Age of Ash, page 15
It was the farthest quarter of Kithamar from the ones she knew. Even if she paid to ride in the back of someone’s cart, it could take more than half of the winter’s short day to pass through the canals of Seepwater, over the river’s southernmost bridge, through the filthy soot-blackened canals and streets of the Smoke, and into its squares and lanes. Travelling back at night would have been walking in the dark through the bitter cold. Instead, she rented a bed from a merchant family that would eat through half of another of Darro’s gold coins before springtime came. When Ullin or one of his friends asked, she pretended to be staying with a cousin who apprenticed with a coppersmith. No one questioned her story. The only qualm she felt came from leaving the box of Darro’s ashes by itself. She hated imagining Darro lonesome.
The cold and dark of winter slowed Kithamar’s blood, but Stonemarket was a revelation for her. She had passed through it before, run pulls by its grand fountain and sold stolen cloth at its marketplace, but she had not lived there. A thousand small things made it different from Longhill and the city she knew. She felt like she’d been transported to some foreign country. The buildings here sounded different. The bread they baked here rose from soda, not yeast. Even the landmarks she knew meant something else here. She’d gotten badly lost twice before she realized that Palace Hill was to the east here, and her whole life it had been a synonym for sunset. She caught glimpses of round Inlisc faces like her own, but they were few. All humanity seemed Hansch in Stonemarket.
She was a stranger here, and so she could be anyone.
“So there I was,” she said, gesturing toward the fire as if it were the summer streets of Longhill, “running like hell, and this baby guardsman screaming behind me with his cloak billowing out like a sail because we’d cut his belt off him.”
Ullin was laughing so hard, tears were running down his cheeks. Two of the others from his barracks were with them: one tall and thin as a sapling tree, the other with a scar that pulled down his right eyelid when he smiled. She didn’t remember either of their names, though they’d said them earlier. They all sat together at the mouth of an alleyway, bundled in wool and leather. Their breath was white and thick as clouds, but she didn’t feel the cold. Ullin had brought a rough iron pan to hold a fire, and they had cooked strips of meat over the dull red coals before moving on to burn bundles of herbs whose fragrant, soft smoke left her feeling warm and expansive and pleasantly outside of herself.
“He must have shit himself!” the one with the scar said.
“Funny you should say that,” Alys said, “because let me tell you what happened next.”
Ullin leaned back against the frost-crazed stone of a building, his head in his hands, and only the edge of his grin showing past his wrists. She couldn’t tell if the hiccups of laughter were telling her to stop or go on. She went on.
It was what Ullin and his crew seemed to do in the long darkness: tell stories and drink. She liked it that the stories were almost evenly weighted between tales of victory and comic stories of their own humiliations. When Ullin laughed at her, it didn’t sting, because he laughed at himself too. As she reached the part of her story with the night pots of Longhill opening up like a yellow-brown raincloud over the guardsman, an old man hurried past on the street. He wore a foxfur overcoat and an embroidered hat that covered his ears. He scowled at the winter cold or at the four of them, or at both. When the tall one made a little bow, the man only hurried his steps. Alys saw Ullin weighing whether to go after him and relieve him of his wallet and furs, and then deciding it wasn’t worth the bother.
“Ah, Darro was a one, wasn’t he?” Ullin said instead. “I didn’t know him except through…” He gestured vaguely with one hand. When he’d said they didn’t talk about Andomaka and the work for her, he’d been very serious. More serious than Alys had seen him be about anything else. He also knew or guessed that what Alys wanted from him was her brother. He was right about that. Any story, any scrap of the life he’d lived and kept from her was worth more than the gold he’d left.
The one with the scar took a small brown bottle from his pocket and drank from it. He didn’t offer it around. Ullin took a deep breath, then blew it out. It looked as solid as a feather in the cold.
“I remember one time I was out with him,” Ullin said. “Would have been about a year ago. I’d just met him.”
That was interesting. Had Darro only been taking work from Andomaka for a year, then? She realized Ullin was waiting for her, that the pause had gone on a heartbeat too long. “Yeah?”
“We had done a thing, and after, we stopped at a taproom in Seepwater by the canals.”
“Won’t see me going to the fucking river,” the tall one said. “Water’s hungry. Stay in my place, me.”
“Well, my place is where I’m called,” Ullin said. “Anyway, there was this girl there, hair dark as pitch and straight as spooled thread. Don’t recall her name.”
“Nel?” Alys said.
Down the street, a small woman turned the corner, wrapped in grey rags and a hood, head lowered against the cold. Alys noticed her and ignored her in the same moment.
“Could have been. Don’t recall. But she was looking for a fight with whoever came in range of her. Now this place, the keep had a rule: You left your blades at the door. So we were there, Darro and me, not a knife between us, and this girl with her teeth out and her fists cocked. Darro said something about it too, and she came at him like he was her best enemy with his belly showing. Only he picked up his club. You know the one?”
“Hard oak,” Alys said. “One end dipped in lead.”
“Thought you said you left your arms at the door,” the one with the scar said.
Ullin lifted a finger like a university tutor making a fine point of public rhetoric. “Blades. I said we left our blades at the door. Weighted stick’s not a blade, which was Darro’s point. So this fine young woman sees how she’s just started something that won’t finish well for her, and her eyes—”
“Alys?”
The woman in her grey bundle of rags had stopped near them and, improbably, Sammish’s face appeared from under the hood. Her cheeks were dark with the cold, her upper lip shining with snot. Snowflakes clung to her eyelashes. Alys noticed that it was snowing. She tried to stand, but it was more difficult than she’d expected. She wondered how many bundles of herbs they’d burned and whether she’d been sitting downwind without noticing.
“You know this one?” Ullin asked at the same time that Sammish said, “Are you all right?” Alys took a moment to untangle the two questions in her mind, then turned to Ullin.
“I’ll be right back.” She stepped forward and took Sammish’s arm. She’d meant to pull the girl away, but found herself leaning against her instead. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” Sammish said. “What are you doing here? No one’s seen you in days.”
“I’m… working,” Alys said, but it wasn’t quite the right word.
Sammish glanced around, alarmed. “You’re doing something for them now?”
“Not that kind of working,” she said.
“I was worried. I thought something bad happened to you.”
Behind them, Ullin said something. The tall one laughed his long, braying laugh. Alys had missed the joke, and she saw Sammish seeing her impatience. Alys smoothed her expression like she was playing at tiles. “Nothing bad. Just learning more. About Darro. What he was working.” Her heel landed on a slick bit of ice, and she stumbled. The road seemed to shift and roll like the river after a storm. She shook her head to clear it. Sammish started to say something, but Alys, annoyed, cut her off. “How did you find me?”
“Tamnis has a cousin working in Green Hill. He said he’d seen someone that might have been you by the fountain a few days ago. And I didn’t have any place else to try.”
“How long have you been looking for me?” Alys asked.
Sammish shrugged and repeated herself. “I didn’t have any place else to try.”
A rough clanging made Alys turn. Ullin was upending his iron pan, scattering the coals in the gathering midnight slush. Embers rose in the air like bright insects and then went dark. It wasn’t something that would ever have happened among the wooden structures of Longhill, and it made the stone walls around them seem magical. Things that were impossible in the world she knew became possible here. The tall one fumbled with his belt, hauled out his cock, and started pissing out the few coals that still glowed. Ullin met Alys’s gaze, raised a hand in farewell, and turned away. The night, it seemed, was over. She considered the two who were still there. They didn’t take jobs from Andomaka and they hadn’t known Darro. They didn’t mean anything to her. A breath of wind set the falling snow swirling.
“Well, you found me,” she said. “I’m here, and I’m healthy and whole. So…”
“I can’t believe you were sitting out in this weather. People die like that.”
“They don’t.”
“They do. Especially when they’re too drunk to feel the cold. Yarro Connish did two years ago. They found him curled up outside Ibdish’s house with half a skin of wine in his hand.”
“I’m not him,” Alys said, and started walking southeast, toward the Smoke. She was steadier on her feet now, and Sammish had to trot to catch up. Her heart was a complex of resentment, amusement, and regret. Part of her wanted to be back with Ullin and the necessary evil of his friends, trading stories and laughing and getting drunk on smoke. But part of her, she now realized, wanted badly to sleep. She didn’t know how long she’d been out in the alleyway, or how far into the night they’d come. With the clouds low overhead, there was no moon or star to tell her. Ullin had the trick of making the night seem brief.
“Long walk home,” Sammish said.
“I’m not going home,” Alys said.
“Oh. All right,” Sammish said, her voice pulling back like Alys had touched a cut. “Then I should…”
“Fuck’s sake, you’re not either. Stop whining and come with me.”
The streets of Stonemarket were calm and quiet in the darkness. A few people made their way on foot, and Alys led Sammish past one slow-moving cart drawn by an ancient, tired-looking mule, but the doors of the markets, workshops, guild halls, and warehouses were all closed. There were glimmers of light in the higher windows where families and servants hadn’t yet gone to bed, but only a few. For the greatest part, the city was saving its candles and oil. Alys stopped at a private alley with a high iron gate and took the key from her sleeve. When she closed and locked the gate behind them, Sammish looked as lost as a rabbit, and Alys took her hand to lead her into the darkness.
The merchant family she’d taken her room from traded in salt and private loans, and they’d bargained hard for her little shelter. It was close as a grave, but it backed against the kitchen. The stone radiated a little of the cookfire’s heat even long after the cooks had gone to bed. Alys wondered whether Darro hadn’t also had arrangements like this. Little places to go to ground scattered all through the city. She imagined that he might have. She hoped that he had.
There was no candle or lantern, so she led Sammish to the straw mattress in darkness, and in darkness, she brushed the melting snow off her own cloak sleeves and shoulders. The mouser that lived in the alley scratched at the door, and Alys let it in too. A few fleas weren’t much to risk if it meant a little more warmth.
“There’s a night pot in the corner if you need it, and some water on a stand beside,” Alys said, lowering herself into the bed.
“Are we supposed…” Sammish said, as if the words were too big for her throat. “Should we undress?”
“If you want to freeze to death, go ahead,” Alys said. “There’s only one blanket, and it’s thin.”
“All right. I didn’t know.” And then, “I’m sorry.”
Alys found the blanket and hauled it up over the both of them. “For what?”
“I’m in the way. I shouldn’t have come looking.”
“You could trust me better to watch out for myself, that’s true,” she said. Then, because it had come out harsher than she’d meant it, “These are good people.”
“Are they?”
“They aren’t like us. They’re rich and they’re smart, and they didn’t spend their lives grubbing for their next meals the way we did. They’re bigger than we are is all. They’re better. It’s why Darro was with them. They care about the whole city, not just their corner of it.”
“Those boys?”
“Not them. Andomaka. The people who matter.”
Sammish didn’t speak, but Alys felt her shift and thought it was a nod. Alys closed her eyes, and the world didn’t get any darker. The mouser crawled between them, turned around twice, and settled down, purring. Alys’s body felt heavy and slow. Sleep tugged at her, but having Sammish there, another flesh next to her own, felt odd. She’d grown used to being alone.
“How much do they know about us?” Sammish whispered. “About why you’re really here?”
“As much as they need. I don’t go around launching into it every time, but there’s no call to hide it.”
“They know about the gold?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, if it came up. I wouldn’t keep anything from Andomaka. There’s no reason to. We want the same things.”
“So you wouldn’t keep secrets from her?”
“Of course not. Why would I?” Alys said, and shifted. “Did you find something?”
Sammish was quiet for so long that Alys thought she’d fallen asleep, and when she did speak, her voice was small and oddly sorrowful. “No. I didn’t find anything.”
Back in Longhill, Alys drew the club through the air as hard as she could and enjoyed the feeling of its mass. It made a soft noise like the flutter of wings.
“You like it?”
It wasn’t quite like Darro’s, but then it couldn’t be. Darro had carried his for years, and use had changed it. The wood had been darker, and shaped to his hand. Even if she’d had it, it wouldn’t have been quite like it had been for him. Her arm was a different length, her hand had its own grip. The most she could hope for was a translation: a tool that was to her as his had been to him. As far as she could recall, Darro had bought his from Merrian Haldin, whose son Jiam stood before her now, Merrian having died last season from a cut on his leg that wouldn’t stop bleeding. It was the same little shop, though. Darro’s club had been oak, as was hers. His had an end dipped in lead to give weight to its swing, just as this one did. And it was a good piece of work. It was as near to her brother’s as it could possibly be. And still, the gap between what she could have and what she wanted chafed.
“It’s good,” she said, and wished she could have been more enthusiastic.
“It will do everything you need, that,” Jiam said, almost defensively.
It wouldn’t, but Alys would take it anyway. She smiled because smiling was polite, and gave the boy his money. Trees that had been lush and green when Darro died were black sticks now, and she still had enough money that she didn’t have to save for the club or trade for it. She walked back out into the streets of Longhill with the weapon across her shoulders and her arms resting on it like a yoke.
She had come back to Longhill for the club and to be in her own room again. Ullin had teased her for leaving, pretending an affront he didn’t feel. She took it as a sign of friendship—or at least companionship—but it sat poorly with her. And now, walking through the familiar winter streets and alleys of home, her irritation grew.
Ice had settled into Kithamar with the deepness that meant it was there to stay. Snow haunted the shadows, and the shit that people threw from their windows froze in the street, waiting for the prisoners’ cart to come by and clean it away. It didn’t even stink.
The preparations for Longest Night were apparent in the windows and doorways. Bits of ribbon hung from the mantels, and candleholders sat outside the shutters, waiting to be filled. There was a comfort in knowing that the days would be stretching out again, even if the coldest weeks were still between them and the thaw. But Alys found herself feeling tight around the throat and strangely ill at ease as she looked at the little signs of celebration. She didn’t put her thumb on why until she saw Grey Linnet walking ahead of her. The old woman wore a shawl of woven, bright yarn across her shoulders as if she were going to a celebration, but her face was sorrowful. She carried a bouquet of thistle.
Alys remembered what she had been trying to forget. She knew—of course she knew—that Longest Night was five days on from where she stood. And that five days before Longest Night was also Darro’s naming day. It would have been his twenty-second, and instead it was the first of his absence. Another moment of traditional mourning that Alys had tried to erase from her mind through a clench-jawed act of will.
And she had failed. Looking back at all she’d done in the past days, she thought the impulse to buy the club in her hands today of all days hadn’t been as random as she’d pretended.
She felt as if she were two people at once: one who had forgotten the course that mourning her dead brother would take, and another who had followed the pattern of ritual, seeking out a token of the dead man and walking now toward the place where her quarter would end their debts and their mourning.
Alys resolved not to make the turn that Linnet had. She was her own woman now. The customs of Longhill didn’t command her. She could walk back to her room—Darro’s room—if she saw fit. Or buy a place on the back of a cart and make her way back to Stonemarket and Ullin. Or Green Hill and Andomaka. Or even walk to the cheap little room by the baker’s that Sammish still used. Kithamar had ten thousand different things happening that day, and her brother’s nameday was only one. She didn’t have to choose it. At the intersection, she hesitated like her feet had stuttered.
