“A woman from the Bronze Coast,” she began, and a shriek came from the street. Someone was screaming Darro’s name. There were other words in the cry, but the only one Darro could make out was sister.
He moved by instinct built from long years of worry. The shutters opened, and the light came in. Below him in the street, Young Caval was waving up to him. The woman’s coronation-day costume of greasy yellow and watery blue was made forlorn by the distress in her expression.
“Darro! Darro! They’re coming for your sister! A guardsman! They’re in the little sac by Ibdish’s. He’s going to kill her!”
The stairway from his room to the street was dark as a chimney. The summer heat drew up it like he was running down into an invisible fire. Darro didn’t remember grabbing his club, but it was in his hand: hard oak with the knobbed end dipped in lead. He reached the street and sprinted along the narrow roads. Speed-blurred faces turned to watch him with mild interest, as if he were part of the day’s show. He knew each of them by name and expected no help. If the positions were reversed, he would have been leaning out the window, curious to see whether the drama below played out as comedy or something tragic. He ignored them and ran.
At the turn toward Ibdish’s house, Darro’s heel slid on a turd some man or dog had left on the cobbles, and he almost fell. Voices raised in threat and anger echoed down the closed street. One of the voices was Alys’s.
The street widened a little where it ended, making a circle hardly wider than a stage with wooden buildings four stories high crowding in around it. There wasn’t so much as an alleyway between them. The street and the doors to Ibdish’s house were the only ways in or out, and Ibdish’s wife had pulled her iron gate closed to keep Alys’s troubles outside. Alys stood on the warped wooden steps, her face dark with rage or effort, her hands in fists at her side. A doughy bluecloak had his foot on the first step and a naked sword in his hand. Men and children looked down from the windows and roofs at the impromptu fighting pit.
“What the fuck is this?” Darro shouted, trying to pull the swordsman’s focus away from his sister. “You step back from her!”
The guard turned. Three long, bloody scratches on his neck said that Alys had fought back already. Even as the man stepped forward, Darro’s awareness spread past him, waiting for the sounds of feet or hooves. One man might be stopped. A full patrol couldn’t.
“This isn’t your concern,” the guardsman said, but there was something off about the cut of his tunic. It was loose and blousy. “I am Tannen Gehart of the city fucking guard. I’m taking this cunt for thieving or I’m cutting her throat right here, and I don’t much care which. I’ll put you in too if you don’t shut your fish-lipped mouth!”
The guard’s belt was gone. That was why he looked wrong. Darro stepped forward on the angle, watching how his enemy’s blade shifted. “You’re a guardsman, where’s your whistle?”
“Not your fucking problem.”
Darro shifted the angle of his approach. “You’re a guardsman, where’s your badge of office?”
“This one stole it,” the guard said, gesturing back with his off hand. Darro didn’t shift to look at Alys. He didn’t want her in the boy’s mind. It would take two fast steps to get close enough to strike and be struck. A blade was the better weapon, but Alys was at the guard’s back. As if he’d heard Darro’s thoughts, the guard brought his sword to the ready.
“All I see,” Darro said, “is a fat boy in a cheap costume assaulting a girl half his size. Doesn’t seem right, does it?”
The guard licked his lips. His gaze flickered. Darro expected him to turn or back away, but he’d judged the man poorly. The rush came with no more warning than a shift at the man’s ankle. The sword curved in a tight arc toward Darro’s neck, the guard’s full weight behind it, and Darro pulled his club up to block before he knew he’d done it. The metal cut a bright notch into the wood.
The guard pushed past him, then turned. Alys and the steps up to Ibdish’s gate were behind Darro now, and the guard stood between him and the free streets. It might seem like the attack had failed, but Darro knew he’d been outmaneuvered.
The guard knew it too.
“I don’t give half a fuck about you, friend,” the guard said, spit blowing from his lips. “But that bitch is—”
Whatever words he’d meant to say were interrupted by a wet splat. A stain as brown as mud drew itself down the guard’s side, and he reared back from the stink. Someone had emptied a night pot into the street. Someone with good aim.
“Who did that?” the guard shouted up at the windows. A single tittering laugh set off a cascade of others. Darro kept his club ready. His knuckles were bleeding and raw. He didn’t know how that had happened. The man shouted again, “Who insults the city guard?”
A long, amber arc of liquid came from a high window, splashing down near the guard without hitting him. Another followed from a different angle.
After that, the street became the wrong side of a turd pit. Alys and Darro pulled back against the iron bars at the top of the stairs while faceless Longhill showed the lone guard what it thought of him and the men he served. Driven back, the guard looked at Darro one last time, then turned and strode away before the impulse to rain filth on him could spread past the cul-de-sac. The stench was terrible, but Darro couldn’t help laughing as he gagged. As Ibdish’s rolling howl began behind them, crying out to know which of the half-dead bastards was going to wash his street, Darro turned to his only living sister.
“What was that about?” he asked.
She paused as if searching for words, then started bawling.
He daubed stinging ointment on his knuckles and leaned out his window, watching for trouble that hadn’t come. Not yet. In the back of his mind, he was planning out how they’d escape if the city guard came around the corner with blades and flame. But maybe they wouldn’t.
“I can’t believe I cried,” Alys said. She was sitting at the blackwood table, batting at the wallet the pale woman had left like a cat playing with a dead insect. “Right out where everyone was watching.”
“Nothing to be ashamed of,” Darro said. “You could have bled out on the stones. Would have, if someone hadn’t thought of something funnier. Anyone would be shaken.”
“I was fine once you came. You’d have beaten him.”
“Maybe.”
“You would have,” Alys said. She’d been like this from the day she was born. Ready to assert that the world was the way she wished it could be, and then insist she was right until the gods relented. It frightened Darro to his bones, because she hadn’t grown out of it. The day she did would be painful.
“At the very least, will you stop working with Orrel?” he asked.
“He’s a good cutter.”
“He’s a skilled cutter. A good one wouldn’t have gone cocky and put his flea across the city guard.”
“It was my mistake. I’ll carry it.”
“Then you’re smarter than he is already. Tell me you’re not rubbing on him.”
Her flash of disgust was more reassuring than a denial would have been.