She’s also dying, Alys thought. Even if not from anything in particular just yet, she’s still dying. It was so clearly true that it should have been trivial, but it stopped her like a slap. Her mother laughed at something the man said. There was a dark gap where her left eyetooth had been. She looked older than the image that Alys had in her mind when she thought Mother.
Alys turned back, edging her way out to the cold street. Her mouth was set in a scowl so profound it ached a little, but she wasn’t angry. Not quite. She lowered her head and started walking, counting the steps in her head until she reached fifty, then looking back. The group outside Grey Linnet’s room ignored her. Black Nel had Nimal’s arm, and they were leaning on each other. A new child that Alys didn’t recognize was sitting on the paving stones, weeping with her head forward. No one looked her way, much less called her back. Alys wondered whether Sammish had gone to pay respects, and if she hadn’t, if she would. She wondered who would pay for Grey Linnet’s rites, and if they’d opt for full or stay with partial since the old woman hadn’t died in the river. She thought maybe she ought to, but the coin she had from Darro would only last so long. She had herself to think of.
She walked back south, the Temple behind her now. Her shoulders ached. She had been born in Longhill. She’d lived her whole life there. But Darro was gone, and she didn’t want to speak to her mother or Sammish. Ullin was dead. Somehow, Alys had built a life that didn’t have anyone in it for her to sit with except a box of ashes. It felt unfair, but she didn’t know who she could blame for it. It hadn’t been her plan. It just happened that way.
She reached her corner more quickly than she’d expected, lost as she’d been in thought. From the street, she looked up at her own window. The shutter stood open, as she’d left it. It was one of hundreds she’d walked past, and nothing to lend it meaning or significance apart from that it had been Darro’s and was now hers. Every other one she could see had another room behind it, with someone else living out a life that meant as little to her as hers meant to them. She felt small.
As she made her way up the steep, lightless stair, she thought about where she would go when Darro’s gold ran out. A little rat-haunted cot like Grey Linnet’s, maybe. Or someplace like Sammish’s little closet by the baker’s kiln. Or a place in a barracks like Ullin had kept in Stonemarket. Or the deep holes and tunnels of Aunt Thorn, if she found it in herself to be the killer she pretended. Or the street. Or her mother’s floor until her mother woke down herself someday.
It was strange to have spent seasons with her focus always on Darro’s ashes, and only now to feel the sense of her own life’s boundaries, still distant but coming closer breath by breath. Why won’t you look at my face? She shuddered and opened her door.
The air in the room was cold as the street, but dark. Smoke filled the space, but there was no fire for it to come from. Her throat went tight, and her less immediate fears flew away like sparrows.
“I didn’t know what happened,” she said under her breath, willing the words to come naturally. “Ullin didn’t tell me he was doing it.”
She closed the shutter enough that only a thin slice of light came in, then went to her safe cache. The black candle was there. When she picked it up, it was cold to the touch. She had an impulse to put it back, leave it in its drawer, and pretend she’d been out in the city someplace and hadn’t seen the summoning gloom. It would be easy enough. She could even make her way down to the taprooms in Seepwater or to the river where the old men and women played at stones and watched the river flow again now that the ice had broken.
But that would only invite Tregarro to find her again in person, and that would be worse. She put the candle in its place on the table, lit it, and waited. The smoke shuddered and shifted, thickening and weaving itself into a human shape. Alys relaxed a degree when she saw the pale hair and eyes.
Andomaka’s eyes clicked over Alys’s face and body like she was reading words written on her skin. Her smile was tight and thin.
“You haven’t made a report recently,” the pale woman said. Her usual dreamy quality was gone, and a harshness had taken its place. “Where do things stand?”
Ullin did something stupid. I don’t know what it was. I wasn’t there. All the lies she’d practiced crowded at the back of her tongue, bumping against each other so that none of them could get through. Andomaka tilted her head, a little frown tugging down the corners of her mouth.
“We tried,” Alys said, and wished the words back as soon as she’d spoken them. It was too late. “We watched the house when we knew the family would be away. The bluecloak came, and his girl did too. We went in for them, but… they fought. Ullin was killed and the girl got away.”
Andomaka was still as stone, pale eyes locked on Alys with a focus that itched, and she rested one thumb in her braided belt like a swordsman putting hand to pommel. Her pale tongue darted out, wetting her lips in a brief, lizard-like swipe, and she shrugged. “Well, that explains some things. Did the girl see you?”
“She did,” Alys said.
“Did you see her?”
“Yes.”
“And?” Andomaka said. Alys shook her head. Andomaka sighed. “Did she look familiar?”
Alys reached for something to say. It wasn’t a question she’d expected. “She looked… rich? She was Hansch.”
Andomaka was still again, and then smiled. When she spoke, it seemed more than half to herself. “I love this city. Well, we’ll have another chance later. She can’t stay hidden forever.”
“If you say so.”
“I have another job for you. You can make up for your failure with the girl who looked rich by tracking down an Inlisc girl who looks poor.” There was a laughter in the words that uneased Alys. It might have covered anger or disappointment or something else, but it was sharp-hearted, and it made Andomaka seem different. As if Alys were seeing a side of her that had been hidden until this moment.
“Any particular one?” she said, trying to match the tone.
“We had a little mouse come visit my temple. Brown hair, brown eyes, so absolutely unremarkable that the guards hardly took note of her while she walked in past them. But she knew me, and my enemies. She knew my business. And she knew my name. My understanding is that not many people know my name. But you do, don’t you?”
“Only because you told it to me.”
Across the table and across the city, Andomaka lifted a reassuring hand. “I’m not accusing you of anything. But I am asking if you might have mentioned it to anyone.”
“Ullin, once,” Alys said. But her thought was Sammish, by all the gods, what did you do?
“Anyone like our unwelcome visitor?”
“May have,” she said out loud. “I don’t know. I know a lot of poor Inlisc girls.”
“With whom you discuss me and my work?” The edge on the words could have cut cloth.
“No,” Alys said. “Just one, maybe. She wouldn’t do anything against you, though.” Except that she might. He wasn’t your pale bitch’s lap dog floated up in her memory. Her breath was coming fast and shallow now. Her head felt light.
“What’s her name?”