In her head, she saw the weathered, exhausted face of Ren's mother standing in the moonlit dirt, holding a wooden stick with trembling, work-worn hands to shield her son. 'I don't care about whatever grand revenge you are planning. If you bring trouble down on our heads, I will personally throw you back over this wall.'
And Heena had looked that woman in the eye and sworn she would not bring ruin to their house.
Less than four hours later, because Heena had been too careless to check for eyes in the dark before scaling that brick wall, a pack of guild thugs was tearing their front door off its hinges to drag Ren into a house where five young men had already been beaten into early graves.
Heena looked down at her arms. She was currently cradling a heavy sack of rice, a bag of salt, a clay jar of lard, bundles of fresh green scallions, and five fragile porcelain vials.
