She’d ask at an alehouse or tavern, she thought. First, she could get something to eat, and by establishing herself as a customer, she’d be entitled to ask for information. The staff of an alehouse might be more willing to advise her, since they wouldn’t have many, or any, rooms to let themselves. From the increase of walkers like herself, and the direction they were taking, the midday meal was just beginning to be served. Making up her mind quickly, Ker found an empty seat at a communal table in a small but well-attended tavern.
Ker sat between a large man wearing a blacksmith’s apron, and a slim woman with a carefully painted face. Ker guessed she was older than she appeared, and probably an actor.
“Your pardon,” Ker said, falling into the formality she thought the older woman would appreciate. She waited until the woman finished a mouthful of stew. “Could you tell me where the Ram and Boar is?”
The older woman swallowed and raised her brows. “You don’t like the food here?” Her voice was almost as beautiful as her smile.
Ker found herself smiling back. An actor, definitely, and probably a singer as well. “I’m meeting someone there.”
The woman nodded and broke a tiny piece of bread off her roll before handing the rest under the table. Ker hoped she had a dog.
“Yes, my dog is under the table.” The woman’s smile broadened. “Oh, my dear, you should have seen the look on your face. Like this.” The woman’s face changed so subtly Ker couldn’t be sure what she’d done, but she was the image of someone worried, but afraid to ask anything.
“You must be a very good actor.”
The woman shrugged up one shoulder. “Luckily, the arts have always been considered the property of the Son, so it’s likely our festival can continue. Smile and nod, my dear, you never know who is watching. That’s better. Now, what were you asking? The Ram and Boar? It’s not too far off, in Threadneedle Alley, about halfway between here and the third-day market—your pardon, my dear, of course you don’t know where that is. Turn left as you leave this place. . . .”
Ker listened, nodding, and then repeated the woman’s instructions back to her.
“Very good, my dear. With your memory, and that magnificent nose, you’d make an excellent actor, if you should need to change professions. I don’t think there’s a noble role you couldn’t play.”
“Thank you, I’ll keep it in mind.” Ker finished eating as the two of them talked over plays she had seen and music she knew, though luckily the meal finished before Ker’s scant experience became obvious. She rose, thanked the actor again, and was out on the street before she realized that she didn’t know the woman’s name. On the other hand, Ker hadn’t given her name either.
The Ram and Boar looked exactly as she remembered it, even the man behind the serving bar looked familiar. This was the sort of place where a person could sit over her cup of kaff for an hour or two unbothered, so long as no one needed her table. All seats against the wall were taken, although one elderly man with wargame markers set up in front of him beckoned her into the seat across from him. Ker shook her head, smiling. She couldn’t possibly focus enough to give the old man a good game. She bought a cup of kaff with milk, fragrant with cinnamon and steaming hot, and sat down at one of the smaller central tables. She pulled a deck of cards from the outer pocket of her pack and started laying out a one-handed game of Seasons. Like the wargame, the cards could be an excuse for her to sit undisturbed, while she thought about what to do next. How long would it take for Tel to get to her? Should she take a room? Did she even have enough money to pay for one?
She was just laying a Winter Inquisitor on a Summer Luqs when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye, gone before she could turn her head. Then, from behind, two hands came to rest on her shoulders.
“You don’t know me,” said a voice that sent shivers up her spine. A voice she hadn’t heard for more than three years.
* * *
Jerek: My people are on their way. You should be ready to move any time now.
Baku placed her fingertips on her eyebrows and applied pressure to the ridge of bone. It was not a headache, but the general lassitude that Pollik Kvar had visited on her. Sitting in the walled garden helped, and here it was easier to Far-think to Jerek unobserved.
Jerek: Baku? Are you still there? There’s something you’re not telling me.
There are two things. Which one can I reveal? Would Jerek even want to help her if he knew she no longer had the mask? But she had to say something. Baku made her choice, and Jerek stayed silent for so long after Baku finished telling him what the Poppy Shekayrin had done to her that only the now-familiar feeling of space in her head told her he was still there.
Jerek: All the more reason for you to get away quickly, while he thinks it’s not possible.
Baku: And if he is correct? It is not yet bad enough that I must ask him for relief, but—Baku had a sudden idea. What of your griffin? Can he help me? Legends say they are all-powerful.
Jerek: Kerida can. Another long pause. At least, I think so.
Baku: It is worth the risk. In any event, I would rather die free.
Jerek: I have a place for you to go once you’ve left the palace.
No. Jerek could not know that she had lost the mask. At least, not yet.
THE skin on Kerida’s back shivered. She knew that voice. It wasn’t possible, but she knew it. She gripped the edge of the table with both hands, afraid to look up. Afraid that it wouldn’t be Ester after all. She’d given up trying to find news of the sister who’d been stationed with the Eagles in the Peninsula when the Halians came. After they’d killed all the Talents they could find, they started on all the military women who didn’t surrender their arms fast enough.
Finally, Ker looked up, but only as far as the woman’s shoulder. The server circled the table. She moved like Ester. The hand that reached for Ker’s almost empty cup, nudging the cards aside so she could wipe the table off with a damp rag, had the same scar across the knuckles that Ker had seen a thousand times. Ker raised her eyes a little more. There was very little left in this woman of the Emerald Cohort Leader of Eagles Ker had last seen on the day Luca Pa’narion had discovered her Talent and taken her from that world forever. Ester’s dark hair was long enough to braid, not cropped short to accommodate her helmet. She wore a loose, half-sleeved shirt, belted in by a large apron, instead of her black Eagles tunic. Ker would never have thought that her sister could look so ordinary. Or that she’d be working in an inn.
But the smile was the same, and the dark eyes. “Try not to look so poleaxed, youngster. It’s a good thing no one’s looking at us.”
Ker coughed to clear the lump out of her throat. “Well, I knew there wasn’t much in the way of advancement in the Eagles, but I didn’t think it would come to this.” The corner of Ester’s mouth twitched. Promotion had always been a sore point in family arguments, ever since the younger of her two half-sisters had gone to the Eagles, who were limited to guarding the Peninsula, and the person of the Luqs. Nasts had always joined the Battle Wings, which saw more fighting, and therefore had more opportunities for ambitious recruits.
Ester’s eyes clouded over, and the humor disappeared from her expression. “You’ll be wanting a room, I take it?” She almost straightened. She almost stood like a military officer, but she remembered in time. In her eyes was the knowledge that, since the Halians came, she wasn’t a military officer anymore and it was dangerous for her even to look like one.
Ker swallowed. If the Halians hadn’t come, Ker would never have spoken to anyone in her family again. She’d stopped belonging to them the moment she’d entered a Hall of Law as a Talent. That she and Ester were here now was proof that the world had turned upside down. “If there’s a cheap one available, yes.” She gathered up her cards and shuffled them slowly. Her hands felt like she was wearing mittens. She’d planned to wait until closer to the evening
meal to ask about a room. Her funds were limited, and she couldn’t afford to pay for the use of a room she wouldn’t need until tonight.
Ester looked sideways as though she were thinking. “If you don’t mind sharing, you can bunk in the attic, third door on the left. I’ll tell the boss,” she added at Ker’s nod. She watched her sister walk away, touching a shoulder here and there, greeting four laborers coming in the door by name.
The rest of the afternoon and early evening seemed to take days to go by. Finally, with supper over, and the night’s drinking started, Ker was able to go upstairs without raising eyebrows at the hour. The little attic room was tucked into a warm corner, to one side of the kitchen chimney. There were only two beds, one made up with both sheets and blankets, the other bare, with the linens folded neatly at the foot of the bed. This was Ester’s own room. Ker didn’t even have to Flash it to know.
It couldn’t have been very much later that Ker heard footsteps on the narrow stairs, coming toward the door. She got to her feet as the door opened, and she found herself in her sister’s arms, ribs creaking at the force of her hug.
“Oh, Mother. Oh, Mother.” Ester whispered against Ker’s hair. “Oh, Kerryberry, you’re alive.” Ker blinked away tears. Her sister hadn’t called her that since she was three years old. For an instant, she smelled the oil on Ester’s leather harness, mixing with straw, and the tar they used to mark the sheep.
“We heard about Questin and thought we’d lost you.”
“Lost me? What about you?” Ker was finally able to pull back, though she didn’t let go completely. “No one could tell me anything about you, where you were, and—and they were killing female soldiers.” Her voice broke as all the fear and anger and grief that she’d been pushing aside for months suddenly bubbled to the surface. She looked at Ester, really seeing her for the first time. Her hair had a dusting of white in it that made Ker think of their grandmother. Her face was thinner, and there were more lines around her eyes. She hadn’t seen Ester at all for over two years, and for the two years before that, she’d only seen her in the black uniform of the Eagles.
“Ooof, put me down. You’re worse than Tonia.” Ker thumped back onto her feet as Ester let go of her.
“You’ve seen Tonia? Are the Battle Wings coming?”
“Mother and Son.” Ker sank to the edge of the bed. She’d been so focused on finding Ester that everything else had flown right out of her head. “How much do you know?”
Ester sat on the other bed, so close their knees almost touched. “How much do I know? I know the Halians came, helped and supported by a network of spies and sympathizers. I know we fought them and lost—if you can call a total massacre a loss. If you can call our female officers and even plain soldiers killed without mercy a loss.” Ester stopped, her lips pressed tight together. It must cost her every day, Ker thought, this pretense that she was just a servant in an inn. “If you can call the murder of the Luqs, to whom we pledged our lives to protect, a loss.”
Hesitating, Ker put her hand on Ester’s knee. It seemed presumptuous to offer sympathy, but impossible not to. “I was in Questin when we heard the news,” she said.
“But you got away in time.” Ester caught up her hands.
“I got away.” Ker swallowed. This part was still hard. “Only me, and one other Candidate, though I didn’t know about him until a few weeks ago. I’ve been with the Bear Wing ever since the Luqs was found.”
Ester sighed, leaning back on her hands. “I’m not calling Dern Firoxi Luqs, not in private, and not in public if I can help it. I don’t care how he’s descended from Fokter the Fourth. No one who follows the enemy around like a dog is my Luqs. Ruarel was a selfish, arrogant woman, as I told her to her face, but she resisted the enemy, though it killed her.”
“I don’t mean Dern Firoxi. The Halians don’t decide who becomes Luqs, the Wings do. And the Wings have acclaimed Firoxi’s son, Jerek Brightwing.”
“Brightwing?” Ester’s eyebrows lifted. “And where is he?”
Ker looked down at her hands. “I’m not sure I can—”
“Kerida.” Ester’s tone made Ker sit up straight. “The Luqs of Farama is the Faro of Eagles, my Faro. I need to know where he is, and I need to know now.” Ester had never been more completely a Cohort Leader.
“They’re in the Serpents Teeth.” Ker responded to the tone of authority. “I won’t go into detail just now.”
“And is Tonia there?”
Ker shook her head. “It’s the Bear Wing. Last I saw Tonia was more than a month ago. She and the better part of her Panthers were in New Province, northeast of the Serpents Teeth.”
“What’s she waiting for?”
“News from Juristand. They’ve shifted the capital there until the Peninsula is free.”
“Juristand.” Her sister took the bridge of her nose in the tips of her fingers. “Don’t tell me. We’re to let them know when we’ve freed ourselves, and in the meantime they’re too busy running the rest of the Polity to send us any help.”
“I think that’s the answer Tonia expects.”
“Thank the Daughter our father’s not here. He’d be saying he told us so.”
Ker almost smiled. Their father, retired Faro of Panthers, had always spoken against splitting the administration of the Polity. “Without knowing what Juristand’s answer is, I don’t know what Tonia will do, but I’m hoping she joins the Bears in the Serpents Teeth.”
“Most of two Battle Wings.” Ester shook her head. “Even that may not be enough. Do you know about these mages—”
“I know all I need to.” Ker tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “It’s because of them the Halls of Law are destroyed, and all the Talents killed, even the youngest Candidates. And they’re behind that network of spies and traitors you talked about. But we have weapons against them. Not many, but we have them.”
“What weapons?”
Hitterol, the senior Mind-healer in the Mines and Tunnels, had once given Ker and Tel a block that prevented them from talking about the Feelers. She’d thought that block long gone, but the reluctance to speak now was still strong. “I’ve pledged not to speak of it,” she said. Her sister nodded. Even senior officers knew that they wouldn’t be told everything. “What about you?” Ker asked. “How did you come to be here?”
“We saw pretty early what was happening with our military women. Ordinary soldiers were given the chance to surrender, but not officers.” Ester fell silent, her face frozen into stillness. “My people hid me among them,” she said finally. “Just one of a Barrack.” She gestured around her. “A few of us came here. The owner is an old friend, from when we used to come for the festivals. It used to be his father’s place, and it’s his now.”
Which explained why the barman seemed familiar. “And you work here?”
“I hide here.” Ester frowned and smoothed back her hair with her hands. “And other things I won’t go into just now.” She raised one eyebrow at Ker.
“I understand. There’s things you can’t tell me, as well.”
Ester smiled. “How long can you stay? I could use a Talent’s help.”
* * *
“You know, I never expected to miss the Mines and Tunnels.” Barid took the basket Wynn handed him and stood, ready to accompany her to the market. “I mean, sure I was nervous on the way here—especially after Tel Cursar left–but here? That was natural. Nothing here feels safe, no one.”
“It’s not that bad, is it?”
Barid waited until they were out in the sunshine to answer. “How you can go back and forth to the kitchens every day, talking and laughing—” He shook his head. “It’s more than I can understand.”
There’d been some argument between Svann and Granion Pvat, the Rose Shekayrin he’d left to administrate Gaena alone, but just as the Sunflower Shekayrin had predicted, Svann’s status as a scholar
saved him from more than a tight-lipped lecture from his colleague and the responsibility of some of the more disagreeable tasks.
“Still, I’m glad of the chance to get out of here, even if the market’s just outside the door.” He shivered. It was a lot colder out here than he expected. “You’re not nervous, are you?”
“Nah, I’m city-born and bred, and this feels as normal to me as bells on Daughter’s Day, truth to tell.”
“I’ve been in cities, too, you know.”
“I’m sure of it, but you won’t see the streets and alleyways the way I do, the way someone who’s lived in them would.”
“Everything seems normal to me.” Wynn’s claiming more knowledge and experience rubbed him the wrong way. She was only a foot soldier, and he was a Talent. She needn’t give herself airs.
“Like people are walking too fast, no one’s strolling, even though it’s a nice day, with the sun shining and warm enough to give us a promise of Rainmonth to come? Like it’s midafternoon, everyone’s had their dinners, so why aren’t there more children on the streets, playing or running errands?”
“Is that all? I would have seen all that if you’d given me a chance.”
“And would you have seen that we’re being followed?”
“What? Where?” Barid felt every muscle freeze.
“When we stop at the poultry stall, while I’m buying the eggs, you look around, as if you’re just bored, and you’ll see a thin blond boy, slightly better dressed than the others around here.”
Barid followed her to the stall and looked around as she’d told him. He saw the boy almost right away, and now that she’d mentioned it, he was cleaner and better dressed than the one or two other children he could see. The boy seemed preoccupied by the baskets of used shoes in front of him, but he glanced up once, as if he felt Barid’s eyes on him. Looked Barid directly in the eye and held his hand up to his chest, thumb, index and middle finger extended, and tapped himself three times, before turning back to examining the shoes.
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