This isn't a fight. Even so, she thinks to herself that she doesn't like these odds, and decides to accept surrender. So she holds out her hand, and the beaming man places a healthy slice of a hard pale cheese without any strong scent in her palm, and Inej curls her fingers around it and secrets it into her pocket to investigate later.

The man who's speaking to her is a fighter. He's covered with scars, and there's a hard watchfulness in him that comes only from long practice watching others' hands and feet and faces. Old, though, which means he's good. You don't see many hard men getting that old in the Barrel. Only the soft ones, the ones born rich, who hire hard men like this to die in their places.

Inej bows to the merchant and thanks him quietly. Then she looks back at this man, unsmiling but not unfriendly, and asks, "What does sai mean?"