Age of Ash, page 21
“I’m not… I don’t…”
“Name him.”
“Garreth.”
“Go to your Garreth,” Andomaka said. “Not as Elaine a Sal, daughter of the prince. Go as a woman to a man. Show him what there is in your life that he can claim, and what there isn’t. And find what there is of him that will sustain you.”
“You… do you… I mean, have you…?”
Andomaka understood the question and fought to keep the contempt from her voice. She would be who she needed to be for the moment. She could be someone else later. “I’m a woman too.”
The girl’s face seemed to blossom with surprise. No, not surprise. Hope. So that was something. A little permission to sin was all she’d needed. Just as effective in the long run as inviting her over the edge and into the air.
“Elaine!” They turned together to see a man silhouetted against the fire, striding toward them. Elaine pulled back her hand sharply, which was interesting in its own way. Andomaka looked from the dark man to the girl and back again, and the figure resolved into Halev Karsen.
She had known the man from the time they’d both been children, but always at a remove. He was known to be Byrn a Sal’s best friend and closest advisor. At the moment, he looked as angry as she had ever seen him. Or perhaps worried. He started to speak, then seemed to think better of it. Andomaka would have bet gold that the words he finally gave weren’t the ones in his mind. “Kint’s been looking for you.”
“I’m sorry,” Elaine said.
“Please attend your father now.”
Elaine nodded and walked away. Andomaka half expected her to look back, but she didn’t. She more than half expected Karsen to go with her, but he stayed.
“You’re looking well, Andomaka,” he said, and from him it was not an invitation.
“As are you, Halev. Power suits you.”
“I don’t believe that’s true.” There was something here she was missing. A hardness in his tone, and a care in how he chose his words. She couldn’t see what was behind it, but that he was on his guard was something. If Halev Karsen was concerned, then Byrn a Sal would be as well. And if they were concerned about her in particular, they were already a good way down a road she didn’t want them to travel. She smiled and took his arm, walking back toward the celebration and the fire.
“They’re beautiful, don’t you think?”
“What?”
“The young ones. It’s hard to believe we were that age once.”
“We aren’t old yet,” Karsen said. And then, more softly, “No matter how it feels.”
“You sound weary?”
“It’s the time of year,” Karsen lied. “I’ll be glad when the darkness has passed. That’s all. Do you remember when my sister decided she’d join with the chanters? Out there on the street corner with her shirt off, calling back the light.”
Andomaka smiled and shook her head. “I do not. And I’d recall that, I think.”
“I suppose our parents got it quieted down. It was all the talk in our house anyway. You’re still with the Daris Brotherhood?”
“On and off,” Andomaka lied.
“You should come to the palace more often. I know Byrn would appreciate your company.”
Was that a threat? Was it a test? Andomaka smiled emptily. “Perhaps I will.”
They reached the stairway back down into the warmth of the great hall. He took the opportunity to take his arm back from her, and she didn’t cling. It was interesting watching him, like reading a poem in a language she only slightly knew. She wasn’t sure if the unease she saw in him came from him or from her. But she saw his jaw go tight when the first shouts came from the great hall—laughter and a wild whooping. They walked a little faster with Karsen in the lead, and the scene they walked into was perhaps the least expected thing in the evening.
In the great hall, Byrn a Sal, prince of Kithamar, was galloping through the crowd like a child in a playroom. He had a broom between his legs that he whipped like a horse as he ran. The palace guard cleared the path for him as best they could, but he was erratic. His face was pale, but with patches of unhealthy redness as if he were wearing makeup that he was in the process of sweating off. His grin was wide and drunken, and all the people he passed laughed and clapped him on. They had to. He was the prince. He was the city.
“Excuse me,” Karsen said, and made his way into the crowd. Andomaka watched him, and the prince, and the community of all the highest families in the city. The sense of wrongness had to be more than hers. The sense of anxiety and illness was as much in the air as the scent of wine and smoke and bodies. Only a few knew that a false prince sat the throne, and she couldn’t be certain who they were besides herself. She clapped and laughed, and acted as though it was a lovely joke. In the privacy of her mind, she thought You are a traitor by blood. I will kill you and yours and remove the stain of your rule from history. You will be forgotten. And the thought made laughing easier.
The prince whooped again, turned, and started galloping in the other direction. The redcloaks scurried to get ahead of him, and in one of the near galleries, a drummer struck up a beat. Someone began to sing a traditional song so old that half the words were fallen Hansch. Slowly, the whole great hall joined in. They’d all heard it from their cradles so it had a sense of home and comfort, though the words, looked at carefully, were a call to war and slaughter. Andomaka joined in, closing her eyes and letting the music wash over her. There was nothing more she needed to do. She had headed off the unexpected threat by giving Elaine the permission she needed to continue her dalliance. And more than that, she’d found something of the lover’s name. Garreth. A scent to put before the little wolf girl and all her other hunters.
It was such a small mistake on Elaine’s part. Easy to overlook. The prince’s daughter would never understand the role it had played in her death.
The new year ran cold. Sammish knew from trust that the days were growing longer, the hours unfurling more slowly. She didn’t experience it that way. The bright, clear skies that came with Longest Night and the days that followed vanished. Clouds crowded down over the city, dark as stones. The snow that fell from them was small and dry, like numberless tiny teeth. The wind that carried it was sharp and merciless.
All through the city, the decorations were gone. There were no celebrations now, just the long durance of winter and distant promise of the thaw. The dogs that haunted the streets grew thinner, and the rats grew hungry and bold. The charity houses gave out thin soup to the streetbound who could find a bowl or cup to carry it away in. The shelves and cabinets that the bounty of harvest had filled continued their long annual exhalation. Each jar that came down, each crate of salt that gave up its bit of pork and beef to the stewpot, was one less to see the city through to summer. The quarantine in Stonemarket seemed to be holding in the illness; it hadn’t spread to the rest of the city. But the men and women of the Smoke and Green Hill were forced to make their way across the river to buy food, and the extra custom drove the price of bread and cheese higher for the citizens of the east bank. Even if the warehouses were opened and Stonemarket declared clean and healthy, it might be a starving spring in Longhill. Food only went so far when the coin to buy it ran out.
The city was out of balance, and everyone seemed to sense it. No one seemed to know what to do, least of all Sammish. All she could think was keep her head down and do what she had always done: survive. In the mornings, she took the stale bread that was left for her, if there was any, and made her rounds of the poorer streets. If she saw any of Aunt Thorn’s people or even just the normal denizens of Longhill who looked a bit more desperate than usual, she’d shift her route around them. The little profit she made wasn’t worth dying for, but if she went without for too long, she wouldn’t be able to pay the baker’s rent. And without her rent, he wouldn’t be able to buy his flour and honey.
Everything depended on everything else, and all of it was fragile.
In the afternoons, she studied the chalk marks from the brewer’s window or cleaned ash from the boilers of a bathhouse near the Temple or ran her ice-bound track through the city gathering knives for the whetstone man. Tramping through ice-grey streets with aching hands pulled up into her sleeves, Sammish could almost forget Alys and Saffa, Andomaka of Green Hill, and the whole vast, dark mess that had spilled into her life after Darro’s death. When she did think of it, she told herself it wasn’t hers to carry anymore, and she was lucky to be done with it. Sometimes she was almost convinced.
She folded the blades into the leather satchel: a pair of straight blades from the cobbler’s shop, a set of cloth shears from the tailor, and—to her advantage—a set of five blades from a tanner’s house at the edge of the city. The stink of the place got into her clothes, but they paid well, and the extra work made up for the butcher’s trade that she’d lost.
She stepped into the shed just as she had a hundred times before. The winter cold pushed in from the walls, radiating like heat from a fire. Arnal sat at his stone. The iron brazier at his side was enough to keep the water from freezing onto the stone, and its fire cast a little light. The old man was wrapped in wool blankets and a leather hat with patchy fur trim over the ears. His hair pushed out from under it like a vine growing between bricks. His eyes flickered when he looked at her. It wasn’t even a real expression. Just a moment of pain or regret. He put down the knife he’d been working—a thumb-long, three-sided dagger that grooms used to trim their horses’ hooves—and waved her forward toward him. Sammish felt a sudden rush of apprehension, but Arnal’s face seemed kindly enough. She went to him, holding the leather satchel out before her.
“Good load today,” she said. “The tanners must have had a heavy month.”
“Or bad technique,” Arnal said, taking the satchel from her hands. “Nothing dulls a blade faster than a bad hand. Sit down with me, eh? We should talk a little.”
Sammish swallowed an apology. She didn’t know what she’d done wrong. If she’d done something wrong. Arnal pulled a little wooden stool over next to the brazier and stopped working the little iron water pump. The flow over the stone died. Sammish watched the subtle tooth of the stone come clear as the last of the water sheeted off it. It felt like an omen.
“I’ve… ah… I’ve decided to make a change,” Arnal said, not looking at her.
“I can get more knives,” Sammish said. “I haven’t been going to the kitchens in Riverport, but I can. Half of those people have their own kitchens. If I go out at daybreak, I could get you a dozen more every week.”
Arnal raised his palm, silencing her. “It’s not you. It’s me. My hands are getting weak. They have been for a few months now. And I’m starting to get the shakes. See?”
Now that he said it, she did. She’d never looked at his fingers before. They were thick and callused all the way to where they met his hand. The nails were yellow, and the flesh where they met his skin was white and cracked as a dropped tile. The shiver in them made her think of leaves in a slight breeze, or a candle flame in a draught. He looked at her looking at them, and his smile was a kind of grief.
“Have you seen a healer?”
“I’ve been drinking a tea for it every night since first snow. It helped for a while. But it’s getting worse now, and the tea tastes like mule piss. I can’t do good work. Not like this. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just old, and the time’s come to step back.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I’ve got a son who works for a tinsmith in the Smoke. He’s got room for a cot, and he said I could stay there. Might be able to do a little work around the smithy on the days I’m feeling right. But this”—he gestured at the little shed; the stone; the pump; the grey, sandy water—“this is over for me.”
“All right,” Sammish said. Her voice sounded calm, given how fast her mind was going. She wasn’t ready. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
“You’ve done fine work for me, these last couple years,” he was saying. “You’re smart, and mostly reliable. I’m sure you’ll find a spot someplace to make up for the shit I paid you.”
“Your brother.”
Arnal tilted his head.
“Your brother runs a brewer’s shop,” Sammish said. “I’ve been practicing the marks for the bettor’s window. Maybe he’s looking for someone?”
Arnal put his trembling hand on his knee. There was sorrow in his eyes that might have been for her or for him or for the way the world ground people like them down. “I can ask him,” he said, and the way he said it meant: No.
Arnal gathered up the satchel and unfolded it, considering the blades as he pulled them out one at a time. Now that she knew to look, she could see the light fluttering on the flats of the blades as he shook. When he was done, he counted out a half dozen bronze coins. Five were old, with the face of Prince Ausai. One was newly minted, bright, and carried Byrn a Sal’s profile on it. Or she guessed that was what it was supposed to be. It didn’t look much like him.
“I can be back for the blades tonight,” she said.
“They can wait for tomorrow. If we run a little late, and they take their coin somewhere else…” He shrugged. What does it matter?
“Tomorrow, then,” Sammish said. As she left, she heard the squeak of the pump and splash of the water. It would probably be the last time. She turned east, toward Longhill and home. As she walked, legs working a hard rhythm to keep her heat up, she thought that she’d have to find some other way to get money. She’d have to ask who had a place for her. What she could do. What she was good for. She didn’t exactly feel the sadness or the humiliation or the loss. She only knew they were there, acknowledged them, and gave them a little space within her.
The rooms in Seepwater, the job at the brewer’s, the bed where she’d imagined herself waking beside Alys’s sleeping body. All of it swirled and scattered like the little angry snowflakes caught by the wind. It hurt, but not as much as she’d thought it would. It was as if she’d known all along that the dream was only a dream, and that someday she’d have to wake up. The only difference between then and now was that the day had come.
“That’s harsh,” Alys said, her breath steaming as they walked.
It was one of the nights she was back in Longhill instead of wherever else her work took her. She had a new red wool scarf at her throat, and a cloak of lined leather that was almost a request that someone knock her down and take it. She swung her lead-tipped club like a Green Hill dandy with a swagger stick.
Sammish shrugged. “It happens.”
“Lots of things happen. Doesn’t mean they’re good.”
Other people had noticed the time that Alys was spending outside the quarter and the money that flowed from her fingertips. Sammish had heard the laughter and the whispers and the speculation. Aunt Thorn had hired Alys on as an assassin. Alys had met a girl in the palace who looked exactly like her, and they’d traded places. She’d started fucking a rich man in Stonemarket who liked the idea of a girl from Longhill dancing on his leash. None of them were right, and all of them meant that something was happening with her. She didn’t fit in Longhill the way she used to.
For Sammish, it was as if there were two Alyses now. There was the angry, hurt, beautiful, funny, soft creature she’d longed for in silence for so long, and then there was this girl—half thug and half fop—who actually sought her company now and then because Sammish knew the truth behind her transformation and apparently Alys didn’t have many people to talk with.
Sammish knew it was an illusion, but she couldn’t get rid of the sense that that first Alys was somewhere in the city, maybe even in Longhill. Walk into the right taproom or market, go to her room at the right moment, and she’d be there, the way she’d always been. They’d go drink hot wine down by the theater and cut some purses and laugh and fall into each other’s arms.
“I mean,” the real girl walking beside her said, “it’s not worth pouting over. I was being sympathetic.”
“Sorry. I must be in a mood.”
“I might be able to help,” Alys said, and her voice dropped to a murmur. “We’re looking for someone in Riverport. I can’t tell you why, but he’s son of a merchant family. We know his name’s Garreth, but that’s all we’re sure of.”
The implications rolled out in front of Sammish like a rug. A mysterious young man who was the new focus of Andomaka and the scarred man, the next job that Darro would have been on if he hadn’t died. The new pull. And if Sammish wanted to help, there might be some table scraps left for her. The way she bristled wasn’t entirely fair. Alys had invited her into pulls before. This wasn’t all that different. It only felt as if it were.
Sammish shook her head. “Doesn’t mean anything to me. The closest I know is a tailor’s boy down in Seepwater called Garret, but I’d bet my right foot that’s nothing to do with yours. Sorry I couldn’t help. Good luck hunting him, though.”
Alys blinked, and Sammish willed her to let the subject drop. There was no path that led from here to Sammish working one of Andomaka’s jobs, and the more Alys pushed her on why, the more Sammish would want to explain it, and anything she said would go straight back to Green Hill and the Daris Brotherhood. Better not to talk at all. Sammish hurried her steps a little, and Alys matched her pace.
The street bent to the left around a dry cistern, and then opened to a tight, uncomforting square. The dark lines showed where wagon wheels had crushed snow against stone. Crows huddled at the roofline, three stories above them, shifting their feet and muttering complaints at the low white sky.
Ullin was leaning against the wall, sending greyish smoke up from a bone-yellow pipe. When he saw Alys, he hitched up his chin in greeting. He didn’t acknowledge Sammish, and she didn’t want him to. At her side, Alys shifted her gait, sinking lower into her hips like she was another lank young man, easy in her joints and ready for violence. Everything she did was a performance. Ullin pushed off the wall, but didn’t step forward.
