stick to your hides!" The growl came from the red-faced merchant, who had noticed their interest and was glaring ferociously at them, stout stick in hand. Caitlyn made a rude gesture in return but did not resist as Willie pulled her along the street, which was lined on both sides by vendors' carts displaying everything from meat pasties to leather shoes.

"We'd best hold off until Doyle and the rest come up to us. Two alone's not good odds."

Caitlyn scowled at Willie's caution. O'Flynn's fate was making women out of the lot of them. They had to shake the specter of it if they were to eat on anything approaching a regular basis. It was foolishness pure and simple to think-as Willie and some of the others did-that they were cursed by bad luck. O'Flynn just hadn't been careful enough or fast enough. The lesson to be learned there was not to stop stealing, but to make certain sure not to be caught. And she wouldn't be. She'd always been careful, and she was fleet of foot, the fastest of them all. No fat merchant would catch her, like had happened to O'Flynn. And Jamie McFinnian, who'd been taken the month before O'Flynn, had always been clumsy. That he'd escaped capture as long as he had was a miracle, nothing less. No, it was not bad luck dogging them at all, at all. It was bad judgment, pure and simple.

"Look there." With a nudge she directed Willie's attention farther down the street. A tall, lean man in a froth of lace and finery was making his way with fine unconcern through the dirty, bare-armed quay workers who with their doxies were beginning to fill the street. As they watched, he pulled a gleaming gold watch from his pocket, flipped it open with a polished thumbnail, and looked at it for a brief moment before carelessly replacing it.