“We aren’t old yet,” Karsen said. And then, more softly, “No matter how it feels.”
“You sound weary?”
“It’s the time of year,” Karsen lied. “I’ll be glad when the darkness has passed. That’s all. Do you remember when my sister decided she’d join with the chanters? Out there on the street corner with her shirt off, calling back the light.”
Andomaka smiled and shook her head. “I do not. And I’d recall that, I think.”
“I suppose our parents got it quieted down. It was all the talk in our house anyway. You’re still with the Daris Brotherhood?”
“On and off,” Andomaka lied.
“You should come to the palace more often. I know Byrn would appreciate your company.”
Was that a threat? Was it a test? Andomaka smiled emptily. “Perhaps I will.”
They reached the stairway back down into the warmth of the great hall. He took the opportunity to take his arm back from her, and she didn’t cling. It was interesting watching him, like reading a poem in a language she only slightly knew. She wasn’t sure if the unease she saw in him came from him or from her. But she saw his jaw go tight when the first shouts came from the great hall—laughter and a wild whooping. They walked a little faster with Karsen in the lead, and the scene they walked into was perhaps the least expected thing in the evening.
In the great hall, Byrn a Sal, prince of Kithamar, was galloping through the crowd like a child in a playroom. He had a broom between his legs that he whipped like a horse as he ran. The palace guard cleared the path for him as best they could, but he was erratic. His face was pale, but with patches of unhealthy redness as if he were wearing makeup that he was in the process of sweating off. His grin was wide and drunken, and all the people he passed laughed and clapped him on. They had to. He was the prince. He was the city.
“Excuse me,” Karsen said, and made his way into the crowd. Andomaka watched him, and the prince, and the community of all the highest families in the city. The sense of wrongness had to be more than hers. The sense of anxiety and illness was as much in the air as the scent of wine and smoke and bodies. Only a few knew that a false prince sat the throne, and she couldn’t be certain who they were besides herself. She clapped and laughed, and acted as though it was a lovely joke. In the privacy of her mind, she thought You are a traitor by blood. I will kill you and yours and remove the stain of your rule from history. You will be forgotten. And the thought made laughing easier.
The prince whooped again, turned, and started galloping in the other direction. The redcloaks scurried to get ahead of him, and in one of the near galleries, a drummer struck up a beat. Someone began to sing a traditional song so old that half the words were fallen Hansch. Slowly, the whole great hall joined in. They’d all heard it from their cradles so it had a sense of home and comfort, though the words, looked at carefully, were a call to war and slaughter. Andomaka joined in, closing her eyes and letting the music wash over her. There was nothing more she needed to do. She had headed off the unexpected threat by giving Elaine the permission she needed to continue her dalliance. And more than that, she’d found something of the lover’s name. Garreth. A scent to put before the little wolf girl and all her other hunters.
It was such a small mistake on Elaine’s part. Easy to overlook. The prince’s daughter would never understand the role it had played in her death.
The new year ran cold. Sammish knew from trust that the days were growing longer, the hours unfurling more slowly. She didn’t experience it that way. The bright, clear skies that came with Longest Night and the days that followed vanished. Clouds crowded down over the city, dark as stones. The snow that fell from them was small and dry, like numberless tiny teeth. The wind that carried it was sharp and merciless.
All through the city, the decorations were gone. There were no celebrations now, just the long durance of winter and distant promise of the thaw. The dogs that haunted the streets grew thinner, and the rats grew hungry and bold. The charity houses gave out thin soup to the streetbound who could find a bowl or cup to carry it away in. The shelves and cabinets that the bounty of harvest had filled continued their long annual exhalation. Each jar that came down, each crate of salt that gave up its bit of pork and beef to the stewpot, was one less to see the city through to summer. The quarantine in Stonemarket seemed to be holding in the illness; it hadn’t spread to the rest of the city. But the men and women of the Smoke and Green Hill were forced to make their way across the river to buy food, and the extra custom drove the price of bread and cheese higher for the citizens of the east bank. Even if the warehouses were opened and Stonemarket declared clean and healthy, it might be a starving spring in Longhill. Food only went so far when the coin to buy it ran out.
The city was out of balance, and everyone seemed to sense it. No one seemed to know what to do, least of all Sammish. All she could think was keep her head down and do what she had always done: survive. In the mornings, she took the stale bread that was left for her, if there was any, and made her rounds of the poorer streets. If she saw any of Aunt Thorn’s people or even just the normal denizens of Longhill who looked a bit more desperate than usual, she’d shift her route around them. The little profit she made wasn’t worth dying for, but if she went without for too long, she wouldn’t be able to pay the baker’s rent. And without her rent, he wouldn’t be able to buy his flour and honey.
Everything depended on everything else, and all of it was fragile.
In the afternoons, she studied the chalk marks from the brewer’s window or cleaned ash from the boilers of a bathhouse near the Temple or ran her ice-bound track through the city gathering knives for the whetstone man. Tramping through ice-grey streets with aching hands pulled up into her sleeves, Sammish could almost forget Alys and Saffa, Andomaka of Green Hill, and the whole vast, dark mess that had spilled into her life after Darro’s death. When she did think of it, she told herself it wasn’t hers to carry anymore, and she was lucky to be done with it. Sometimes she was almost convinced.
She folded the blades into the leather satchel: a pair of straight blades from the cobbler’s shop, a set of cloth shears from the tailor, and—to her advantage—a set of five blades from a tanner’s house at the edge of the city. The stink of the place got into her clothes, but they paid well, and the extra work made up for the butcher’s trade that she’d lost.
She stepped into the shed just as she had a hundred times before. The winter cold pushed in from the walls, radiating like heat from a fire. Arnal sat at his stone. The iron brazier at his side was enough to keep the water from freezing onto the stone, and its fire cast a little light. The old man was wrapped in wool blankets and a leather hat with patchy fur trim over the ears. His hair pushed out from under it like a vine growing between bricks. His eyes flickered when he looked at her. It wasn’t even a real expression. Just a moment of pain or regret. He put down the knife he’d been working—a thumb-long, three-sided dagger that grooms used to trim their horses’ hooves—and waved her forward toward him. Sammish felt a sudden rush of apprehension, but Arnal’s face seemed kindly enough. She went to him, holding the leather satchel out before her.