Oh, Tannen thought, this is how I die.
But the blade didn’t tug to the side. His throat stayed unslit. Instead a voice hissed at his ear. A woman’s voice, but not the apologetic girl. Someone else. “Did you kill my brother?”
“Who the fuck are you?” he squeaked. And then, “No, I didn’t kill anyone. I’ve never killed anyone.”
“You were a bluecloak.” The knife pressed closer. If she drew her arm to the side, he wouldn’t see morning.
“For half a year,” he said. “I saw maybe four fights the whole time, and no one died in any of them. I swear it. I’ll swear by anything!”
The darkness around them thickened. He wondered, if he called out, whether any of his old friends would hear him. If they’d be in time to watch him die in the street. The first girl spoke again, but not to him. “I believe him.”
Two long, shuddering breaths passed before the knife girl replied. “I do too.”
The blade vanished, and a boot came down hard in his ribs. He felt something crack. Then another kick came, this one a toe-point to his kidney. The pain was brighter than fire. Tannen curled into a ball and waited for another blow. It didn’t come. Through the sound of his own breath, he heard two sets of soft footsteps moving away. He rested his head against the stone of the street. As hard as it was, it still felt like the most comfortable pillow in the world.
Alys felt like she was flying, like her heart had widened to the size of the city and become fire. She wore the cool Kithamar night like a wide black cape and walked like she was still and the world moved under her. The long, empty days in her cell felt like a dream she’d had. Or the threat of a nightmare she’d fall into if she closed her eyes again too soon.
Sammish walked at her side, grinning. Alys remembered the weight and solidity of the bluecloak’s back as she hit him as if it were happening again. The thin whine of his voice. The first time she’d had enough wine hadn’t felt this good. The warmth and the broadness of spirit were both there, but the drink had left her muzzy-headed and sleepy. Now she felt more awake than she’d ever been, and she loved it.
“You know, then,” Sammish said as they reached the river and started across. “It wasn’t him.”
“It’s a good start,” Alys agreed. The river roared against the stone under their feet like a god talking softly. Alys had the urge to jump over the stone lip and dive into the water as if she could command it. She knew better than to give the impulse life. She thought instead about digging the coin out of her safe cache and finding some taproom where she could sing and spend and be lifted up by what she’d done. That was a dream. The night was already full, and Kithamar in its beds. Any taproom she found now would be on its way to empty before she stepped in. Her own company would have to be enough.
She walked up the slope of Oldgate, her legs burning pleasantly from the effort, and ducked into the thin inner streets within the hillside’s flesh. It struck her that this was likely the longest she’d ever spent sleeping outside Longhill. When she was younger, she’d gone out to work harvest at an orchard east of the city that had taken her away for a time, but this harvest was longer, darker, and not yet at its end.
In her tiny cell, she lit a white candle—she’d need to buy more in the morning—and set it beside Darro’s box. The yellow wax of his deathmark picked up the glow. Sammish sat on the cot, legs folded up under her. Her mud-brown eyes were brighter than usual, her smile an echo of Alys’s own intoxication.
“You did good work,” Alys said. “Finding him wasn’t the answer, but you did good work. You shouldn’t feel bad that he wasn’t the one.”
If Sammish’s smile seemed to dim for a moment, it was likely just her mind turning to the path ahead. Alys leaned her back against the wall. The cell wasn’t brick this deep in, but the native stone of the hill. She’d heard that in winter, the depths of Oldgate kept the cold at bay, but for now the wall felt cool against her shoulders. The elation was starting to fade, and she tried to hold it, willing it bright again like blowing on embers. She was suddenly tired.
“Orrel next,” Alys said. “You said he was looking for Darro. If he found him—”
“Or the knife,” Sammish said. “Orrel, we might put hand to, we might not, but the knife is here for certain. I could take it to the whetstone man I know. Maybe his clients. They might recognize it.”
No jumped to Alys’s throat, but she stopped it there. The thought of letting the weird blade out of her cell felt like a threat. What if it didn’t come back? What if she lost that bit of Darro too? It was a mad thought. Her brother wasn’t the blade. It couldn’t call him back from his ashes.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I’ll be careful with it,” Sammish said, and then, almost shyly, “And I know how to stay clear of a cutter’s pull.”
Alys chuckled, and Sammish smiled. It was the smile that did it. Alys took the blade and its sheath and handed them over.
“Do what you can,” she said.
Sammish stood in the fortune-teller’s back room shifting her weight from leg to leg while the old man who actually ran the place pulled the knife from its sheath and held it up to the light.
“Looked similar to yours,” Sammish said. “I thought you might know it.”
The actual fortune-teller was a Hansch girl with one blue eye and one brown. It made her look exotic and mysterious. She sat in a red leather chair, watching the old man with a look of amusement that Sammish liked even less than the old man’s scowl. Sammish couldn’t tell if the girl had had too much wine or if she was drunk on something stranger. Either way, she wasn’t right. The room itself was dim, except for the one open-shuttered window. Tin mirrors lined two walls, throwing back twisted images of the three of them. A low black table had a wide silver bowl filled halfway with vinegar water that the fortune-teller would heat and pour egg whites into. The ghostly whorls were supposed to show the future. It stank of spices and incense.
The old man made a sour noise at the back of his throat. “These markings?” he said. “They’re supposed to look like old gregate runes. Life and death, love and sex. Truth and cutting through the space between spaces. All the usual. The calligraphy’s not bad.”
“It’s silver too,” Sammish said. “You can see where it’s tarnished up at the hilt.”
“Plated, yeah. Not kept very well, is it?” the old man said. It wasn’t plated.
He’d been running the fortune-teller’s place for as long as Sammish could remember. The girl might have been his daughter or his lover or something odder. Sammish fought the urge to take the blade back. She didn’t like the way he held it.
“Has to do with a murder, you said?” the old man asked.
“Didn’t say. Might, might not,” Sammish said, not looking him full in the eyes. “Someone had it.”
“And now they don’t.” The old man chuckled. “All right, fine. The workmanship’s not good. It’s not likely to keep an edge, but as props go, it has some charm to it. I can give you eight bronze. Not more.”
Sammish shook her head, confused. The old man didn’t take it that way.