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He wanted to ask her why she had loosed his name so easily; why her revenge had been a chance at repair instead of annihilation. But asking would be taking more than was owed. She inclined her head, a small acknowledgment of equivalence, then turned and walked back into the darkness, a monarch returning to a funeral court.

Outside, the first stars came awake, patient witnesses to every promise and every reckless theft.

“You took my name,” she said. “You traded it for coins.”

Her voice was the prism through which the past bent. He remembered the old woman at the stall, the way she'd reached for his wrist as if to weigh his soul. He had pulled away, laughing, the amulet caught in his palm. He had not seen the little girl she cradled then, not properly. He had not listened when the woman spat a curse under her breath and pressed the amulet to the girl's brow.

Dusk found him at the rim of the tomb, the returned amulet whole upon his palm. The woman stood where shadow met stone, her linen hair unbraided, her smile tired but satisfied.

Pain lanced his chest—sharp, immediate, his name stripped and pulled out through his sternum. He realized then that names were not labels but anchors. The light in the lantern showed him a flicker of his own life: faces he'd traded, debts repaid with secrets, promises he had shrugged away. Each was a stitch cut free; without his name, each thread loosened.

“How?” he croaked. He had spent his life in other people's shadows, a hunter of coins and heirlooms. He had never been a thief of names.