The girl, on the end of the bed, had taken off her cloak. Her gown was pale. The city guardsman, her lover, had rough canvas trousers and was naked from the waist up, and held a sword in his hand.
All this between one sprinting footstep and the next.
And then, chaos.
Ullin went for the boy, swinging hard for his ribs. The boy parried with the speed of instinct, pushing in toward the attack to get inside Ullin’s guard. The girl—the target, the reason they were all here—stood as if she were about to command them all to stop.
Alys swung her club, cracking the girl on the shoulder and spilling her to the floor. She was aware of Ullin and the guard to her right, and one of them shouting. Her hands ached from the blow she’d delivered. The girl looked up at her from the floor with fear and surprise and something else. Rage, maybe. Alys lifted her club, ready to bring it down on the girl’s skull, but when she swung, her victim was bolting for the door. Alys shifted, but only caught the girl a glancing blow across the neck, and that with the haft of the club. If it had been a blade, it would have opened her throat.
Ullin shouted something, but Alys was grabbing at the girl’s collar, trying to haul her back. If she could just knock her down again, she could finish it. They pulled at each other like children wrestling in the street, but without the play. The girl slipped loose, slammed out the door, and Alys, shrieking, followed. The girl was down the hall, head lowered and sprinting. Alys loped behind her. They went down the wooden stairs in a tumble, and out into the herb garden. The girl went for the low point in the wall, but Alys knew she would. She swung her club in a fast, vicious arc just ahead of her fleeing victim. The stone at the top of the wall split under the blow. The girl pulled back, and Alys put the wall behind her, cutting off the girl’s escape.
They faced each other, feinting to one side and then the other. Alys really saw her for the first time. Thin Hansch face. Light hair. She looked vaguely familiar, but not so much that Alys recognized her. From the house, someone screamed, but whether it was Ullin or the guardsman, she couldn’t tell.
If the girl turned to the house, Alys could cock back her club, swing, and take her in the back of the head. If she pushed through to climb the wall, Alys could bring her down there. She was sure of it. She only needed for the girl to choose which way she was moving when she died.
Only she didn’t. Her arm hung wrong from the shoulder. Broken, likely, from the hit Alys had landed. Mud streaked the girl’s face. Alys didn’t know where that had come from. The girl stood there, looking Alys in the eyes. Somewhere far away, thunder rumbled.
You have to kill her, Alys thought in Tregarro’s voice. You don’t have a choice.
And then Darro. Why won’t you look at my face? Despair radiated from the girl’s expression.
Alys stepped to the side, clearing the way to the wall and the city beyond it. The girl didn’t take the bait, and Alys was shocked to realize it wasn’t bait. It didn’t matter what Tregarro or Andomaka wanted. It didn’t matter what Darro would have done. They weren’t in the garden and Alys was.
“Why are you waiting?” Alys snapped. “Run!”
“This isn’t the right way,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “We have to go the other way.”
“No,” the thing in the boy’s skin said, using the boy’s voice. “Keep coming. This is right.”
“You can go on your own, then. You don’t need me. I’m going back.”
Sammish tried to pull her hand free, but the boy’s grip tightened, and his eyes went hard. The pretend game was over. When he spoke again, his voice was lower. “You are going to tell me where she is.”
“Fine, then,” Sammish said, stepping toward him, then dropped her full weight against his hand, pushing where his thumb and fingers met, just the way she would have against a bluecloak’s restraining grip. Whatever the thing was, it hadn’t practiced holding a Longhill street rat in check. Her arm free, she turned and bolted. Its voice rose behind her, screaming for the house guards. Good. Better that it call for help than that it follow on her heels. By the time they knew what they were looking for, she had to be someplace else or she’d die. She was certain of that.
She made it to the temple, hopped over the altar stone, scattering the beads of the game and knocking over a lantern as she passed. If she was lucky, they’d stop to keep it from putting the house to fire. The map she’d built in her mind was of a place she’d only seen once now, and that from the other direction. Fear muddied it. A wrong turn could put her at a dead end or in a guard tower. She didn’t think. She only ran.
She’d passed a window coming into the temple maze. The one with the foggy glass and the shutters. It was where she headed now. Behind her, more voices were rising loud. A horn blatted the alarm. She couldn’t outrun sound. The window came before her. It wasn’t as wide as she’d remembered, but the glass was old and the wooden shutters thick. She yanked the wood down, putting all her weight on the hinges until they bent and gave way. A plank of wood half the size of her body with splinters at the edge. She braced herself against it and ran, putting her shoulder behind it, shouting as if her voice alone could shatter the glass.
The window broke, and she scrambled up through the hole where it had been. It was a longer drop to the ground than she’d expected. This part of the brotherhood’s house was built on a hill, and the alley below her was lower than it should have been. She didn’t hesitate. For a long, terrible second, she fell. There was time enough to wonder if it had been the best idea.
The alleyway hit the bottom of her feet. Her knees snapped up into her chest, knocking her breath out. She had to run, but she couldn’t even stand up. The horn sounded behind her again, and a roll of thunder.
She pulled herself up to standing, swung one foot forward, put her weight on it. She could walk. As she did, she pulled her cloak off, pulling the sleeves through so that the paler fabric on the inside faced out. By the time she reached a corner where the alley joined a larger way, she was wearing what looked like a different cloak. She took a length of string from her pocket and tied back her hair. She was limping, but that was fine. It didn’t seem like the glass had cut her, or if it had, she wasn’t bleeding badly enough that it showed.
The house of the Daris Brotherhood boiled with guards and servants like a kicked hornet’s nest. She glanced back at it with mild curiosity, wondering what all that was about. Whatever it was, it was nothing to do with her. She turned south, trundling down the street. Her feet ached. Her knee hurt. There was a storm coming.
All that, and she still had to get her pan.
The bluecloaks came even before the family returned, their whistles calling guardsmen and curious citizens alike. Even when the first fat raindrops fell, the citizens of Riverport huddled under awnings and lifted their hoods rather than look away. The trading house at the center of the winter caravan appeared to have some new scandal. Freezing rain wouldn’t keep curiosity from having its day.
When the family did return, they weren’t allowed into their own house. Not at first. Ropes had been put up, and bluecloaks stood at the iron stanchions to keep them in place. The older man—the head of the family, Alys guessed—refused all shelter even as the younger one tried ineffectually to hold a blanket over his head. The water plastered his white hair to the old man’s scalp. The pretty Inlisc girl was weeping, and the old, pinch-faced woman looked ready to take a knife to someone. Alys watched them from the middle of the crowd of onlookers, leaning on her club like it was a cane.