“That’s an argument for starting tonight,” Marcus said.
Buying a handcart took Marcus almost no time. A potter with a small yard near the counting house was willing to part with one, and Marcus was willing to overpay. Finding a hammer and chisel meant finding the smith in his home and explaining what he needed. Decades of hammer blows had made the man nearly deaf.
The plan’s simplicity was its strength.
The street was empty and dark, the righteous men and women of Porte Oliva asleep in their beds and the unrighteous tending to stay nearer the salt quarter. Fewer queensmen patrolled here in the night, and if they did, what could they object to? Marcus and Yardem were known to be part of the bank. If someone came across them on the way to the counting house, they were only on their way to a turn at the watch. And once they left, Marcus assumed they were gone forever. It wasn’t likely that Porte Oliva or anywhere that the Medean bank was a force would be open to him again.
Small price.
In the gloom, Yardem pulled the handcart into the house, locked and barred the door. Marcus went below to the sunken strongbox. The lock was stronger than it looked, and opening it took the best part of an hour. When the lid finally did swing back, silent on well-oiled hinges, Marcus brought his lantern close. Only the most sensitive and valued contracts were kept here. Papers were only paper, and the number of people who could use them was small. Gems, though. Sacks of gold coin, weights of silver. Jewelry and sealed tubes of rare spice. Those were things that anyone could use. Marcus squatted over the box, his free hand going through the wealth of the bank quickly but with consideration.
“Less than it was when we came,” Yardem said.
“That’s to be expected,” Marcus said. “Most of it’s tied up in loans and partnerships. There’s enough, though. Maybe not for a full company and full season, but a couple hundred sword-and-bows. We’ll move faster on the road that way too. Won’t have the long supply lines to slow us down.”
“I’m going to ask you for a favor, sir.”
Marcus looked up. The lantern cast the shadow of Yardem’s chin up over his face, hooding him with it. In that light, he could have been someone else entirely.
“What is it?” Marcus said.
“Once we put that in the cart and walk out the door, it’s done. This is the last chance to reconsider. I’d like you to take a moment and pray with me on this.”
Marcus laughed. “I’m serious, sir.”
“God’s not listening,” Marcus said. “It’s not what he does.”
“I think we might be the ones meant to listen, sir.”
“Get it over with,” Marcus said.
Yardem bowed his head, the black eyes closing. Marcus shifted from foot to foot, waiting. It was seven streets to a stable. More than that to the port. But with what he’d have in hand, buying a way out of the city would be easy. Between the gold and their two swords, the morning would find them elsewhere. Yardem opened his eyes.
“Change your mind, sir.”
“Nope, the spirit didn’t speak. Enough theology,” Marcus said, tossing a small leather sack of gems. Yardem caught them overhand. “Help me load this up.”
Yardem’s hand closed on his shoulder, and the world spun. The stone wall of the basement struck his back like a hammer, and he fell to his hands and knees.
“What in—”
Yardem stepped close, his wide hand on Marcus’s neck. Marcus rolled, pulling his sword free as he did it, but the Tralgu’s other hand clamped on his wrist and twisted. The hand around his throat lifted, and Marcus’s feet lost the floor. As the world began to go red and hazy, he brought a knee up hard into the soft spot just under Yardem’s ribs. He felt something give way and the grip on his throat eased enough that he could draw in a sip of air. There was desperation in the way Yardem pulled at Marcus’s sword arm, working it like a lever, but Marcus went with his momentum and broke the hold.
He swung around, blade at the defense half a heartbeat too late. The hammer he’d bought to break the lock came down gracefully on the bridge of his nose. Something cracked wetly and the world dissolved in pain. He felt his sword wrested from his grip as if it were happening to someone else. He bulled forward blind, his shoulder finding something soft and pushing Yardem back to the ground, but the Tralgu slipped to his left and got an arm around his throat. Marcus kicked, trying to twist his head down low enough to put his teeth on Yardem’s arm, but he couldn’t. His mouth tasted of blood and he couldn’t breathe through his nose. His fingers dug at the thick, strangling flesh. Something smelled like smoke. His leg kicked out from under him, and the world narrowed to a greyish point far away before him and then blinked out.
When Marcus came to, his legs and arms were bound behind him and a cloth was pushed into his mouth and tied there with a leather thong. A sack was pulled over his head, making the process of breathing even more difficult. He was in the handcart, and its wooden wheels were rumbling against the cobblestones. His nose throbbed, sending stabbing pain back into his skull, and he tried to twist into a position where he could rise to his knees or shout for the queensmen. Anything.
“That the package?” an unfamiliar voice asked.
“Is,” Yardem said. “You know where to take it?”
“Do. But I’m not going to vouch for a damned thing if he gets loose along the way. I’m no soldier.”
“I am a soldier,” Yardem said. “He won’t get loose.”
Something lifted him around the middle and dropped him hard against boards. Chains rattled and a wide leather strap wrapped him like a girth. The sack slipped, and Marcus saw the bed of a cart, a wide iron ring set into the planks, and Yardem fixing the chain to it. Rage and willpower lifted him to his knees, and Yardem casually pressed him back down.
“How long are you going to take back there?” the carter asked.
“Almost done,” Yardem rumbled. He pulled at the chain, and Marcus slid down to the boards. His shoulder and hips screamed in pain. His labored breath started the blood flowing from his nostrils. Again. If he craned his neck, he could see the Tralgu’s stoic face looming over him. There was fresh blood on Yardem’s hands and a cut on his ear that Marcus didn’t remember making. Part of Marcus still expected to be released. That it was a joke or a lesson or the start of some overblown religious statement.
The other part of him, that part that understood, stared up and thought,
When Yardem spoke, his voice was calm. He might have been talking about the weather or the prospects of a new recruit. He might have been talking about anything.
“The day I throw you in a ditch and take the company, sir? It’s today.”
Geder
They went underground.
His first thought had been to follow the paths and gantries that clung to the side of the Division, working their way down until they found a passageway that led into the ruins beneath the city. The pale woman, Cithrin, had seen the problem with that: following paths that people were already using meant running across the people who were already using them. Safety meant finding places that no one went, making passageways where there had been none before. The idea seemed second nature to her. It scared him to death, but he couldn’t deny the wisdom of her words. It took the better part of a day for the actors to find an abandoned corner of the city, but they did. An old warehouse that had fallen into disuse and partly collapsed in on itself, the walls sinking into the city below.
The building had fallen because there was something beneath it to fall into. Geder, dressed now in rough grey clothes that stank of perfume and greasepaint, had let himself be led into the fallen house, and down to where an ancient archway still held the stone above it at bay. There was only a foot or so of open air between the rubble and the archway’s top, but cats went in and out through it freely. Cithrin had gone first, crawling into the darkness with only a small candle carried in a thick glass lamp. The hole was so small, she had to pull herself along by the elbows,
