You thought I'd never get to this, right? I'd just tease and tease . . . Well, I will, but the idea of a good tease is to offer something first. But only a little something because I have to keep writing, yes? Yes.

It's over a year since we last saw Beka--it's autumn, after a not-so-great harvest. She's an official Dog, but it's not all skittles and beer as she had hoped. She's just been given the gate by her fourth partner.

You heard me. The fourth.

Okay, the first one died in a summer plague. That could have happened to anybody. But she arrested the second herself. The third, well, she offered him violence for personal reasons. And the fourth--she was just too eager for him. So now she's back with Goodwin and Tunstall, as she always is between partners. Not that they're complaining. She isn't even complaining, not really. But she lost money on this partner. She'd bet she would last a month, when the smart money said it wouldn't go even two weeks.

And Tansy just got caught by her baker passing fake silver coins. She isn't the only one, so he let her go (after charging a fee and humiliating her), but the very fact that a baker is testing silver coins points Beka, and the Evening Watch Dogs, to a growing problem. Someone--several someones--is passing false silver coins into the capital's economy. If word gets out to the majority of the population, prices will go up, just in time for winter. With food already tight, it could mean disaster for the city's poor, and the country's poor.

The Evening Watch Dogs form a team to hunt down the source of the false silver coins. They seem to originate in the Lower City's gambling dens. They're hunting quietly, picking up gamblers and questioning them, when the riot breaks out . . .

Oops. Gotta go!

}8-D