“The quarter-Dartinae,” Opal, the older leading woman, said. “He’s been avoiding the ’van master’s sermons almost as much as you have, Captain. A constant diet of scripture isn’t going to sit well with him.”
“The girl in the false whiskers,” Mikel, the thin boy, said. “She’s looking mightily fragile.”
“Oh, yes. Her,” Cary said.
“And God knows what she’s really hauling,” Opal said, her tone all agreement. “Gets jumpy as a cat whenever anyone gets too near her cart. Won’t talk about it either.”
Marcus raised a hand, commanding silence.
“Who?” he said.
“The girl in the false whiskers,” Master Kit said. “The one that calls herself Tag.”
Marcus looked at Yardem. The Tralgu’s expression mirrored his own blank surprise. Marcus lifted an eyebrow. Did you know? Yardem shook his head once, earrings jingling. No.
And God knows what she’s really hauling.
“With me, Yardem,” Marcus said, pulling his boots back on.
“Yes, sir,” the Tralgu rumbled.
The carters and and ’van master were in a separate network of rooms and tunnels. Marcus went through the smoke-hazed halls and common rooms, Yardem looming at his side. The other guards or actors, or whatever they were, trailed along behind like children playing follow-me-follow-you. With every room that Tag wasn’t in, Marcus felt the hair on the back of his neck rising. His mind ran back over everything that had happened on the road, every time he’d spoken to the boy, everything that the ’van master had said about him. There was very little. Almost nothing. Always, the boy had kept himself—and, more the point, his cart—to himself.
The last of the rented rooms looked out over the dark and snow-carpeted hills. Behind him, Marcus heard the high, excited voices of the carters asking what was happening. The chill, wet air smelled as much of rain as snow. Lightning sketched the horizon.
“He’s not here, sir.”
“I see that.”
“She can’t have gone,” Opal said from behind them. “Girl hardly knew how to steer the cart without something in front for the mules to follow.”
“The cart,” Marcus said, walking out into the gloom.
The carts that hadn’t been unloaded were near the low stone warehouses. Half a foot of snow covered them, making them all seem taller than they truly were. Marcus stalked among them. Behind him, someone lit torches, the fires hissing in the still-falling snow. Marcus’s shadow shuddered and danced on the wool cart. The snow on its bench was hardly an inch thick. Marcus hooked a foot on the iron loop beside the wheel and hauled himself up. Once atop it, he pulled back the tarp. Tag lay curled in a ball like a cat. Now that the words had been said, Marcus could see where the whiskers were unevenly placed, the dye in the hair patchy. What had been an underfed, half-dim Firstblood boy resolved into a girl with Cinnae blood.
“Wh-what—” the girl began, and Marcus grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to her feet. Her lips were blue from the cold.
“Yardem?”
“Here, sir,” the Tralgu said from the cart’s side.
“Catch,” Marcus said and shoved her over. The girl yelped as she fell, and then Yardem had her in a headlock. Her cries were wild and Yardem grunted once as a lucky blow struck. Marcus ignored the struggle. The wool was damp and stank of mildew. He lifted up bolt after bolt, letting them drop to the ground. The girl’s cries became sharper, and then quiet. Marcus’s hand found something hard.
“Pass me a torch,” he called.
Instead, Master Kit scrambled up beside him. The old man’s face expression said nothing. In the torchlight, Marcus pulled up the box. Blackwood with an iron fastener and hard leather hinges. Marcus drew his dagger and slashed at the hinges until there was enough play to let him push the blade between lid and box.
“Be careful,” Master Kit said as Marcus bore down on the knife.
“Late for that,” Marcus said, and the lock gave with a snap. The box hung open, limp and broken. Inside, a thousand bits of cut glass glittered and shone. No. Not glass. Gems. Garnets and rubies, emeralds and diamonds and pearls. The box was full to the brim with them. Marcus looked down into the hole he had left in the wool and snow. There were more boxes like it. Dozens of them.
He looked at Master Kit. The old man’s eyes were wide with shock.
“All right,” Marcus said shortly, letting the box fall closed. “Come on.”
On the ground, the other guards were clustered around Yardem and the girl. Yardem still held the girl in his wide arms, ready to choke her asleep. Tears were flowing down her cheeks. The set of her jaw was all defiance and grief. Marcus pinched off a bit of the whiskers from her cheek, rubbed them between his fingers, and let them drop to the ground. Beside the Tralgu’s bulk, she seemed barely more than a child. Her eyes met Marcus’s, and he saw the plea there. Something dangerous shifted in his chest. Not rage, not indignation. Not even sorrow. Memory so vibrant and bright it was painful. He told himself to turn away.
“Please,” the girl said.
“Kit,” he said. “Take her inside. Our quarters. She doesn’t talk to anyone, not even the ’van master.”
“As you say, Captain,” Master Kit said. Yardem loosened his grip and stood a half step back. His eyes were locked on the girl, ready to incapacitate her again if she attacked. Master Kit held out a hand to her. “Come along, my dear. You’re among friends.”
The girl hesitated, her gaze jumping from Marcus to Yardem to Master Kit and back again. Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t sob. He’d known another girl once who’d cried the same way. Marcus pushed the thought aside. Master Kit led her away. The others, as if by habit, followed the master actor and left the soldiers to themselves.
“The cart,” Marcus said.
“No one comes near it, sir,” Yardem said.
Marcus squinted up into the falling snow. “How old do you think she is?”
“Part Cinnae. Makes it hard to tell,” Yardem rumbled. “Sixteen summers. Seventeen.”
“That was my thought too.”
“Same age Merian would have been.”
“Near that.”
Marcus turned back toward the cliff. Light glimmered in the stone-carved windows, and the ancient, snow-filled script carved into the cliffside above shone deep grey against the black.
“Sir?”
Marcus looked back. The Tralgu was already sitting on the cart’s bench and wrapping the wool around himself in the style of Pût nomads to keep his body warm and his sword arm free.
“Don’t let what happened at Ellis affect your judgment. She’s not your daughter.”
The emotion in Marcus’s chest shifted uneasily, like a babe troubled in its sleep.
“No one is,” he said and walked into the darkness.
A cup of warm cider, Master Kit’s sympathetic ear, and half an hour got the full tale. The Medean bank, the original carter’s death, the desperate smuggler’s run to Carse. The girl wept through half of it. She’d left the only home she’d known and the nearest she had to family. Marcus listened to it all with arms crossed, the scowl etching into his face. What caught him were the small things about her—the way her voice grew stronger when she talked about letters of exchange and the problem of capital transport, the habit she had of pushing her hair out of her eyes even when it wasn’t there, the protective angle of her shoulders and her neck. Tag the Carter had been beneath his notice. Cithrin bel Sarcour, amateur smuggler, was a different matter.
When she was done, Marcus left her with the actors, took Master Kit by the elbow, and steered him out through the thin stone corridors that laced the stones of Bellin. The darkness was broken by candles at each turning; enough light to see where they were going, if not the individual steps that would get there. But walking slowly fit Marcus’s needs at the moment.