“This is my city. I have sat that throne since the Temple was built.”
“If it wasn’t the blade or the rite…” Andomaka said.
“The blood,” he said.
“The vial?”
“The man. We failed because I had no connection to the new prince. Byrn a Sal is not our line. At least my sister-by-law and quite possibly my mewling cunt of a brother have betrayed the city and put a bastard on the throne. If they weren’t already dead, I’d haul them over a live fire to ask the details. But…” He gestured with one young hand. She had seen that movement so many times done by a different arm. For a moment, she felt a wave of vertigo. Ausai rubbed his palms over his eyes.
“He’s been crowned,” Andomaka said.
“Yes, and what proof do we have of his treachery that doesn’t also reveal my secrets? Are we supposed to go decades back in time and set a watch on Irana to see who she fucked besides my brother?”
“There could be letters…” Andomaka said.
“Letters burn. Proofs can be altered. I didn’t suspect anything for the decades I sat the throne. Who’d believe me now? Look at me. I’m a Bronze Coast whelp. I wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’ll stand,” Andomaka said.
Ausai lifted himself to sit on the altar. For anyone else, it would have been blasphemy. No rules that applied to other people constrained him. “You will, but not that way. This war began in the shadows, and it has to end there. A false prince sits the palace, and we will take him from it. Byrn a Sal may not even have known what he is, but it doesn’t matter. He has to die.”
She grasped at the thought. Byrn a Sal might not even know he was a bastard.
“He wasn’t brought up in the brotherhood. It will be simpler if he isn’t already on guard against us.”
Prince Ausai scowled with the young boy’s face. “If he didn’t know then, he may by now. I wasn’t expecting to have anyone else’s eyes on my private things. If he’s found them… yes, he’ll know there’s something. Not the details, but even those he may come to suspect, given time.”
“He has an heir.”
“His daughter dies too. The House a Sal will have to end. It’s time for a new family to guide the city. Chaalat is honorable and old and carries my blood. It is time for the ages to turn in Kithamar, and you are the axis around which history will spin.”
Silence reigned in the temple as Andomaka took the thought in, held it in her mind.
“It can be done, and better quickly,” she said. “But it can’t be discovered. The city wouldn’t understand.”
The boy nodded. Or Prince Ausai did. Or the thing that had worn Prince Ausai’s skin—the thread and spirit of Kithamar itself. The god that she had been raised to worship.
“When they fall, you will be prince of the city, Andomaka,” it said. “And I will be you. It’s the only way this works.”
Three days after Longest Night and a week still before Tenthday, Alys walked unsteadily back from her night’s drinking. She’d thought that being around people would be less awful than being alone, and she’d been partly right. The soup had been warm, and they’d had meat tarts with spiced pork that she could still feel burning pleasantly on the back of her tongue. There had been wine with only a little water in it. The wash of bodies and heat made a welcome change from Darro’s hole, for a few hours at least. Korrim and Calm Biran had sung a drunken round, celebrating the coming of the light, and she’d felt the tension growing at the back of her neck.
As she walked, she realized that part of what drove her back into the dark and the cold of her room was guilt. It had come in mouse-quiet. She’d enjoyed herself for a little while, and she’d forgotten Darro. For the time it took to eat a bowl of soup and drink a cup of wine, she’d lived in a world where Darro was truly forgotten. It was a mistake she couldn’t allow herself again.
As she took the dark stairs, she heard a man’s deliberate cough. It came from behind her own door. Darro’s door. She took her club in her fist, rage and fear flowing into her like she’d found a spider in her hair. She kicked the door open.
Tregarro sat at her table. His scarred face caught the light of a little oil lamp. He wasn’t woven from smoke this time. He’d actually come in the flesh. Magic would have been less alarming.
“How did you find me?” Alys asked.
“Fuck you,” he answered calmly. “And close the door.”
She did, but she didn’t sit. Her gaze shifted, checking to see that Darro’s box was where she’d left it, closed and undisturbed. She relaxed when she saw it was safe.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Tregarro nodded. “She said you were hungry for work. Is that still true?”
“Yes,” Alys said without pausing to think.
“There’s work. In Riverside.”
“All right,” Alys said. “What is it?”
“Are you loyal to her?”
Alys frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I am. I’m loyal to her. If I think for a moment that you would put her or our work in danger, they would never find your body. You know that.”
With a shock, she realized the scarred man was frightened. She didn’t know what of. “I know,” she said.
“There’s a girl who’s been trysting with a boy while his family’s elsewhere. It’s a merchant house. You’re to find the house.”
“What can you tell me of it?”
“Just that.”
Alys scowled.
“If it was simple, I’d have done it already,” the scarred man said. “Find the house. Watch over it, and when they make their little love meeting, you’ll interrupt them and kill the girl.”
Alys shifted her weight. Part of her was already refusing. Find a merchant house with young lovers freshening up the luck? That had to be half of them. And walking into danger was one thing, even anticipating a fight. But the prospect of murdering someone—of seeking them out in order to leave them dead—was like looking over the edge of a cliff. It left her head spinning and her heart beating fast. She told herself it was just excitement. “Kill her?”
“Yes.”
“Is she one of the people who killed my brother?”
“She’s one of the people who’s against us. That’s all you need to know.”
“And her boy?”
“I don’t give a shit about him. But the girl dies.”
She tried to imagine what Darro would have done. What he would have said, and how he would have said it. He would have been fearless. He would have been hard. She wasn’t either of those things, but she could learn to be. She could pretend she was until it came true. She smiled his smile, leaned against the wall, her hand resting on the club. Her breath was short, and her heart tapped against her chest.
“A girl who’s with a boy?” she said. “Next you’ll be telling me to look for someone who’s breathing.”
“I know it isn’t much to start from. But do what you can, and you’ll be paid.”
She shrugged the way she imagined Darro might have. “Then I’ll do what I can.”