For a moment, it seemed like Sammish wouldn’t. Like she’d grind Alys’s bones together in her grip out of spite. Her scowl looked like hatred. Worse, it looked like contempt. She let Alys go.
“He wasn’t this, Alys. What you’ve become, with your swagger and your intrigues? He wasn’t like that. You’re being what you wish he’d been, but Darro was just another Longhill knife running the pulls he could find, same as the rest of us. He wasn’t loyal. He wasn’t powerful. He wasn’t your pale bitch’s lap dog. This that you’re doing? It doesn’t even rhyme with him.”
Alys stood up too fast. The bench scraped against the brisk floor. From the next table, Nimal and Cane looked over, curiosity and amusement in their eyes. Alys leaned in, towering over Sammish as best she could and pointing a hard finger at her with each word. “I tried to help you. I helped you.”
She turned to the door, wide steps and head high to convince herself that she didn’t feel the sting of tears in her eyes. She more than half expected Sammish to call her name or rush over to take her elbow and pull her back to the table. If she had, Alys would have gone, but the taproom door opened on the frostbound street and nothing came. When she glanced back, Sammish was sitting where she had been, her face in her hands. It wasn’t grief or regret. Maybe exhaustion. Alys let the door close behind her.
For the first few streets, her heart felt like the raw spot where a scab had been ripped off too soon. But each corner she passed, each wagon and wheelbarrow that creaked in her way, each voice raised in the cold, the pain turned warmer. By the time she passed into Newmarket, her mind was red with rage. Sammish was jealous. Of course she was. She’d been half a step from streetbound while Alys was paid from the coffers of Green Hill. But that wasn’t Alys’s fault. She’d offered to share. She’d tried to. When Sammish had wandered over to Stonemarket in the killing chill, Alys had taken her in.
Besides that, Alys hadn’t needed the girl’s help in any of this. Everything important that she’d done, she’d done on her own. If Sammish hadn’t wanted to be part of it, she could have kept her narrow ass in Longhill where it belonged. Alys would still have found that first black candle. She would still have taken the knife to Green Hill. Sammish hadn’t been the one to catch Andomaka’s eye. Sammish hadn’t taken Tregarro’s contract or faced down slavemasters for the Bronze Coast boy. And everything that Sammish had said about Darro… Alys didn’t want to think about what Sammish had said about Darro.
Why won’t you look at my face?
A dog darted out ahead of her too close, and she swung her club, catching its side. The dog yipped and ran away. If Alys felt a flicker of regret, it didn’t last. “Next time stay out of my way,” she called after it. But she kept watching long enough to reassure herself it wasn’t limping.
The houses that lined the streets grew a little taller. The streets grew wide enough for two carts to pass each other and room between them. To the west, she heard the high whistle of the bluecloaks summoning help to a fight, and she tacked east away from it. At some point, she must have been weeping, because her cheeks ached now where salt and cold conspired against them. She rubbed her face with her palms until the pain went away. And before Ullin saw her.
He was lounging in a doorway, smoking a clay pipe with the half-impatient air of someone waiting for a late friend. When he saw her, his eyebrows lifted a degree. Alys found a bit of wall beside him and put her back against it.
“Didn’t think you’d be here today,” he said.
“Life’s full of these little shocks,” she said acidly, and he laughed.
“Well, then I don’t have to wait to share the good news. I saw them.”
Sammish and the humiliation of the taproom vanished like a candle flame being snuffed. Ullin smiled and spat smoke.
“The old man and the young one—the pretty boy—took the Inlisc girl off in a carriage. I think to a guild meeting or the magistrate. Sun hadn’t moved two fingers in the sky before our boy Garreth was at the door. And a woman travelling alone not long after that.”
Alys felt her breath grow shallow, but Ullin shook his head. “They’re not there now. The carriage came back before I could manage anything, and I don’t like going into this sort of job by myself. But if our love dogs come here when those three are gone, we have a way to predict the meetings. And I saw how the happy couple snuck out. Which means I know how we can sneak in too.”
The day had been hard, that was all. The sick feeling in Alys’s gut was only the whiplash of Sammish’s unexpected cruelty and this happy surprise. You’ve never killed anything more than a rat rose in her mind. For a moment, she felt younger than she was, and alone in a way she didn’t want to understand. She realized Ullin was waiting for her to say something, so she answered him.
“Good.”
Sad Linly walked—trudged, rather—through the frostbound streets, her knees aching to announce a change in the weather. The cold bit, but not as sharply as it had even last week. Any breeze more powerful than a breath had the killing threat of winter, but find a patch of sunlight and still air, and it was almost warm. If she had gone outside the city walls, she would have seen no leaves on the trees, and underbrush like twigs with only the crisp brown remnants of the last year clinging to it. But the bark might have had a touch of green on it. The withered limbs might have been just a bit less withered. It wasn’t springtime, but it was the promise that springtime would appear. And her knees ached. Change was coming.
Every doorway she passed, she knew. She’d lived her whole life in Longhill, and rarely gone even as far as the eastern side of the river. Some deep, atavistic part of her still thought of it as the Hansch city rather than another part of Kithamar. She liked being where the people all looked like her, slept like her, ate the foods she ate even if they were the cheapest parts the butcher had on offer. Growing up, she’d felt safe in Longhill. Now she’d lost two of her three children and was on her way to losing the third. And still, she was out of her little room, away from her housemates, and looking for her friend.
Grey Linnet hadn’t always been Grey Linnet any more than she herself had been born Sad Linly. She’d known the woman since they were both girls. Linly and Linnet, drinking to match the boys in the taproom and breaking hearts and cocks. The memories were bawdy and distant and more than a little shameful. They kept her warm.
These days, Grey Linnet kept a little room not too far from Seepwater. Big Salla had come to Linly yesterday asking if she knew where Grey Linnet was. No one had seen her, and the children wanted to go to the Silt and look for treasures. She’d told the children that the river was solid. It wouldn’t be washing up anything new until after thaw, but Big Salla wouldn’t be moved. And it was best to check on Linnet. She might be sick or hurt, and Longhill looked after its own.
Linly reached the alley and turned down it. Linnet’s door was old wood with a leather hinge, and she slapped it with the palm of her hand. “Linnet? Are you in there, you old bag? Are you all right?”
No one answered. The door was latched, but the hinge was weak. It wasn’t hard to make enough of a crack to slide in her boot knife and lift the catch. It had been a long time since she’d forced a door, but it was a skill that faded slowly.