The cold of winter was still on the city, but it wouldn’t be many more weeks before the sea lanes opened. A ship from Porte Oliva to Carse would be faster than going overland through Birancour. And as long as he could keep it from captain and crew what exactly they were hauling—
The scraping sound was soft, there and gone again in an eyeblink. Leather sole against stone. Yardem sat up a degree straighter. He looked over at Marcus, then pointed once toward the opaque parchment window, and then at the door.
Marcus nodded and rolled slowly off the cot, careful not to let the canvas creak beneath him. He took a slow step toward the window as Yardem shifted toward the door. When Marcus drew his knife, he kept his left thumb against the steel to keep it from singing when it cleared the scabbard. Cithrin snored delicately behind him.
Whoever they were, they’d done this before. The door burst open at the same instant a man leaped through the parchment window. Marcus kicked low, his boot slamming against the man’s knee. While the man struggled to regain his balance, Marcus slit his throat, and two more men poured in after him. They had daggers. Swords would have been awkward in so small a space. Marcus had hoped they’d have swords.
Yardem grunted the way he did when he lifted something too heavy, and an unfamiliar voice cried out in pain. The knife man on Marcus’s left made a flurry of short swings designed to catch his eye and force him back while the one on the right shifted to flank him. They were thickly built, but not massive. Firstblood or Jasuru rather than Yemmu or Haavirkin. Marcus ignored the false attack, feinting instead to keep the man on his right from getting around him. The first man took the opening and slid his blade in. Marcus felt the pain bloom on his ribs, but he ignored it. Behind him, a bone snapped, but no one screamed.
“We surrender,” Marcus said, and slid forward, his ankle hooking behind the rightmost attacker’s leg. When he brought his knife out, the man instinctively stepped back, stumbling. Marcus sank his blade in the man’s groin, but the effort left him open again. The remaining attacker, having drawn blood once, swooped in for the kill. Marcus twisted, the enemy blade skittering across his shoulder. Marcus dropped his own knife and took a grip on the other
man’s elbow, but the attacker moved in close, bending Marcus back with a combination of weight and leverage. The hot breath stank of beer and fish. The embers glittered on scaled skin and evil, pointed teeth. Jasuru, then. Marcus felt the tip of the Jasuru’s blade prick his belly. Another push and the knife would open him like a trout.
“Yardem?” Marcus grunted.
“Sir?” Yardem said, and then, “Oh. Sorry.”
A dagger sprouted from the Jasuru’s left eye, the blood sheeting down from the wound, black in the monochrome dimness. The attacker pressed forward even as he died, but Marcus felt the strength leave the man and stepped back to let the body fall.
Three men lay by the torn window, dead or bleeding dry. Another lay motionless on the floor, one arm sprawled into the fire grate and starting to burn, and the last slumped against the wall at Yardem’s feet, head at an improbable angle. Five men. Strong and experienced. This, Marcus thought, was very,
very
bad.
“What’s the matter?” Cithrin asked groggily. “Did something happen?”
“Outside,” Yardem said, and Marcus heard it too. Retreating footsteps.
“Stay here,” Marcus said, and bolted out the ruined window.
The night-black streets blinded him, but he loped forward, committing to each stride and hoping that his foot didn’t come down on any icy puddle or unexpected step. Ahead of him, the footsteps slapped against cobbles. Something large and animal hissed as Marcus flew past. His lungs burned, and the blood on his shoulder and side chilled him. The fleeing footsteps skittered, lost balance, and pelted off toward the left. He was getting closer.
The street opened onto a wider square, and there, by starlight, Marcus caught sight of the fleeing figure. It was small and wrapped in a dark cloak with a hood that covered head and hair. The disguise was pointless. By the time he’d seen the fleeing woman take two steps, he knew her as well as if he’d seen her face.
“Opal!” he shouted. “You should stop.”
The actress hesitated and then pressed on, pretending she hadn’t been recognized. Marcus cursed, gritted his teeth, and kept running. The dark city ignored them. Opal shifted through streets and alleys, trying desperately to confuse or exhaust him. Marcus ignored his wounds and kept after her, one foot in front of the other, until by a wide cistern, Opal stopped, knelt, and put her head in her hands. Her chest was working like a bellows. Marcus tottered up beside her and sat. They were both wheezing like old men. Her pale hair caught the starlight.
“Not,” Opal said between gasps. “Not what it looks like. You have to believe me.”
“No,” Marcus said. “I don’t.”
I
didn’t know,” Master Kit said. “I should have, but I didn’t.”
Marcus’s former cunning man was still in a striped wool sleeping shift and a close-fit nightcap. That and the fact that he’d been dead asleep in the back of the troupe’s wagon when Marcus reached him argued for his innocence. Master Kitap rol Keshmet wasn’t the picture of a man preparing to escape with his stolen gold. It was what Marcus had bet on.
The rooms they sat in now had been rented from a brewer. Most of the year, they warehoused the oats and malt of that trade, and the air was still thick with the smell of them. The table was three lengths of plank set across two piles of old
brick, and the stools Marcus, Kit, and the disgraced Opal sat on were less than a milkmaid might use. In the flickering light of Master Kit’s single candle, Opal’s eyes had disappeared in pools of shadow. Her argument that it was all a misunderstanding, that she’d been there to protect Cithrin, vanished like the morning dew as soon as Master Kit had come into the room, and all that was left was her sullen silence.
“You mean to say she came to this herself and no one else in the company had a suspicion,” Marcus said.
Master Kit sighed.
“I’ve traveled with Opal as long as I have with… well, anyone. I think she knows me, and I would guess well enough to know how to deceive me. Captain, if she had even lied about this, I’d have known.”
“Leave him be, Wester,” Opal said. “This wasn’t his. It was mine.”
It was the first confession she’d made. Marcus took no pleasure in it.
“But I don’t understand why,” Master Kit said. He wasn’t talking to Marcus any longer. “I’d thought Cithrin was a favorite of yours.”
“How many more years do I have?” Opal asked. Her voice was sharp as aged cheese. “You’re already thinking of Cary for Lady Kaunitar roles. Another five years, and I’ll be strictly witch-and-grandmother, and then the day will come when you and the others leave some shit-stinking village in Elassae and I don’t.”
“Opal,” Master Kit began, but the woman raised a palm to stop him.
“I know how this goes. I’ve been a player since I was younger than Sandr is now. I’ve seen it happen. Made a kind of peace with it, really. But then the banker’s girl appeared
out of the air, and…” Opal shrugged, and it was an actor’s movement made of weariness and resignation.
Weariness and resignation, Marcus thought, but not regret.
“All right,” Marcus said. “Next problem.”
Master Kit turned back toward him. There were tears in the man’s eyes, but otherwise his expression was calm.
“I have five corpses,” Marcus said. “Maybe three hours to first light. If I go to the queensmen, I have to explain what happened, and what we’ve got in those boxes that’s worth killing over. Any hope of keeping quiet’s gone then. Add to that, we’ll have to move just in case any of Opal’s friends have friends of their own. We’ve sold the cart. You still have one.”
The cut in his shoulder had gone an uncomfortable sort of numb, but the scratch across his ribs tore open each time he took a deep breath. He knew that this was the point at which Master Kit might balk. Marcus had hoped he could avoid a long negotiation. He watched Master Kit’s dark eyes as the man weighed his unpleasant options.
“I feel the company owes you something, Captain Wester,” he said at last. “What would you have me do?”
An hour later, they were back in the small rooms of the salt quarter. The dead man had been pulled from the grate, and a new fire stoked. Hornet and Smit were somberly pasting lengths of cloth over the rips in the parchment while Cary, Sandr, and Mikel looked at the bodies piled like cordwood against the wall. Master Kit sat on an overturned handcart, his expression grim. Cithrin sat on the cot, her legs drawn up to her chest, her eyes empty. She didn’t look at Opal, and Opal didn’t look back. The room, small to begin with, felt dangerously crowded.
“There’s an opening in the eastern seawall, not far from
baker’s row,” Master Kit said, thoughtfully. “I don’t remember much cover, nor any way to explain being there, but I think I could find it again.”
“Even in the dark?” Marcus asked.
“Yes. And if there’s no reason for us to be there, I think there’s little reason for anyone else either.”
“They look peaceful,” Mikel said. “I didn’t think they’d look peaceful.”
“All dead men are at peace,” Marcus said. “That’s what makes them dead. We’ve got five of these bastards to get rid of. We don’t have much time. How far is this place?”
“We’ll be seen,” Cithrin said. “They’ll find us. Ten people carrying five bodies? How does that…?”
The girl shook her head and looked down. Her face was paler even than usual. The others were quiet. If things had gone otherwise, there would only have been three bodies, and hers among them. Marcus could see the knowledge etching the girl’s soul, but he didn’t have time now to fix that, or any idea how he would have.
“Master Kit?” Cary said thoughtfully. “What about the festival scene in Andricore’s Folly?”
“You can’t be serious,” he said.
“I think I am,” Cary said. She turned to Yardem. “Can you carry one by yourself? Over your shoulder?”
The Tralgu crossed his arms, frowning deeply, but nodded. Master Kit’s face was still pale, but he rose and turned the handcart back onto its wheels, considering it. By contrast, Cary’s face was flushing rose.
“Yardem takes one,” she said. “Smit and Hornet can take the small one there. Sandr and Cithrin, the poor fellow with the beard. That puts two on the handcart. Mikel can steady them, and you and the captain haul. Then Opal and I take torches and—”
“Not Opal,” Master Kit said. “She stays with us.”
“I’ll take Cithrin, then,” Cary said, hardly missing a breath. “Opal can help Sandr.”
“You’ll take Cithrin where, exactly?” Marcus said, his voice low.
“To make sure no one is looking at
you,
” Cary said, and she stepped over to the cot, lowering herself beside Cithrin’s slight frame. The dark-haired woman put an arm across Cithrin’s shoulders and smiled at her gently. “Come on, sister mine. Are you ready to be brave?”
Cithrin blinked back tears.
“Kit?” Marcus said.
“Andricore’s Folly. It’s a comedy from a poet in Cabral,” Master Kit said. “The city prince dies in a brothel, and they have to smuggle his body back into his wife’s bed before she wakes.”
“And they manage it how?”
“It’s a comedy,” Master Kit said, shrugging. “Help me with this cart, won’t you?”
There were no torches, but two small tin lanterns in the back room came near enough. With a few pins and Cary’s direction, their dresses had grown short in the skirt, and half undone at the neck and back. Their hair hung in loose curls, threatening to fall at any moment, like the ruins of some more respectable arrangement. Cary rouged Cithrin’s lips and cheeks and the swell of her breast, and in the darkness of the night the pair seemed carved out of sunlight and the promise of sex.
“Count three hundred,” Master Kit said to Cary. “Then follow. If I give the sign…”
“We’ll start singing,” Cary said, and then, to Cithrin, “Shoulders back, sister mine. We’re here to be seen.”
“Yardem?” Marcus said as the Tralgu hefted a dead man.
“Sir?”
“The day you throw me in a ditch and take the company?”
“I am the company, sir.”
“Fair point.”
They slipped into the darkness. The cold was bitter, and Marcus’s breath fogged before him. The cobbles seemed made from ice, and the smell of death came from the cart, low and coppery and familiar as his own name. At his side, Master Kit pulled, the man’s breath coming fast as panting. The living carried the dead through the black streets, guided by starlight and memory. Drying blood caked Marcus’s side, plucking at his wounds with every step. He pressed himself forward. It seemed like a slow eternity, pain in his fingers giving way to numbness, and then pain again. Behind him, he heard Cary’s voice suddenly rise in bawdy song, and then, like a river reed playing harmony to a trumpet, Cithrin’s voice with hers. He looked over his shoulder. A block behind them, their lanterns held high above them, two scantily dressed women faced a patrol of queensmen. Marcus stopped, the handcart slowing as he dropped from the lead.
“Captain,” Master Kit whispered urgently.
“This is idiocy,” Marcus said. “This isn’t your comedy, and that street’s not a stage. Those are men with swords and power. Putting women in front of them and hoping for the best is—”