Age of Ash, page 25
“Didn’t think you’d be here today,” he said.
“Life’s full of these little shocks,” she said acidly, and he laughed.
“Well, then I don’t have to wait to share the good news. I saw them.”
Sammish and the humiliation of the taproom vanished like a candle flame being snuffed. Ullin smiled and spat smoke.
“The old man and the young one—the pretty boy—took the Inlisc girl off in a carriage. I think to a guild meeting or the magistrate. Sun hadn’t moved two fingers in the sky before our boy Garreth was at the door. And a woman travelling alone not long after that.”
Alys felt her breath grow shallow, but Ullin shook his head. “They’re not there now. The carriage came back before I could manage anything, and I don’t like going into this sort of job by myself. But if our love dogs come here when those three are gone, we have a way to predict the meetings. And I saw how the happy couple snuck out. Which means I know how we can sneak in too.”
The day had been hard, that was all. The sick feeling in Alys’s gut was only the whiplash of Sammish’s unexpected cruelty and this happy surprise. You’ve never killed anything more than a rat rose in her mind. For a moment, she felt younger than she was, and alone in a way she didn’t want to understand. She realized Ullin was waiting for her to say something, so she answered him.
“Good.”
Sad Linly walked—trudged, rather—through the frostbound streets, her knees aching to announce a change in the weather. The cold bit, but not as sharply as it had even last week. Any breeze more powerful than a breath had the killing threat of winter, but find a patch of sunlight and still air, and it was almost warm. If she had gone outside the city walls, she would have seen no leaves on the trees, and underbrush like twigs with only the crisp brown remnants of the last year clinging to it. But the bark might have had a touch of green on it. The withered limbs might have been just a bit less withered. It wasn’t springtime, but it was the promise that springtime would appear. And her knees ached. Change was coming.
Every doorway she passed, she knew. She’d lived her whole life in Longhill, and rarely gone even as far as the eastern side of the river. Some deep, atavistic part of her still thought of it as the Hansch city rather than another part of Kithamar. She liked being where the people all looked like her, slept like her, ate the foods she ate even if they were the cheapest parts the butcher had on offer. Growing up, she’d felt safe in Longhill. Now she’d lost two of her three children and was on her way to losing the third. And still, she was out of her little room, away from her housemates, and looking for her friend.
Grey Linnet hadn’t always been Grey Linnet any more than she herself had been born Sad Linly. She’d known the woman since they were both girls. Linly and Linnet, drinking to match the boys in the taproom and breaking hearts and cocks. The memories were bawdy and distant and more than a little shameful. They kept her warm.
These days, Grey Linnet kept a little room not too far from Seepwater. Big Salla had come to Linly yesterday asking if she knew where Grey Linnet was. No one had seen her, and the children wanted to go to the Silt and look for treasures. She’d told the children that the river was solid. It wouldn’t be washing up anything new until after thaw, but Big Salla wouldn’t be moved. And it was best to check on Linnet. She might be sick or hurt, and Longhill looked after its own.
Linly reached the alley and turned down it. Linnet’s door was old wood with a leather hinge, and she slapped it with the palm of her hand. “Linnet? Are you in there, you old bag? Are you all right?”
No one answered. The door was latched, but the hinge was weak. It wasn’t hard to make enough of a crack to slide in her boot knife and lift the catch. It had been a long time since she’d forced a door, but it was a skill that faded slowly.
She knew before she saw the body. It wasn’t rot; the world was too cold for that. But death had a smell all its own. The only light was from the door, and it was enough to see Linnet there on her cot, curled up. The brazier beside her was scorched where the wood had been, and ashes lay in the bowl. The rats hadn’t taken to her, which was a kindness. In death, she looked younger. Or if not younger, at peace. Spring was coming, that was true. But not for Linnet.
Linly sat on the end of the cot and patted the dead woman’s thigh as if she could still be comforted.
“Good work, you,” she said. “No more Linly and Linnet, I guess, but that’s mine to carry. You did good work. You should rest proud.”
There was no answer, nor had she expected one. Everything that rose, fell. Everything born, died. The only questions ever were when and who was left behind.
She sat there, communing with the dead woman for a time, then went to find a bluecloak who could call for the body men.
The weather was foul and threatening storm the second time Sammish went to Green Hill—low, angry clouds and a wind damp enough to leave the cobbles slick.
She’d thought that taking away the banners and decorations of the harvest festival would leave the quarter looking less than it had, but the truth was the absence only changed it. It was like seeing someone in a gilt mask shaped like a wolf, and then removing it to discover they’d been a panther all along. Green Hill in the midst of harvest had been a cacophony of magic and illusion. Green Hill at the trailing edge of winter, standing as it was under a low and ominous sky, was wide and austere. Its houses were clad in stone, its streets so clean it was hard to believe they’d been used, and the servants and low courtiers who walked under its bare arbors and leafless trees would all have been beautiful in Seepwater or Longhill.
Sammish felt like an impostor just breathing the same air that they did. Which, fair enough, she was.
She and Saffa stayed off the larger avenues where the carriages and litters travelled, keeping to the narrower alleys and back ways meant for servants and mules. The brotherhood’s house had been designed to be seen from the front, but even this oblique view of it impressed Sammish. It was less a building and more a small quarter to the city in itself. Ivy rose along its walls, and a patio in carved marble led to its public temple. Its private rites and mysteries were available only to those invited in, but Kithamar had more gods than sparrows, and most of them gave out a free taste to whoever wanted it. The fountain at the patio’s side was empty, the pipes dry against the winter cold. In summer, it would have been astounding.
The nearest thing to the Daris Brotherhood in her experience was Aunt Thorn’s little fortress beneath Longhill, but even that would have needed ten of its own kind stacked one atop the other to match the brotherhood’s compound. It would have been the central fact of any other district of Kithamar. In Green Hill, it was one ostentation among many.
Sammish wore a servant’s dress she’d borrowed from Averith, who’d kept it from when her sister had taken a place at a Riverport merchant’s house. The sister was dead now from a bad childbirth, but the dress was decent, and it almost fit her. Saffa walked at her side, a brown cloak pulled tight around her, a hood concealing her hair and her features. Sammish could feel the anxiety in the older woman’s walk and see it in the way she held her shoulders. She tried to imagine what it would be like, coming so close to the home of your enemy. Whether the urge to run back from the danger or forward into the fray would be stronger. She didn’t know, and it didn’t matter.
“I should wait for you,” Saffa said.
“You shouldn’t,” Sammish said. “You should walk around the outside of the compound with me once the way we planned. You should look for any signs your son might have left to guide a rescue. And then you should go back to your hole in Stonemarket and wait for me.”
Saffa didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
“We’ll be fine,” Sammish said. “This will work.”
“You don’t know that.”
Sammish shrugged. Of course she didn’t.
Riverport wasn’t quite in riot, but the energy in every passing stranger spoke of its anxiety and unease. The magistrates were taking up the complaint against the winter caravan, just the way everyone had known they would. The guilds and merchant houses were in array against each other. Fortunes were going to be made and lost before the sun set. Even if Garreth Left’s family hadn’t been at the center of the controversy, they’d likely have gone to watch. Everyone else would be there. As it was, the house was as good as promised to be empty for the lovers to use. The sky was dark with low, blue-grey clouds that blotted out the sun, and the breeze had a thick, eerie texture that told Alys worse was coming. More snow, maybe. Or something worse.
“You’re upset,” Ullin said.
“I’m paying attention. You should be paying attention too.”
They were walking around the household of the family Left the way they would have if they’d meant to rob it: changing their appearance a little each time they passed, coming together one time and apart the next, never looking quite the same way twice. If she was still angry—not that she was, but if—it was only that Sammish should have been with them on the pull. But Sammish was too busy being a little shit, so never mind her.
What Alys hated was the way her once-friend had corrupted her own tools. She’d spent months now growing into Darro’s shoes. She walked the way he’d walked, swung her club the way he’d swung his, held herself the way she remembered his body. But now when she did, Sammish’s voice threaded its way into her mind like a thistle in a wool cloak. This that you’re doing? It doesn’t even rhyme with him. How would she know? Darro wasn’t her brother. Sammish hadn’t grown up around Darro and his friends. No one liked Sammish. Not even Alys, now.
But it irritated her that Sammish had been able to put that grit into her wheels. Trying to make her doubt her connection with her brother was unforgivable, and that Sammish had almost, sort of, halfway managed it was worse.
“To the right,” Ullin said. His voice was light and casual, but the words hit her all the same. And yes, there ahead of them was the bluecloak, only he wasn’t wearing his blue cloak or his badge of office. He was just a young man with a sword at his hip and an anxious look in his eyes. Alys looked down and started counting her steps to fifty the way Darro had told her. The way Darro would have done himself.
“Girl?” she said quietly.
“Not that I’ve seen yet,” Ullin said. She could hear his smile. “We will, though. Today is our day.”
She imagined telling Andomaka it was done and saw the pleasure in the pale woman’s face. The gratitude. She knew she had to hold that image if she was going to get through to nightfall. You’ve never killed anything more than a rat.
“We’re strong. We can do this,” she said, and took a firmer grip on her club.
Sammish felt bored and a little bit put upon. Normally it was easy. She would just be the girl who was like that, and it happened, simple as putting on a jacket. Today it was hard. Her body was vibrating with fear and hope and an anger that she’d been carrying so consistently that she was starting to wonder if it would ever pass. Taking all of that and fitting it into a version of her that was just moving through another dull day in order to reach an uninteresting night was like pulling a sock over a street cat. Might be possible, but it also might not.
It didn’t help that she’d had two stale rolls and a finger’s length of dried fish for food in the last two days.
She trudged down the pathway to a servants’ entrance where a man and woman were talking. She didn’t look at either of them, just moved forward like she’d rather be doing something else, shifted by the man and in through the doorway.
“Hey!” the man said, which was a bad sign. He shouldn’t have noticed her at all. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Need my pan,” she said, and shrugged. She trundled into the shadows of the house and the man went back to his conversation. The hardest part was done. Once she’d passed into the space that the brotherhood commanded, the assumption would be that she belonged there. She made her steps slow and not particularly stealthy. Thieves were quick and quiet. She wasn’t a thief. She was just trying to get back her pan from the girl who’d borrowed it. It was only because she was low and small and unimportant that she walked quietly but with purpose, as though she knew where she was going and required neither help nor permission. She wasn’t trying to hide, just not to give offense. Inoffensive was, as far as Sammish saw it, another word for invisible.
She knew in general terms what she was looking for. The pale woman, her scarred chief servant, the temple they served, and the secure rooms—a pit, a jail, a barred room—where the boy prisoner might be held. But she wasn’t searching. She was just going to get her pan back, and it was always just a bit ahead and down another turn or two. She knew the way, even if the understanding changed with each corner and hallway. Sammish, bored and a little put upon over her panic, made her way through the brotherhood, committing every bit of it to memory and waiting for something interesting to catch her sharp and secret attention.
The Hansch girl came soon after, as if blown by the first gusts of storm. Ullin pointed her out as soon as she came around the corner, but he didn’t need to. Her cloak had its hood up to hide her face, and she walked with a bad actor’s version of casual ease. If she’d been on a pull, she’d have been caught by the guard before she’d had a chance to do anything. Alys imagined herself walking down the street toward her, killing her there before anyone could stop her. In her imagination, she felt the club come down on the girl’s skull, hard and soft at once. Instead, she bent down and pretended to be working something free of her boots as the girl went to the same low point in the wall that her lover had crossed. She actually stopped there, glancing up and down the street before she hoisted herself over.
“Not the smartest thing, is she?” Ullin said. “Taking her out before she can breed will be doing the world a favor.”
“How long do we wait?” Alys said, and then felt stupid for asking. It was something she should have known already. Darro would have.
Ullin shrugged. “The magistrates are going to take all day. They’ve got the place to themselves, more or less. But true love gets its skirts up quick, and I’d rather catch them distracted.”
“So, now?” Alys said. She didn’t feel right. Usually she could imagine Darro and then mimic him, but she felt bright and tense and nauseated. She couldn’t imagine her brother ever skating the edge of fear like this. Ullin rested his hand on the pommel of his blade. His eyes were as bright as a drunkard’s.
“Now,” he said.
Alys watched the street one direction, Ullin the other. When both looked clear, they stepped out of their niche, made their way across the street, and swung over the wall. Not running, but moving quick and smooth. Purpose didn’t draw eyes the way thrashing did.
The far side of the wall was a kitchen garden. Herb beds stood bare and empty, ready for planting. A black iron stove and a clay oven stood at the wall. Alys could hardly imagine the luxury of cooking in your own courtyard. Longhill’s relationship with fire would never have allowed it.
Ullin passed over to a red lacquered door that opened under his hand. He drew his sword. It was a little shorter than his forearm, and had no adornments. It looked brutal. She hefted her club. Ullin passed inside, and she followed.
The hallway within was stuccoed the warm yellow of summer sunlight made sullen by the low, angry sky. They moved down it quietly. The floor was smooth stone, and Alys rolled her feet heel to toe to keep her steps from tapping. She was sick with the fear of a servant opening a door or coming out in front of them, but the house was silent. It made sense. The disgraced son of the family had chosen this moment for his tryst because the place would be empty. The same things that covered his transgression would cover theirs.
The hall reached two sets of blue doors and a thin stairway leading up to what Alys assumed were the household’s family rooms. As Ullin put his hand to the nearer of the doors, gently lifting its latch, Alys saw something on the stairs. A smudge of dirt hardly longer than her thumb, but fresh and the same rich soil as the garden. For a moment, she hesitated. If Ullin led them the wrong way, they might run out of time. They’d have to try again another day. It wouldn’t even be her fault. The idea of leaving with the deed undone was almost worth having to do it all again. But only almost.
She put a hand on Ullin’s shoulder, and when he glanced back, she pointed up. He nodded, and carefully, they ascended.
She really did want her pan. That it didn’t exist, had never existed, didn’t matter. It was hers, and she had need of it, and she wanted it back. If anyone stopped her now, she wouldn’t even be lying. Magic knives and foreign wizards and stolen boys weren’t any business of hers. Just her pan.
Behind that, Sammish’s fear was starting to fade. She was in her element now, dull as dust and twice as common. In her mind, the brotherhood was coming together corridor by corridor, room by room, window by courtyard by stair. Here was a sculpture in marble of a chained god whose name she didn’t know. Here was a shuttered window that looked down over the street, its glass fogged by time and wear. Here was a door with a complex brass lock and a stool built into the wall at its side. Landmarks. She held the map in her mind, and drew it there.
And it was in that map that she began noticing something odd. Curved halls and straight but without doorways between them. They almost reminded her of the way the streets of Longhill had been built to tame the wind. She imagined it all had some religious significance. The part of her that wanted her pan back didn’t particularly care, but her secret self pricked up its ears and led her deeper in. She’d heard of temples built this way—open to the air, but also not.
The walls there were rosewood with lanterns that looked like tin and glass but were probably silver and crystal. Voices carried from behind her, but only in talk. Not alarm.
