Age of Ash, page 34
“Karsen,” it said, careful to keep its voice neutral. “There are more comfortable rooms, you know. And ones that aren’t sacred to the rites here.”
“I know, I shouldn’t be in here. But the curiosity’s hard to overcome. I apologize.”
He turned to consider her. In the steady, soft light of the lanterns, he seemed older than it remembered him. Crueler too, somehow. “What brings you from the palace?”
“My sister, actually. She’s having one of her religious moments, and I was hoping Daris might be a rite she could engage with and not risk embarrassing the family. You know how she gets when she’s in the heat of a new enthusiasm.”
The thing that called itself Kithamar smiled indulgently and casually maneuvered itself between Karsen and the altar. Something about this felt very wrong, but it wasn’t certain what.
“She’s welcome to present herself,” it said. “I’d be happy if she did. But I couldn’t promote her without putting her through the same forms as everyone else. Even priests are constrained by the gods.”
“Especially priests, I’d think,” Karsen said. “I’d appreciate it if you kept an eye on her, is all. Her piety doesn’t last long but it burns bright. Chanters and all.”
It didn’t know what he meant, so it smiled. “Yes, of course. Chanters.”
“You remember that time she decided that the Longest Night chanters were heretics and started whipping that poor old man in the street?”
“I think I do,” it said. “It was a long time ago.”
Karsen’s smile widened. “It was. The family went through a lot to keep it quiet. We’re just trying to keep history from repeating.”
It spread its arms. “Anything I can do.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I should get back to the palace. I do appreciate this. I’ll pay you back, somehow. I promise.”
“I’m happy to help,” it said. “It’s always good to see you.”
Karsen bowed, and if there was a little mockery in the gesture, it wasn’t more than old friends might allow each other. Karsen left the temple, walking lightly. As soon as he’d gone, it checked the locked safe cache hidden under the altar, ready to raise the alarm, but the silver blade was still there.
The thing that called itself Kithamar sat on the ancient stone, rubbing its chin the way it had when it was Ausai. Had there been a strangeness to Halev, or was it only that the murder of Byrn a Sal was underway and so anything that touched on the false prince took on a significance it didn’t deserve? Something about the visit left it unsettled, but it couldn’t say what or why. It rubbed its fingertips together, a dry, fast hiss. Something was wrong.
When from habit it sat on the altar and reset the game board, one of the red beads was missing.
With morning came the wind. It drove from the east, raising dust as it came. It muttered and it howled. Somewhere in the secret depths of Longhill, Inlisc priests who kept the old ways drank their holy teas and listened for the voice of God in it. The serpent-curved streets broke the air or pushed it back up and away from the ground. In the Hansch quarters, shutters banged like hammers. The proud tower of the Temple stood against it like the prow of a great ship cutting through troubled waters, and the face of Oldgate was the city’s mast and sails. There was a story that a kerchief dropped between the center two of the four bridges of Oldgate would land on the palace, blown up the face of the hill faster than a horse could run. That was only a story, though.
Green Hill was, as they walked along its wide and well-kept streets, almost calm. The great promontory of Palace Hill sheltered the western edge of the city from all but the eddies, protecting the noble compounds from the weather like a mother pushing a child behind her. The trees around the brotherhoods and compounds of the high families shimmered their leaves, but they didn’t twist or bend.
Alys wore her leather, even though it was a little too hot to be comfortable. Her body felt tight and a little ill, like she was in the first part of a fever, but once they were doing the thing, she knew she’d be fine. It was only the nerves before. Sammish wore a brown tunic, a skirt, and a cutter’s knife—thin, sharp, and easily concealed—bound against her arm at the elbow. Only Saffa had what might be called a disguise, and it was so intentionally nondescript, she could have been a low servant from any number of houses. The only thing odd about her at all was the woven sack across her body where the unlit lantern plinked and sloshed as she walked.
“The stables are at the back,” Sammish said. “You remember? By the gate?”
“I remember,” Saffa said. She sounded calmer than Sammish did. Alys didn’t know if it was that she, unlike them, was staying outside the compound or if her work as a priest just made her more sanguine about dying or being captured.
They rounded a corner, and the Daris Brotherhood stood before them. It wasn’t even a particularly large compound. It was only her focus on it that made it intimidating.
“Count to a thousand,” Sammish said. “But only once we’re inside.”
“I know,” Saffa said.
Alys pulled the leather thong from her wallet and tapped Sammish’s shoulder. “Wrists,” she said.
Sammish put her hands behind her. Alys looped the binding around the base of Sammish’s hands where the thin bones of her wrists began to delta up into palm and thumb. The knot was an old trick Darro had taught her. It looked and felt solid, but a twist from Sammish would undo it.
“Wish us luck,” Alys said.
The Bronze Coast woman nodded once and said, “Luck.” Alys prodded Sammish forward with the lead-dipped head of her club just as if she were a prisoner. They crossed the wide square, Sammish taking deep, sighing breaths. “I’m trusting you.”
“I know,” Alys said. “Try to look nervous.”
Sammish laughed, and Alys smiled. But then they were at the wooden gate, and two guards with swords at their hips stepped out to meet them. Both were Hansch, both wore the colors of the Daris Brotherhood. One was a half-head taller than the other, but beyond that, they could almost have been the same man.
“What’s this?” the taller one asked.
“Delivering what was asked for,” Alys said. The swagger in her voice was the same that she’d been cultivating for months, but this time it felt like a performance. “Tregarro knows what it’s about.”
The guards exchanged a glance. Alys saw herself through their eyes: a Longhill rat hauling another one like herself to the master for a little coin and a pat on the head. Their contempt wasn’t even a sneer, but a smile. “All right, we’ll take it from here,” the taller one said, reaching out for Sammish.
Alys yanked her back. “No. Straight to him. That’s the agreement.”
“Whatever it was or wasn’t, he’s not here anymore. You can give this one over or you can take her home and feed her table scraps.”
The words washed over Alys like a cold wind. She saw Sammish stiffen. If Tregarro had gone, what else had changed? She didn’t know what they were walking into, except that it wasn’t what they’d thought.
She wanted to talk to Sammish, wanted to ask her what they should do. She couldn’t. This was her decision to make, so she made it.
“I need to talk to her, then,” Alys said.
“Her?”
She fixed the guard with contempt of her own. “You know who I mean. If he’s not here, I’ll talk with his master. Tell her the wolf girl is here, and I’ve done what she asked me to do.”
The men seemed less certain now, wondering, she guessed, whether Andomaka really lowered herself to speak directly to someone like Alys. She lifted her chin in defiance. One of them shifted his weight, stepping back from her without quite meaning to, and she knew they were in. The taller one put a hand on the pommel of his blade and nodded her forward. Alys pushed Sammish, who stumbled a little too theatrically. The guards didn’t notice anything false, though. They walked to the wooden gate, opened it, and escorted them through.
Alys expected them to take her and Sammish to the little cell where Tregarro had hauled her a lifetime ago when she’d brought them the silver knife. Instead, they moved toward the main building of the compound, near the entrance to the public temple. Servants and guards seemed to be everywhere, but it was likely no more than the usual. It was her anxiety that made them seem like ants on a dead rat.
They led her to the side of the building and down a set of old wooden steps to a basement servants’ entrance, and then to a thin, bare, high-ceilinged room. It was the sort of place where a merchant’s factor might meet with a head cook or houseman. The furnishings were threadbare chairs and a rough wood table. The only light came from a narrow window at the top of the wall. Thick wooden rafters shifted with the shadows of ankles passing by. Alys had the sudden, visceral memory of staying in Aunt Thorn’s underground halls, hiding from bluecloaks while Darro got himself killed. She wanted to leave, to go back up the stairs and into someplace with more ways to flee.
“Wait here,” the taller guard said, then left. Their footsteps, muffled by the closed door, faded quickly. Alys sat, then stood, then paced.
“He isn’t here?” Sammish said, her voice soft and low as if they might be overheard.
“I don’t know,” Alys said. “He always has been before.”
From the window above them, someone called out, and Alys’s blood went bright and fast. But no one took it up. It wasn’t the fire. How long had it been since they’d passed through the gate? She’d meant to start counting when they lost sight of Saffa, but she’d forgotten to do it.
“Maybe it’s better like this,” Sammish said. “If he’s not here, that’s one less person to follow. More likely that Andomaka will go after the knife.”
“If she comes. What if she’s doing something and doesn’t mind letting us wait here for an hour or two? We’re not that important to her.”
“Saffa is,” Sammish said with a certainty Alys didn’t share. “She’ll come as soon as she knows we’re here.”
“And if she doesn’t reach us before the call goes up?”
Sammish, her arms still tied behind her back, shrugged. “Then we’ll go find her.”
Outside, in the clean, washed streets of Green Hill, a woman with a woven sack on her hip and a mole on her cheek walked with calm purpose. She certainly wasn’t Hansch, though she didn’t quite look Inlisc either, but she carried herself with purpose and grace. If anyone noticed her, it was as a mild curiosity. Not as a threat.
She turned down one of the less beautiful paths meant to let servants come and go without being seen. Her head shifted from side to side as if she were reciting something silently. She paused at the wall of the Daris Brotherhood. The wall there was pale stucco ten feet high, with a thick layer of ivy—green leaves covering old brown stems. The wide wooden carriage gate was farther ahead, and closed. The smell of manure and the sound of horses said that the brotherhood’s stables were on the wall’s far side. The woman stopped, stretched, and put her sack down gently on the paving stones. When she leaned over, rooting through it, she seemed very much at ease.
The lantern she took out was no bigger than two balled fists together. Its tin belly clinked and sloshed with oil, and the little glass flue that would protect the flame from draughts was greasy and cheap. Her head still shifting almost imperceptibly, she rolled out far too much wick. Used like that, it would smoke the glass, but she didn’t seem concerned. A little striker held a chip of flint almost too small to be useful. She flicked it with her thumb half a dozen times before the flame took. She put the glass flue back in place and stood, looking at it.
Her head went still.
Tossing the lantern over the wall was almost effortless, more like releasing a bird than throwing a missile. The lantern rose up in a slow arc and almost seemed to pause above the wall before deciding to plummet to the ground on the far side.
It landed awkwardly, the glass flue splitting into shards and the little tin belly popping its seams, rolling and leaking. The oil spread, darkening the paving stones. The little wick lay down, and the small flame became a wider one. A puff of smoke rose and was whipped into nothingness.
On the street side of the wall, the woman shrugged her bag back over her shoulder and walked on as calmly as if she had done nothing odd. No one took notice of her as she reached the corner and rested there in the shade of an old stone statue of a Hansch god standing at a gate. She peered back the way she came, scratching her cheek in what might have been anxiety, looking for some sign of reaction to her vandalism.
The stables of the Daris Brotherhood were busy. The wind lifted grit and bits of dry hay and dried manure into the air, and left the groomsmen and carriage driver squinting. Near the wall, the pool of oil flowed under the bright green of the ivy, and the fire followed with it. The leaves were thick and waxy. They defied the fire. The old leaves and stems beneath them, evidence of many years’ growth that no one had taken the trouble of clearing away, were drier, more brittle, and ready to burn. If anyone had been there to see it, it would have been beautiful, the warm orange light glimmering through the broad green, but it was an unpleasant day, and no one saw.
Hidden, the flames grew and spread until the heat was enough to shrivel the green, and a thread of dark smoke rose. The horses sensed the danger first, but the boy minding the stables didn’t know why they were agitated. The flames reached the wide wooden carriage house, but the sides were old, hard wood. They might char, but it would take more than the wet tinder of ivy to set them alight.
The smoke was thicker now, a shadow against the sky. The woman sitting by the god saw it, but only because she knew to look. She leaned forward, anxious and wondering whether to sound the alarm herself.
Beneath the ivy, the fire began to die, its easy fuel exhausted. The green leaves slumped a little, but the brightness behind them dimmed to a vague orange. The gate opened, and a carriage rolled in, a thick-bodied coachman handling the two-horse team. He paused at the gate, lifted his eyes to the sky, caught by a scent he couldn’t quite identify.
Please, the woman said. Please. Less than a prayer, but with the same intensity.
The wind, as fickle as wind, shifted to flow down across the city from the north like a bellows blowing in a forge. The green leaves shuddered and danced. The orange brightened to gold. Embers and smut blew out from the hidden fire like a swarm of glowing insects. The movement caught the carriage driver’s eye, but by then a new little flame had found its home in the hay. Another, in a pile of old rags the boy had meant to clear away but had forgotten. Another drifted through an unshuttered window in the brotherhood’s main house.
The coachman shouted. The horses screamed. The wind muttered, and then it howled.
The door opened, and a guard Alys didn’t recognize stepped in. He looked around the room like he was checking for something, but she couldn’t guess what. Then, apparently satisfied, he stood at the side of the door without acknowledging her, and Andomaka stepped in. Now that she knew to look for it, she could see changes in the pale woman. She held herself differently. Not straighter, exactly, but more stiffly. The Andomaka who had appeared in the smoke of Alys’s Oldgate cell in the fall had flowed through the world like smoke. This one was harder, harsher, and crueler somehow.
The pale eyes clicked between Alys and Sammish, then lingered on Sammish. A small, satisfied smile touched the corner of her mouth. Sammish, hands behind her back, stared at the ground by Andomaka’s feet like she was trying to disappear. Alys felt the knot of fear in her gut tighten.
“Is this the one, then?” Alys said, needing to break the silence.
“It might be,” Andomaka said. She reached out a hand to Sammish’s chin and lifted it until they were facing each other. “Well? What do you think, little one? Have we met before?”
Sammish swallowed and shook her head. No.
Andomaka’s smile was pure cruelty. “Are you sure about that?”
Sammish shook her head again, maybe meaning no, they hadn’t met, or no, she wasn’t sure.
Andomaka’s smile widened. “Is she still here? Is she still in the city?”
“Who?” Sammish asked, and Andomaka punched her hard on the bridge of her nose. Sammish yelped and fell back, blood pouring down her face. Andomaka turned and put her hand out. The guard at the door drew a short-bladed knife from his side and put its handle in her palm. Sammish mewled in pain and fear.
“Hey!” Alys said, putting herself between them. Her heart was bright and racing.
Andomaka scowled. “You should stand aside.”
“I haven’t been paid,” Alys said. “You want to put her in ribbons, that’s your choice. But where I’m from, you pay the butcher before you eat the sausage.”
“You’ll get your reward,” Andomaka said, and moved forward as if Alys would get out of her way. The impulse to step back was powerful, but she stood her ground.
“I’ll take it while there’s still some blood on her insides. No offense meant, but it’s how I work. Until I’m paid, this one’s still mine, and I’d appreciate you not bruising my goods.”
Andomaka’s laugh was as short and sharp as the blade in her hand. “Don’t think you have power here. This is my house. And my city.”
“It is,” Alys said, crossing her arms. “But it’s my work, and I get paid for it.”
Annoyance and amusement warred in the pale eyes. Alys steeled herself, feet planted like she’d put roots into the stone floor. The shadows high on the wall flickered, and for a moment, the only sound was the patter of feet outside the high window. And then, faint but unmistakable, a man’s voice shouting Fire!
