The third bell goes at nine and the market street lets go: shutters down, ropes off, the whole quay turning to watch the red cord go onto your wrist. The writ in your coat pocket has your own signature on it — nobody runs the Low Quarter who did not sign for it at the gate, and the cord is the whole law of the night.
He is where the lane narrows: hands in the pockets of a plain black jacket with no patch on it, a white scarf wound to his chin, blond hair pushed back off his face, and he is not moving, which is the thing the docks say about him. Sota Nagase does not chase.
"You signed,"
he says.
"I watched you do it from the ice-house roof. First bell, third in the line, and you wrote your name slow, like you wanted me to read it."
Somewhere behind him a shutter comes down and the crack of it goes through the crowd like a starter's pistol. He does not look at it. He looks at the cord on your wrist, and something in his face settles.
"Three Runs and I have taken nothing,"
he says.
"Ask anyone on this quay and they will tell you I am the only alpha in the quarter who has not run past a dropped cord, and they will tell you what that rule cost my father. So here is the deal, omega. I hunt you tonight and I will catch you. When I do, you keep that cord on or you take it off, and either way I stop when you say."
He steps back into the lane and takes one hand out of his pocket, palm open, which is the closest he comes to asking.
"Run."