She felt the panic almost before she knew why. She grabbed Sammish’s arm hard enough that the other girl yelped. Alys pointed up to the top of the great cart. There, five back from the prince himself, a woman stood in a dress of green feathers and gold chains. She had pale skin and hair. Her arms were out, palms to the crowd, as if she were warming herself at a fire.
“Her!” Alys shouted over the clamor. “That’s the woman from the smoke!”
Sammish looked up, then leaned close, her lips brushing Alys’s ear so that she could be heard without anyone else being part of their conversation. “I’ll look for servants. Find out who she is.”
The woman in green smiled beatifically over them all. She was so close… Alys reached up and pulled off her mask.
“You!” she shouted, pointing up at the woman. “You! I saw you!”
“What are you doing?” Sammish hissed, but Alys ignored her. Instead, she waved her arms and shrieked. The man next to her shied away, and Alys screamed again. She ran along beside the vast cart as it moved down the street, pushing aside anyone who got in her way. She lost track of Sammish, of the guards who watched the street, of everything except the pale-skinned woman floating along above her. Her throat ached with her shouting. With a sense of rising despair, she grew more and more certain that the voice of the crowd would always drown her out. The great barge of a cart came to a corner and paused as the horses were repositioned to make the turn. A huge stone statue of a Hansch goddess stood on a granite plinth, and Alys saw her chance.
She hauled herself up the stone, climbing it. She heard voices shouting at her, calling her to come down, threatening her. She reached the goddess’s shoulders and rode them like a child being carried by her mother.
She still wasn’t halfway to the height of the cart, but she thought the woman was looking at her now, amused and attracted by the commotion. Alys reached down and plucked the blade from her boot. When she lifted it up, the silver caught the light. Above her, the woman froze.
And then, like a flower bud blossoming in sunlight, the pale woman smiled.
The man who came for her had thick, ropey scars across his cheek and neck. At first Alys thought they were false, put on for the festival like a morbid kind of mask. He wore a sword at his side that wasn’t a costume either. He found her in the crowd and walked her into the darkness with a grim focus that frightened her, though she knew better than to show it. Now he unlocked a gate between two great, thick hedges that stood taller than walls and nodded her forward. Everything she knew told her to turn and run. She clenched her jaw and walked forward into the darkness.
The roar of the celebration crested and turned to cheers behind them as some other astounding thing happened: an acrobat making some particularly terrible jump or a fire-eater blowing flame into the sky. Nothing of that mattered to Alys now, nor did it seem to matter to the man walking with her.
“What happened to—”
“Not here,” the scarred man said. “Don’t talk.”
He led her down a narrow passage between thorny hedges and a rough stone wall. The green leaves were thick and leathery, and the twigs had cruel spikes. The pavement was wet and pebbled, and it glittered in the moonlight. If they meant to spirit her someplace quiet and kill her, she imagined it would look very much like this. She still had the knife in her boot. If he turned on her, she’d have the half-second while he drew his blade. She could try to cut his leg and run.
If he noticed her preparing for violence, he didn’t show it. They came to a thin, dark wood doorway in a wall of carved granite. A metal bar held it closed, and the steel brackets had wept rust down the stone. He opened it and stepped through, clearly expecting her to follow. Alys stood for a moment at the mouth of the darkness before a brightness flared inside: the scarred man lighting a candle.
The room was small, windowless, and cold with a dark stain along one wall where something had spilled or seeped through. It smelled of mildew, and apart from a single rough wood table with a pair of benches at its side, it was empty. She guessed it might be an unused storehouse, unless the high families of Green Hill kept their own private jails. The scarred man sat at the table.
“You have it?”
“Have what?”
“Don’t play with me. You have it.”
Alys stood on the other side of the table from him. He looked at the low bench, but she didn’t sit. She nodded.
“Let’s see it, then.”
She drew the blade, careful not to get close enough that he could try to grab it from her. She didn’t know how quick he was. He didn’t try for it, but leaned forward, resting on his elbows and squinting at the marks along the flat. Between the dimness of the light and the webwork of scars, she couldn’t be certain, but he seemed to sharpen.
“What are you asking for it?”
“Who killed my brother?”
His eyes flicked to hers, evaluating and cool. “I see.”
“Was he killed because of this?” she asked, gesturing with the knife. “Because of you?”
The scarred man stood, and she stepped back, not fleeing but wary. His scowl was contempt and pity.
“You’ll wait here,” he said.
“And if I don’t want to?”
“We’re past that,” he said, and walked out, closing the door behind him. A moment later, there was a deep scraping sound, and when she tried to open it, the door was barred. She sat on the bench and scowled at it as if it might care. Slowly, her courage began to fade and a deeper fear welled up in her chest. She’d been impatient. She’d been carried away by the moment. She’d needed to see what happened more than she’d wanted to stay safe.
Keep your eyes down and forward for fifty steps, she thought, and sighed. Next time, maybe. If there was a next time.
The minutes stretched in silence. Her only company was the single, slow candle and its buttery light. She strained to hear the celebration or voices. Even the scuttling of mice would have been better than the uncanny silence. It was like her cell in Oldgate, except that had been of her own choosing. It had been under her control. She wondered if she screamed whether anyone would notice, and if they came to her calls, what they would do.
The certainty settled into her bones that she had been impulsive and very, very stupid. Her only hope was that Sammish had watched everything that had happened. She might be making her way to the door to free her. She tried calling Sammish’s name a few times, but the walls ate the sound. She was as good as buried.
Alys was more than halfway to deciding her best chance was to cut whoever opened the door and try to run for the shadows when the deep growl of the bar being lifted interrupted her. She stood, knife in hand, her heart fluttering against her ribs. The door was motionless for so long that she almost wondered whether the sound had been real. When it opened, it was startling. The scarred man entered first, took in the blade and her stance, and shook his head once. No. Behind him, the woman stepped in.
In person, she seemed less frightening. Her flesh was solid, and though she was older, she was a bit shorter than Alys. Her skin and hair were weirdly pale, her shaped eyebrows almost invisible until Alys looked for them. Her costume was gone, and in its place, a robe of fine wool bound by the same braided belt. The woman’s smile wouldn’t have been warmer if they had been sisters.