“Breakfast,” announced Degan.

I looked up. “What?”

“I’ve decided you owe me breakfast.”

“Oh?”

Degan gave me a wry look as he silently counted off three fingers.

“Ah,” I said. “Well, I suppose you earned it.”

Degan snorted. There had been three men with Athel the Grinner when I’d finally tracked him down-three very large men. For me, they would have been an impossible barrier; for Degan, they were little more than an inconvenience. If not for him, I’d never have made it out of that plaza, and Athel would still be grinning.

“Thanks,” I added. It was something I didn’t say to my friend nearly enough, and something he didn’t worry about hearing. We’d been running the streets together long enough to have moved past words and gestures like that.

Degan shrugged. “Slow night. I needed something to do.”

I smiled and was just slipping the ahrami seeds into my mouth when a muffled scream came out of the warehouse. Degan and I looked up and down the street, but there was no one to hear Athel’s cries-or, at least, no one who felt inclined to investigate. I shuddered in the silence that followed.

I had been planning on letting the seeds sit in my mouth for a while, to savor the quickening of my pulse in anticipation. Now, I simply bit down. The ahrami filled my mouth with smoky, bittersweet flavor. I chewed quickly, swallowed, and waited for them to hit.

They came on fast, as the straight seeds always do. One moment I was tired and half asleep; the next, I felt revitalized. The cobwebs that had been draping themselves across my mind for the last several hours receded, replaced with a sense of alertness. I could feel the worst of the tension drain out of me. My back loosened, and the pressure that had been building behind my eyes faded away. The fatigue was still there-I wasn’t going to be running across the city again any time soon-but I didn’t feel as raw as I had a few moments ago.