Months after helping Basso and Jenivere escape, master thief Garrett accepts an invitation to visit them in the small town of East Fording, where Basso now runs a locksmith shop. The letter cheerfully asks Garrett to leave his work tools at home. A postscript mentions a small plague outbreak, a town-wide curfew, and — just in case — the address of a smugglers' passage through the city walls and where it exits inside the storage hut.