men. They tried Palliako in four different costumes before settling on Father Hope from The Midwinter Princess, the brown robes and crooked stick making him look older than he was. Aster only took a pair of old breeches tied tight around his waist, a stained shirt, and dirt ground into his hair and skin. Cithrin changed into a peasant dress made for a Firstblood woman and too wide for her hips and bust, but Charlit Soon threw stitches on to bring it closer.
“Can’t do anything with the hands,” Cary said, surveying the work. “Anyone looks at their palms and you’re caught.”
More fires were dotting the city, towers of smoke rising higher even than the Kingspire and windblown so that they seemed always falling.
“I have to thank you,” Palliako said. “All of you. The danger you’re putting yourselves in for me…”
“Feh,” Mikel said with a grin. “Sometime we’ll tell you about the first time we worked with Cithrin. Made a play about it.”
“Let’s get our heads out of this noose first, shall we?” Cary said smartly.
“If we stay here, they’ll find us,” Cithrin said. “One side or else the other.”
“If there’s only two sides,” Smit said. “Lot of times these things wind up more complex than when they start.”
Sandr rolled his eyes.
“Oh, worked a lot of insurrections, have you?”
The city was in the grip of riot, the two most powerful and important men in Imperial Antea huddling in fear of their lives before him, and Sandr was peevish at having been upstaged by Cary.
“Didn’t I tell you about being in Borja when the plague winds came?” Smit asked. “That was when I’d only just met Master Kit. I must have been twenty, twenty-two. Right in there, and—”
“Gentlemen?” Cary said.
“Sorry,” Smit said and lapsed into silence.
The stable reeked of piss and horse shit, and beneath that a growing scent of smoke. Camnipol, burning. Cithrin’s gut was a solid knot. She knew that if she ate now—or even if she drank—she’d vomit it all back up. And also, she was exhilarated. She wondered where Paerin Clark was right now. She had faith he’d survived the initial attack and that, barring the mischance that came with the violence, he would be able to find a place of relative safety. But she wouldn’t go looking for him, and she was certain he wouldn’t come looking for her. He’d be too busy making his soundings of the tactics and politics.
But he didn’t have regent and prince to talk with. And she did.
“We can go under the city,” the prince said. “It’s all ruins. If we can find someplace where it won’t collapse, we could stay there.”
“Food,” Palliako said. “Water. And how do we know when it’s safe to come back out?”
“We’ll take care of that,” Cary said. “Cithrin can come up for supplies. And we can be your eyes and ears. Otherwise, we’re just what we are. A half dozen actors trying to keep out of trouble, no?”
“Not much food for an actor no one’s watching,” Sandr said.
“If we take the stones off that rag the prince was wearing, we could sit in this yard playing to rats and dogs for a year and still have enough for food and beer,” Cary said, shrugging. “As far as I see, we’ve just been hired.”
Palliako sat forward, hugging his legs. For the regent of a great empire, he looked a bit lost. It was more than the desperate situation. More than the violence. Dawson Kalliam had been this man’s Lord Marshal, leader of his armies. Palliako had called the man’s revel, and in return he’d nearly taken a knife. She tried to imagine what it would feel like to have the person you trust most revealed as an enemy.
Easy enough. It had happened to her.
Cithrin walked the two steps to him and sat at Palliako’s side. There were no tears in his eyes, but something worse. Something lost and emptied. Cithrin took his hand in her own. He had wide palms and short fingers, the angry welt of an insect sting on his arm.
“Listen to me,” she said. “We’ve only just met and you have no reason to trust me, but do it anyway. These people are my friends, and they’re no part of your court or anybody else’s. If they say they’ll keep us safe, then they will.”
“How do you know that?” Palliako said, his voice tight. “You can’t be sure they won’t turn on you. I need to find Basrahip. I need to see if he’s all right.”
“We’ll find out for you,” Smit said. “I mean, not tonight. But when the dust’s settled a bit, we can find that out for you. Unless they really burn the full city down.”
Palliako’s gaze focused on her for what seemed like the first time.
“I don’t know you,” he said.
“I’m Cithrin bel Sarcour,” she said, nodding as she said it. Encouraging him to do the same. And by doing it, begin to mean it. “There. Now you know me.”
Clara
The letter from Osterling Fells was written in a poor hand, the letters awkward as kittens and the spelling approximate at best. There were scribes at the holding, and at least one in the township nearest it. Vincen Coe could have easily had some more practiced hand aid him, but he had not. The text itself was innocuous—the progress of the kennels, the watering tanks to provide for the hunting pack, the number of pups whelped in the spring—and she couldn’t precisely object to his having made the report. It was like a light, unnecessary touch on the hand. Like the other letters from him, Clara wouldn’t respond. Sooner or later, the boy would recover from whatever madness had fixed his mind upon her. He would find some more appropriate infatuation, and the letters would stop. She put this one down again for the hundredth time, it seemed, and resumed her uneasy pacing.
The night hadn’t let her sit still, not even for handwork. The revel had begun in the morning and was set to travel through until the middle part of the night. And with it, something darker. She let herself hope that whatever her husband had in mind, it would fall apart at the last moment. That he would come home annoyed and disappointed, but without anything dramatic having taken place. She told herself it could be like that. That the world tomorrow could look very much like it had yesterday.
She plucked at her sleeves and chewed on the stem of her pipe, teeth tapping against the hard clay. Dawson had lived all his life with the politics of court and the tactics of war. He would be fine. Whatever needed doing, he would do, and they would survive it and the family would, and it would all end well. She fought to believe it. She struggled and she failed.
The first sound to herald the chaos was a single horse running hard into the courtyard. The second was the yelp of the footmen. Dread pulled her toward the main doors almost against her will. When they burst open, Dawson stumbled through on the arm of the door slave. Her husband’s sword was in his hand, and blood soaked his right arm and side. His hunting dogs circled the pair, their ears back and faces rich with concern. She must have made a sound, because he looked up at her sharply.
“Arm the house,” he said between gasps.
The fear that had been welling up in her broke, flooding her with ice. She didn’t know yet what the worst was, but she had no doubt it had happened. She grew calm. She walked to her husband, pushing the dogs aside, and put a supporting shoulder under his arm.
“You heard my lord’s order,” she said to the door slave. “Spread the word. All doors and gates are to be locked immediately. Shutter the windows. Gather the servants and be ready to defend the house. When that’s done, find Jorey and send him to the kitchens.”
“My lady,” the door slave said, and gave Dawson over to her.
With every step Dawson winced, but he didn’t slow. The dogs followed them anxiously. When they reached the kitchens, Dawson lay on the wide oak preparation table and squeezed his eyes closed. As Clara went to the pantry, her head cook came into the room and stopped.
“You aren’t armed,” Clara noted as she took cooking wine and honey from the pantry shelves.
“No, ma’am,” the old cook said.
