walked right by them, too, a moment later. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to say hello and see if it was anyone I knew, but they weren’t too friendly.
It was harder in the little streets to keep behind them. Alec was moving slower. Like it was a bright spring day and he had all the time in the world to get from Rosalie’s tavern to his own lodgings. I heard St. Vier had killed a man there today.
They didn’t go in. Alec leaned his head against the crumbling stone archway to the courtyard. His arm was up over his head, and his fist was clenched. He spread his fingers out slowly, ran them down the outer wall. He backed away slowly from the house, like he didn’t want to let go. Even slower he walked down the street, where it was so dark we both would have lost him without the lantern.
Did he know St. Vier was following him? How could he not? How could he think he’d get so far in the night alone? And did St. Vier know it was me behind him? He must have. Or maybe not. Maybe everyone was out taking a little midnight walk that just happened to go all around Riverside. All around the places the two of them liked to eat and drink and buy things, make trouble and get out of it, kill and get talked about. All of them. Like a farewell tour.
Alec crossed Riverside, all the way to the Bridge—the good bridge, the big stone one that takes you to the side of the city with all the nice stuff: the excellent shops and pretty little houses, the wide paths by the river, where people go walking under the trees, until you climb all the way up to the Hill, where the nobles in their mansions can enjoy fresh breezes and a really good view. There are some nasty bits, too, with nasty people in them who don’t care who your boyfriend is or codes of honor or anything. If Alec was planning to sneak up to Tremontaine House with his lantern in the dark, he’d better be careful.
But the dark was a little less dark now. You could see his bony, ragged form against the sky behind him. He went up to the Bridge, but didn’t cross it—didn’t even set one foot on it. He just stood there, staring at the city. Then he held his lantern up high, high over his head, like he was showing it to the river, or showing the whole world where he stood. And he goes and throws the whole thing far out into the water.
Alec turned around, then, back to Riverside, back to us. I couldn’t see his face, but I heard his voice. “Richard?” he asked, into the graying light.
The funny thing was, he was looking in the wrong direction.
St. Vier stepped out of the shadows. “Let’s go home.”
They walked right past me.
Most people in Riverside lock their doors if they own anything of value, but Richard St. Vier had gotten out of the habit. This morning, though, he found the door to their rooms locked tight. They had to go back down to Marie’s to get her key.
She handed them the cold old iron. “You’ll want to keep this. I’ll put a gate over the courtyard entry, too, maybe. Should I?”
“Not yet.”
Their rooms were spotless, the old elmwood floor scrubbed almost white. “Like the pages of a book,” said Alec. He took a burnt stick from the hearth and wrote something on the floor with it, then scuffed it out with his foot, leaving a charcoal smear.
Richard stood in the middle of the room. The furniture was off. It had been knocked around during the fight, of course, and then Marie had moved it to do the floor and not put it back exactly right. She’d missed a spot of blood on the wall. He pulled the chaise longue back to its place between the window and the fireplace. The inlaid table Alec had pawned his velvet coat for should be closer to the wall. He remembered the day Alec had reappeared in Riverside, fresh from his last fight with the duchess, groceries in hand and tiny shards of glass still glittering on the shoulders of that coat.
Alec flung himself into their ratty old chaise longue. Stuffing oozed. He twisted uncomfortably, got up, took a book from the pile on the mantelpiece—which Marie had dusted and straightened—and tried the chaise again.
Richard went into the next room, where his opponent had been hiding, waiting. It looked all right, but he hated knowing anyone had been in there. He opened his sword chest. Everything seemed in place. He took out a practice sword and went back to the front room to work. For a while, the room was quiet except for the rhythmic thud of his feet on the floor, the sword on the wall.
Then Alec looked up from the book he hadn’t been reading. “Richard,” he said, “let’s go to Tremontaine House.”
“All right.” Richard put the sword up. “When?”
“How long will it take you to change your shirt?”
“And you? Are you going to change?”
Alec considered his own frayed cuffs. “No. No, I don’t think so.”
He pulled on his scholar’s robe and then went out the door and down the stairs without looking back.
Richard did not stop to change his shirt; he grabbed the nearest decent sword and followed Alec down the narrow stairs, catching up with him on the landing. Alec didn’t say anything; he just kept walking. Walking toward the Bridge. He walked down the narrow lanes where the old houses practically touched each other in perpetual twilight. He walked along the streets where the gutters overflowed, past the lion fountain with the broken nose where women were washing linens.
And then it turned into a story. That’s the only way he could describe it.
“Where are you going?” asked Lucy Diver, and when Alec answered “Tremontaine House,” Lucy put down her washing and said, “Oh, yeah? Mind if I come, too?” Alec shrugged,
They walked through the Market Square, and people looked up from their trading in fresh-caught fish and stolen watches.
“Hey, Alec!” Toothless John called out. “I got good trout for you today!”
But Alec didn’t stop.
“Where are you going?” John asked, and Lucy answered, “Tremontaine House!” and John fell in with them.
They came upon Fat Rodge and Hal, and “Where are you going?” they asked, and John answered, “Up the Hill,” and they came along, too.
They picked up three or four more this way, and after that people just started joining because it was a crowd, and it was a nice day to be going somewhere new.
I was one of the ones who marched that day, the day that funny kid Alec became the Duke Tremontaine.
A whole big bunch of us parading through Riverside, drunk and sober, some at the end of their day and some just starting out, because everyone likes to be in on the action. The girls were waving ribbons in the air, and everyone was singing something different. St. Vier was guarding all of us, like some crazy wedding procession, and other swordsmen joined in, too, making a very nice appearance.
For a guy with a mouth like that on him, Alec was awful quiet. In fact, I don’t think he ever said a word. Just kept on walking, a beanpole in black, paying no attention to anyone around him, just walking like he knew if he stopped the whole thing would fall apart. Sometimes we even had to run to keep up with him.
When we got to the Bridge, we kept right on going. We marched through the city, past all the shops and the fancy houses, singing and carrying on, laughing as people fell back out of our way, and we heard them shouting and screaming and calling to each other to run away or to come and see. Some even lined up, cheering. I heard “Riverside!” and “Tremontaine!” and a whole lot else, besides. But we didn’t stop. We marched all the way up the broad streets to the Hill, past all those high walls and gold-and-iron gates, until we came to the biggest and fanciest, the one that was Alec’s, and they had to let him in.
We lifted him up on our shoulders and carried him all the way there—over the Bridge, all the way up the Hill to Tremontaine House.
After all, he was one of ours.
