“I withhold judgment.”
As if she’d heard them, the new actor glanced over at them and then away. Sandr jumped out the back of the cart and waved to Marcus. Either his fear had faded or he was a decent actor. Marcus waved back. Mikel, thin and weedy as ever, came out from the taphouse with a bucket of sawdust, Cary following behind with a broom.
“I heard rumor you might be leaving Porte Oliva.”
“It’s one possibility,” Master Kit said. “We’ve played here almost an entire theatrical season. I think cities can get full on plays. Show too many, and I believe people become complacent. I don’t want what we do to lose its magic. I was thinking of taking the company up to the queen’s court at Sara-su-mar.”
“Before the winter, or after?”
“I’ll know more after Charlit’s been onstage for a few nights,” Master Kit said. “But probably before. When the ships leave for Narinisle.”
“Well, do what’s right, but I’ll be sorry to see you go.”
“I take it you’re staying for the foreseeable future?” Kit said. Mikel began spreading the sawdust on the flagstone paving of the courtyard to soak up the damp, Cary sweeping along behind him. It seemed like an odd thing to do. The yard was only going to fill up with mud and piss and rain again.
“I can count the foreseeable future in days,” Marcus said. “Weeks at best.”
“You’d be welcome to travel with us,” Master Kit said. “Yardem and Cithrin too. I think we all miss being caravan guards, just a little. It wasn’t a role we’d ever had before, and I don’t expect we will again.”
“Master Kit?” Sandr called from behind the cart. “One of the swords is missing.”
“I believe it’s with Smit’s bandit robe.”
“It isn’t.”
Master Kit sighed, and Marcus clapped him on the shoulder and left him to his work.
Lantern flames and barn heat made the interior of the taproom warmer than the streets. The scent of roasting pork and beer competed with the less pleasant smell of close-packed bodies. Marcus kept one hand on his coins as he walked through the press. With so many distractions and people in so small a space, he’d have been shocked if there wasn’t at least one cutpurse looking for a little luck. He saw Yardem first, sitting at a back table, then as he got closer, Enen and Roach, Cithrin and… Barth. That was his name. The Firstbloods were Corisen Mout and Barth, and Corisen Mout had the bad front tooth. Feeling unaccountably pleased with himself, Marcus sat at the table.
Cithrin raised her eyebrows, asking.
“It’s done,” Marcus said. “You? Things went well with the governor?”
“Fine,” Cithrin said. “Paid the fee, left the box.”
“The receipt?”
“Burned it,” Cithrin said. “There won’t be a trail back. As long as the governor doesn’t get curious and force the lock, we’re as ready as we’re likely to get.”
A servant hurried over, put a tankard of ale on the table in front of Marcus, and reached to take Cithrin’s away. She stopped him, and he nodded his bow and darted away.
“What are the chances that the governor’s baser instincts will get the better of him?” Marcus asked instead of How much have you drunk? If she were in danger of losing herself, Yardem would have stopped her. Maybe already had.
“Life is risk,” she said as Roach, sitting beside her, sipped ale from his own tankard.
“Yardem was just telling us about the shapes of people’s souls,” Barth said. “Did you know your soul’s a circle?”
Marcus shot a pained look at Yardem. The flick of an ear was the closest he got to an apology.
“Don’t listen to anything he says, Barth. He’s religious. It makes him nervous when things are going well.”
“Wasn’t aware they were going well, sir,” Yardem said dryly.
Over the next hour, Marcus drank his tankard of ale, ate a plate of roast pork with a black sauce hot enough to bring tears to his eyes, and listened to the talk around the table. Barth kept on Yardem about souls and destiny, but Enen and Roach and Cithrin chewed on more practical matters: how many payments would be coming to the bank proper and how many to the room at the cafe, how to assure that no one attacked whoever carried the cafe payments across the city, whether to make arrangements with the queensmen to help enforce their private contracts. All the business and consideration of a bank’s owner to her people. Cithrin spoke like a woman sure of her fate, and Marcus admired her for that.
The banging of a stick on a tin pan interrupted them.
“Show’s to start!” Mikel’s voice threaded through the noise of the taproom. “Come and watch the show! Show’s to start!”
Marcus dropped a few coins on the table, rose, and, half joking, offered Cithrin his hand.
“Shall we?” he asked.
She accepted his support with a mocking formality.
“It’s what we’ve come here for,” she said. Marcus led her and the members of his new company out to the pleasant cool of the courtyard to watch his old one. The crowd was good. Easily fifty people, and more likely to stop as they went in or out. When Master Kit strode out on the boards, his wiry hair pulled back and a sword strapped to his hip, a few people applauded, Marcus among them. Sandr came out a moment later, pretending to pick his teeth with a blunted dagger.
“You, Pintin, have been my second in command these many years,” Master Kit said, thrusting out his chin in parody of heroism. “From the moments of my highest glory and the depths of my despair, you have followed me. Now once again the hounds of war are loosed, and we must fly before them. The armies of dark Sarakal descend upon the city tomorrow.”
“Best we get out tonight, then,” Sandr said. The crowd chuckled.
“Indeed, ours is not to stand and fight the doomed fight. The city surely shall fall, and before it does, Lady Daneillin-last of her house and gentlest beauty of Elassae-must be taken safe away. That is our great work, Pintin. Our company is to fly this night with the great lady in our charge.”
“Yeah, problem with that,” Sandr said in his Pintin voice. “The men were on the city wall seeing who could piss the farthest. Seems the magistrate thought it was raining. They’re all in the city gaol.”
Master Kit paused. The self-importance in his jaw melted.
“ What? ” he shrieked in comic falsetto. More people laughed. They were warming to it.
Marcus leaned toward Yardem Hane.
“I’m not like that, though,” he said. “All that high dramatic talk and sucking my gut in. That’s not what I’m like.”
“Not at all, sir,” Yardem said.
Two days later, Cithrin sat across the cafe table from him. A light rain pattered outside the open doors and windows, the stones at the entrance of the Grand Market darkened almost black. Behind him, two Kurtadam men were talking about the latest news from Northcoast. Another war of succession seemed almost certain. Marcus told himself he didn’t care, and for the most part that was true. The world smelled of coffee and raindrops.
“If we have the free coin, I’m thinking about sponsoring one of the Narinisle ships next year,” Cithrin said.
Marcus nodded.
“There’s going to be uncertainty about the new fleet idea. Especially at first. If it’s a success, even just for the first couple of years, it’s going to increase the traffic through Porte Oliva. That could be a very good thing for us, so long as we’re in position. Known to everyone. Trusted.”
“All that assuming,” Marcus said.
Cithrin swallowed. She’d lost weight in the last weeks, and her skin, while always pale, was growing pallid. It was odd to him that none of the men who came asking her patronage for a loan or offering to deposit their wealth with her for a discreet return appeared to notice that the anxiety was eating her. She wasn’t sleeping enough. But she wasn’t drinking herself to sleep either. That counted as strength enough for him.
“All that assuming,” she agreed. And then, “Do you ever wish we’d run? Filled our pockets and just… gone?”
“Ask me again once the auditor’s left,” Marcus said.
