“I’m sorry about Vanai,” Sandr said, using the same gambit he’d tried before the play.
Now what was the effect of saying that? Reminding her how badly she needed reassurance and the feeling of connection, she supposed. Making the things he offered seem valuable. Still, he’d made that point earlier. Stating it again was a mistake. Maybe if he’d interspersed it with other tactics. He could devalue her side of the exchange. If, for instance he’d criticized her dress or the cut of her hair, making it clear that lying down at her side wasn’t likely worth so much. The danger there being that she might take offense and end the negotiation. Or pretend offense as a way of forcing him to raise his offer.
“Cithrin?” he said, and she shook herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “My mind was elsewhere.”
“The beer’s good. Have you been here before?”
“I’ve meant to,” she said. “Something’s always come up.”
“Want some?”
“All right,” she said.
She’d expected him to pass his tankard to her, but instead he lifted his arm, calling over the server, and bought a tankard just for her. It was complex and thick, the alcohol lurking in a rich play of flavors. It didn’t have the astringent cleanness of the fortified wine. How had Captain Wester put it? Get her stupid drunk to get her knees apart. Something like that.
It occurred to her that Sandr wasn’t a man with a wide variety of strategies.
“I don’t remember my parents,” Cithrin said. “The bank raised me, bought my clothes and tutors.”
“You must have loved them,” Sandr said, playing the part of the consoler with his voice and pressing his thigh against hers with just a bit more fervor. Still, Cithrin considered the question.
Had she loved Magister Imaniel? She supposed so. She’d certainly loved Cam and wanted Besel. She’d wept for them all when the first news came. But she wasn’t weeping now. The grief was still with her, but there was something else beside it. A terrible sense of possibility.
“I suppose I must,” she said.
He took her hand, as if in sympathy. His brow furrowed and he leaned toward her.
“I’m so sorry, Cithrin,” he said, and to her amazement, tears came to her eyes. That couldn’t be right.
Sandr leaned forward, dabbing gently at her eyes with the cuff of his sleeve. Washing away the tears he had called forth. The stab of resentment at the little hypocrisy clarified many questions.
“Captain Wester!” she gasped, and Sandr dropped her hand like it had bit him. He glanced out from behind the almost-curtain.
“Where?” he said.
“He just stepped into the other room,” Cithrin said. “Go, Sandr. Before he sees you!”
Sandr swallowed, nodded once, and slipped off the bench, heading for the alley door. Cithrin watched him go, then reached over and pulled his tankard to her as well. The chicken did go well with it after all. As she drank, her mind wandered. She wasn’t angry at Sandr, but she couldn’t bring herself to respect him. On another night, she might have let his scene play out, if only to see where it led. But it was increasingly clear that Master Kit intended to remain in Porte Oliva for some time. Since she wasn’t sure when or how she’d depart the city, making that kind of connection was sure to complicate things. And then what if she got pregnant? Everything would fall apart then. Easier to stay out than to get out later. Still, she did wonder what it would have been like. Her mind shifted back to the mill pond, the snow against her skin, the weight of the boy upon her.
She finished the second beer and went back to the fortified wine. Alcohol was supposed to soften the mind, but she didn’t feel soft at all. Or at least not in a way that left her unaware. She was more relaxed, certainly. The ever-present knot in her gut was looser, and she felt more at home in her skin. But her thinking was as clear as ever. Maybe clearer. She had the sense of huge thoughts shifting just beneath her awareness, her mind comparing and scheming with a speed and elegance that she couldn’t quite keep up with herself. She ate some of the pickled carrots, finished the wine, and got another tankard of the beer.
When she stepped out the door, the sun had already set. Porte Oliva lounged in the grey twilight. Lanterns flickered and glowed. Men and women scurried through the streets, anxious to get home before twilight had entirely faded. The air was cold but not bitter. This wasn’t a mild winter evening so much as a chilly springtime. She let herself drift down the street, her mind plucking at thoughts, turning them over, and dropping them again. How old Sandr seemed on the stage, and how young off it. The emptiness in her heart that was the death of Magister Imaniel and Cam, the almost vertiginous need to fill it, and her almost clinical detachment from her pain. The impending trip to Carse, smuggling wealth she hadn’t stolen. The books of the bank records, sums and ciphers tracing history from the foundational document to the last rush of fleeing aristocracy. Opal’s betrayal and Captain Wester’s loyalty. She remembered something Master Kit had said about the shape of Wester’s soul, and wondered what shape her own soul might take.
A Cinnae woman hurried past, her robes wrapped with pink-and-orange gauze, her face pale as the moon. A dog barked from the shadowed mouth of an alleyway. Three Kurtadam men walked past her, beads clicking and jingling in their pelts, said something she didn’t understand, and then laughed together. She ignored them. The glow of her own windows shone just up ahead. If anyone were to attack her now, she’d only have to call out and Captain Wester and Yardem Hane would come. It was a pleasant thought, and enough to make her feel safe whether she was or not.
She pulled herself up the stairs to the steady creaking of Captain Wester’s pacing footsteps. She opened the door to his scowl.
“You’ve been out for quite a while,” he said.
Cithrin shrugged.
“How much have you been drinking?”
Cithrin walked over to the cot and sat beside the Tralgu. Yardem smelled like open fields and damp dogs. She repressed the urge to scratch his wide back. Captain Wester was still looking at her, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t recall exactly,” she said. “I wasn’t paying for most of it.”
Wester hoisted an eyebrow.
“The thaw’s almost come. We have to make a decision,” she said, her words precise and unslurred.
“That’s true,” the captain said, crossing his arms. The failing daylight from the windows softened the lines of his scowl and the grey at his temples. He looked young. Cithrin remembered that Opal had found the man attractive and wondered whether she did. She’d lived with him for weeks. Months, counting the time on the road. She wondered for the first time whether his mouth would taste like Sandr’s, then pulled her mind back to the moment, more than half repulsed by her own musings.
“No matter how we try to reach Carse,” she said, “the danger is that someone will kill us and take the money.”
“Old news,” Captain Wester said.
“So we need to take the money ourselves,” she said, understanding as she said it what she’d been considering all night. “We need to use it.”
“Probably the wisest thing we could do,” the captain said. “Take what we can carry and vanish.”
“No,” she said. “I mean take all of it.”
The Tralgu at her side flicked a jingling ear. Captain Wester licked his lips and looked down.
“If we took all of it, we’d be in the same situation we are now,” he said. “We’d still have to hide the money or protect it. Only we’d have your friends in Carse after our heads. That’s not an improvement. We can talk about this when you’re sober,” he said.
“No, listen to me. We’ve been acting like smugglers. We aren’t. You’ve always said we can’t keep this much money quiet and we can’t keep it safe. Opal proved that. So we shouldn’t keep it quiet.”