“So how are you going to help?”
“Why did Saffa come here?”
“To the city?”
“To the Silt.”
It might only have been lack of sleep, but Sammish thought it was a stupid thing to ask. “Because Darro tried to kill her.”
“That’s what came before, true. But maybe there’s a relationship, maybe there isn’t. What makes you think that your boy Darro acting poorly would make her come here?”
“Someone’s trying to kill you, you go where they can’t.”
“Seems wise, yeah? The way your friend holed up with Aunt Thorn when that bluecloak was looking to open her skull for her. Only Aunt Thorn has iron doors and guards. I don’t. Did I lock you out?”
“She was just being hard to find,” Sammish said. “The Silt’s no place.”
“Wasteland,” Goro agreed. “Hard to find anyone out here, because there’s no one here to find. No good way to get here. No reason to stay once you do. So there you are.”
“Where I am?”
“Now you know how her mind works. Glad I could help. Now warm your hands up and get the fuck out of here. I told you, I have business. And don’t think for a moment I’ll let you off bringing me that bread. You agreed.”
And in fact, Sammish had brought the bread. With all that and knowing what had happened to Orrel, it still took her days to understand where the Bronze Coast woman was hiding.
On the other side of the rope, the streets stank. No prison carts had made their way down these streets in weeks, and the shit and trash were piled on the paving stones. If it had been summer, the reek would have been terrible. With the winter still in its depths, the bodies of dogs and the turds and the sacks left on the ground after the food and water had been taken from them all had a white coating of frost. With no one leaving the quarantine, the people unlucky enough to live in these houses survived on a grain and water allotment from the Temple tossed in by the guards and whatever their friends and family could spare them. For someone whose neighbors disliked them, who had no one to help with their survival, plague was the second most likely thing to kill them.
Sammish turned a corner. The harsh, clean sunlight pushed through between the buildings on a little widening in the street where a dry cistern stood, its pipes capped by the city. The shutters around it were closed, but Sammish had the sense of people behind them. There were eyes on her, she was sure of it. If she’d been wrong in coming here, she’d been very, very wrong. She walked to the cistern, clambered onto its low stone wall, and tried for once to be seen.
“I’ve got medicine! Herbs from the hospital! And fresh water!” The white steam of her breath caught the sunlight, swirled, and vanished.
A set of brown, cracked shutters opened behind her. A girl no more than seven years old looked out. Sammish lifted a hand in welcome, but the girl didn’t react. There was some movement at the doorway of a house, and then another a little farther down the street. Sammish dug through her bag and pulled out a little water jug. She held it up.
“I don’t need money! I just want to talk!”
And find a foreign wizard woman who doesn’t want me to find her. And get out of here without getting sick. And not have anyone put a knife in me so they can take all my things. Weirdly, the unspoken thoughts made her smile.
A thin man leaned out of a doorway. He might have been sick. He might only have been hungry. His hair was filthy, and he wore a tunic that might have been yellow or white or green once. Sammish smiled to him and held out the jug. He walked with a hitch in his step, like something had gone wrong with one leg. He made his way to the cistern and looked up at her. For a long moment, she wasn’t sure he was going to speak.
“I’m Dannid.”
“Sammish.”
“I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve never seen you before. You don’t have people here.”
“I don’t. And I’m looking for someone else who doesn’t. She’s older than me, and she’d have come just before the quarantine came up.”
“Did she bring the plague?”
“I don’t think so,” Sammish lied. “She’s older than me. Not from Kithamar. She has a mole on her face.”
Dannid looked at the water jug, then back at Sammish’s eyes. She saw the calculation going on in his mind. As tired and weak as he was, if it came to a fight, she thought she’d win. As long as no one came to join him. But there were more shutters opening now. Another door, farther down the street.
Sammish held out the water jug. “Ask your friends if they’ve seen her. I’ll be here.”
Dannid took it like he’d been given something precious, and not a double handful of baked mud around four swallows of water. “I’ll ask,” he said. It didn’t matter much if he did. Another man came out into the street, and a thin woman behind him. Sammish wished she’d brought more to trade with, but she had what she could get. Wishing the world were different was a luxury.
The woman came forward next. She hadn’t seen Saffa either, but her child had the fever. Sammish gave her some of the herbs. And then a young boy came from another building. And then an older man. Sammish handed out something to each of them with a growing sense of fear. Every time her sack grew lighter, she was that much closer to failure.
She was giving a jar of nettle tea to a grey-haired man when she noticed another figure in the street. She hadn’t seen what door the woman had come from or seen her step out around a corner. The woman no one had seen was simply there.
“Wait,” Sammish said, grabbing the grey-haired man by the shoulder. When he turned back, she took a jar of water and some salt pork from the sack and handed him the rest. “You give it out, yeah? You know this place better than I do.”
“Bless you,” the old man said. “Thank you for this kindness.”
Sammish hopped off the cistern wall and trotted toward Saffa. The attention of the street stayed with the sack and whatever might still be in it. Saffa turned her back and began to walk away, but not so quickly that Sammish couldn’t catch up. She fell into step beside the Bronze Coast woman as she turned down a side street. The boundary rope cut across the next intersection like a line inked in the air.
She had thought so much about how to reach this moment, and now that it was here, she wasn’t sure what to say. Saffa didn’t seem inclined to help her either. At a narrow wooden doorway with a chain across it, she stopped, pulled at one of the boards, and the chain went slack enough to open. Saffa ducked inside, and Sammish followed before the door was closed against her.
Inside was a tiny room with a mattress of old straw, a night pot, and little else. Prisoners lived better than this. Saffa sat on the mattress with her legs crossed under her. Sammish stood. The silence between them was unbearable.
“Did you do this? The fever? I mean, did you make that happen?”
“I used what I found. Why are you following me?” Saffa said, and her voice was hard as stone.
“To help,” Sammish said. “I have a plan. I mean, part of one. The shape of one.” She paused, but the Bronze Coast woman didn’t speak. Sammish balled her hands into fists and bulled ahead. “Andomaka took your boy. Probably he’s at the brotherhood’s house in Green Hill. I know where that is.”