The plague house stood in the forest south of Kithamar. In summer, the view from his little window would have been filled by a vast greenness of leaves. Now it was all black trunks and bare branches that rose toward the sky like a shriek. The only sounds were the soft settling of ashes in the brazier and the coughing of the woman at the end of the little hall. The pale stucco walls had glyphs and sigils that promised health and balance painted on them in bright blues and yellows. He couldn’t tell if they worked. Maybe without them, he would have died by now.
Maybe that would have been better.
Sammish sat on the three-legged stool that the benefact used when she washed him. It was stained by the splashes of vinegar and lime that had dripped from her washcloth. If the room smelled of anything, his nose had grown accustomed to it long before. To judge from Sammish’s expression, it stank of something.
“I looked for you and Alys both,” Orrel said to fill the quiet with something. “After coronation day, I tried to find you. I wanted to give you your cut, yeah?”
“I know,” Sammish said. She glanced at him, and then away. “I trust you.”
It was a lie, and they both knew it. Just as they knew that anything he owed her had been spent weeks before. She didn’t even ask for it. If she had, he’d have been angry. Don’t you see how ill I am? And you come here to squeeze my last coins out of me? Since she didn’t, he had nothing to push back against. That made it worse.
“I looked for you,” he said again, gamely.
“What happened to you?” Sammish asked. And then, “Was it Darro?”
Orrel managed to get up some energy now, if only for the moment. “Fucking Darro.”
“You heard what happened?”
Orrel didn’t answer. His gut hurt, and his heart was racing. He couldn’t tell if it was the anger and fear or the first sign of the fever coming back. The world narrowed until his skin was the horizon. It startled him when Sammish put her hand on his knee and pulled his attention back to her and the room.
“Do you know what happened?” she asked.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Orrel said.
It was the third day of Prince Bryn a Sal’s reign, and pretty much everyone Orrel knew was waiting to see whether he made it to the fourth.
The story about Alys getting chased down by the guardsman was the first thing anyone who saw him talked about. The story ended with the guardsman running away from a rain of shit, or Alys getting a night pot dropped on her and the guard leaving in disgust. Or her brother Darro being caught in it. Or all three. What had actually happened, Orrel didn’t know except that Alys was underground with Aunt Thorn, her brother had paid for it, and Orrel was very interested in not getting found by anyone involved.
But that hadn’t worked out.
“I don’t care,” Darro said, putting down his leather bag. “That’s not what I’m here for.”
“Please. I’d never put my own crew in threat. It wouldn’t be good for me, for one thing. Even if you think I’m the worst shit in the world, there’s no call for me to—”
Darro looked around the little room. It was in the heart of Longhill, and less a house than a shack cobbled together where two other buildings hadn’t quite met. When winter came, it would be too cold to live in, but until then, it was cheap and easy to overlook. Darro found a block of wood that Orrel had used for a table, turned it on its side, and sat on it like a stool. Orrel tried to crawl back farther into his sleeping shelf, but Darro reached out a hand and hauled him by the ankle.
When Darro spoke, he spoke carefully. “That’s not why I’m here.”
Orrel slowed, then stopped. Darro’s expression edged on contempt, but he sat on the block and spoke in calm, friendly tones, like a man trying to gentle a spooked dog. “There’s something I need to do. And you are in a position to help me.”
“A pull?”
Darro’s expression clouded, and his eyes seemed to take in something more than the room contained. “A killing.”
Orrel swore under his breath, and it brought the older man back to himself. His smile was apologetic, though Orrel couldn’t have said who he was apologizing to. “It’s also a pull, but this is the dangerous part. I’m going to have to end someone, and I’m going to have to do it in the street where I can be seen. I’d rather not be stopped, and I think you can arrange that for me.”
“The fuck am I? A wizard?” Orrel said. “What are you into, Darro?”
“I have an opportunity is all. Someone stole a thing, and I recovered it. Now I have two people who want it. I’ve pledged to give it to both of them. One of them’s paid me. The other one is too dangerous to cross. So I’m keeping the coin and knife, and making very certain that no one is around to suggest I had any but the most loyal intentions.”
“But killing someone?”
“No one will miss her. And people die for money every day. Just the coin usually goes up to the palace instead of rolling down to Longhill. If anything, this is more justice than the city usually sees.”
Orrel’s panic had thinned and burned away. He sat with his back to the wall, his legs crossed under him. He didn’t even think about fleeing. Not now. “Is it a lot of money?”
“It could keep me for years,” Darro said, and there was no boast in his voice. There might even have been dread. “She knows the risk of it. It’s why she won’t meet me in private. Which means I have to end this in public. And I have to do it so that no one whistles up the bluecloaks.”
“How—” Orrel began, and in answer Darro leaned down and pulled a length of blue cloth from the bag at his feet.
“I understand you have a badge of office. No one calls the guard when the guard’s doing the killing.”
Orrel felt his eyes go wide. “That’s brilliant.”
Darro pushed the cloth back into his sack. “Let’s not get too happy yet. I haven’t managed it. Now. The badge.”
Orrel scrambled to his feet, and Darro let him. A part of him wanted to take the chance and run. It was a reflex. His safe cache was under a board in the corner of the sleeping shelf, and the bluecloak’s belt was in it. He held it out to Darro like a man putting offering bread on an altar.
“Do you…” Orrel began, and faltered.
Darro took the badge and fitted it to his own belt. It looked wrong there, but to other eyes, it might pass. With the cloth around it, Darro might look less like a Longhill knife in a costume and more like an actual guard. Orrel swallowed to loosen his throat and tried again to speak.
“Do you think you’d want a fish? Someone to watch the crowd and raise an alarm if you needed one?”
“Are you offering?”
“Are you paying?”
“I am,” Darro said. “Spin this wrong for me, and I’ll kill you before the guards do.”
Orrel grinned. He remembered clearly that in that cursed moment when he should by right have run, he’d grinned.
The next day had been hot, but the river had the deep smell of rotting leaves that it got when the turn of seasons was close. The meeting was in a square by the northern wall, beside the bridge that crossed to Green Hill. Orrel didn’t wear the blue, because he had no badge to justify it. Instead he wore his good shirt in hopes of passing for the son of a merchant house or a worker at the store yards. The sky had been white with summer haze. Darro had stationed himself at a corner, sweating himself thin under the guardsman’s blues and a darker cloak to hide them until the moment. Orrel had gone ahead.