The wise thing would have been to do as Darro told her: put her eyes down and walk away. Ullin would know to look for her, if he could. There was nothing to gain by being here, and on the off chance that Garreth Left had survived, he might be able to point her out as one of the assassins. But with so many people to stand behind, he probably wouldn’t.
She got ahead of me at the stairs, Alys rehearsed, planning the inflections she’d use and the gestures with them. By the time I got close, she was already in the street. We’ll find her next time. Next time, she won’t get away.
Now that the moment had passed, she regretted letting the girl live. It wasn’t that she had suddenly become bloodthirsty, but if she’d beaten the girl’s head in, all this would be over. She wouldn’t still be dreading it. Or feeling the shame over letting the pretty Hansch girl slip away. If she’d have been feeling the shame of something else, that was for a different time. Today’s failure was today’s ache.
A murmur passed through the crowd and brought her back to herself. Garreth Left was stepping out into the street. A wide-set bluecloak with an oversized silver badge of office at his belt and a scowl the shape of murder had him by the elbow. The young man’s face was pale. He walked carefully, like movement hurt him, and there was blood in the brown hair over his left ear.
The old man of the house said something, but between bodies and raindrops, she couldn’t make it out. The boy straightened and replied. Two more bluecloaks emerged from the doorway, hauling a cart behind them. The crowd pulled her forward like a swimmer in a current as they tried for a better look.
Ullin was on the cart, covered in blood. He wasn’t moving, but she told herself he might only be hurt or unconscious. They stopped him before the old man and sluiced Ullin’s head clean with a bucket of steaming water. The old man took a moment, then shook his head. Ullin didn’t move. Would never move again.
The horror and sorrow were overwhelming, but at their heart a tiny relief glimmered. She wouldn’t have to lie to him, anyway. She turned her back to the merchant house, pushing through to where the crowd thinned, and then south and east toward her room and Darro’s ashes, and a storm in the back of her head to match the thunder outside.
The night was long, cold, and terrible. Sammish had wanted nothing more than to turn south toward Stonemarket and Saffa, but the danger of being followed or tracked sent her north and across the river. By the time she reached Riverport, the storm had joined her—thick, slushy drops that froze as soon as they touched the paving stones. Her cloak was sodden, and she was shivering. Snow would have been warmer. Snow would have been kinder. There would be people dead on the streets by morning simply for not having the coin to buy shelter or the friendships to borrow on. It would be a sad joke if she was one of them.
Her fears kept her walking. First, her fear that the guards of the Daris Brotherhood had found a way to track her through the city streets. Then that the cold and her hunger would overwhelm her. And then, as her pace warmed her and the narrow streets of Longhill grew near, the fear of the thing in Timu’s skin.
It was always like this, even if it wasn’t always this bad. While she worked a pull, her mind was calm and detached, lost in the role she imagined herself into. And then after, her two selves had to come back together, and all the fear and danger shook her. If it had been a close thing, it might have made her feel sick. Sometimes she woke in the night with the memory of some particularly near miss with the bluecloaks or an angry touch, and she sat up, shuddering against what might have happened, until sleep came again. Tonight was no different, except that there was a growing dread of the future as well. Saffa was in Stonemarket, waiting for her to come back with a report of the brotherhood and its layout. Sammish had something terrible ahead of her to add to the ones behind.
She made it back to her room by the baker, stripped her soaked clothes off, and crawled under the blanket. Her body felt thick and heavy as a woman drowned. Sleep came on with a pull so sudden and profound, she wondered if it might be death. Only she woke afterward, so it wasn’t.
She put on her other set of clothes and hung the still-wet ones to dry. Her body ached. The rain was still falling in a thin, frigid drizzle. Not sleet any longer, but not much better. It was a long walk to Stonemarket and the quarantine. It would have been easier not to go. The angry clouds and filthy weather were an excuse. But then she imagined Saffa waiting, wondering if she had been caught. With her luck, the older woman would vanish again out of an overgrown sense of caution, and Sammish would have to track her down just to give her bad news. Better that she do it now.
She had a strip of dried pork that she’d been saving, and she chewed it as she walked, working it like a dog gnawing wood and then sucking the salt and old fat out of the gristle. Living like this was dangerous. She’d be streetbound before summer if she didn’t find a way to get coin, and whatever she was doing with Saffa and Alys, the dead prince and the live one, it wasn’t going to buy her food. She’d die, and the city would close around her like she’d taken her finger out of water. She wouldn’t leave a hole.
As she walked, memories of Alys floated through her exhausted, cold, hunger-drunk mind. They left her sad. A carter let her ride from the Seepwater bridge halfway through the Smoke and waved to her when she hopped off. It was easy to forget the little acts of kindness in the city, but they were as real as the river, even if they weren’t enough to make up for the darkness and the rot. Sammish made her way west and then north as the clouds broke and an improbably warm sun shone down on a Palace Hill washed clean by the rain. Or as clean as it could ever be, anyway.
A day almost to the hour after she had left Saffa’s plague-guarded retreat, she returned to it. The full circle of Kithamar left her feet hurting, her legs tremblingly tired, and her mind eerily clear. Now that she knew where to find her, slipping unseen past the ropes wasn’t hard. The quarantined streets were quiet and empty. A few new sacks lay on the ground where the priests had brought grain and water from the Temple and thrown it in for the locals to part out by whatever method they could. She thought of Orrel sweating himself to death in his little room to the south of the city and wondered whether she shouldn’t be more worried about the sickness that Saffa carried with her like a sword.
The Bronze Coast woman sat in a doorway, waiting. Her dark eyes brightened with relief and hope when she caught sight of Sammish. Then, reading her face, they dimmed. Sammish lowered herself to the street, sitting with her back to the wall. For a time, the only sound was the trickle of meltwater as ice gave way to sunlight. Sammish kept reaching for a way to begin—We’re too late or I made it in, but the news is bad or I’m so sorry—and kept failing to find the right one. Eventually, Saffa broke their silence.
“He was a kind child. He would have been a good man.”
“I’m sorry,” Sammish said, and the way the woman sank at the words said she’d been hoping for different ones, despite the acceptance in what she’d said.
“Tell me,” Saffa said, and Sammish did.
When she reached the moment where the not-boy had asked too much how to find her and it became clear that Timu’s body wasn’t his own any longer, Saffa hung her head low over her knees. She took deep, gulping breaths. Sammish found herself weeping in sympathy as she went on. When she was done, she took the older woman’s hand, and Saffa didn’t pull back. The grief was overwhelming for a time. It had been more than a year that this thin, strong mother had sought her son. Sammish tried to imagine how unforgiving hope would be to drive someone forward like that, alone in a foreign land. Sammish made herself a witness as that hope died.