by Angela Boord
I don’t know how they ignore the way the ravens hunch forward, as if they’re listening in on every conversation. Erelf’s knowing smirk always makes me feel as if I’ve been caught out doing something I shouldn’t.
Vadz puts a hand on my shoulder and bends down to speak into my ear. “Too many gavaros. He won’t find us in this company.”
I start to nod, but a flash of yellow glass catches my eye.
The man in the wolf mask is coming up on Vadz. “Vadz,” I say, putting my hand on his arm. He looks at me. “No.” I point with my left hand, my knife half out of its sheath and in my right hand. Vadz turns around and the man in the gray wolf mask is right there. He leans down as if to speak, and Vadz bends closer to hear him, his elbow drawing back within his cloak so that I know he has his hand on his knife too.
The man in the wolf mask says something in a low voice I can’t hear and points at Vadz’s feathers. Vadz frowns.
“What? What did you say?”
He leans forward instinctively. When he does, my arm hums. It knows when there is danger. I start to push Vadz to the side, but during the motion, I see the flash of metal in the man’s hand, and I shout, “Vadz!”
But it’s too late.
The knife slides deep into his stomach, just below his ribs. The man holds the knife angled up, for killing. Vadz cries out, clutching the knife hilt jutting out of his gut. His knife drops to the ground. The sound of the crowd masks the clatter and his cry.
Metal glints in the wolf’s other hand—another knife. One in Vadz, and one for me.
I look up to see light eyes hidden behind yellow glass. Startled eyes. We stare at each other as if neither of us can move, knives out.
Then he drops his. It clangs on the cobbles, a weird hollow ringing in the closed-in space of my mask, and he shoulders his way into the crowd behind him.
The woman in the bird mask screams when she sees Vadz on the ground. “You!” she screams, pointing at me. “Murder!”
I’m surrounded by people. The man in the wolf mask is getting away. Walking fast but not running, and I can’t go after him because of this wall of people staring down at Vadz. Vadz’s chest doesn’t move. His green eyes stare through the holes in his mask unblinking, glittering in the lantern light.
“He did it!” the turquoise bird says. “He did!”
I have my knife out and there’s blood on my shirt. Vadz’s blood. From when I tried to shove him away.
I look down at Vadz lying there, dead.
Then I run.
The crowds of the Night Market are my allies. I’m still wearing my hawk mask as I shove people aside and dodge through holes between them. Shouts follow me, shrieks, the sound of pounding, running feet, the clank of scabbards. The sound of screaming gets trapped in my mask. I duck through the labyrinth of stalls and loop around in the wolf’s direction, but I can’t see him. He probably took off his mask. I keep mine on so nobody will see me take it off and tell the Prinze what I look like.
I slow to a quick walk and head for the north wall. People mill around me, gavaros closing in to protect their charges. I just keep walking. Houses and shops huddle against the wall, their low-sloping tile roofs within reach for anyone willing to jump, and I’m not the only one with this idea.
The Prinze can’t stop every smuggled good from coming into the Night Market. There are at least ten people going up and over the wall right now, and the maze of shops is a mass of confused, frightened people arranging themselves into small, defensible squares.
“Prinze!” somebody yells. “Prinze are out!”
I clamber up the wall in a hurry next to a little beggar girl. She skins upward faster than I can but slips at the top. I catch her, and she glances back at me, breathing hard, wide-eyed. Then she’s over the top and dangling down the other side.
The roofs are a better escape, though. I eye the distance between the gutter and my outstretched hands. Then, with a prayer to Ekyra, my patron, I leap.
For a moment—too long—I’m not sure if I’m jumping or falling. Then I catch the lip of the rough stone gutter, right hand first, and swing in the air. My shoulders yank painfully in their sockets and my feet bounce against the wall, then I lever myself up. The gutter is full of rotting leaves and soupy, foul-smelling water. My hands and knees splash into it as I heave myself over the top. Below me, feet scuff as the girl drops to the ground and starts running.
I keep low as I clamber to the peak of the roof, my boots slipping on the tile. But I can’t resist a look back when I get to the top.
The girl is gone, but the Night Market is like a swarm of insects, the lanterns like fireflies. Somewhere in that crowd is the man who murdered Vadz.
The man who also wanted to murder me.
I slip up over the top of the roof and down the other side. When I hit the ground, I’m in an alley.
I rip off the hawk mask and hurl it away from me as far as I can.
Chapter 3
I wander in a daze most of the night, unable to settle anywhere. I see Prinze in every crowd whether they belong or not, feel the breath of that wolf on my neck regardless of what is behind me. I keep thinking about Aleya in her kitchen, waiting on Vadz to come home. How is she going to find out he’s dead?
The last thing I want is to lead the assassin to that safehouse full of refugees.
Or maybe the last thing I want is to have to face Aleya. To explain that I can get her the money, but I can’t buy her husband back.
I feel like a fool and a coward. Liera won’t let me forget any of the debts I have to pay, and now I have another life to account for. Everywhere I go, I see damage from the wars—broken walls, orphaned children, clogged canals, shattered statues of Adalus pulled down by Geoffre di Prinze.
All these threads spinning themselves out like a worm weaving its silk cocoon, not knowing the cocoon will lead to its death—those precious gossamer strands that householders wear like murder incarnate.
Dammit.
I take a deep breath and make myself think.
Who else knows about Driese and Cassis? Who knows who could also want me dead?
It’s easy to put a finger on the Prinze. They’d want to stop me from killing Cassis. But they’d have nothing to gain from letting Cassis marry Driese, either.
There might be Caprine interests at odds with Tonia who want Cassis alive and a baby from the match; I don’t know which way the Sere would lean. They might want me killed, too.
The man in the wolf mask could have done a good job of it. But why didn’t he? Why kill only Vadz?
Perhaps I’m giving too much credit to the spies. Perhaps the man in the wolf mask didn’t know which of us Tonia had hired and went for the more obvious target.
But the question remains—how could he have known about Tonia’s intrigues so quickly? In order to time it so perfectly, he must have been following us from the tavern. But Vadz and I saw no one.
Unless Vadz had arranged with the murderer to bring me to the Night Market. I scowl as I banish that voice from my mind. It’s possible that the murderer might betray Vadz if they were in it together, but why would he have dropped his knife at the sight of me, his true target? And if he was in it for the money, why didn’t he wait until I was paid?
Even behind the yellow glass the man’s eyes were familiar. The shape of them. The way they widened in surprise when I stared into them.
First Tonia di Sere’s Qalfan and now an assassin. Two men who’ve reminded me of Arsenault in one night. Since returning to Liera, there have been glimpses of men in which I thought I saw something of Arsenault—a flick of black hair, eyes I thought might be gray but on closer examination were blue, a tall silhouette that bore the wrong face. False hope, in every case.
Surely, somewhere there is another man who looks like him, who moves with the same kind of coiled grace. Other men have eyes like that.
And Arsenault would never betray me. Especially to the Prinze.
I find myself picking my way through
more and more rubble. The people have changed. This is the Kinless Quarter. Beggars, clothed in rags, smelling of kacin smoke and vinegar-piss, hold out their hands to me as I walk by. No family, no name—I’m just like them. I drop my last catos into their palms, wondering if the twenty-five thousand astra will be waiting for me at the moneychangers’ tomorrow so I can pay Aleya the blood price I owe her now. Or if the man in the wolf mask will put a knife in my gut instead.
As I move away from the beggars, down the alley, an old piece of paper nailed to a door catches my attention.
Arsenault again. His picture still turns up everywhere, but where is he?
Seeing him like this, now, is like having my heart squeezed in a fist. Loneliness falls upon me so heavily, I can hardly breathe.
I pull out the crumpled poster in my pocket to compare versions in the gray, almost-dawn light. He looks so much meaner in these sketches. They’ve made his brows too heavy, given him a scowl he rarely wore, and his beard is so full and wild, he looks like a bear. His scar stands out livid on his face. The apprentice who did this sketch has gone beyond what he was paid for, adding a maniacal glint to Arsenault’s eyes.
Unable to help myself, I trace the lines of his face with my finger. But the ink just smudges and blurs. I’m afraid that five years apart has begun to blur the memory of his face in my mind, too. Maybe that’s why every man I see lately looks like him.
I wipe the residue off on my trousers and look around. It’s as good a place to sleep as any, I suppose—just a nameless alley in a part of the city where no one has a name anymore. But it feels somehow safer with Arsenault’s picture keeping watch above me. I kick some rocks out of the way and sink down against the wall that still stands, wrapping myself in Arsenault’s cloak.
I promise I’ll find you if I can. If I can’t, I hope you’ll find me.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Arsenault, you idiot,” I whisper, “why did you make me go in the first place?”
Tomorrow, I’m going to buy a gun. And then I’m going to ask Cassis some questions.
Right before I blow a hole in his head.
Part II
Chapter 4
Arsenault never knew me when I had two arms of flesh and blood. Had I continued in my life as Householder’s daughter, I would never have known him. Perhaps there would still have been a war, but without Cassis’s betrayal, there would be no Arsenault. It’s a strange thought, one I’ve turned about in my mind for many years and have yet to make peace with.
I first met Cassis on a hot, dry day in the summer of my sixteenth year. When genealogists record the births of babies born that summer, they always name it Zete, the Summer of Thirst. In truth, I don’t remember being thirsty, though our wells began to dry and the mulberries’ leaves turned yellow before their time. But then, my thirst was not for water, and my father’s cellars were full of expensive Amoran wines.
I was my father’s only child. He could have taken another woman to wife, one who might have borne him a son, but he loved my mother and did not subscribe to the new laws that allowed a man two wives. I wasn’t privy to my parents’ discussions of heirship, although I know they must have had them; perhaps I would have been named the legal heir to the household, had I not been such a disappointment. Many families now found themselves without male heirs and were forced to divide their lands between their daughters and nephews, cousins, or brothers whom they did not trust. It was a great period of consolidation and rivalries among Houses. But I was sixteen and cared little for politics, except when its spear pierced my cocoon with a girl’s most important question.
Whom shall I wed?
I never expected Cassis di Prinze to be among the men who courted me. My mother was born Caprine, and the Caprine and the Prinze were great rivals for the sea trade. Perhaps in another city, my match with Cassis would have been a good one. But the Caprine and the Prinze sought no alliances with each other. Instead, they built up their rivalry the way walls are built around cities, with new bits added by each generation. In the case of my family, my mother’s kin ties dictated that our silk ship in Caprine holds and that we pay Caprine fees for carrying it. The Aliente were an old, landed family; we owned no ships, no dye houses, no caravans. Instead, our fortunes dangled on threads so fine and thin, they couldn’t be seen in the light—silk, spun from the descendants of stolen Saien worms.
Silk bound us to our land. Because of my mother, the Caprine usually fetched us a fair price. But as the Prinze grew ever more aggressive in their quest to monopolize the sea trade, the Caprine gave ground. Their carrying fees dipped lower and lower, but the number of ports at which they could sell goods dwindled until the savings in carrying fees no longer compensated for the money lost on the silk itself. We had chests and chests of silk held back. My parents argued about it often.
I might have been the solution to the problem, had I married into an Amoran house, or perhaps even an Onzarran one with their overland trade. I had seen envelopes on my father’s desk sealed with the wax marks of Rojornicki boyars and Vençalan noblemen, and even the small royal house of the Carrata, who were rumored to have gained a taste for exploration. But my father obeyed the laws of our ancestors. He would make no betrothals before my eighteenth nameday.
And so, when Cassis arrived, the first Prinze to visit our land in many years, I remained in my father’s villa, sweltering in the conservatory and picking halfheartedly at the strings of the harp my mother insisted I learn to play. The lorikeet swinging in its wicker cage above me ruffled its blue and scarlet feathers and squawked. I had lapsed into staring out the big windows, and the commotion in the halls that accompanied Cassis’s arrival was a welcome distraction. I paced to the door and watched as servants scurried by, bearing armloads of linens and trays of food and wine. After a few moments, I stopped a kitchen girl carrying an earthenware jug.
“Why are you running? Is there a visitor at the gates?”
She looked up at me with wide black eyes. “My lady,” she said, “it’s a Prinze with his gavaros. He’s come to treat with the Householder.”
My own eyes grew wide. “A Prinze? Which one?”
“The younger, I think... Forgive me, lady, but they’ll be wanting the jug.”
I’d seen Cassis at my friend Ila’s feast when she’d come of age last spring. He’d attended with his retainers, a group of dark-haired cousins clothed in silks of the most expensive blue and purple. I’d only caught a glimpse of Cassis, but I remembered him to be handsome. The Prinze were normally out of all my considerations, but no Prinze had arrived at our gates since Geoffre di Prinze, head of their House, had visited us when I was a child. It was either a hopeful or disastrous sign that Cassis came now, and I couldn’t remain in the conservatory, unknowing. I lifted the jug out of the servant’s hands, and she stared up at me.
“My lady–”
“I’ll bring it,” I said. “You can run some other errand.”
She gave me a frightened look. She must have been new in the house and not used to me, but I gave my actions little thought.
The Prinze were in the receiving room, just as the girl had said, with my mother and father. The men looked as if they’d had a hard ride from Liera. The road wasn’t long, but it was steep, a difficult climb in the heat. The gavaros’ faces were brown with dust, and their sweat left thin white runnels through it. All of them wore the sky-blue Prinze armband, and all of them were armed with swords and daggers.
In their midst sat a young man dressed in tawny gold silks slashed with orange, his dark hair pulled back with a silver clasp. His eyes were dark and almost too big for the lean face in which they were set, and his mouth was flexible—not a cruel mouth, but surely one capable of a pretty cynicism. In the gleaming silver hilt of his sword were set three large tourmalines etched with tridents. The sunlight pouring in the open courtyard doors flashed blue-green off the stones and made his silks shimmer—a tight weave with the thinnest threads, the work of hundreds or thousands of worms. The breeze flutter
ed his sleeves and breathed the scent of roses into the room, which otherwise smelled of wine, sweat, and dust.
No one saw me enter. The gavaros’ backs were to the door, and they were all big men. My parents sat in front of them. I put the pitcher down on the sideboard and bit my lip as I watched, leaning against the doorframe, blocked from sight.
“The city reels with fever,” Cassis said, his voice a pleasant mid-tenor. “The elders say it’s the worst they can remember. Everyone takes precautions to save themselves from the night air, but those fools down in the Kinless Quarter breathe their ill humors everywhere. My father is sending his entire fleet from the city before they’re stranded. He needs more goods to fill his holds. He sent me to determine if you had kept any silk back from last year.”
My father frowned. Liera was more prone to water fevers than we were in the hills, but we weren’t so high up that they never reached us. In fever season, we took care with guests. Before he asked about the Prinze offer, my father said, “And you’ve come from Liera, just now?”
Cassis shook his head. “We’ve retired to Padera, all the family. Our retainers carry out our business in the city.”
“And this offer to buy my silk, with what price does it come?”
Cassis glanced pointedly at my mother, then at his men. “We can discuss the terms at your leisure.” He was only three years older than me, but one did not grow up in the shadow of Geoffre di Prinze without acquiring a certain acumen for negotiation.
Finally, he saw me.
I don’t know if he recognized me from Ila’s ball, or if it was simply that in my water-blue silks, I was dressed far too well to be a servant. But when he saw me, his eyes widened and his hands tightened on the arms of the chair.
My father finally noticed me too. “Kyrra,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought to bid welcome to our guests.” I hoisted the jug up off the sideboard and carried it over to the tray beside Cassis. A number of goblets stood there, and I filled them all. Cassis watched me while I poured.