Linly had been born into Longhill; Alys’s father might have been born anywhere. She’d neither known him nor known of him. When she’d been young and asked her mother—seeking the story of him if not the man—all her mother would say was that he’d loved her when he was here, and forgotten her when he was gone. He’d stayed long enough to make three babies, though: Darro, their sister Caria, who’d died of a fever before Alys was born, and Alys herself. The only memory Alys had of her father was as a wide back sleeping beside her and the smell of tobacco, and even that might have been from a dream. She didn’t know why he had left, and if her mother did, she didn’t say. She’d heard Grey Linnet say that there was a disgrace, and her mother had told her father to leave and not come back. That might have been true. Even if it was, it didn’t affect Alys. All that was over before she could walk.
Longhill had a thousand ways for a girl like Linly to shape her life, and all of them were hard. It was the pride of the quarter that Inlisc cunning and ingenuity floated in the air and ran with the water there. Between the prince’s taxes and the landlords in Riverport and Newmarket, coin flowed out of Longhill. It had to be coaxed back in. Or tricked. Working pulls was one way. Finding contracts on the barges or in the temples was another. Some people begged at the port or outside the walls. Others took work with the teams of oxen that towed boats against the river’s flow south of the city. A few traded sex for coin. No one did only one thing, because no one thing could bring in enough to live off.
Most people slept in rooms they paid for, bringing as many others in as space allowed. Four people in a bed meant a fourth of the price for the house, unless you were someone with a child to care for. Or else two children. Unless you were Linly. In that case, a fourth body in the bed only cut the cost in half. The other one had to be someone willing to pay half the cost for a quarter of the space.
For all her mother’s faults, Alys gave her credit for keeping her children safe from her lovers. Being turned out of the house for a night or two now and again, having to find someplace in the street to huddle while the darkness passed, wasn’t the worst thing. Harder things happened, and more often than people liked to admit.
She was fairly sure the man had been named Otgar, but it might have been Uthar or Ausgar or something like. He’d been a trader from the east, carrying cargo to Aunt Thorn that didn’t bear talking of. The gods knew what he’d found attractive about Alys’s mother, and they weren’t telling. Her mother had made it very clear that Alys wasn’t to come home until morning. It was the end of her ninth year in the world, and Darro had already been away from them for years, living with a pack of boys who kept to the southernmost edge of the quarter.
Alys remembered her mother telling her to stay safe. She had been young enough that she thought if her mother told her to do something, it meant that it was possible. That safety could be had, and that it was within her control. That had been the night of the first snow too.
The flakes had been larger then; wide and thick as feathers. She didn’t remember what she’d worn, only that she’d seemed almost warm at first, and then slowly grown colder until the cold seemed like everything. It had pushed down into her bones so deep that she’d wondered whether she would ever be warm again. Later that night, Darro would tell her that it had been a good sign, that if she’d started feeling warm again it would have meant she was dying.
She’d walked north, toward the Temple, not because she’d expected any gods to help her, or any priests for that matter. But the great stone building had fascinated her with the gentle glow of its windows and the solidity of its walls. Stone was how the Hansch built. Stone was meant to last forever. The idea of standing solid against the flow of time, unmoving as a bridge in the river, had appealed to her then. Her places were all wood. Wood floated on water and spun and washed away.
There was an empty place in her memory of that night. She remembered looking up at the Temple, and she remembered being by the north gate with its tall bronze doors streaked with verdigris and closed for the night. It was possible she hadn’t been there. Darro might have found her by the Temple gate instead, and she was confusing it now. Before, when she could have asked him, it hadn’t been important to her. Now that she couldn’t, the question carried more weight.
Wherever she had been, there had been a niche between the buildings, and she’d backed into it, trying to stay out of the snowfall. She’d thought that the building would warm her, but it had made her colder instead, pulling the heat from her body more quickly than the air. She’d wept. She’d wondered whether to go to the bluecloaks and ask to be put in lockup for the night. If they didn’t, she could kick them or threaten to start a fire. They might beat her, but they wouldn’t leave her to die in the street afterward. They probably wouldn’t.
She didn’t know how Darro had found her. She’d been there in the grey darkness of the night watching the snowflakes fall on the black, shining cobblestones and melt. And then not melt. Darro had appeared out of the gloom. She hadn’t seen his face, not at first, but she’d known him by the sound of his footsteps and the shape of his boots. They’d been dark leather with a buckle on the side. She remembered what he’d said, though. She’d carry it with her forever. Tell me you can walk. I don’t want to fucking carry you.
If he’d said the secret name of God, she wouldn’t have been more awed or grateful.
He hadn’t embraced her or warmed her hands, but he’d put a thick leather wrap over her as they walked south for what felt like hours. They hadn’t talked. She stayed silent because the cold and exhaustion and fear and relief had left her with barely enough of herself to put one foot in front of the other. He did because he was distracted or impatient or in a quiet rage at their mother for putting Alys out in the street to freeze and die.
Darro had been spending his days with a stable crew back then. Terryn Obst, before he got sick. Nimal, before he and Darro fell out. Black Nel and Sarae Stone. They’d all been more or less the same age. The children of Longhill grew up that way, making cohorts and crews and connections that complicated with the years. It wasn’t strange for two old men to come to blows over an insult from decades before that had festered over time. Or to find two childhood enemies weeping in each other’s arms at the end of a long night’s drink. Everything connected in Longhill, and all the connections mattered. Darro had led her south that night in the silence and the snow to the alley behind the woodcutters’ guild house. There had been a ladder against the wall, and she’d gone first with Darro behind to steady her if she slipped. She hadn’t known where they were going besides up as the snow came down.
The topmost reach of the hall, four stories up, was all storage rooms and servants’ quarters. Either they’d bribed someone for the use of the half-empty storage room or found it unguarded. Black Nel and Terryn Obst and two or three others were there around a little brazier in a stone firepit. They were all lounging on cushions and blankets they had stolen from someplace and laid over the rough wood. Terryn Obst cooked bits of chicken meat on skewers, dipping the pale pink flesh in powdered salt and fine-chopped rosemary. Black Nel had a bottle of wine that she passed around. Alys drank from it, the alcohol spreading warmth through her throat and chest.