For the most part, Darro and his friends ignored her as she snuggled into the pillows and blankets. They had talked and laughed and sung together, and she had been there with them. It had been enough and more than enough. It was the first time she’d understood why Darro spent his time away from her and their mother. He’d found something better, and as soon as she’d seen it, she wanted it for herself. She wanted to be the girl sitting at the fireside, trading bawdy stories with her friends and eating real meat and drinking until she was sated.
At some point, she’d fallen asleep there, and the others had too. She woke sometime near dawn with Darro’s familiar body at her side keeping her warm. The snow outside the window had thickened, and the world seemed unnaturally quiet. There had only been the sound of his breath and hers. Alys had lain in the comfortable darkness, knowing that she might have spent her night in the niche by the gate and died in the snow, except that her brother had come for her.
Her brother, who had always come to help her when she found herself swimming in treacherous water. Her brother, who had a deathmark now, and who wouldn’t see the thin snowflakes falling outside his window ever again.
In the street below her, Ubram Foyle turned the corner. His calls for bones and iron faded a bit, but not so much she couldn’t make out the words. A pigeon flew past her window, a flutter of blue-grey wings. She tried to remember what kind of wine Black Nel had been drinking that night and whether the skewers Terryn cooked the pale meat on were wooden or iron. She tried to remember whether the smoke from the brazier had given her a headache or not. There had to have been a time when she’d known those things, even if it had only been in the moment. The details had faded or been replaced with false versions by an imagination hungry for more than was there. The thought tightened her throat and took the pleasure from the memory.
She stepped back from the window and the first first snow that Darro wouldn’t see, and closed the shutters. The darkness wasn’t total, but it took a few long breaths together for her eyes to adjust. She went to her safe cache, undid the hidden latch, and opened it. The remaining coins caught the faint light that pressed in at the shutters’ edge. She took up the black candle and carried it back to the rough wood table. It was easy to light. The wick spat, the flame stretched up, blue then white then ruddy orange as it cooled into smoke. She waited, and it pulled back into a perfect sphere, just as it had before. She hoped Andomaka would come this time, or if not her, then no one.
The smoke shifted, narrowed, and darkened. It thickened. Alys found herself holding her breath as the smoke wove itself together, and Tregarro sat across the table from her. In the weirdly steady light of the candle, his scars looked deeper than they had before. When he smiled, the ropey flesh pulled down his eyelid. He seemed to notice her discomfort, and he smiled more deeply.
“Well,” he said. “I see you’re still open to work. She’ll be pleased.”
Alys didn’t ask after Andomaka. Something about the man kept her wary of any sign that she cared about something or someone. Any connection would be a weakness, and any weakness would be exploited. She didn’t know if that was true, or if it was only the man’s uncanny appearance that made her think it. It didn’t matter.
“I see you still have work that needs doing,” she said, lifting her chin the way she imagined Darro would have.
“As it happens, I do,” Tregarro said. “You don’t object to working with other people, do you?”
“I don’t.”
His nod left her wondering whether that had been the right answer, or if she had just failed some subtle test. He took something from a pocket in his sleeve and slid it across the table to her. It grated as it moved across the wood. It was a black iron key as thick as her thumb with an animal of some kind worked into the top. It might have been a wolf or a lion; the metal was too worn to know. She’d seen keys like it used on warehouse locks. When she picked it up, it was lighter than she’d expected.
“Newmarket, two streets south of the main square, there’s a soapmaker’s shop. You know it?”
“No,” she said.
“Well, find it. That key opens the door to the storage shed at the back. The others will meet you there tomorrow at sunset.”
Alys put the key in the wallet hanging from her belt. “What are we doing?”
“There’s someone we need. We’ve heard from the people who have him. You’ll get the details then.”
“Will it be dangerous?” she asked, and immediately regretted asking. She expected Tregarro to sneer at her and snap. Instead an expression passed over his face that might almost have been sorrow. When he spoke, his voice was gentler than she’d ever heard it.
“Everything we do is dangerous,” he said.
The world didn’t pause for Sammish. No matter what happened with Alys and her new people in Green Hill, Sammish needed money for food and to pay the baker for her room. Work only gave so much, and running a pull was always a balance between risk and reward. Festival days were an easy call; people were drunk and wearing their gaudiest jewelry. The bluecloaks knew to be on close watch, but they were also watching the empty warehouses and halls for burglars and pulling the intoxicated and aggressive out of their small celebratory riots. The usual squares—Newmarket or Riverport—were a more difficult decision. By their nature, they called people with coin in their wallets, sometimes there was beer and cider, but there was nothing like the abandon that a celebration brought.
Riverport in particular had its advantages and its dangers. Northernmost of the districts of Kithamar, there was more coin to be harvested there, but most of the people were Hansch, narrow-faced and straight-haired. The Inlisc who bought bread and fruit and meat, beans and herbs and knives from the stone stalls and tables there were usually servants of the great houses in Green Hill come across the river for the freshest goods instead of taking the scrapings of Stonemarket. A little fountain in the plaza gave frigid water to anyone with a bucket to carry it away and a place to sit and gossip, but few of the voices that rose above the splash and patter there had the accents of Longhill. The cloaks and embroidered hats and loomed scarves in Riverport were a bit finer than the clothes people wore in Newmarket. And Newmarket was better than Longhill. For Nimal and Little Coop and Cane, Riverport was a more dangerous hunting ground because they stood out there more.
Sammish didn’t mind, though. She didn’t stand out anywhere. Even if she had, she needed the money.
Little Coop was the cutter, and Nimal was the flea. Sammish was the walk-away because she always was. They had Cane as the fish, which made it a little safer, but also meant they were sharing the take four ways instead of three. Sammish tried not to be resentful of that. Nimal had put the crew together, but Little Coop was the cutter, and the cutter called the go.
Sammish sat on the edge of the fountain, her hands in her lap, and watched whoever was close to Nimal, but never the man himself. There was a change in how he walked when he was moving in, and that was her signal. It hadn’t come in half an hour. She’d been sitting there eavesdropping on the two old men next to her as they gossiped for so long that she was starting to form opinions about whether the thicker one’s daughter really was treating her father poorly, or whether he carried some of the blame. Usually, in those kinds of family issues, she sided with the woman, but he was making a good case for himself. She was starting to waver when Nimal’s back straightened and he turned sharply to his right. Sammish stood up smoothly, her shoulders a little hunched, her eyes a little down, and moved after him.