The first days of an occupation said a lot about the war that brought it about. In the best case, the new protector would reach out to the older, established powers in the city and find ways to make the habits and expectations of the citizens work gracefully under the new regime. The worst was slaughtering everyone and burning the place to the foundations. Suddapal fell in between. There were few fires, and what there were got doused quickly. Three ships sank during the sack, and given the number of vessels at the docks, Marcus suspected they’d been scuttled by captains who for whatever reason couldn’t put out to sea. The physical city itself was treated, for the greatest part, with respect. But it was the respect of an owner for their property. It didn’t bode well for the citizens.
And neither did the march of children.
Suddapal had three gaols, a legacy of the different cities it had been before they grew together. One stood safely inland with great stone walls around lines of iron cages. The second was at the top of a cliff near the shore with cells that lay open to the weather, foul or fair. The third was an island with only a single bay and currents cruel enough to defeat even the most experienced swimmers. All three had been emptied of their prisoners and refilled with the young. From his first glance at the children packed twenty in a cage meant for six, Marcus understood what he was seeing. Not a city folded into the empire. Not a people made subjects. Slaves, then, at best. And more likely, the culling that Kit had feared. The man did pick the worst times to be right.
The new protector—an improbably mustached Firstblood named Fallon Broot—had set a curfew for all Timzinae in the city. No one on the streets from dusk to dawn. Marcus had seen a fisherman at the piers shouting that the catch would be gone before he was on the water. The new Antean portmaster had him whipped in the street until there were bright tracks of raw meat along the chitined back. A dozen soldiers watched, laughing.
All of it put Marcus in an odd place. Like the Anteans, he was Firstblood. Like them, he was an unfamiliar face in the city. He could walk the darkened streets that the citizens no longer could. And more than that, he could pass unremarked by the new masters of Suddapal because he looked like them. Even Enen and Yardem, not technically bound by the curfew, would be noticed for their race. Marcus looked like what he was, a Firstblood soldier out of uniform and a little long in the tooth. He looked like nobody. He could ferry messages between the elements of Magistra Isadau’s shadow company with less danger than anyone else in the branch.
Or at least less danger from the invaders.
“Isadau sent me,” Marcus said, his hands at his shoulders, palms out. The blade pressed against his throat.
“The hell she did,” the Timzinae man holding it said.
“My name is Marcus Wester. I’m guard captain for the Porte Oliva branch.” It might not be true, but going into the complexities of his employment seemed like a poor decision. “I came here with Magistra bel Sarcour.”
“Prove it.”
“You have seven children hidden in the attic right now. You sent the message this afternoon as a letter asking about a loan for a new millstone.”
The blade came tighter, drawing a trickle of blood. The compound around him was less than a fifth of the bank’s size. Hardly bigger than a Northcoast farmhouse. They were in the dining room, the remnants of the night’s meal still on wooden plates. In addition to the man presently in position to open his throat, there were four by the benches with knives. This, Marcus thought, would be a profoundly stupid way to die.
“System could have broken,” the man behind him hissed. “Been intercepted. How do I know you’re not one of them?”
“Because I don’t have fifty Antean soldiers outside throwing lit torches through the windows and putting arrows in anyone who runs out,” Marcus said. “Why would they bother trying to trick you?”
There was a long pause. The blade went away, and Marcus put his hand to his neck. The cut wasn’t much worse than he’d do to himself shaving, but it was embarrassing to have been overcome. His reflexes were getting slower. He wondered if it was another effect of the poisoned sword he’d left with Yardem and Kit or just the creeping in of age.
“Sorry,” the man said, wiping his blade clean of Marcus’s blood. “Can’t be too careful.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Marcus said. “I have a message from the magistra. There’s a ship going out to Put tomorrow just before noon. Captain’s name is Brust. His ship’s got a double hull.”
“A fucking smuggler, then,” one of the men at the table said and spat. “I hate smugglers.”
“What exactly do you think it is we’re
“In the name of the Protector, open the door!” a voice called. The accent was Antean. The man who’d been ready to kill Marcus moments before pushed him back into a pantry closet.
“Stay here,” he said. “Don’t make a damned sound or you’ll get us all killed.”
Marcus nodded and pulled the door almost shut. Through the slit he left himself, he could hear the doors open and the Anteans pushing in. The voices were harsh, pressing in over each other. Marcus wondered if the children hiding above him could hear it all too.
“We had a report. Someone came here in violation of the curfew,” a new voice said, and Marcus felt his blood go cold. He peeked out. The man wore no armor, but brown robes. His wiry hair was pulled back and his long face could have been Kit’s twenty years ago. One of the priests. The man with the blade drew in his breath to lie and doom them all and Marcus stepped out of the closet.
“That was likely me,” he said.
“And who are you?” the priest said. There were four more Antean blades behind him, and God knew how many waiting in the street.
“Marcus Wester. I work for the Medean bank.”
The priest’s eyes narrowed as he consulted the spiders in his blood. Marcus’s flesh crawled a little, just thinking about it. Behind him two of the Firstblood men exchanged a glance. Nice to have the name recognized.
“What are you doing?” the blade man said.
“Telling the truth,” Marcus said, and stopped himself before he went on with,
“Why are you here?” the priest asked.
“Business. The magistra had a note this afternoon about a loan for a new millstone. She wanted me to follow up on it since she can’t. Curfew and all.”
“A millstone? Was there nothing else?”
“I can get you the note, if you’d like,” he said. And then, “You won’t find anything else in it.”
“And yet when you heard us, you hid in a closet? Why was that?”
“I’ve been in occupied cities before, and they can be intimidating. I got scared, and I didn’t think it through.”
The priest cocked his head, nodded. “Thank you. It seems there’s no violation here.”
“You shouldn’t be doing business with bugs,” one of the swordsmen said. “What kind of merchant works with these?”
“Bankers can be surprisingly flexible where there’s money involved,” Marcus said. “But I’ll tell them what you said.”
It was over, but there was still a chance it could go the other way. If the Anteans still thought of themselves as coming to enforce the curfew, they’d go now. If not, there was still plenty of chance for a bloodbath. But with him and the five Timzinae, the odds were good that at least one of the Anteans wouldn’t walk out. Apparently the swordsmen came to the same conclusion.
“Next time, you open the door faster,” he said, pointing his blade at one of the Timzinae who hadn’t actually opened the door at all, “or there’ll be trouble. You understand me?”
“I do,” the Timzinae man said, and the Anteans withdrew, scowling as they went.
When the door was shut, Marcus sagged down onto a bench. The sense of narrowly avoiding death left him slightly nauseated. There was a time when things like that had felt exciting, but he’d been a younger man.
“You all right?” the blademan said.
“I am,” Marcus said. “Or anyway I will be. Listen, those priests? You can’t ever lie to them. Or listen to them if you can help it. They’ve got spiders in their blood that give them power over truth and lies.”
