She walked unsteadily through the thin young trees, pulling herself forward with every step. The pain in her shoulder and side had gone from sharp to a deep ache as the injured muscles tightened and set. Her wounds hurt less than the betrayal. The betrayal hurt less than the guttering of her hopes. She fought to breathe, and knew that she was losing the fight.
Above her, beyond the trees, the vast wall of a hillside they called Oldgate glimmered. At its top, her enemy’s house. If she died here, the beast might never know that her bones rested at its feet. How odd to be so vast that your victories went unnoticed.
She chanted as she went, the rhythm of the words complicated by her hitching breath and the rushing of the river. They echoed in her mind, the syllables growing deeper, calling forth a space that was not space. The spiritual flesh of the city was not as thin as it had been on the night after Ausai died, but it wasn’t as thick as when he had lived. That was a sign in itself, and she tried to take comfort in it.
Moonlight flickered from between a hundred thousand late summer leaves. Her feet sank into the thin, spongy litter of old rot. The day’s heat was gone, and the cold that seemed to run through Kithamar’s veins caressed her. She swallowed to loosen her throat and returned to her chanting and her walk.
She didn’t hear him approach. He was simply there, looking like an old man with wiry hair sitting on a wide, wild stone. She nodded her respect, and thought she saw amusement in his eyes.
“Looks like you’re having a shitty day,” the old man said. “What happened to you?”
“I seek shelter,” she gasped. The words hurt deep in her chest.
The old man tilted his head like a dog hearing a distant whistle. “Your accent’s… Endil? Or, nah. Bronze Coast.”
“I am priest of the six, and sworn of the spirit house.”
“Long way from home, you.”
“I know what you are, lord. Will you grant me this?”
The old man spread his hands, palms open. There were calluses on his fingers, and his nails were thick and poorly trimmed. “I’m just some asshole out enjoying the moonlight. Same as you.”
“We have the same enemies. Will you grant me this?”
He sobered and went silent. She waited until she was sure he was not going to speak, and then she waited longer. She had no place else she could go.
At last, he shook his head. “No. This city is on fire, except nobody sees it. Risks are too high. There’s no good reason for me to put my head out of my shell now, and a hundred good reasons not to.”
“Help me, bury me, or watch me rot; I don’t have the strength to leave here.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t, do you?”
“Will you grant me this?”
It was the third time. The one that commanded an answer. The thing that looked like an old man chuckled, and then sighed. “Fine. Come with me. We’ll see what we can do.”
He turned and began to walk. When she tried to follow, her legs failed and she sank to the earth. The forest floor smelled of rot and new growth. It ticked with the movement of insects. Discovering that her eyes had closed, she tried to open them. Then tried again.
Strong arms reached under her knees and across her shoulders. When the thing that looked like an old man lifted her, pain shrieked across her body, but as it walked—its rolling gait like the shifting of a horse or a boat on choppy water—she leaned her head against its shoulder and the discomfort faded to something bearable.
“My thanks, Lord—”
“Yeah, don’t use that name here,” he said. “Call me Goro.”
Eight long days after the coronation of Byrn a Sal, Grey Linnet woke before dawn. She had been Harld’s Linnet when her husband had been alive, and Little Linnet and Red Linnet and Linnet Maganschild before that. Longhill had seen every incarnation of her from girl to woman to elder of the street.
When she rose from her small cot, she shooed out the rats with no great violence. She’d known rats her whole life. They held no terror for her. She ate a little of yesterday’s bread, took her sack over her shoulder, and started her morning rounds gathering up the children: Dark Aman whose mother was Danna, Averith’s girl; Big Salla and Little Salla, who lived across the street from each other and liked to hold hands when they walked; Elbrith Thin-as-a-Reed with his shock of white hair like an old man’s though he was only seven. Some days, Grey Linnet got better than a dozen of Longhill’s young. Other times, she might only find three or four.
She took them to the little wilderness in the center of Kithamar where the living river put down sand and soil carved away from under the docks and port. The river had too many moods for making a home on the Silt to be anything but foolish, but things washed up there that had value. Even if the hunt brought her nothing, their parents would give her a bronze now and then for keeping the little ones out from underfoot.
In the rose-and-grey before dawn, Linnet passed by Aunt Thorn’s door and saw Linly’s girl Alys coming out. It didn’t seem so long since the girl had been one of her little ones. Now, here she was with a face and body more like a woman than a girl. Linnet cooed the way she did with the children, clapped her hands together, and felt her own death a little closer than before.
“Look at you! My little Alys Woodmouse, all changed. You look so lovely, child. So lovely.”
“You haven’t changed at all,” Alys said, and suffered Linnet to take her arm and pull her a little way along the street.
“Working for Aunt Thorn now? I would never have guessed it.”
“I’m not,” Alys said. “I had some trouble. I’ve been buying safety.”
Linnet nodded, tugging the girl along. “Good, and good. Pay them like Aunt Thorn what they’re owed, but never give them power over you. I’ve seen so many go that way, you know. So many. You were always a good, honest child.”
“I should let you go,” Alys said. She didn’t quite keep the pity out of her voice, but she kissed Grey Linnet’s cheek before she turned and walked away. She hadn’t had to do that. Linnet watched her go, thinking about who she’d been when her hips had moved like Alys’s.
It proved a good day. She had a half dozen pairs of small, willing hands and sharp, childish eyes to add to her own before the sun rose up as high as the Temple’s crown. They went through Seepwater with the morning sun on their backs, skipping together and singing the song about the little dog that bit off her own tail.
Linnet’s eyes weren’t what they had been, and her feet and hands ached at the end of the day. If the children ever stopped coming with her, she’d starve, so she danced and capered and kept them happy, no matter how she felt. There were worse ways for a woman her age to live.
At the trade bridge between Seepwater and the Smoke—yellow brick and black mortar—a pole stood with bits of cloth nailed to it: a little blue dress, a little yellow blouse, and a soft white cap that might have fit a child of five or six years. They’d been taken from a drowned body and put here for the parents to identify.
Elbrith Thin-as-a-Reed tugged her sleeve. “What are you thinking, Grandmother?”
I am thinking that children are like elm seeds on the river: some manage to set roots, but most rot in the flow.