“Did you hear about the sugar barge that sank?” Korrim Stara asked.
“I didn’t,” another man answered. “What sank it?”
“Some asshole in Riverport got happy, ran a flatboat into the barge. Didn’t notice it was taking on water. Whole damned thing went down, is what I heard.”
“Well, there’s someone’s fortune lost,” the barman said philosophically. “Pity for them.”
The trick to finding Orrel was that he clearly didn’t want to be found. Asking after him was like touching a snail’s horn; it would only make him pull away. The best she could do was be in the places that he usually was, and then listen and watch. They were the same taprooms and street corners where she had been, where her friends and petty rivals were. She entered into her life as it had been before Darro died, like she was impersonating the girl she used to be.
The Pit had half as many people as usual, which wasn’t surprising for harvest time. Given the choice between begging in the richer quarters, scraping for work in the city, stealing, or going to the fields for the season’s reaping, about half chose the hard and honest labor, and about half didn’t. Nimal and Cane at the little table in the back weren’t the honest type. Korrim had a bad knee that wouldn’t let him do fieldwork. Calm Biran was there too, his hair pulled back from his face to let the early grey at his temples show. Everyone in Longhill knew everyone else, if not directly then at no more than a single remove. Korrim had lived in the building beside Alys’s mother for three years when she was younger. Nimal and Cane had used Alys as a lookout when they were breaking into Riverport houses sometimes. Calm Biran had an older sister who had bedded down with Darro for a time before she took up with a student at the university. All of them knew who she was, and how Darro had died.
“Anything more for you, Alys?”
She shook her head, but the mention of her name shifted the room’s attention toward her. Nimal stood, stretched, and slouched over to her. “Where’ve you been keeping yourself?” His tone and the narrowness of his eyes meant he was asking whether she was open to crewing up on a pull. Any other time, it would have been interesting.
She shook her head, answering the question he hadn’t asked. “I’ve been here. Just have my hands full for the time.”
“Heard about your brother,” he said. “Me and Darro, we didn’t always get along, but he was a good man.”
“Thank you,” she said, because it was expected of her, and because any more genuine answer would have invited him to keep speaking. He put a hand on her shoulder in a way that wasn’t an invitation to a more immediate and physical kind of comfort unless she was open to the idea, in which case it was. When she didn’t respond, he took his hand away and went to the barman for a beer.
Darro’s name in someone else’s mouth left her uncomfortable, itchy, and restless. She drained the last of her drink, straining it through her teeth and spitting the dregs on the floor, and walked out. It was still daylight, even if the sun was low and red. She could have spent some time down near the university where the girls Orrel had favored plied their trade, but it wasn’t in her. Not tonight. She could have found Sammish, but even her company felt like a burden. She needed sleep and food and time for something like hope to find its way back to her.
She walked back toward Oldgate with her hands pulled into her sleeves. The evenings were getting cooler, especially near the water. A singer had put a little wooden dais near the bridge, and she paused to listen to him warble his way through an old Inlisc ballad that ended with two lovers stabbed and dead. A closed carriage with no crest on its side barreled past like it was fleeing from something, but no one followed on behind it. A group of older men in the good clothes and colorful cloaks of Riverport merchants strolled past, muttering among themselves with the gossip of trade and politics. Reluctantly, Alys went back to the bridge and her cell in Oldgate. The effort of finding food was too much for her now, even though she knew she’d regret later that she’d let her belly go empty.
Her small darkness waited, as it always did: cot, candle, and ashes. The time was coming soon she’d have to either pay to keep it or find another place to sleep. She lay down in the dim light and turned to Darro’s box. It was such a small thing to hold a whole body. Fire left so little behind. She didn’t weep. Her heart had many masks these days. Rage and sadness were the most common, though she’d also found herself giddy and restless or weirdly calm, like someone already dead herself and only watching her life from a distance. Her heart was as uncertain as weather, and tonight it had chosen the old numbness and despair.
She would have thought grief was just sorrow. She knew better now.
“Well,” she said to the box. “This could be going better. At least Sammish found something. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me who this southern knife hunter is? What she was to you? Or where Orrel is? Anything that would help?”
Darro’s box flickered as the candle spat and the flame wavered.
“Didn’t think so,” Alys said. “If you want justice, you could start by being more useful. You should have seen that bluecloak. He was so sure of himself when he came after me that day, but I left him crying in the streets. You should have seen it. You should have—”
Without warning, her calm gave way, and she wept. Even as the sobs racked her, she felt a deeper darkness growing beneath the sorrow. Grief was supposed to fade. Wounds—even wounds to the soul—were supposed to heal. She felt hers getting worse.
The candle spat again, the wick almost spent. She rose unsteadily to her feet and dug in her sack for another, but there were none. She’d neglected light as much as she had food. A hazy half-memory came to her, and she went to her hiding place. The knife was gone. Sammish still had it. The gold was there and the little stub of black candle. She took it and went back to the holder. She stood tracing Darro’s deathmark with her fingertip until her old candle seemed to be in its last, fading blue, then lit the little black candle from the dying light. The dark wick sparked as the new flame took. She dug the old wax from the holder with a fingertip, ignoring the heat, and leveled the dark stub in its place. It was burning fast. It wouldn’t give her more than a few minutes, but some light was better than none.
She didn’t notice at first that the smoke was doing anything odd. The wisps and trails of it didn’t dissipate, but narrowed, thickened, and wove together. Her attention was on Darro and her own self-pity. The woman’s voice, gentle as it was, startled her as if it had been a shriek.
“Well now. Who exactly are you, little wolf girl?”
Alys spun. There in the gloom of her cell, a pale woman stood, her body made of smoke but solid as the stone walls. She was Hansch, with high, sculpted eyebrows and well-painted lips. Straw-pale hair cascaded down her shoulders, and even her gently smiling lips seemed bloodless. Her robe was silk the color of moss, bound at the waist with a beautiful belt of braided leather with a dove worked in bronze as the clasp.
There was a soft, throaty clicking sound, and Alys realized it came from her. That she was trying to speak, but the fear choked her.
“It’s all right,” the pale woman said, stepping toward her. “I won’t hurt you, little wolf girl. Only tell me how you—”