And it was the draw of it.
The poison, he had in a small stitched leather bag no larger than his thumbnail. Grains like salt, but with a thin greenish cast. He tucked it between his belt and his hip, easy to retrieve and easy to overlook. The last thing was a grey cloak with a deep hood to help hide his face. Once it was on, he could go. Instead, he sat for a moment on the edge of the little bed and rested his head in his hands. It took more time to gather himself than he would have liked.
In the halls, he wore his hood up and kept his eyes down. He didn’t know whether the people he passed would recognize him from his stride. If any did, they would know better than to ask questions now or tell tales later. He gave himself credit enough for keeping discipline that well, anyway. He passed through the public temple, past the guest houses, and in through the kitchens where a brace of pheasant hung on a string. Their tiny feet were bound, their black eyes sightless. He took them over his shoulder, paused, and put them down. There was time enough to see her one last time.
Andomaka, the transformed Andomaka, was in the private temple, sitting on the altar in the same pose the Bronze Coast boy had sat. The board in play before her. She didn’t look up, but she knew he was there. Neither spoke for a time as he considered the well-known contours of her face. No one thing had changed in her, but the way all of her features came together was like seeing a different woman. Which she was.
“I’m off,” he said. “I won’t be back… for some time. Perhaps weeks.”
“No,” she said, and she turned to look at him. Her smile was knowing. The sense of seeing Ausai wearing her body like a cloak had been eerie at first. But it had grown harder and harder to see the old prince in her expressions. The thread of Kithamar passed through them both like they were beads on a necklace, but they weren’t the same person. That, surely, was what he had come here to see.
“No?” he asked.
“When you have done this,” Andomaka said, “your duty to me will be complete. You have done well, Tregarro. You don’t have to come back.”
“But the girl—”
Andomaka stepped toward him, and without realizing it, he took a step toward her. “Elaine a Sal will be my problem, and I will solve her. Don’t concern yourself.”
“Have I given reason for your displeasure?” His voice came out as a whisper.
“Quite the opposite. You have dedicated yourself to the brotherhood and all that it serves. And to Andomaka Chaalat, who will be the prince of the city. But I have done this before enough to recognize… patterns. Your work here was good. And your work here is finished.”
The tears in his eyes humiliated him. “If… if this is your will… then I… of course, I will…”
She pushed back his hood, considering him in the candlelight. Her eyes were unforgiving, but not wholly unkind. He chuckled once, like a cough. “I have endeavored not to let any feelings on my part interfere with my duties. I… I tried to be discreet.”
“She didn’t know,” Kithamar said. “I wouldn’t have, except that I’ve seen it all before. Generation upon generation. It doesn’t change. And doesn’t get easier. When you have found yourself a new place in the world, send to me on my throne. No matter what flesh I inhabit, I will see that you are cared for. You will be a powerful man, wherever you choose to make your home. And you will have any woman you wish at your side.”
“Except the one I want.”
“Yes,” she said. “Except that one.”
She kissed him then, her pale, soft lips on his scarred, half-numb mouth. Once, and then she turned and walked into the shadows, leaving him alone in the temple.
Trembling.
Alys stepped out of the heat and sunlight into the shadows of the Stonemarket taproom. The keep was a Hansch man with white hair and a thin beard. He scowled at her and shook his head, but he didn’t tell her to leave. She’d been here once or twice with Ullin and his friends, it seemed like a lifetime before.
She went toward the back. Beside an empty fire grate, Sammish and an older woman sat with mugs of beer and bowls of barley and fish. Alys waited for her heart to race or her jaw to clench. It was a moment that deserved some overwhelming emotion. Instead, there was a little sorrow, a little shame, and the sense that the great drama she’d constructed in her head and her heart—her noble brother and his allies defending the city from treachery—must be happening someplace else. This was just three people talking about a pull.
She sat down across the table from the woman. She was clearly foreign. There were threads of white shot through the dark of her hair, and a mole on her cheek. She’d have been a good mark in a crowd because she wasn’t from around here, but other than that, she could have been anyone.
You killed my brother, Alys thought, and then waited for the rage and hatred. You killed my brother while he was trying to kill you after he cheated you out of the money I’ve been living off for months. And he did that so his patrons at the Daris Brotherhood wouldn’t know that he’d been playing his own games on them. And I delivered your son to them for them to murder in their rites.
It was too much for anything simple. She couldn’t forgive this woman. She couldn’t condemn her. With her, Alys had reached a place beyond judgment, and they’d only just met.
“I’m sorry for what happened to your son,” Alys said.
The woman nodded. “I am sorry for your grief at losing your brother.”
They sat in silence for a few heartbeats as Alys reached for something more to say. She couldn’t find it. Sammish shifted impatiently and leaned forward on her elbows.
“All that’s past,” she said. “We need to talk about what’s coming next.”
“The pull,” Alys said.
“It’s a safe-cache pull. Not quite the usual shape, but close. I’d thought we could start a little fire and go in with the sand and water, follow the scarred man—Tregarro—when he went for the knife.”
“That’d be a run,” Alys said. “I mean, yeah. The knife’s important. They’d save it if things went bad, but finding and following him? That’s a trick.”
“I know.”
“Easier if you’re already inside when the fire starts,” Alys said.
“I snuck in once, but that hole’s been filled. I’d need a new way. Making it is where you can help.”
“Why not walk in the front door?” Alys looked from Sammish to the woman, then shrugged. “My job right now is to find you and take you to Andomaka. And likely Tregarro. Loop a little loose rope around your wrists so you look tied. I’ll carry a spare blade for you in case they search. The timing will be a trick, but not too hard a one. If this one”—she nodded at the Bronze Coast woman—“can count to five hundred from the time we go in, that’ll give us some time to find them and not so much I can’t keep them talking before they try taking you away. When the call goes up, I say that I’ll keep an eye on you, and when they go, we follow. Plus if they go two ways, there’s one of us for each.”
Sammish licked her lips, thinking. After a moment, she nodded, more to herself than to them. “That could work.”