“Good load today,” she said. “The tanners must have had a heavy month.”
“Or bad technique,” Arnal said, taking the satchel from her hands. “Nothing dulls a blade faster than a bad hand. Sit down with me, eh? We should talk a little.”
Sammish swallowed an apology. She didn’t know what she’d done wrong. If she’d done something wrong. Arnal pulled a little wooden stool over next to the brazier and stopped working the little iron water pump. The flow over the stone died. Sammish watched the subtle tooth of the stone come clear as the last of the water sheeted off it. It felt like an omen.
“I’ve… ah… I’ve decided to make a change,” Arnal said, not looking at her.
“I can get more knives,” Sammish said. “I haven’t been going to the kitchens in Riverport, but I can. Half of those people have their own kitchens. If I go out at daybreak, I could get you a dozen more every week.”
Arnal raised his palm, silencing her. “It’s not you. It’s me. My hands are getting weak. They have been for a few months now. And I’m starting to get the shakes. See?”
Now that he said it, she did. She’d never looked at his fingers before. They were thick and callused all the way to where they met his hand. The nails were yellow, and the flesh where they met his skin was white and cracked as a dropped tile. The shiver in them made her think of leaves in a slight breeze, or a candle flame in a draught. He looked at her looking at them, and his smile was a kind of grief.
“Have you seen a healer?”
“I’ve been drinking a tea for it every night since first snow. It helped for a while. But it’s getting worse now, and the tea tastes like mule piss. I can’t do good work. Not like this. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just old, and the time’s come to step back.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I’ve got a son who works for a tinsmith in the Smoke. He’s got room for a cot, and he said I could stay there. Might be able to do a little work around the smithy on the days I’m feeling right. But this”—he gestured at the little shed; the stone; the pump; the grey, sandy water—“this is over for me.”
“All right,” Sammish said. Her voice sounded calm, given how fast her mind was going. She wasn’t ready. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
“You’ve done fine work for me, these last couple years,” he was saying. “You’re smart, and mostly reliable. I’m sure you’ll find a spot someplace to make up for the shit I paid you.”
“Your brother.”
Arnal tilted his head.
“Your brother runs a brewer’s shop,” Sammish said. “I’ve been practicing the marks for the bettor’s window. Maybe he’s looking for someone?”
Arnal put his trembling hand on his knee. There was sorrow in his eyes that might have been for her or for him or for the way the world ground people like them down. “I can ask him,” he said, and the way he said it meant: No.
Arnal gathered up the satchel and unfolded it, considering the blades as he pulled them out one at a time. Now that she knew to look, she could see the light fluttering on the flats of the blades as he shook. When he was done, he counted out a half dozen bronze coins. Five were old, with the face of Prince Ausai. One was newly minted, bright, and carried Byrn a Sal’s profile on it. Or she guessed that was what it was supposed to be. It didn’t look much like him.
“I can be back for the blades tonight,” she said.
“They can wait for tomorrow. If we run a little late, and they take their coin somewhere else…” He shrugged. What does it matter?
“Tomorrow, then,” Sammish said. As she left, she heard the squeak of the pump and splash of the water. It would probably be the last time. She turned east, toward Longhill and home. As she walked, legs working a hard rhythm to keep her heat up, she thought that she’d have to find some other way to get money. She’d have to ask who had a place for her. What she could do. What she was good for. She didn’t exactly feel the sadness or the humiliation or the loss. She only knew they were there, acknowledged them, and gave them a little space within her.
The rooms in Seepwater, the job at the brewer’s, the bed where she’d imagined herself waking beside Alys’s sleeping body. All of it swirled and scattered like the little angry snowflakes caught by the wind. It hurt, but not as much as she’d thought it would. It was as if she’d known all along that the dream was only a dream, and that someday she’d have to wake up. The only difference between then and now was that the day had come.
“That’s harsh,” Alys said, her breath steaming as they walked.
It was one of the nights she was back in Longhill instead of wherever else her work took her. She had a new red wool scarf at her throat, and a cloak of lined leather that was almost a request that someone knock her down and take it. She swung her lead-tipped club like a Green Hill dandy with a swagger stick.
Sammish shrugged. “It happens.”
“Lots of things happen. Doesn’t mean they’re good.”
Other people had noticed the time that Alys was spending outside the quarter and the money that flowed from her fingertips. Sammish had heard the laughter and the whispers and the speculation. Aunt Thorn had hired Alys on as an assassin. Alys had met a girl in the palace who looked exactly like her, and they’d traded places. She’d started fucking a rich man in Stonemarket who liked the idea of a girl from Longhill dancing on his leash. None of them were right, and all of them meant that something was happening with her. She didn’t fit in Longhill the way she used to.
For Sammish, it was as if there were two Alyses now. There was the angry, hurt, beautiful, funny, soft creature she’d longed for in silence for so long, and then there was this girl—half thug and half fop—who actually sought her company now and then because Sammish knew the truth behind her transformation and apparently Alys didn’t have many people to talk with.
Sammish knew it was an illusion, but she couldn’t get rid of the sense that that first Alys was somewhere in the city, maybe even in Longhill. Walk into the right taproom or market, go to her room at the right moment, and she’d be there, the way she’d always been. They’d go drink hot wine down by the theater and cut some purses and laugh and fall into each other’s arms.
“I mean,” the real girl walking beside her said, “it’s not worth pouting over. I was being sympathetic.”
“Sorry. I must be in a mood.”
“I might be able to help,” Alys said, and her voice dropped to a murmur. “We’re looking for someone in Riverport. I can’t tell you why, but he’s son of a merchant family. We know his name’s Garreth, but that’s all we’re sure of.”
The implications rolled out in front of Sammish like a rug. A mysterious young man who was the new focus of Andomaka and the scarred man, the next job that Darro would have been on if he hadn’t died. The new pull. And if Sammish wanted to help, there might be some table scraps left for her. The way she bristled wasn’t entirely fair. Alys had invited her into pulls before. This wasn’t all that different. It only felt as if it were.
Sammish shook her head. “Doesn’t mean anything to me. The closest I know is a tailor’s boy down in Seepwater called Garret, but I’d bet my right foot that’s nothing to do with yours. Sorry I couldn’t help. Good luck hunting him, though.”