“When the time comes,” she said. “We can worry when the time comes.”
Captain Marcus Wester
It was a week past his thirty-ninth name day, and Marcus squatted at the alley’s mouth, waiting. A soft rain fell on the nightdark streets, beading on the waxed wool of his cloak. Yardem stood in the shadows behind him, unseen but present. In the house across the narrow square, a shape passed in front of the window—a man peering out into the darkness. A less experienced man might have stepped back, but Wester knew how to keep from being seen. The man in the window retreated. The tapping of raindrops against stone was the only sound.
“It’s not as if I can tell her what to do,” Marcus said.
“No, sir.”
“She’s a grown woman. Well, she’s
“It’s an awkward age, sir,” Yardem agreed.
“She wants control over her life. Autonomy. The problem is that she didn’t have any her whole life, and then had all of it at once. She had free rein with this bank for months. Long enough to see that she could do it well. After getting a taste for it, I don’t see how she turns her back.”
“Yes, sir.”
Marcus sighed. His breath barely misted. It was a warm spring. He tapped his fingertips against his sword’s pommel. Annoyance and concern gnawed at him like rats in the grain house walls.
“I could talk to her,” he said at last. “I could tell her that she’s got to be patient. Give the situation time to change on its own. Could she hear that, d’you think?”
For a moment, the rain was the only reply.
“Did you want me to answer that?” the Tralgu asked.
“I asked it, didn’t I?”
“Could have been a rhetorical point.”
Across the square, a thin line of light marked an opening door. Marcus went still for a few seconds, but the door closed again without opening fully. He eased his grip on his sword.
“No, I really meant it,” he said. “She’s my employer, but she’s also… Cithrin. If you’ve got a suggestion here, I’m open to hearing it.”
“Well, sir, I believe that every soul has its own shape—”
“Ah, God. Not this again.”
“You asked, sir. You might let me answer.”
“Right, sorry. Go ahead. I’ll tell myself it’s all a metaphor for something.”
Yardem’s sigh was eloquent, but he continued.
“Every soul has its own shape, and it determines the person’s path through the world. Your soul is a circle standing on its edge. At your lowest point, you will only rise, and your highest is when you are most likely to fall. Someone else’s soul might be shaped like a blade or a brick or a branching river. Each of them would live the same life differently.”
“Which would make it the same life how?”
“I
“No, forget I said anything.”
“If the magistra’s soul leads her in one way, it will seem the simplest path, whether it is or not. If she’s left within herself, she’ll turn in that direction just like Old Imbert drifted to the left after he took that hammer to his head. To make another choice would require the action of a different soul—”
Marcus raised his hand, and Yardem fell silent. The door that had opened before shifted. The light behind it was gone, and the movement was only a deeper bit of darkness. Yardem shifted. Marcus squinted into the dim.
“He’s going north, sir.”
Marcus took to his feet and shrugged back his cloak, the rain dampening his newly freed sword arm. Around them, Porte Oliva slept, or if it didn’t sleep, at least huddled close to its fires. If there had been moonlight, the pale walls and blue-painted lintels of the merchant quarter would have glowed. Instead, Marcus navigated by shadows and memory. Here and there, a lantern hung from an iron hook beside a door, spilling thin light, but there was more than enough gloom to cling to for a man who didn’t want to be seen. The bricks under his feet were slick with grime and rain. Marcus walked quickly, not quite trotting, and straining his ears for his quarry’s footsteps. Yardem could have been his shadow.
The man’s mistake was a small one, and inevitable. A small splash of a heel coming down in an unexpected puddle and an involuntary grunt. It was enough. They were close enough. It was time.
“Canin!” Marcus said with a friendliness that might almost have been genuine. “Canin Mise, as I live and breathe. Imagine meeting you out on a night like this.”
For a moment, it could have gone either way. The man could have greeted him, pretended some legitimate business, and had their conversation. Instead, there was the soft hiss of steel clearing its sheath. Marcus was disappointed, but he wasn’t surprised. He stepped back slowly, putting another foot or two between himself and the man.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Marcus said, easing his own blade free with a finger pressed against it to keep it from singing. “No one has to die here.”
“You cheated me,” the little merchant said. “You and that half-breed bitch you dance for.”
The buzz in his voice wasn’t a drunkard’s. It was worse than that. It belonged to a man who had taken the humiliation of his own failures and forged a weapon from them. That was hatred, and too much wine would have been easier to recover from.
“You borrowed money,” Marcus said, circling slowly to the right. The rain chilled his sword. “You knew the risks. The magistra forgave you three payments already. And now there’s a story you’re looking to leave the city. Set up shop in Herez. You know I can’t let that happen until you clear your debt. Now let’s put the sharp things away and talk about how you’re going to make this right.”
“I’ll go where I want and I’ll do what I please,” the man growled.
“That’s not where I’d put my bet,” Marcus said.
Canin Mise was decent with a blade. Veteran of two wars, five years as a queensman before the governor’s magistrates suggested he look for work elsewhere. His plan for starting a fighting school had been a good one. If he’d followed it, he’d likely have died with a reputation and enough money to set up any children he’d fathered along the way. Instead, his foot scraped against the cobbles and his blade hissed through the rain-thick air. Marcus held his sword in a ready block and stepped back out of his reach.
Probably out of his reach. If there had been even a glimmer of light, it would have been safer than what they were doing now. In the darkness, Canin Mise could no more judge his attacks than Marcus could avoid them. Marcus strained his senses, listening for the small noises that could guide him, trying to judge the pressure of the air. It was less swordplay than gambling. Marcus slid forward and took an exploratory swing. Metal clashed against metal, and Canin Mise yelped in surprise. Marcus pressed in with a shout, blocking the counterstrike by instinct.
Canin Mise shouted, a full-throated roar filled with rage and violence. It cut off suddenly. His blade fell to the cobble stones with a clatter. Soft, wet choking sounds came through the darkness, the splash of heels beating at the puddles. The sounds faded and went still.
“You have him?” Marcus asked.
“Yes, sir,” Yardem said. “You’ll want to carry his heels.”
“So,” Marcus said, “you’re saying that someone will choose against the shape of their own soul if some other-shaped soul’s in the room with them?” Canin Mise’s boots were slick and the unconscious man’s legs were dead-weight heavy.
“Not that they will, but that by having that, the opportunity arises. The world has no will of its own, so
