I walk through the Banlieu, nothing but slum dwellings and waste heaps, a boil on the arse of the city. Even a fine spring day cannot make these streets bloom. Children root through the mounded filth left by poor folk. They chase me as I make my way. Girls of ten and younger try to distract me with big eyes and kiss-mouths whilst skinny boys work to pull something from my pack, anything they can snatch free. I take my knife in hand and they melt away. Orrin of Arrow might have given them bread. He might have resolved to change this place. I just walk through it. Later I will scrape it from my shoes.
Where the Banlieu shades into the Low City the worst of the taverns crowd around narrow streets. I pass the Falling Angel where I first plotted Gelleth’s end, where I first thought to pay for affection. I know better now. Affection is always paid for.
I choose another alehouse, the Red Dragon. A grand name for a dim and reeking place of shadows.
“Bitter,” I say.
The barkeep takes my coin and fills a tankard from the barrel spigot. If he thinks I look young to drink here, among the broken old men with their red noses and watery eyes, he says nothing.
I take a table where I can put a corner at my back and watch the windows. The ale is as bitter as my mood. I take slow sips and wait for the night to come.
I think of Katherine. I make a list.
She said I was evil and that she hates me.
She has set her heart on the Prince of Arrow.
She tried to kill me.
She destroyed the child she thought was mine.
She was defiled by another man.
I run through it again and again as the sun sinks, as the drunkards come and go, carts and whores and dogs and labourers pass in the street, and still I cycle through my list.
Love is not a list.
Full dark, and my tankard has stood empty for hours. I walk into the street. Here and there a lantern hangs, too high for thieves, casting a parsimonious light that struggles to reach the ground.
Despite all my waiting, despite my resolve, still I hesitate. Can I tread the paths of childhood again without taint? Overhead the stars turn, a slow revolution about the Pole Star, the Nail of Heaven. Part of me doesn’t want to go back to the Tall Castle. I push that part away.
I cross the river by the New Bridge and find a quiet corner where I can watch the High Wall. Crath City and its parts have been named with the same lack of imagination the Builders put into the architecture of its castle. As if the box-like utilitarianism of the castle has leached into the language of the city. If I had the power to build for the ages, to know that what I set in stone would stand for millennia, I would put at least some measure of beauty into the mix.
The High Wall is indeed high, but it is not well lit, and some way west of the Triple Gate the stonework is broken by the remnants of a second wall that once led off at right angles and is now gone. I practised my climbing here when I was little. It seems easy now. Handholds that I struggled to reach can be bypassed entirely in favour of the next. My hands know this surface. I don’t need to see it. This is memory. I gain the top well before the next guard makes his rounds. On the far side ill-advised ivy makes the descent a simple matter.
Young Sim taught himself the ways of the assassin. He made a hobby of it, the short knife, drop-leaf in powder or tincture, or once in a while a harp string used to garrotte. Of all my Brothers it is Sim that is the most deadly in the long haul. In a battle I could surely cut him down. But lose sight of the boy and he will not come at you in the next moment, or the next day, but in his own time. When you have forgotten the wrong you did him, he will find you again. Sim taught himself the long game and he passed a little knowledge on to me.
Disguise is not a matter of clothes and artistry with paints and kohl. Disguise lies in how you move. Of course the right uniform, a chin made of putty, a well-applied scar, all these can be of great help in the proper circumstances, but the first step, Sim taught me, the most important step, is exactly that…how you step. Move with confidence, or at least confidence in your role. Believe you have every right to be where you are. Step with purpose. Then even a prop as small as a hat can furnish a full disguise.
I stride through the streets of Old City, aiming directly for the East Gate, the gate where deliveries are made to the Tall Castle, supplies unloaded, messages handed to runners for carriage to distant quarters. A patrol of my father’s soldiers, ten strong, passes the head of Elm Street as I walk it. They spare me a first glance but not a second.
Three torches burn above the East Gate. They call it a gate but it is a door, five yards high, three yards wide, black oak with iron banding, a smaller door set into the middle of it for when it is simply men seeking entrance rather than giants. An armoured knight stands duty before the door. If he wished to see anything he should stand in the dark.
I turn aside and come to
