“You heard the first part, then. About my husband and hers?”
“I did.”
“Why do you suppose she would be concerned about Asterilhold and Antea sharing a common history? Being ‘practically one kingdom’?”
“At a guess, my lady, because she expects they may be again.”
He glanced at her, and his expression-guarded, calm, grim-told her that they were in agreement. Whatever the intricacies of blood and marriage, precedent and politics, Antea and Asterilhold could never be united while Simeon and Aster lived. And Phelia, never meaning to say it, thought unification possible. Even likely. And Aster was quite likely going to be living under her roof.
It seemed to follow that Feldin Maas and his foreign backers intended to kill Prince Aster.
“Well,” Clara said with a sigh. “So much for making peace.”
Cithrin
Wind rattled the shutters and hissed at the windows. The morning sun was too bright to bear. By simply existing, the world made Cithrin want to vomit. She rolled over on her bed, pressing her hand to her throat. She didn’t want to stand up, and she certainly wasn’t walking to the Grand Market. The attempt alone would kill her.
There was a vague uneasiness muttering at the back of her mind, a reason that staying here would be a problem. She was supposed to go to the cafe because…
Because…
Cithrin said something obscene, then, without opening her eyes, repeated it slowly, drawing out the sounds. She was supposed to meet with a representative of the tanner’s guild to talk about insuring their trade when the ships went back out. It wouldn’t be long now. Days, perhaps. Not more than two weeks. Then the thrice-damned ships would go out, traveling up the coast while the season still held. They’d make their stops in the north, make what trades they could, and then hunker down for the winter, waiting for the ships from Far Syramys to reach the great island of Narinisle and begin the whole blighted thing over again. And so it would go, on and on and on until the end of all things, whether Cithrin got out of bed or not.
She sat up. Her rooms were in disarray around her. Bottles and empty wineskins crowded the floor. Another gust pushed against the windows, and she felt the air around her press in and then out. It was nauseating. She stood up slowly and walked across to look for a dress to put on that didn’t stink of sweat. Sometime during the night, it appeared she’d knocked against the night pot, because a puddle of cold piss was well on its way to staining the floorboards. The only clothes that didn’t look filthy were the trousers and rough shirt she’d worn as Tag the Carter. For what she had to do, they’d suffice. There were still half a dozen silver coins in her purse, and she shoved them into Tag’s pocket.
By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she felt more nearly human. She stepped out into the street for a moment, then back in through the bank’s front door.
“Roach,” she said, and the little Timzinae jumped to attention.
“Magistra Cithrin,” he said. “Captain Wester and Yardem just left to collect payment from the brewer just north of the wall and the two butchers in the salt quarter. Barth and Corisen Mout went with them. Enen’s asleep in the back because she drew night watch, and Ahariel is going to get some sausages and come back.”
“I need you to run an errand for me,” Cithrin said. “Go to the cafe and let the man from the tanner’s guild know I won’t be there. Tell him I’m unwell.”
The boy’s nictatating membranes clicked over his eyes nervously.
“Captain Wester said I should stay here,” Roach said. “Enen’s asleep, and he wanted someone awake in case-”
“I’ll stay down here until someone gets back,” Cithrin said. “I may feel like slow death, but I can still raise a shout if it’s called for.”
Roach still looked uncertain. Cithrin felt a stab of annoyance.
“I pay Wester,” she said. “I pay you too, for that. Now go. ”
“Y-yes, Magistra.”
The boy darted out to the street. Cithrin stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching the dark legs scissor and stretch as he ran. Far down the street, he dodged a cart loaded with fresh-caught fish, turned the corner, and vanished. Cithrin counted slowly to twelve, giving him time to reappear. When he didn’t, she walked out into the street and pulled the door shut behind her. The wind was against her and kicking up bits of dust and straw, but she squinted her way to the taproom.
“Good morning, Magistra,” the keeper said as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. “Back already?”
“Seems I am,” she said, fishing the silver coins back out of her pocket. “I’ll take what this buys.”
The keeper took the coins, lifting and dropping his hand as he estimated their weight.
“Your boys know how to go through wine,” he said.
“They don’t drink it,” she said, grinning. “It’s all for me.”
The man laughed. It was a new kind of lie she’d only just discovered, telling the bleak truth lightly and letting everyone around her mistake it for a joke. They don’t drink it; it’s all for me. Come winter, I’m as likely to be in the stocks as free. Nothing I do matters.
He came back with two dark bottles of wine and a small tun of beer. Cithrin tucked the tun under her arm, took a bottle in either hand, and waited as he opened he door for her. Now the wind was at her back, pushing her on like it wanted her to get back home. The sky was blue above her with a skin of white clouds high in the air, but it smelled like rain. Porte Oliva autumns had a reputation for rough weather, and summer was in its last days now. A little cloudburst now and again hardly seemed worth complaining about.
She didn’t go back into the main rooms, heading for her own door instead. Maneuvering up the stairs was hard with the tun still under her arm. She hit the corner of the wall at the top with her elbow. The impact was enough to leave her fingers tingling, but she didn’t drop the bottle.
She’d forgotten about the puddle of piss, but she was feeling well enough now to open her window and pour the night pot’s contents into the alley. She swabbed up the rest with a dirty shift, then threw that out the window too. She’d eaten a link of gristly sausage and a heel of black bread the day before. She knew she ought to be hungry, but she wasn’t. She pulled off her carter’s boots, pulled open the first of the wine bottles, and lay back on her bed, her back against the little headboard.
The wine was sweeter than she was used to, but she could feel the bite of it. Her stomach rebelled for a moment, twisting like a fish on a fire, and she slowed down to sips until it calmed. Her head throbbed once, the beginning of an ache. The wind paused, leaving her in silence. She heard the voices of the two Kurtadam guards rising from below her.
The woman-Enen-laughed. Warmth and calm slid into Cithrin’s blood. She took one last, long drink straight from the bottle’s neck, turned, and set the wine on the floor. The darkness behind her eyes was comfortable and deep. The roar of the wind kicking back up seemed to come from a great distance, and her mind, such as it was, sparked and slipped. Connections came together in unlikely, unrepeatable ways.
She had the sense that Magister Imaniel had left her something for Captain Wester. She thought that it had to do with the canal traffic in Vanai connecting to the docks in Porte Oliva, and also with herbs and spices packed in snow. Without drawing a line between awake and dozing or dozing and asleep, Cithrin’s consciousness faded to darkness. Time stopped, started when she became vaguely aware of angry voices, very far away, and stopped again.
“Get up.”
Cithrin forced her eyes open. Captain Wester stood in the doorway, his arms crossed. The light was dim, the city in twilight and cloud.
“Get out of bed,” he said. “Do it now.”
“Go away,” she said.
“I told you to get out of that God damned bed!”
Cithrin pushed up on one arm. The room shifted, unsteady.
