“Some things never change.”
Rani started at the voice, even though she knew she should have expected it. “Crestman,” she said, turning slowly.
“Rani.”
He was taller than she remembered. Taller, and his shoulders were broader. His face was the same, though – the planes of his cheeks with the white patch of his lion-scar, the hard line of his jaw, the calm depth of his dark eyes.
His voice was lower. Or maybe his words were husky because he had not said her name for three long years.
“I trust that you are comfortable in your quarters, my lord? Poor Moren has little to offer now, but you should at least have found clean sheets upon your bed.”
“Aye.”
He was not making this easy. She tried to make her voice light. “They’re speaking of you in the streets this morning. You should be quite pleased – it takes a lot these days, to make folk forget their squabbles over the price of eggs.”
“I have not heard the gossip.”
“They say that you shamed the king into journeying to Liantine.”
“I did not intend to shame him. He is my liege lord, and I only hope to serve him.”
“You think that hunting down the Little Army will serve us now? When we face the aftermath of fire and disease?”
“He made a promise. Good men keep their vows.”
“King Halaravilli is a good man.” Rani answered automatically, setting aside her own doubts, her own anger. Certainly, Hal might be spiteful. He might be immature. He might be a short-tempered, pig-headed, close-minded, name-calling child, who thought that he could make all right by sending her a clutch of wilting flowers. But he was trying to be a good king. He was trying to save Morenia, even if he saw no path but an ill-considered loan at usurious rates. Besides, the flowers had been the blue of Zarithian glass. “The king acts as he thinks best, holding all of Morenia in his thoughts.”
Something in her words heated Crestman’s reply. “My lady, if we do not find the Little Army now, it will be too late. It might be too late already. Halaravilli rules two kingdoms now – Morenia and Amanthia. And we in the northern one must know our fate. We cannot live with any more indecision. We must commit our children to the pyre or bring them home.”
“And are you prepared for what you might find, Crestman? Are you prepared to learn that all the Little Army is lost?”
“I’m a soldier, Rani Trader. I’m prepared for the reality of war.” The words chilled her more than the wind that skirled through the courtyard. She knew that Crestman had trained with the Little Army; he had told her some of what he had suffered in Sin Hazar’s horrific camps. Nevertheless, his brutal resignation was frightening. It made her question her own determination, made her doubt her own mettle as she stared down at the aftermath of Moren’s brutal fire.
Desperately, she reached for a brighter topic, for some note of hope and success that she could spin out on the springtime breeze. “Davin has helped us tremendously. His engines finally stopped the fire, his calculations and his orders.”
“He’s a shrewd old man.”
Silence. Rani racked her mind for something else to say – something witty and entertaining. She would settle for a pithy observation, a shrewd comment about Moren. About Amanthia. About the Little Army. About the cursed workers who were going about their task, pacing off the floor plan for Mair’s hospital.
Rani was spared the need for more stiff conversation when Mair appeared at her side. The Touched girl held a fur-lined cape in her arms, kin to the one that was draped across her own shoulders. “Rai,” she said, darting a glance at the northern visitor. “Crestman.”
“Mair.” Rani heard the old rivalry there, the old bonds that the pair had built around a soldier in the Little Army. Mair and Crestman had both loved the boy, but Monny had perished despite their best intentions.
The Touched girl shuddered and pulled her cloak closer about her shoulders. “You looked cold up here. I went to fetch your cloak.”
“The breeze is chilly, but I’m not actually cold.”
“I thought that you should put on your cloak,” Mair said pointedly. Rani took the garment and shrugged it over her shoulders. “You should leave the balcony, Rai. We should let the men do their work without us hounding them.”
“I’m hardly hounding –”
“By Jair, you can be difficult!”
By Jair.
Rani looked at Mair and realized that a flush painted her friend’s cheeks. There was a scarce-suppressed excitement in her eyes as she cast a meaningful glance toward Crestman. All in a rush, Rani understood. The Fellowship of Jair had summoned them. A messenger must have arrived while Rani was distracted, while she was trying to speak with Crestman.
She could not imagine what the Fellowship might want. Ever since the fire, the shadowy body had lain quiet, convening no meeting, issuing no instructions. Rani had begun to fear that some of the leaders had been destroyed in the fire. After all, the Fellowship drew its members from all the castes in the city. The leader of the Moren cell was an old Touched woman – who could say that Glair had not succumbed to firelung, even if she had escaped the flames?
But someone had finally decided that it was time for the Fellowship to act. And whatever had provoked that decision must be important. It was risky for the group to congregate at any time, but it was absurdly dangerous to gather in the middle of the day, with the sun up and all the people of the city about. …
Rani swallowed a dozen questions and pulled her furred cloak closer about her shoulders. She turned back to Crestman. “I’m sorry, my lord. Mair is right. I must not distract the workmen by watching from here. Besides, I promised I would sort herbs from the new shipment that arrived this morning.”
“Duty always calls.” His words were bitter.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
He reached out, cupping her cheek with one warm hand. “Tell me that you’ll speak with me this evening, Rani Trader. Tell me that we can sit beside the fire and talk about our plans.”
We have no plans, she wanted to say. You are going to Liantine, with Hal. Traveling to a distant land that holds the remnants of the Little Army. And a princess. I am going nowhere.
Instead, she nodded once, feeling his fingers move with her. “We’ll talk.”
Mair took her arm, pulling her across the room and toward the stairs, toward the palace gates before she could worry about any other words, any other promises. Rani’s thoughts were roiling inside her skull as she approached the guardhouse, but she forced a smile across her lips. “Good morning, Wodurini.”
“Good morning, my lady,” the man bowed briefly, turning halfway toward Mair to include her in his greeting. “You’re not going out in the city!”
“But we are. Lady Mair and I promised His Majesty that we would see how the excavation crews are progressing in the Merchants’ Quarter. We cannot begin rebuilding the marketplace until the fire damage is cleared.”
Rani’s tone was blithe as she invoked Hal’s name, but her heart pounded. Hal would attend the Fellowship’s meeting. She would see him for the first time since their disastrous fight, communicate with him for the first time since he had sent her the anemones. Annoyed with herself, she pushed aside the thought. Hal was her king, and he was her fellow in the eyes of Jair. All else was separate. All else was immaterial, in view of Morenia’s plight.
“One of my men should accompany you, my lady. It’s dangerous out there.”
“The danger is from falling timber, Wodurini. None of your men can protect us from that. We’ll watch our step.” The guard started to scowl, but Rani shook her head and lied easily. “Besides, the engineers who work on the hospital have said that they will need assistance in raising some frames this afternoon. You’ll likely need to send every man you can spare to the courtyard.”
“But my lady –”
“We’ll be fine.” Rani made her voice firm, but she smiled. “We mustn’t delay. The king will be asking af
ter us if we don’t hurry.”
Rani settled her fingers on Mair’s arm, pulling her friend beneath the heavy portcullis. She ignored the soldier’s grumbled complaints as she threaded her way into the crowds on the city streets. With so many people evicted from their fire-destroyed homes, the paved ways were bustling.
Mair took advantage of the general commotion to hiss, “It was easier to answer the group’s summons when I only needed to duck away from my own Touched troop.”
“It’s easier,” Rani said, “when they don’t summon us in the middle of the day. How did they get a message to you?”
“I was speaking with the carpenter, and he was explaining why the king’s money would be wasted on one long hall. He honestly thought that I have no idea what I was asking for. You should warn the king, Rai – that carpenter is just scheming to take his money and leave with the job half-done. He’s a Briantan! He has no pride! He thinks that he can come here to Moren and exploit us when we need him most. Well, he –”
“Mair,” Rani interrupted. “The messenger.”
The Touched girl swallowed the rest of her vitriolic speech before continuing. “I thought at first that Rabe had sent the child.”
Rani nodded. She remembered Mair’s lieutenant, a shrewd boy who had taken an immediate dislike to a young merchant girl turned guildsman who had fled her new caste. To be fair, Rani had done her best to provoke him. Still, the boy – now a man, Rani supposed – had done a good job leading his crew in the streets.
Mair continued. “This was no child I had ever seen, though. Whoever is leading her troop isn’t doing a grand job, either. Th’ puir bairn ’ad only a shift on, not a scrap o’ cape i’ th’ mornin’ chill.”
Rani realized that Mair had slipped back into the Touched patois that she had spoken all her youth, and she resisted the urge to smile. Fierce emotions always brought out Mair’s rough past. “I’m sure you remedied that.”
Mair blinked. “Aye. The child proved lucky – the cloak I was wearing was a bit ragged at the seams. She might be able to keep it if the older children in her troop find it too shabby to fight over.”
“What did she say, Mair?” Whatever the message, it must have been disturbing. Mair was usually far more direct.
“Not much at all. But she handed me this.” Mair produced a scrap of parchment from the pouch at her waist, and Rani stopped to read.
Jair summons all his faithful children.
Rani turned the scrap over, but there was nothing else. “She had no other message?”
“Nothing. She took the cloak I gave her, and she ran.”
“But how do we know where to meet?”
“We’ve received no notice of a new place, so we’ll go to the old.”
“But the old one burned to the ground!”
“We met below the ground, Rai. The guildhall cellar must have survived, or we’d have heard of another gathering spot.”
Rani lacked Mair’s complacence, or the Touched girl’s faith in the Fellowship’s communication. Nevertheless, she followed Mair through the city streets. As they left behind the palace compound, there were fewer people about. In short order, the pair skirted the edge of the fire-blackened ruins, arriving at the quarter that had housed merchants before the conflagration. These streets had been home to Rani for the first twelve years of her life, but her heart quailed at entering them now.
“Mair, I haven’t been in there since the fire.”
The Touched girl shrugged. “We’ll be fine.”
“It isn’t safe! You heard Wodurini.”
“It’s safe enough. Besides, we have no choice, Rai. We’ll stay on the main streets. We’re just passing through to the Guildsmen’s Quarter.”
Rani let herself be convinced, but the first few steps were the hardest. Black grit crunched beneath her hard-soled shoes, yielding up the sharp smell of charcoal. Rani could see where Davin’s engines had felled entire rows of buildings – storefronts, with their homes above, collapsed upon themselves in heaps of rubble. Rainwater had drenched the destruction, working its own damage, washing away shattered, blackened timbers. Dirty puddles shimmered in front of scorched, smoke-stained buildings. Rani’s heart began to beat faster.
She caught her breath as she ventured further into the ruins, nauseated by the stench of burned timber and melted stone. The paving stones of the road had shattered under the combined assault of hot flame and cold rain, and the path required all of her attention. Twice, Rani and Mair startled rats, and the animals were slow to slink away from the shapeless prey that they gnawed. Rani was grateful that the priests had already passed through this quarter. At least the dead had been carried out, committed to clean and purifying pyres.
The farther the two girls went, the greater the damage from the fire itself. Rani knew that one corner had boasted two silver shops and the finest woven goods in all of Moren, but now nothing remained of the rich shops. There, on that long street, had been the vendors of all things made of tin. And on yet another, there had been leather goods, stretching as far as the eye could see.
Now, all the wooden frames were charred to shadows, and sooty stone crumbled on cracked foundations. The sky was often blocked, and the breeze that whistled through the ruins was even colder than the one that blew in the king’s courtyard.
And everywhere, Rani smelled the acid reek of soot. Charred wood, melted stone, ruined curtains and furniture, clothing and trade goods. The stench was thick enough that she thought her lungs would never breathe free. She raised her sleeve and held it across her nose, as if that would be enough to keep the smell of utter destruction from intruding.
Mair, though, led the way as if she had already prowled through these ruins. She chose turnings down the devastated streets, navigating by memory, for there were no more references, not a single cheerful merchant sign. She took them the long way around the open space that had been the marketplace – Hal’s men were busy excavating that field, preparing it for rebuilding. It would not do to be seen in the ruins.
At last, they reached the burnt-out warren of streets that had formed the barrier between the merchants and the guilds, and then they walked on the broader streets of the Guildsmen’s Quarter. Rani knew these passages less well than those that criss-crossed her childhood home.
Of course, she remembered where the ill-fated Glasswrights’ Guild had stood. When she had been bound by her new caste’s expectations, though, she had found few opportunities to explore the surrounding streets. Mair, as the leader of a Touched troop, had lived under no such restrictions. She led the way through the devastation with confidence.
Rani noticed that the ground beneath their feet bore many footprints. Fire or no, people had been prowling through the Guildsmen’s Quarter. Rani commented on the traffic to Mair, who shrugged. “The Touched. They’ll have scoured these streets from top to bottom. I would have brought in my troop as soon as it was cool enough to walk here.”
Rani looked about the desolate ruins. “What could you hope to find?”
“You know the Touched, Rai. The guildsmen, the King’s Men - they’d pass over all sorts of treasures. The Touched might be the only folk in all of Moren to have grown richer from the fire.” The statement sent a shiver down Rani’s spine; she could not help but think of the Touched she had seen in the firelung wards, coughing, gasping, hacking up black soot. Nevertheless, she was grateful for the feet that had passed this way, crossing and recrossing the girls’ path. If not for the Touched, Mair’s and Rani’s footprints would have been conspicuous. They might have led any over-curious strangers to the Fellowship’s secret meeting place.
“Here we are,” Mair said at last. Rani turned her head at an angle, and she managed to recognize the wall that had surrounded the Tilers’ Guild. She could make out the kilns that had fired the guildsmen’s pottery, the ruined sheds where apprentices had mixed huge vats of clay with shredded straw. She could see the pitiful remains of the garden that had fed the guild, the spidery trellises that had been e
rected for vines. A pang shot through Rani’s heart as she looked around – so much of this blighted landscape resembled her own destroyed glasswrights’ guild after the old king’s soldiers had had their way with it, after they had torn it down and torched it for her supposed wrongdoings.
Mair, unencumbered by such haunting memories, picked her way across the sooty ground, grimacing at the cross-beamed structure that threatened to collapse at any moment. “Back here, Rai. The cellar opened onto the edge of the garden. Remember?”
Rani swallowed hard and forced herself to follow. Of course, Mair was right. The Fellowship’s secret meeting house had been hidden from the street, hidden from casual onlookers. The tilers’ gatekeeper was a member; that was how the Fellowship had been spirited past the guild’s high walls.
The entrance to the cellar was set into massive stonework, as if its builder had anticipated that it would provide a refuge after some great disaster. The deep alcove had protected the oaken door – although the planks were darkened, they stood fast. Rani followed Mair down a handful of steps, gathering her skirts close to keep them from brushing against the blackened stairs. The door was slightly ajar, as if it had been forced inward by the fiery forces that had been at work throughout the quarter.
Mair paused for a moment and reached beneath her furred cloak. She fumbled among her garments, and then she withdrew some scraps of black fabric, as dark as the fire-charred wood around them. Her fingers moving with certainty despite the chill in the air, Mair separated out two pieces of cloth and passed one to Rani.
By time-honored custom, the Fellowship of Jair hid their faces from each other when they came together in a large meeting. Traditionally, that hiding took the form of long, full cloaks, with dark hoods that swept over the wearers’ heads. The alternative, though, a fashion newly come to the secret conspirators, was a simple cloth mask, a loose hood that covered only the head, hanging down to the wearer’s shoulders. The mask was a reflection of the truth that all the conspirators knew – the disguises were more symbolic than practical. Rani could recognize more than a dozen members of the Fellowship, black hoods or no.
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