"She's alive!" Yale's whisper snaps Evelynn awake as the lid cracks and musty light cuts the dark.
"Evelynn?" Yale presses the narrow slit of his sleeve against his mouth. His hand shakes on the wood. "Don't make a sound."
Evelynn kicks. Her foot hits splintered wood and the lid lifts enough for her head to push through. Dust fills her throat. She coughs once, hard.
"Yale—what did you do?" Evelynn hisses, dragging herself free.
"I kept you alive," he answers, breath ragged. "Captain said bury and bolt. I said not yet."
"Captain?" Evelynn scrabbles for footing on the inn floor. Straw and blood tack to her palms. "Where are—"
"Outside," Yale says. "They took the others. They burned the sign. They're not thieves."
"They aren't thieves," Evelynn repeats, and the words land like a warning.
A boot thuds over the threshold. Steel taps wood. Voices slide across the room, low and organized.
"Search the inn. Do not break the rooms unless you must," a man's voice says. Flat, practiced. Not the shout of a brigand.
"Who gives the orders?" another voice asks.
"The marshal's badge on their cloaks," Yale says. He leans down, snatches up a scrap of blue cloth stamped with a stamped brass chin-plate. "See the notch? Hernando's men."
Evelynn feels wood under her palms she can't name. A painted coffin lid leans against the wall, crimson sigils flaked away. House colors, Evelynn thinks. Someone paid to
