“If you give it to me for forty,” Cithrin said, nodding at the ruined dresses, “I’ll help you turn a profit on those.”
The merchant stepped back, his arms crossed in front of him. Cithrin feared she’d overplayed him until he spoke.
“How would you propose that?” he said. His words had a touch of amusement.
“Forty,” she said.
“Convince me.”
Cithrin walked back to the crate and rifled through the dresses. They were all the same design. Cheap cloth with tin hooks and thread eyes, a bit of embroidery at the sleeve and collar.
“Where do you see the fewest goods from?” she asked. “Hallskar?”
“We don’t see much from there,” the merchant agreed.
“So switch out these hooks for silver,” Cithrin said. “And put glass beads here at the collars. Three or four, but bright. Something to catch the eye.”
“Why would I waste good silver and beads on trash like this?”
“You wouldn’t,” Cithrin said. “That’s the point. If they have silver and beads, they must not be trash. Call them… I don’t know. Hallskari salt dyes. New process, very rare. No other dresses like them in the Grand Market. Start them at two hundred silver, drop down to one hundred thirty.”
“Why would anyone agree to pay that?”
“Why wouldn’t they? When it’s a new thing, no one knows its fair price. If nobody knows better, you can do anything.”
The merchant shook his head, but it wasn’t refusal. The Firstblood woman’s eyebrows crawled toward her hairline. Cithrin dug out a honeyed nut. The roar and echo of voices around them was as good as silence. Cithrin waited for the space of four breaths as the merchant wrestled in his mind.
“If only one person in the whole Grand Market believed it,” Cithrin said, “you’d cover the cost of all ten dresses. Hooks, beads, and everything. If two people did…”
The merchant was quiet for two breaths more.
“You know entirely too much about dresses,” he said.
I don’t know anything about dresses, she thought. The merchant barked out a laugh. He reached for the rose dress and tossed it at Cithrin in mock disgust.
“Forty,” he said to her, then turned to the Firstblood woman. “Do you see this? Look at this face. That is a truly dangerous woman.”
“I believe you,” the Firstblood said as Cithrin, grinning, counted out coins.
An hour later, she was walking down the half-open ways of the Grand Market, her dress folded in a tight, rose-colored bundle under one arm, and the world around her a bright, benign place. The dress would need altering to make it fit her body, but that was a minor point. More than any object she’d gained, she enjoyed the idea of being a truly dangerous woman.
The sun had only just begun its slide into the west. Cithrin took herself toward the public baths, thinking of an hour’s time in warm water and steam. Maybe even a few coins spent on a balm to drive away the fleas and lice that travel and her new, tiny rooms had given her. The baths sat at the northern edge of a wide public square. Pillars rose into the air, tall as trees, though whatever shelter they’d supported had been gone long enough that the rain had worn channels in the supports. Patches of brown, winter-killed grass lay like carpets in the open spaces, and twig-fingered bushes caught dead leaves and scraps of cloth. Cithrin walked past a cart selling hot soup and a weedy Kurtadam with a pair of marionettes dancing at his feet beside a beggar’s bowl with a few bronze coins. Across the square, a troupe of players had changed their cart to a stage, edging out a pair of disgruntled puppeteers. Pigeons wheeled overhead. A group of Cinnae women walked together, pale and thin and lovely, their dresses flowing around their bodies like seaweed in the tide, and their voices all accents and music. Cithrin wanted to watch them, but without being seen. She’d never known a full-blooded Cinnae well. And yet her mother had been one, would have looked in place as part of just such a group.
The women turned up the wide steps that led to the baths, and Cithrin had started to follow when a familiar voice caught her up short.
“Stop!”
She turned.
“Stop now, and come near. Hear the tale of Aleren Mankiller and the Sword of Dragons! Or if you are faint of heart, move on.”
On the players’ stage, an older man strode across the planks, his voice ringing through the square. His beard jutted out, and his hair had been combed high. He wore gaudy theatrical robes, and his voice rang and slithered among the great pillars. There was no mistaking Master Kit, the cunning man. Cithrin walked toward the stage, wondering whether she was dreaming. Half a dozen other citizens of Porte Oliva had paused, drawn in by the patter, and the crowd itself drew a crowd. Cithrin stood on a patch of dead grass, amazed. Opal stepped out wearing a robe that made her seem ten years younger. Then Smit, wearing a simple laborer’s cap and speaking in a broad Northcoast accent. Then Hornet in gilt armor, and behind him, striding onto the boards as if he owned the world and everything in it, Sandr. Cithrin laughed with delight, and other hands joined in her clapping. Mikel and Cary, both in among the crowd, nodded to her. Catching Cary’s gaze, Cithrin pantomimed a drawing a sword and then gestured at the stage. I thought you were soldiers, and you were this? Cary shifted her head coyly and dropped a tiny curtsey before returning to the work of cheering Aleren Mankiller and hissing Orcus the Demon King.
The winter square was too cold. By the end of the first act, Cithrin’s ears ached and her nose ran. She wrapped her arms around herself, huddling into her clothes, but nothing could have pulled her away. The story unfolded like a spring flower blooming, the caravan guards she’d known for months becoming actors before her, the actors becoming the parts they played until in the end Aleren Mankiller thrust the poisoned sword into the the belly of Orcus, Sandr and Master Kit half-forgotten echoes of men she used to know. The applause from the crowd was thin but heartfelt, and Cithrin dug out a few coins of her own to add to the shower dancing on the boards.
As the actors broke down the stage, Opal, Mikel, and Smit came out to grin at her and trade stories. Yes, they’d been actors from the start. They’d only played at being guards. Cary recited the opening of the comic piece they were making to commemorate the adventure. Cithrin told them—quietly so as not be overheard—about her rooms with Marcus and Yardem, and Opal made lewd jokes until Smit started to blush and they all lost track of themselves in laughing.
Sandr stood near the cart, frowning furiously and pointedly not looking at them all. Cithrin excused herself from the others and went to him, thinking that he might have been hurt that she was talking to the others and not to him.
“Imagine this,” she said. “You never told me.”
“Suppose not,” Sandr said. He didn’t meet her eyes.
“I didn’t know,” she said. “You were brilliant.”
“Thank you.”
Master Kit called from the far side of the cart, and Sandr hauled on a thick rope, pulling the stage up to lean against the cart’s frame. Sandr tied off the rope, flickered his eyes to Cithrin and away, and nodded.
“I’m not done working. I need to go.”
Cithrin stepped back, the pleasure in her heart going hollow.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—”
“S’allright,” Sandr said. “I just…”
Shaking his head, he walked away, ducking under a spar that Smit was bringing down to pack. Cithrin walked back into the square. The milk-colored sky seemed less benign than before. She didn’t know whether to approach the players again or walk away, whether she was welcome here or an intrusion. She found herself suddenly aware of her tattered clothes and slept-on hair.