The interior of Yellow House was comfortable and familiar. Cary lifted her hand to the keeper and pointed toward the back. He lifted his chin. The gestures were a full conversation in themselves. Cary led the way to a small room where casks of wine and tuns of beer lined the walls. A lamp hung from the ceiling with smoke-darkened tin plate above it reflecting the light down onto a thin wooden table. Cary sat first, then Master Kit. Marcus got stuck in the chair with its back to the door. A moment later the keep poked his head in.
“Cider all around,” Cary said. “Captain’s paying.”
“Pleased someone is,” the keep said, and a minute later three earthenware cups of cider sat on the table before them, steaming and filling the air with the scent of apples. Marcus took a sip and was a little surprised by both the sweetness and the bite.
“Good,” he said.
“They get it from an orchard in Asterilhold,” Cary said. “The stuff they had before wasn’t as good. So. Leaving Camnipol, then?”
“Seems that way,” Marcus said. “But the shape of it’s not clear. We were hoping to find someone who could give us information about some expeditions that the Lord Regent sent out into the world. What they were looking for, say. And where they were looking. Only that hasn’t worked. I think we’ve put in as much time as we can.”
“All right,” Cary said. Master Kit looked pained. To leave so soon after finding his family again was hard. Marcus knew that from recent experience. It was why he’d made the decision he had.
“I’m going north. The man leading the group in Hallskar’s named Dar Cinlama. Cithrin’s dealt with him before, and she thought he was the true gold. My guess is that whatever it is he’s looking for, he kept the best prospects for himself.”
“Seems wise,” Cary said.
“I will be going with him,” Kit said at the same moment that Marcus said, “I’m leaving Kit behind.”
Kit’s eyes went wide with surprise and Marcus leaned in toward the table, speaking quickly to take the floor before Kit wholly recovered.
“If you’re willing, Cary, you can take the company to the holdings of the nobility. You can follow the King’s Hunt. Kit knows how to sniff out the man we’re looking for. I’ll head for Hallskar by myself and try to find Cinlama and his people along the coast. It gives us two chances where we only have one otherwise.”
“I think that would also double the risk,” Kit said. “Traveling through Hallskar alone in winter, any number of things might go wrong.”
“Makes it a larger problem if I get a fever or break a bone,” Marcus said. “Also makes it less likely I’ll draw attention. I figure that makes it about even either way.”
“No,” Kit said. “You don’t.”
“You know, that’s really annoying.”
Cary slapped the table with an open palm. The report made both men jump. A strand of her hair had come loose from its braid and she pushed it back over her ear like a carpenter holding chalk.
“You know what I’m not hearing?” she said.
“Ah. I suppose I don’t,” Marcus said.
“I’m not hearing anyone say, ‘What do you think, Cary?’”
Marcus glanced at Kit.
“What do you think, Cary?” Marcus said.
She nodded curtly. “I think whatever this thing is you’re trying to find and being so closemouthed about —”
“Well, we don’t know what it is, and—” Marcus began, then Cary lifted her eyebrows. “Sorry.”
“I think whatever this thing is, a bad storm in Hallskar in the winter wouldn’t be good no matter how many people were on the road with you. The captain here knows it and wants us out of harm’s way. Add that he knows”—Cary turned toward Kit—“which apparently you don’t, that the company goes where Master Kit does.” Kit started to object and then stopped himself. “So all of this lip-flapping and masculine self-sacrifice will play just fine on the stage, and the stage is going to Hallskar. I’ll tell the others, send Hornet to buy some horses, and get the rest packing up. It’s about damn time we left this city anyway.”
Cary stood up from her chair, drank down her cider in one swallow, and marched out toward the main rooms of the house and, beyond them, the yard. Kit sipped his own cider more slowly and looked over at Marcus.
“You did give her control of the company,” Marcus said.
“I did. That’s true.”
“I’m thinking she has a taste for it.”
The journey was long, and they didn’t wait for the end of the court season to begin it. The company spent the last of its money on a team of horses to pull the cart and a couple more for the people to rest on when they got tired of walking. Even with the long stay in Camnipol, years of wandering made the company a model of efficiency. Aided by good weather, the journey to Sevenpol took hardly more than a week; they arrived just about the same time they would have been playing at Lord Daskellin’s party if they’d stayed. They made Estinport a week after that. The half of the fleet that hadn’t stayed in Sarakal was in winter port there, and the steep, narrow streets of the city were full with sailors spending their season’s wages and the prize money from the blockade of Nus.
Warships crowded the piers, empty for the most part, and the docks were fragrant with hot tar and fresh sawdust. Most ships flew the banner of House Skestinin below the royal pennant. And below them both, the red field and pale eightfold eye of the goddess.
Cary guided the cart into the yard of a taphouse that stood not a hundred paces from the sea. The air was cold and humid and the cries of the seagulls were louder than the human voices nearby. Master Kit negotiated with the taphouse keeper and got them decent terms for a three-night run. There wasn’t time enough to tailor any of the plays to the local situation or incorporate personalities, so they chose a well-known story where everyone knew the lines. While the players brought down the sides of the cart and prepared the props and costumes, Kit went to scout out boats that might be hired to ferry them across the water to Rukkyupal.
The players knew their business well enough that Marcus would only get in the way. For the better part of a day, he wandered the streets of Estinport with only himself for company. When he stopped in a taphouse for a length of garlic sausage and a mug of beer, he sat apart from the larger crowd.
A singer with a drum sat at the front of the common room, his reedy voice working through a long cycle that Marcus had heard before: the sea captain who went to war and was caught in an ancient magic that took him out of the world so that when he returned, all the people he had known were gone, all the places he had lived had changed. It was a sad song, with the dry beat of the drum carrying it along like a heartbeat. Marcus listened with half an ear, and watched the faces of the men and women in the room. They all looked young. Fresh and untried. These were sailors in a martial navy, and tradesmen, and women with households and market stalls and children of their own, and they all looked as if they were playing dress-up. More even than the players.
He had been that young once, that sure of himself and his ability to remake the world in the shape he chose. And it had been true, within bounds. It seemed like something that had happened to someone else, except when it seemed like it had all happened a week before. When he finished his beer, he walked back out in the cold, the singer’s drum still throbbing behind him.
At the yard, Kit was in the back of the cart in a robe of yellow silk, his arms held out to his sides while Mikel and Smit, needles in their mouths, sewed long, quick stitches at the seams.
“It appears I lost a bit of weight in the last year,” Kit said as Marcus pulled himself up to sit beside them.
“Rewards of a vigorous lifestyle,” Marcus said. “Any luck with the boat?”
“Yes,” Kit said. “We have passage two days from now. It won’t quite break our little bank, but we have a few plays we can rehearse on the way that tend to do well with Haaverkin. The sense of humor in Hallskar tends to run to puns, I’m afraid, so we have to make sure we have the lines precisely.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Mikel said around a mouthful of pins. “This is what we do, right?”
“Apparently so,” Smit said pleasantly. “Try not to turn there, Kit. Changes the drape of the thing.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll try not to.”
The afternoon passed quickly, the low northern sun dashing for the western horizon. The keep brought torches and braziers out to the yard, and as the sunset stained the clouds rose and gold, Marcus stood out in the crowd to guide the laughter and applause or help to remove the hecklers that popped up, one or two at every show.
