“Bring that back, and we could find a buyer for it.”
“Some money isn’t worth the trouble it brings.”
“Now that’s wisdom,” her mother said. “No, I mean it. Took me more years than you’ve got to see that for truth.”
“You can’t tell anyone you had this.”
Her mother mussed her hair affectionately. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Alys shoved rag and blade together into the cloth satchel at her side. When she stood, the high clouds were already fading to grey. The first stars flickered in the east. There would be many more soon.
“You’ll come back to see me?”
“I will if I can,” Alys said, and turned her back to the stars.
The Khahon was black and as smooth as glass that night. If she paid attention, the sound of the water had tones in it like a musician giving their instrument free rein and hoping it would lead them to some new melody. Alys crossed the southernmost of the four bridges that led to the base of Oldgate. The switchback road rose above her, climbing to Palace Hill and whatever was happening there that night. Torches and lanterns marked the way up, but that wasn’t where Alys was going.
She walked along the river’s western edge. Two bluecloaks passed the other way, watching her with suspicion, but they didn’t stop her. She didn’t look like trouble, and she didn’t look like fun. They passed along their way, and she passed along hers.
A path snaked under the northernmost of the four bridges. In sunlight, the stones were green with algae. At night, they were the same black as the river. Alys went down the old, well-worn stairs and then along the path, feeling the slick under her feet, slippery as ice. Where the river hit the stone pylons, it threw up a pale foam. She waited, listening. Sometimes the streetbound took shelter there in the shadows, but not tonight. Tonight, she was alone. She wasn’t sure whether to feel pleasure or regret for that.
She didn’t know when she’d decided on her plan. Maybe when Sammish had told her about the rite and she understood what she’d seen in that slaver’s room on the night they’d taken Timu. Maybe when she was walking away with the blade in her hand. It hadn’t felt like making a choice so much as becoming aware of one that had already been made. She was sorry not to tell Sammish. It felt wrong to leave that friendship on a lie, but the girl wouldn’t have understood. She might have stopped her. And as good a friend as she was to her, Sammish wasn’t blood.
She wasn’t her brother.
She sat at the water’s edge. If she’d wanted to, she could have taken off her boots and cooled her feet in the river, but instead she pulled off her satchel and put it beside her. It was darker than she’d expected, and unbuckling the straps took a while. She took out the blade first, unwrapping the rag and then taking the silver from the sheath. It seemed brighter than it should have been, as if it were in a shaft of moonlight that nothing around it shared.
Next was the box. Darro’s box. Darro. She ran her finger over the grooves of his deathmark. She’d brought it in case her memory failed, but now that the time had come, she knew every line and curve. She’d spent too many nights in the last year with Darro as her best company to forget it. A tightness took her throat, and tears rose in her eyes. She didn’t sob, only let the sorrow come.
There were times now she didn’t feel it. Or at least forgot to feel it. Sometimes for days in a row. She felt it now, and deeply.
With the rag, she rubbed a bit of paving stone clean. Or as clean as it could be. When that was done, she took the silver blade and pressed it to her arm. It was sharp. It bit her easily. Eagerly. Blood welled up, black in the darkness, and then she drew the tip of the blade through it like it was ink.
The impulse to hurry was profound, and she pushed against it. She didn’t know what would happen if she got it wrong, so she kept her eyes open and wide to catch any bit of light. Slowly, carefully, she drew the deathmark just the way she’d seen a thug dressed as a coachman do, back in some other lifetime. Only this mark was Darro’s. The thinness of the world around her seemed to ripple like a curtain.
When she was done, she sat back, knife in her clenched fist. She hoped nothing would happen. She would have tried and failed, but that would be enough. The thing she couldn’t bear was not to try at all. She waited, caught between longing and dread.
It was too dark to see the blood beginning to smoke. She smelled it instead, like overheated iron. The murmur of the river fell away into some deeper silence. Something like mist or smoke seemed to rise from the water. Or not from it. Through it, as if all the world were insubstantial and the shadowy mist was the only real thing. She heard her own breath catching and stuttering. It was how she knew she was on the edge of panic.
All around her, the shadows grew thicker, darker, more solid. A sensation like insects crawling over her skin raised gooseflesh. The attention of the dead was on her, and it was heavy, cold, and unsympathetic.
She tried to speak, but all that came out was a thin whine. She balled her fists until her fingers ached, swallowed, and tried again. She’d come too far to stop. Not until she was sure.
“Darro?” she said to the roiling dark around her. “Darro, are you there?”
For a long moment, nothing seemed to change. But then, slowly, the darkness gathered, condensing into a solid shape. A man’s body, dark within the darkness.
“Is that you?” she whispered. The figure didn’t move at first, but then slowly lifted a hand, as if in greeting. Alys rose to her feet.
“I wanted to see you. I wanted to know that you’re all right. Are you all right?”
The figure made no response. She tried to see its face, to see Darro’s face in it. The emptiness was too profound.
“I miss you,” she said. “I tried so hard to have you still be here, but… I miss you. I love you. I think there’s a way I could bring you back, but then I wouldn’t be here anymore, and that’s too much. I already tried it, in a way. It’s too high a price, and I’m so sorry it is. I’d save you if I could, but not like this.”
She waited. The darkness waited too.
“I didn’t get to say goodbye.” There were tears on her cheeks, thick and warm and flowing, but her voice didn’t waver. “I had to tell you how much I miss you. And goodbye.”
The figure didn’t move. The formlessness that was its head and body remained as blank and featureless as before, but she had the impression that she was looking at its back now. That it had turned away. Maybe that was all it could do.
She waited a moment more, savoring it and hating it and carrying the knowledge of what came next like stone in her belly. She slid her foot forward, putting it over the deathmark, and twisted at the ankle, smudging the mark out. Instantly, the figure was gone, and with it the unreal mist and the abrading attention of the dead. Alys bowed her head, noticing the tightness in her chest and her throat. She tried to love the sorrow, because it was all that was left of her brother. And because she knew now that even it would fade.
Across the water, a carriage barreled through the darkness, torches bright on its roof. The river murmured as it had before. The city all around her shifted and muttered and slept, a vast beast with tens of thousands of eyes. She had to force her hand to relax, then stretch out her fingers, working the joints until the stiffness and ache were gone. She took the blade by its point, cocked her arm back like a knife thrower at a carnival, and aimed halfway between the horizon and the top of the sky. She put her hip and shoulder into the throw, and two long, breathless seconds later, she thought she heard a splash in the voice of the water, but it might only have been her imagination. She sat alone in the darkness for a time, feeling something that wasn’t peace—not yet—but that was near to it.