warmth in the stomach. She refilled her cup, let the sweet plum vintage ease the bitter taste in her mouth. Adam watched her, waiting.
The next cup emptied the pitcher and the waiter appeared to replace it. When he was gone, her bitterness began to leak.
“He found me when I was fifteen. Not thieving, but bad enough. Selling charms to pay for a tenement room with three other girls. I was too stubborn to ask the temple of Erishal to take me in.” She shook her head at half- forgotten pride. “But Kiril found me, offered me training without the temple vows. I’ve studied with him for twelve years.” She drained the last of her cup in a single swallow. It was enough of an answer, but she couldn’t stop the rest from spilling out.
“I don’t think he ever imagined I’d fall in love with him. Neither of us did.”
Adam blinked. “What happened?”
Her laugh was soft and ugly. But she might as well finish it now. “Three years ago I finally said something, when he realized I wasn’t a child anymore.” Though perhaps she’d been wrong about that. “And it worked. We were happy.”
Adam sipped more wine and speared a twisted creation of raw fish and seaweed, finishing it in two bites. “But not anymore?”
The quiet curiosity of the question nearly undid her. She’d grown used to the feigned grief and relentless probing of the court gossips, and her friends had learned not to ask. She glanced aside, stared at the canal lapping gently below them.
“Did he tell you what happened last summer?” she asked. Her cheeks were flushed, from wine or embarrassment she wasn’t sure. At least she wasn’t going to cry.
Adam shook his head. “I heard of the plague, but I was in the north that season. Kiril didn’t say anything about it.”
“The plague, yes.” Such a small word to hold so much horror and grief. “The bronze fever. It tore through the city, all the way to the palace. The queen fell sick. The king begged Kiril to save her, and he tried.” Her voice felt cold and dead in her mouth. “He tried until his heart gave out, but she died all the same. I thought he was dead too-”
Lanterns swayed in the breeze, rippling blue and violet light across the balcony. Isyllt swallowed against the tightness in her throat, concentrated on the press of corset stays as she breathed. She hadn’t told this story before, not in so much detail.
“He recovered, but he wasn’t the same. We waded through death to the knees every day, but it finally came too close. And he said…He said I was too young to nurse an old man to his grave. I argued, but he put me aside. We fought for a year. And now he’s sent me away, far enough that I can’t play the termagant.”
She smiled, bright and bitter, and shook her head. “And that’s the whole of it, mawkish as a bad play.”
They sat in silence for a time, music and laughter and water swirling around them. “I’m sorry,” Isyllt said at last. “You didn’t need to hear all that. But as I said, I know what we’re here to do, and my feelings won’t interfere.”
Adam only nodded.
She glanced at the nearly empty flagon and blinked. “Black Mother. Lucky I haven’t made more of a fool of myself than I have.”
“Eat some more,” Adam said, nudging the plate toward her. “Then we can walk it off.”
Isyllt shivered in spite of the heat as they left the tavern, wrapping her silk shawl over bare shoulders. Wine burned in her blood, stung her cheeks. Corset stays pressed against her ribs, and she wasn’t sure more food had been a good idea.
Moonlight shimmered on rooftops, glittered on the water. The city was full of spirits tonight. Or maybe it always was, and she only now heard them. Not ghosts, but water creatures, jungle creatures, flitting and whispering in voices she couldn’t understand. She paused, eyes closed, and let the strange sounds wash over her. The ground spun beneath her.
Adam’s hand closed on her arm and she opened her eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked. His calloused fingers were warm against her clammy skin and she fought not to sway on her feet.
Very lucky not to have made more of a fool of herself.
“Can you feel them?”
His smile stretched lopsided. “Some of them. Not like you do. I hear them sometimes, the louder ones.”
She cocked her head, studied the play of shadows over his face. “Are you a witch?” she asked, even though she caught no hint of power under his skin. But the way he moved, alert as a mage…
“Not even a little. Charms are Xin’s job. I just kill things.”
She looked down at his hand, let her vision unfocus. Colors blossomed around him, deep forest greens and grays, swirled red and black around his hands and sword. “You’re good at it.”
“I am.” For an instant his eyes gleamed green-gold like an animal’s and a sharp-toothed shadow hung over his.
“What are you?” she whispered. “Not just an orphan brat.”
He smiled a wolf’s smile. “Tier Danaan. Half-breed, at least.”
Isyllt blinked, colors fading. Adam was just a man again-a man she was leaning on drunkenly in the middle of the street. She straightened and took a step back. “I’ve never met one before.”
“People in civilized places usually haven’t.” He started walking and she fell in beside him. “I wasn’t raised among the Tier.” The careful flatness in his voice warned her away from the subject.
They crossed an arching bridge over one of the broad canals that bordered the districts; someone sang from a passing skiff below. The breeze tugged strands of Isyllt’s hair free of their pins, stuck them to her sweat-damp shoulders. And they called this the dry season.
Descending the bridge steps, Isyllt tripped on an uneven stone. Adam caught her before she fell. The streetlamp’s glow revealed a crack in the rock, several inches deep.
“The street is sinking,” Adam said, pointing down the side of the canal where the pavement sloped sharply toward the water.
“Lovely. Let’s hope it doesn’t finish the job tonight.”
The streets in Straylight were narrow and cracked and the houses tilted drunkenly, some leaning so close their gardens grew together. Wards dripped from shop signs, shimmered in windows and doorways. Many lamps were out, only a few puddles of orange-gold glow marking their way. Someone stirred in the blackness of an alley, racked with a consumptive’s cough. Isyllt heard death waiting in that wet rattle.
A trio of young men passed them, armed and swaggering. Isyllt felt their angry stares and her fingers twitched. Adam’s hand settled lightly on his sword hilt. “I think we’ve outstayed our welcome,” she whispered. She traced a careful charm in the air-
She and Adam turned a corner onto another well-spelled lane. The street marker had been broken off its post, an octagonal wooden sign nailed in its place. A lantern swayed above it, rippling light and shadow over Sivahran letters.
“What does that say?” Isyllt asked.
“Salt Street. I’d guess it also translates to
“Or any other foreigners.”
The spirits were quiet here. Warded away, or frightened. Isyllt heard human voices instead, raised in emotion. A woman stood in the street, arguing in Sivahran with an older woman framed in a shop door. The old woman spat in the gutter and slammed the door as they approached.
“That,” Adam murmured in Isyllt’s ear, “was nothing polite.”
The woman in the street sobbed angrily, shoulders slumping. She turned toward them and light fell over her face-the customs inspector from the
“Miss Xian-Mar?” Isyllt stepped closer; the woman’s eyes were swollen and shining, but she wasn’t crying now.
She blinked, dragged a hennaed hand through her unbound hair. “Lady Iskaldur.” She straightened, tugging at her coat.
“Are you all right?” Impossible not to feel the black worry that hung over the woman like a pall.
“My niece is ill. She needs help, but that
