sentries. He didn’t see them.
He didn’t see anyone.
When he reached the structures, the great open square where he’d dined less than a day before, they were deserted. When he called out, no one answered. It would have been like a children’s song where they’d all been ghosts, except he could follow the footprints and smell the horse droppings and see the not-quite-dead coals still lurking white and red in the firepit. The horses were gone, the men and women, but the wagons remained. The heavy winches that the prince’s servants used to construct their sudden towns were still where they had been. He even found the long chains that the seer had worn, wrapped around a bronze spool and dropped in the dust.
He went back to his own camp, where his squire was just putting down a meal of stewed oats and watered cider. Geder sat at his field table, looking at the tin bowl, then up at the abandoned camp.
“They left in the middle of the night,” Geder said. “Took what they could carry without making noise and slipped away in the darkness.”
“Perhaps the prince was robbed and murdered by his men,” his squire said. “Things like that happen in the Keshet.”
“Lucky we weren’t caught up in it,” Geder said. His oats were honey-sweet. His cider had a bite to it, despite the water. His squire stood quietly by while Geder ate and the other servants struck camp. The sun was hardly two handspans above the horizon when Geder finished. He wanted to be away, back on his own path, and the eerily silent camp left well behind.
He did wonder, though, what else the Haavirkin had seen, and what she had told her prince after the foreign guest had left.
Marcus
I would prefer to give it to Magistra bel Sarcour directly,” the man said. “No disrespect, sir, but my contracts don’t have your thumb on them.”
He was a smallish man, the top of his head coming no higher than Marcus’s shoulder, and his clothes smelled like his shop: sandalwood, pepper, cumin, and fennel. His face was narrow as a fox, and his smile looked practiced. The lower rooms of the Medean bank of Porte Oliva had Marcus, Yardem, Ahariel the stout Kurtadam, and the ever-present Roach. The weight of their blades alone was likely as much as the spicer, and yet the man’s disdain for them radiated like heat from a fire.
“But since she isn’t here,” Marcus said, “I’m what you’ve got to work with.”
The spicer’s eyebrows rose and his tiny little lips pressed thin. Yardem coughed, and Marcus felt a stab of chagrin. The Tralgu was right.
“However,” Marcus went on, “if you’ll accept our hospitality for a few minutes, sir, I’ll do my best to find her.”
“That’s better,” the man said. “Perhaps a cup of tea while I wait?”
I could kill you with my hands, Marcus thought, and it was enough to evoke the smile that etiquette called for.
“Roach?” Marcus said. “If you could see our guest is comfortable?”
“Yes, Captain,” the little Timzinae said, jumping up. “If you’ll come this way, sir?”
Marcus stepped out the door and onto the street, Yardem following him as close as a shadow. The evening sun was still high in the western sky. The pot of tulips in front of the bank was in full, brilliant bloom, the flowers sporting bright red petals veined with white.
“You take the Grand Market,” Yardem said, “I’ll check the taproom.”
Marcus shook his head and spat on the paving stones.
“If you’d rather find her, I can go to the Grand Market,” Yardem said.
“Stay here,” Marcus said. “I’ll be right back.”
Marcus walked down the street. Sweat pooled between his shoulder blades and down his spine. A yellow- faced dog looked up at him from the shadow of an alleyway, panting and too hot to bark. The streets were emptier now than they would be after sunset, the light driving people to shelter more effectively than darkness. Even the voices of the beggars and street sellers seemed overcooked and limp.
The taproom was cool by comparison. The candles were unlit to keep from adding even that little extra heat to the darkness, and so despite the brightness of the street, the tables of the common room were dim. Marcus squinted, willing his eyes sharper. There were a dozen people there of several races, but none of them was her. From the back, Cithrin laughed. Marcus threaded his way across the common room, following the familiar tones of her voice to the draped cloth that kept the private tables private.
“… would have the effect of rewarding the most reliable debtors.”
“Only until they start becoming unreliable,” a man’s voice said speaking more softly. “Your system encourages debtors to extend, and if that goes on long enough, you change good risks to bad.”
“Magistra,” Marcus said. “If you have a moment?”
Cithrin pulled aside the cloth. As Marcus had expected, the half-Jasuru man was with her. Qahuar Em. The competition. A plate of cheese and pickled carrots sat on the table between them alongside a wine bottle well on its way to empty. Cithrin’s dress of embroidered linen flattered her figure, and her hair, which had been pulled back, was spilling in casual disarray down her shoulder.
“Captain?”
Marcus nodded toward the alley door. Profound annoyance flashed across Cithrin’s face.
“I could step out,” Qahuar Em offered.
“No. I’ll be right back,” Cithrin said. Marcus followed her out. The alley stank of spoiled food and piss. Cithrin folded her arms.
“The spicer’s come with the commissions for the week,” Marcus said. “He won’t give over to anyone but you.”
Cithrin’s frown drew lines at the corners of her mouth and between her brow. Her fingers tapped gently against her arms.
“He wants to talk about something else,” she said.
“And not with your hired swords,” Marcus said. “That’s my assumption.”
The girl nodded, attention shifting inward.
It was moments like this, when she forgot herself, that she changed. The false maturity that Master Kit and the players had trained her into was convincing, but it wasn’t Cithrin. And the giddy young woman who shifted between overconfidence and insecurity wasn’t her either. With her face smooth, her mind moving in its own silence, she gave a hint of the woman that was in her. The woman she was becoming. Marcus looked away from her, down the alley, and told himself that by doing it he was giving her privacy.
“I should see him,” Cithrin said. “He’s at the house?”
“Roach and Yardem are with him.”
“I should hurry, then,” she said, humor warming the words.
“I can give Qahuar your regrets-”
“No, tell him I’ll be right back. I don’t want him to leave without me.”
Marcus hesitated, then nodded. Cithrin walked off down the alleyway, careful where she stepped, until she reached the corner, turned into the street, and disappeared. Marcus stood in the reeking shadows for a long moment, then ducked back inside. The half-Jasuru was still sitting at the table, chewing a pickled carrot and looking thoughtful. At a guess, the man was a few years younger than Marcus, though the Jasuru blood made it hard to be sure. The vesitigial scales of his skin and the vibrant green eyes reminded Marcus of a lizard.
“The magistra’s called away for a few minutes. Small business,” Marcus said. “She said she’d be right back.”
“Of course,” Qahuar Em said, then gestured toward the seat where Cithrin had been. “Would you like to wait with me, Captain Wester?”
The wise choice would be to walk away. Marcus nodded his thanks and sat.
“You’re the actual Marcus Wester?” the man asked, motioning to the servant boy for a mug of ale.
