It reached past its flesh, deep into the secret depths of the city. Its breath rooted it in place. A servant girl blundered into it and away like a blind fish bumping against a boulder large enough to split a river. With each breath, it drew its power in. Saffa was doing the same. It could see the invisible tendrils, soft as skin, that the woman summoned up. It would have been fearsome magic anyplace else. But this was Kithamar, and it was Kithamar, and for all her power and rage and the profundity of her mysteries, Saffa was a candle flame. It could snuff her out and not blister its thumb.
Behind her, a loud rumble as the floors of the brotherhood’s house collapsed. The crowd gasped at the rolling black smoke that rose up and was ripped apart by the wind. Embers glittered in the air like stars going out. The late morning sun turned a bloody orange.
Saffa raised her hands, as if to strike. Then, without warning, turned her back, lowered her head, and sprinted.
The thing that called itself Kithamar waited, ready for some new and unexpected assault, but nothing came. Saffa’s dark hair vanished into the press of bodies. Another shout, and a stream of men in red cloaks. More of the palace guard arriving at last with spades and sand to hunt embers and bury them. With a long, shuddering breath, it let its magic fade, seeping back into the city that it came from. It stood for a moment, unsure whether to laugh or rage. Saffa Rej, its old lover and, it supposed, its victim, had come so far and dared so much. It felt a cold, ice-bound pity for her. And a frustration to have come so near the climactic act of violence, only to turn away.
In someplace that wasn’t the world, it ground sharp and inhuman teeth. But in the street, it only turned back the way it had been going. Tregarro and kitchens. That was next. And at least it knew now where the fire had come from. It hadn’t been young Karsen’s hand. If a Sal and his allies had been ready to move against it now, that would have been inconvenient. There would be time to rebuild…
It walked toward the red gates. They stood open now as the guards and servants poured forth to aid in the redemption of Green Hill from the fire. As it reached them, its robe caught the wind and billowed out behind it like a bedsheet. Something about that seemed wrong. It put its hand to its waist just where the swell of its hips began. To the place where its braided leather belt should have rested and didn’t.
In that moment, it realized that something precious was gone.
Alys counted under her breath. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty. One with each step, her eyes forward and down. Her ears strained for running footsteps behind her, and the fear was like a hand on her chin, wrenching her neck to look back. Just a glimpse. Just enough to know if she’d been seen. Just enough to know whether to run.
She kept her pace slow. Her steps even. Thirty-nine. Forty. Forty-one.
Before her, Green Hill sloped down to the bridge at the palace’s southmost corner. The one that crossed the canal. She didn’t want to go there. Half her mind said it would be safer to swim across the canal. The bridge was a choke point. It was where Andomaka, the thing that lived in Andomaka now, could catch her. A sprint through the trees, a dive into the water, and a fast swim across into the streets of Stonemarket.
She kept her eyes down and forward, holding the cut belt wadded close against her belly. The belt. And the sheath. And the blade. Forty-nine. Fifty. She’d made it this far. The impulse to look back had faded. Alys kept going as if she were innocent. She even let herself smile.
Sammish was gone. Like any good cutter, she’d done her part, handed off the take, and vanished into the crowd like a stranger. Saffa was gone. Like any good flea, Saffa had held the touch’s attention just long enough, and then dissolved. It was all on the walk-away now.
It was all on her.
The bridge to Stonemarket was crowded, but not blocked. Carts were stopped while the carters gossiped and pointed back at the plume of smoke that had been a brotherhood. The gabble of voices was like listening to geese flying low overhead. The words meant nothing to her. She reached the edge of the bridge, set out across it. Reached the far side. No one shouted to stop her. No one grabbed her arm or her neck.
At the confluence where four streets came together—the easternmost corner of Stonemarket and the northernmost part of the Smoke—she paused to slip the snaky mess of leather and silver under the cloth and next to her skin. Only then, she looked back. Whatever she had hoped or feared to see, it wasn’t there. She felt something loosen in her chest. Relief flowed into her, so profound it could have been sorrow.
She turned south, and then west. It wasn’t midday yet, and she knew her way through this part of the city better than she once had. She’d be back in Longhill before the sun ducked behind the vast hill that was the Palace and Oldgate.
She’d be home.
Through all the long hours of the morning and into the afternoon, there was no other news in Kithamar than the burning of the Daris Brotherhood. The compound, they said, was still smoking. It was a ruin. The magistrates were going to have the canal redirected, flood the buildings so that no coals could come to life and start the fire again. It had started from a careless maid dropping a candle. Or the oven that cracked and spilled its fire. Or a lightning strike from the clean, wind-driven sky, a clear sign that the brotherhood had offended a god.
In the taprooms of Stonemarket, they found whatever servants had worked there and bought them beer for solace and to loosen their tongues. Old men shook their heads and made sounds of disapproval or sympathy. In Riverport, a half dozen merchant houses called emergency meetings to consider how the fire changed the delicate balances of patronage and allegiance. In Longhill and Seepwater, people said that a fire that took down a compound in Green Hill would have killed hundreds in Longhill and left hundreds more to sleep in ashes, and no one west of the river would have cared. They took a quiet pleasure in the rich and powerful suffering for once, and then went on with their days.
With the afternoon, the wind died down—not ending but growing less vicious. And before the first reddening of sunset, the fire and the brotherhood and all of Green Hill were forgotten. Runners came from the palace, shouting at the tops of their voices, announcing the terrible news.
Byrn a Sal, prince of the city, was dead.
Where’s the blade?” Sammish asked, leaning across the table.
“Sunk in the middle of the river,” Alys said, only partly lying. “Anyone that wants that thing back had better be a fish.”
“And Andomaka?”
“No sign, no word, nothing.”
The Pit was open for business in that the door wasn’t locked and an ancient, one-eyed man had been paid to take the usual keep’s place giving out cider and beer and bowls of stew from the common pot. Alys and Sammish were the only two at the tables, though. Longhill, like all the other quarters, was out, lining the streets for the funeral procession. Some would watch the recent dead pass by and talk in low, worried tones about whether the omen was good or bad—whether losing a new prince so quickly was a doom upon the city or a happy escape from a terrible rule. Others, including most of the regulars of the Pit, were running pulls in the crowd, or preparing them for the celebrations that would come with the next day’s coronation. In any other situation, Alys would have been out there with them.
Sammish was wearing a heavy cloak, and her hair was tied back. There were dark patches under her eyes that spoke of sleeplessness, and an urgent, nervous energy around her. Possibly fear, possibly excitement. Her leg drummed a fast tattoo, shaking the table between them. “With any luck, Andomaka and Tregarro and the whole brotherhood’ll think we’re bones and ash. The only one they know to look for is Saffa.”