Morning came gray and cold, and nobody mentioned the marks on Ebony's chest. She'd buttoned her shirt to the collar before the others were fully awake, and the look she'd given Veronica across the lamplight had said later, or never, and Veronica had chosen to hear never for now.
They put their hoods up in the inn's doorway. Veronica handed out the papers — five sets of forged documents, pulled from somewhere in her pack with the easy fluency of a woman who had clearly never in her life relied on a single name being true.
"Read your own before you hand it over," she murmured, distributing them. "If the guard asks your trade, you answer with what's on the page, not what's in your head. Lucian, you're a textile buyer. Try to look like you've touched cloth before."
"I have excellent taste in cloth."
"Try to look like you've paid for it."
