“I’m sorry,” Sammish said for what felt like the hundredth time. Only this time, Saffa was nearly enough herself again to answer.
“Thank you. At least I know. At least I can stop now. It isn’t the kindness I wanted, but it’s the one I have.”
“Couldn’t we… I don’t know. Put him back?”
“My son is not what his father was. And even if he were, Ausai’s hiding place has been found. He won’t stay there. Timu is gone.”
“It’s over, then? You’re stopping?”
“I have nothing to do here. Everything I loved is gone. This city is death for me now. I’ll go home. I’ll… I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“Or,” Sammish said.
Saffa’s eyes, watery and bloodshot, found hers. The woman pulled back her hand, and Sammish let her. The thoughts that had been turning themselves over through the long, cold walk found words. Sammish thought each sentence before she spoke them, leaning forward with her fingers woven together.
“Hear me out. You aren’t the first to fight this thing. That one you were talking about, Andomaka’s father. He said they probably wouldn’t need the boy, but then they did. Something went wrong for them. You didn’t steal the knife. Someone else did that. I don’t know who they were or what made them take the chance, but they took it. You’re not alone in hating this thing.” Then, a moment later, “We’re not alone.”
“This isn’t your fight.”
“You don’t know what my fight is,” Sammish said, and the words were sharper than she meant them to be. She started for an apology and stopped. “All I’m saying is that other people have stood against this.”
“Who are they, though? Are they alive? Do they still fight?”
“I don’t know, but… I mean, we’re here.”
Saffa looked at her hands, rubbing her palms together slowly with a sound like the hiss of wind in a loose shutter. She shook her head. “You are kind to offer, but no.”
“I’m not offering you anything,” Sammish said. “I’m telling you something. There was a plan to break them. All right, it didn’t work. That doesn’t mean it can’t ever work. And if it can, I’m going to do it. You can stay and help me, or you can go home. I’m not your jailer. But I’m going to fix this.”
It was astonishing to hear herself say it and feel her own sincerity. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken something aloud that mattered to her. She always kept it so quiet. It felt like breathing in after swimming too long underwater. She saw the question forming in Saffa’s expression, and she thought it would once again be Why? She was wrong.
“How?”
“Not sure,” Sammish said. “But I’m going to start by taking that fucking knife back.”
Tregarro stood on the stone stairway, his lieutenant quietly behind him. Sleet had come in through the shattered window and darkened the stone. Two girls in servants’ robes were mopping it up with rags, wringing the freezing water into an old tin bucket. Their hands were raw from the cold. The window itself was a ruin. Time and weather had weakened the lead. When the spy or assassin or whatever she’d been had thrown the shutter through it, it had shattered like a pitfighter who’d taken coin to fall at the first punch.
It had been a bad day. Something had happened with Elaine a Sal. No one had announced anything, but servants’ gossip became masters’ gossip faster than a stone dropped, and Green Hill was alive with speculation.
Andomaka, in her role as cousin to the prince and high blood of the city, was at the palace, finding out what she could about her false cousin. If they were lucky, the little bitch was dead, but he hadn’t heard from his hired knives, and every hour they didn’t come for the rest of their coin made it seem less likely. The better guess was that her assignation had been discovered, and the so-called prince was having her punished or spirited out of the city until the problem could be addressed. She might even be pregnant, which would mean killing her while she carried or else having a baby to slaughter before Andomaka could take the throne.
And also this.
“How many men did we have on duty?” Tregarro asked.
“Eighteen, sir. We have fifty on the force. Fifty-three. Three watches, but at night most doors are locked, so there’s a few less on patrol. And they all take days off to rest. It’s tradition.”
He was a younger man, and a dedicant to the mysteries of the brotherhood without yet being advanced enough to know the deepest of them. And he talked too much when he was anxious.
“And yet,” Tregarro said, and gestured to the window.
“They say she was dressed like a servant,” his lieutenant said.
“I know she was. I’m the one who told you that. What I’m asking is how eighteen of our guard let some girl slip into the private temple just because she was wearing a cheap cloak.”
“I… they didn’t see her.”
“She’s a witch now too? Made herself invisible? Turned herself into a mouse?”
“They just didn’t notice her.”
“Well, maybe if we whip a few of them, it will sharpen their eyesight.”
The hesitation before he replied was enough to say he expected to be first man tied to the post. Which, if it came to that, he would be. “If you say, sir.”
“Double shifts. No days off for anyone until I say so. And nobody goes into or out of the private temple without being known. Anyone that tries to sneak by either way, open their throat and we’ll question the corpse.”
His lieutenant nodded sharply, turned, and walked stiffly away. Likely he was still more than half ready for the whip. Fair. Tregarro was more than half ready to wield it. But after a failure as utter as this, it was better to consult with his master than run ahead and risk doing something Ausai—Kithamar—didn’t desire.
The scars on his cheek itched the way they did when he was getting sick, but this wasn’t an illness. His body was only telling him that he was frightened, and he was doing all he could to ignore the message. He walked back slowly, following the path the spy had run, looking for anything that seemed odd or out of place. Any sign she might have left that would lead back to who she was and where he could find her. It was only hallways. The girl had been a shadow.
In the temple, Ausai sat cross-legged on the altar. His young body seemed at ease, and his expression was almost mischievous. The glass beads of their game were in a complex position, caught at midgame as if the two players had only stepped away from the board. Tregarro looked at the board, trying to guess which color would make the next move.
“Red,” the boy said, as if hearing the thought. “What do you think he should do? Attack or entrench?”
“The attack is almost always more dangerous,” Tregarro said.
“I agree,” Ausai said. “What did you find?”
“Nothing you don’t already know, my lord.” He felt the urge to report that he’d doubled the guard, that he’d punish the men who’d failed them, that he apologized for the failure. He didn’t let his chagrin loosen his tongue, though. He only waited.
“Still, that isn’t nothing. She said we had friends in common, if not friends we liked. She talked of Saffa and she knew Andomaka’s name. That’s two places we touch. And she knew to look here. Three. That’s actually quite a bit. And she didn’t trust me.” The spirit wearing the boy’s skin cracked his knuckles like a workman about to turn to a hard job. “It’s fascinating that she didn’t trust me. There are gods on the streets these days, Tregarro. They sense the thinness like fish sense the worm. I can feel them bumping against me sometimes. They think they can take this place back, but they’re wrong.”