The new torches mingled with the old, and she heard the bark of voices. A moment more, and five men were galloping toward her. The one who didn’t carry a torch was the impressively mustached Fallon Broot, Protector of Suddapal, wearing a dining shirt and no jacket.
“Magistra Cithrin,” Broot said, “I am so terribly sorry this has happened. I told my man to spread the word, but some half-wit bastard wasn’t listening. I swear on everything holy this will not happen again.”
He bowed deeply in his saddle, as if he were speaking to a queen. Cithrin wondered what Geder had said in his orders that would bend a baron of the Antean Empire double before a half-Cinnae merchant woman. She felt a brief tug of sympathy for the man and his terror.
“Anyone can make a mistake,” she said. “Once is a mistake.”
“Thank you, Magistra. Thank you for understanding.”
“Twice isn’t a mistake. This was once.”
“And never again. You have my word. I’ll have Amis whipped raw as an example to the others.”
Cithrin looked down the street at the fluttering flames. Any of them—all of them—would have pulled the children out of the crates behind her. Would, at best, have driven them through the streets. At worst, the Timzinae would have died here on the snow-damp street of their home. She thought of Isadau and, for a moment, smelled her perfume.
“Do that,” she said, with a smile. “Yardem? I think we’ve lost enough time already.”
“Yes, Magistra,” the Tralgu said and made a deep clicking in his throat. The cart lurched forward, and the line of torches parted to let them through. Cithrin caught a glimpse of Amis as she passed, his face a tragic mask. She smiled.
At the dock, a small ship stood at anchor. The captain was a Yemmu, the bulk of his body making do instead of a jacket. He trundled forward to meet the cart, his eyes narrow.
“You’re late,” he said. “Another hour, we’d have missed the tide entirely.”
“There was some business that needed to be done,” Cithrin said.
“Doing what?”
“Establishing precedent,” she said. “We have the cargo here now. Are you still taking the contract?”
“You’re still paying it?” he said, and his tusks made his grin into a leer.
“I am.”
Yardem, Enen, and half a dozen sailors carried the crates across to the gently rocking deck. Cithrin watched as they disappeared. Each crate was a life or two that wouldn’t end here. A child who wouldn’t sleep in an Antean prison, a mother or father, brother or sister who wouldn’t be parted. And one less hold that the empire would have over its newly conquered lands.
Yardem and Enen walked back down, and with the calls of the sailors, the planks rose up. The anchor line rose and the ropes holding the ship to the land cast free. Slowly, the ship moved away into the grey of the snow. It was dangerous weather for sailing and worse for staying on land. Cithrin waited until the ship vanished entirely. The melted snow had turned all her clothes wet as if she’d jumped in the sea, but she couldn’t leave until she saw it gone.
Yardem laid a blanket across her shoulders. She didn’t know where he’d gotten it from, but it smelled of wet animal and it was warm.
“Seems that worked,” he said.
“It did,” she said. “And it will work better next time. And they’ve seen you and Enen, so they’ll know to be careful of you as well. It isn’t a promise that things will go well, but it makes our chances a thousand times better.”
“Suppose that’s true,” he said. “So a hundred this week?”
“I think so,” she said. “This can’t last long, and we’ll regret missing the chances we don’t take.”
“Fair point,” Yardem said. He put his hand on her shoulder for a moment, a silent approbation, then turned back to the cart. Cithrin waited another moment, then followed him with dread thickening in her throat. When she got back to the office, she would have to write back to Geder.
Marcus
Winter came to Camnipol. There was little snow, but the winds that blew across from the northern plains and highlands were bitter. The birds in the city departed until all that seemed to be left were crows and sparrows. The citizens of the city wrapped themselves in coats and cloaks, scarves and mittens, until they all seemed part of a single unified race of the chilled.
For weeks, Marcus and Kit had wandered the streets, striking up conversations with whomever they could. A rag seller’s daughter sitting on the stoop of her mother’s shop. A guardsman at the Prisoner’s Span. Footmen of the wealthy spending their wages at the taproom. Anyone. Everyone. They might begin anywhere—a scar on the back of someone’s hand, the weather, what kind of horses pulled best on a team—and edge the conversation around until they could ask, for whatever reason, Do you know anyone sending messages to Carse?
Most often the answer had been no, and the people had been telling the truth. A few times every week they found someone who said yes. Then they would use some pretext to talk about the bank in Carse, and the trail would run to stone. Three times they’d found someone who said that no, they didn’t know anyone doing that, and lied. Each time that happened, Marcus felt a rush of excitement and the sense that they were about to discover Cithrin’s mysterious informant.
The first had taken five days to run to ground, a man whose wife hated his brother. He had been sending messages to his brother in Carse and hiding the fact to avoid fighting about it at home. The second was a courier who had a lover in Northcoast and would send messages to him to arrange assignations. The third and most promising had been a minor nobleman trading correspondence with a counterpart in the court of King Tracian. For that one, Marcus and Kit had been forced to corner the man’s personal servant in the street and pepper him with questions like children throwing pebbles. They discovered that the man had been trying to buy a particularly impressive carriage without his social rival finding out and offering a higher price for it.
In the evenings, they retired to the stables by the Yellow House and slept in the company of the players. Marcus had the poisoned sword in among the props and costumes, and Kit made all the others understand the peril it represented. Even Sandr seemed wary of it. Marcus’s dreams became less disturbing and vivid and his shoulders hurt less when he wasn’t carrying it. And the days had taken on a kind of rhythm and the grim taste that consistent disappointment brought.
The hunt went on, striking blind and hoping, but the contact had been so discreet that no one seemed to know of him. And eventually, winter came to Camnipol, and the game changed again.
“Cary’s been approached by Lord Daskellin to be part of a revel,” Kit said, hunched over his cup of coffee. “Many of the most powerful men in the court will be there. And their servants.”
“Sounds like a thing we should do, then,” Marcus said. In the yard, half a dozen children were playing a complex game that involved kicking stones off the Division’s edge. Marcus watched them, envying the energy they had and the freedom of their play. The stables were full of horses and the grooms and the farrier had pushed the players to the edge of the space, where they sat together in a clump, like sheep in a rainstorm.
“What do you think she’ll put on?” Hornet asked from behind them.
“Something darker this time,” Charlit Soon said. Of all the players, Marcus knew her least, but her fair hair and round face made her seem more open and naïve than she’d turned out to be. “We’ve been playing the farces until you can see all the threads.”
“I believe farces are good in wartime,” Master Kit said. “There seems to be a hunger for laughter when times are bleak.”
“What we need to do is find what plays best in a famine,” Smit said thoughtfully. “You think The Tailor’s Boy and the Sun?”
“Why would that be good?” Mikel asked. “It’s got nothing to do with a famine.”
“That’s my point,” Smit said.
“When she and Sandr get back from the market, we can ask her,” Master Kit s
aid. “But it poses a more immediate problem for our project, Captain.”
“I know,” Marcus said.
The court season ran from spring to the start of winter. Within days, the migration would begin. The men and women of the court would pack up their households and retreat from the city to their various holdings throughout Antea, and now Asterilhold, Sarakal, and Elassae besides as the conquered lands were divided up among the powerful and favored. Whoever they were looking for might be going anywhere. And then the King’s Hunt would begin, and a collection of the higher noblemen would track around the face of the world with the Lord Regent and Prince Aster killing deer. The court wouldn’t reconvene until spring, and by then the world might be a very different place.
Charlit Soon cursed mildly and flicked a beetle off her arm. One of the boys in the yard kicked a stone that sailed past his friends and companions out into the empty air of the Division, then lifted his arms in triumph. Kit sipped his coffee.
“If we can’t find him in Camnipol with everyone living in each other’s laps,” Marcus said, “we won’t find him in winter.”
“It seemed to me that it might be more of a challenge,” Kit agreed. “That leaves us, I think, with a question.”
“Several.”
All around them, the other players went quiet. Marcus could feel the glances and gestures being exchanged behind him and had the courtesy not to look back, but the tension was in the air all the same. Cary and Sandr appeared from around the corner of the house, each with a sack over their shoulder. Food, already expensive, was growing scarcer in the city, though from what Marcus could see, the higher classes still looked well fed. Kit rose to his feet, and Marcus followed him. The time had come to have the hard conversation.
Marcus saw Cary notice them waiting for her. Her steps didn’t falter so much as change the authority with which they struck the ground. Sandr was in the middle of some anecdote or argument, talking and gesturing with his free hand. Cary took the sack from around her own shoulder and handed it to him. Sandr took it, looking confused, then saw Marcus and Kit approaching. Cary stopped, and Sandr walked on.
“Cup of cider?” Marcus asked.
“Why not.”
The interior of Yellow House was comfortable and familiar. Cary lifted her hand to the keeper and pointed toward the back. He lifted his chin. The gestures were a full conversation in themselves. Cary led the way to a small room where casks of wine and tuns of beer lined the walls. A lamp hung from the ceiling with smoke-darkened tin plate above it reflecting the light down onto a thin wooden table. Cary sat first, then Master Kit. Marcus got stuck in the chair with its back to the door. A moment later the keep poked his head in.
“Cider all around,” Cary said. “Captain’s paying.”
“Pleased someone is,” the keep said, and a minute later three earthenware cups of cider sat on the table before them, steaming and filling the air with the scent of apples. Marcus took a sip and was a little surprised by both the sweetness and the bite.
“Good,” he said.
“They get it from an orchard in Asterilhold,” Cary said. “The stuff they had before wasn’t as good. So. Leaving Camnipol, then?”
“Seems that way,” Marcus said. “But the shape of it’s not clear. We were hoping to find someone who could give us information about some expeditions that the Lord Regent sent out into the world. What they were looking for, say. And where they were looking. Only that hasn’t worked. I think we’ve put in as much time as we can.”
“All right,” Cary said. Master Kit looked pained. To leave so soon after finding his family again was hard. Marcus knew that from recent experience. It was why he’d made the decision he had.
“I’m going north. The man leading the group in Hallskar’s named Dar Cinlama. Cithrin’s dealt with him before, and she thought he was the true gold. My guess is that whatever it is he’s looking for, he kept the best prospects for himself.”
“Seems wise,” Cary said.
“I will be going with him,” Kit said at the same moment that Marcus said, “I’m leaving Kit behind.”
Kit’s eyes went wide with surprise and Marcus leaned in toward the table, speaking quickly to take the floor before Kit wholly recovered.
“If you’re willing, Cary, you can take the company to the holdings of the nobility. You can follow the King’s Hunt. Kit knows how to sniff out the man we’re looking for. I’ll head for Hallskar by myself and try to find Cinlama and his people along the coast. It gives us two chances where we only have one otherwise.”
“I think that would also double the risk,” Kit said. “Traveling through Hallskar alone in winter, any number of things might go wrong.”
“Makes it a larger problem if I get a fever or break a bone,” Marcus said. “Also makes it less likely I’ll draw attention. I figure that makes it about even either way.”
“No,” Kit said. “You don’t.”
“You know, that’s really annoying.”
Cary slapped the table with an open palm. The report made both men jump. A strand of her hair had come loose from its braid and she pushed it back over her ear like a carpenter holding chalk.
“You know what I’m not hearing?” she said.
“Ah. I suppose I don’t,” Marcus said.
“I’m not hearing anyone say, ‘What do you think, Cary?’”
Marcus glanced at Kit.
“What do you think, Cary?” Marcus said.
She nodded curtly. “I think whatever this thing is you’re trying to find and being so closemouthed about—”
“Well, we don’t know what it is, and—” Marcus began, then Cary lifted her eyebrows. “Sorry.”
“I think whatever this thing is, a bad storm in Hallskar in the winter wouldn’t be good no matter how many people were on the road with you. The captain here knows it and wants us out of harm’s way. Add that he knows”—Cary turned toward Kit—“which apparently you don’t, that the company goes where Master Kit does.” Kit started to object and then stopped himself. “So all of this lip-flapping and masculine self-sacrifice will play just fine on the stage, and the stage is going to Hallskar. I’ll tell the others, send Hornet to buy some horses, and get the rest packing up. It’s about damn time we left this city anyway.”
Cary stood up from her chair, drank down her cider in one swallow, and marched out toward the main rooms of the house and, beyond them, the yard. Kit sipped his own cider more slowly and looked over at Marcus.
“You did give her control of the company,” Marcus said.
“I did. That’s true.”
“I’m thinking she has a taste for it.”
The journey was long, and they didn’t wait for the end of the court season to begin it. The company spent the last of its money on a team of horses to pull the cart and a couple more for the people to rest on when they got tired of walking. Even with the long stay in Camnipol, years of wandering made the company a model of efficiency. Aided by good weather, the journey to Sevenpol took hardly more than a week; they arrived just about the same time they would have been playing at Lord Daskellin’s party if they’d stayed. They made Estinport a week after that. The half of the fleet that hadn’t stayed in Sarakal was in winter port there, and the steep, narrow streets of the city were full with sailors spending their season’s wages and the prize money from the blockade of Nus.
Warships crowded the piers, empty for the most part, and the docks were fragrant with hot tar and fresh sawdust. Most ships flew the banner of House Skestinin below the royal pennant. And below them both, the red field and pale eightfold eye of the goddess.
Cary guided the cart into the yard of a taphouse that stood not a hundred paces from the sea. The air was cold and humid and the cries of the seagulls were louder than the human voices nearby. Master Kit negotiated with the taphouse keeper and got them decent terms for a three-night run. There wasn’t time enough to tailor any of the plays to the local situation or incorporate personalities, so they chose a well-
known story where everyone knew the lines. While the players brought down the sides of the cart and prepared the props and costumes, Kit went to scout out boats that might be hired to ferry them across the water to Rukkyupal.
The players knew their business well enough that Marcus would only get in the way. For the better part of a day, he wandered the streets of Estinport with only himself for company. When he stopped in a taphouse for a length of garlic sausage and a mug of beer, he sat apart from the larger crowd.
A singer with a drum sat at the front of the common room, his reedy voice working through a long cycle that Marcus had heard before: the sea captain who went to war and was caught in an ancient magic that took him out of the world so that when he returned, all the people he had known were gone, all the places he had lived had changed. It was a sad song, with the dry beat of the drum carrying it along like a heartbeat. Marcus listened with half an ear, and watched the faces of the men and women in the room. They all looked young. Fresh and untried. These were sailors in a martial navy, and tradesmen, and women with households and market stalls and children of their own, and they all looked as if they were playing dress-up. More even than the players.
He had been that young once, that sure of himself and his ability to remake the world in the shape he chose. And it had been true, within bounds. It seemed like something that had happened to someone else, except when it seemed like it had all happened a week before. When he finished his beer, he walked back out in the cold, the singer’s drum still throbbing behind him.
At the yard, Kit was in the back of the cart in a robe of yellow silk, his arms held out to his sides while Mikel and Smit, needles in their mouths, sewed long, quick stitches at the seams.
“It appears I lost a bit of weight in the last year,” Kit said as Marcus pulled himself up to sit beside them.
“Rewards of a vigorous lifestyle,” Marcus said. “Any luck with the boat?”
“Yes,” Kit said. “We have passage two days from now. It won’t quite break our little bank, but we have a few plays we can rehearse on the way that tend to do well with Haaverkin. The sense of humor in Hallskar tends to run to puns, I’m afraid, so we have to make sure we have the lines precisely.”