“None of that’s a question.”
“Are you in love with her?”
“I’ve loved a lot of people, and the word hasn’t meant the same thing twice,” Marcus said. “The job is to protect her, and I’m going to do the job this time.”
“This time?”
Marcus shrugged and kept quiet. The bastard had gotten him to say more than he meant already. Marcus had to give it; Qahuar was good at what he did. The half-Jasuru stood up, his lips pursed. Slowly, deliberately, he put the box in the pouch at his belt.
“I hope I’m not going to regret this,” he said.
“I expect it won’t matter to you one way or the other,” Marcus said. “For what it’s worth, though, I appreciate your taking it on.”
“You know it’s not as a favor to you?”
“Do.”
Qahuar Em held out a broad hand. Marcus rose to his feet and took it. It was an effort not to squeeze a little hard, just to show he could. The man’s bright green eyes looked amused. And maybe something sadder as well.
“She’s a lucky woman,” Qahuar said.
God, let’s hope so, Marcus thought but didn’t say.
Autumn had come to Porte Oliva overnight. Trees that had been lush and full were dropping leaves that were still green in the center. The sunset winds were loud with their skittering. The bay had turned the color of tea, and stank at midday like a compost heap. The queensmen patrolling the twilight streets wore overcoats of wool and green caps that covered their ears. Marcus walked the narrow streets near the port, feeling the first bite of night’s chill, and decided maybe he liked the city after all.
He found Master Kit and the others in a torchlit courtyard between a taphouse and an inn. Smit and Hornet were still putting the last adjustments on the stage supports while Master Kit barked instructions to them, not even in costume yet. A young woman was pacing behind them. She was fair-haired with large eyes that left Marcus thinking of babies and a tight-bound dress that showed her figure. Her hands were knotted before her, fingers wrestling one another like fighters in a melee.
Marcus walked over to Master Kit. Instead of saying hello, he nodded to the woman.
“New one?”
“Yes,” the old actor said. “I have hope for this one.”
“Had hope for the last one too.”
“Fair enough. I have expectations of this one,” Master Kit said. “Calls herself Charlit Soon, and I find she rehearses wonderfully. Tonight we’ll see how she does with an audience. If she stays through tomorrow, I think I’ve found my full company.”
“And she’s what? Twelve years old?”
“Cinnae blood some generations back,” Master Kit said. “Or that’s the story, anyway. She believes it, and it may even be true.”
“But you don’t believe it?”
“I withhold judgment.”
As if she’d heard them, the new actor glanced over at them and then away. Sandr jumped out the back of the cart and waved to Marcus. Either his fear had faded or he was a decent actor. Marcus waved back. Mikel, thin and weedy as ever, came out from the taphouse with a bucket of sawdust, Cary following behind with a broom.
“I heard rumor you might be leaving Porte Oliva.”
“It’s one possibility,” Master Kit said. “We’ve played here almost an entire theatrical season. I think cities can get full on plays. Show too many, and I believe people become complacent. I don’t want what we do to lose its magic. I was thinking of taking the company up to the queen’s court at Sara-su-mar.”
“Before the winter, or after?”
“I’ll know more after Charlit’s been onstage for a few nights,” Master Kit said. “But probably before. When the ships leave for Narinisle.”
“Well, do what’s right, but I’ll be sorry to see you go.”
“I take it you’re staying for the foreseeable future?” Kit said. Mikel began spreading the sawdust on the flagstone paving of the courtyard to soak up the damp, Cary sweeping along behind him. It seemed like an odd thing to do. The yard was only going to fill up with mud and piss and rain again.
“I can count the foreseeable future in days,” Marcus said. “Weeks at best.”
“You’d be welcome to travel with us,” Master Kit said. “Yardem and Cithrin too. I think we all miss being caravan guards, just a little. It wasn’t a role we’d ever had before, and I don’t expect we will again.”
“Master Kit?” Sandr called from behind the cart. “One of the swords is missing.”
“I believe it’s with Smit’s bandit robe.”
“It isn’t.”
Master Kit sighed, and Marcus clapped him on the shoulder and left him to his work.
Lantern flames and barn heat made the interior of the taproom warmer than the streets. The scent of roasting pork and beer competed with the less pleasant smell of close-packed bodies. Marcus kept one hand on his coins as he walked through the press. With so many distractions and people in so small a space, he’d have been shocked if there wasn’t at least one cutpurse looking for a little luck. He saw Yardem first, sitting at a back table, then as he got closer, Enen and Roach, Cithrin and… Barth. That was his name. The Firstbloods were Corisen Mout and Barth, and Corisen Mout had the bad front tooth. Feeling unaccountably pleased with himself, Marcus sat at the table.
Cithrin raised her eyebrows, asking.
“It’s done,” Marcus said. “You? Things went well with the governor?”
“Fine,” Cithrin said. “Paid the fee, left the box.”
“The receipt?”
“Burned it,” Cithrin said. “There won’t be a trail back. As long as the governor doesn’t get curious and force the lock, we’re as ready as we’re likely to get.”
A servant hurried over, put a tankard of ale on the table in front of Marcus, and reached to take Cithrin’s away. She stopped him, and he nodded his bow and darted away.
“What are the chances that the governor’s baser instincts will get the better of him?” Marcus asked instead of How much have you drunk? If she were in danger of losing herself, Yardem would have stopped her. Maybe already had.
“Life is risk,” she said as Roach, sitting beside her, sipped ale from his own tankard.
“Yardem was just telling us about the shapes of people’s souls,” Barth said. “Did you know your soul’s a circle?”
Marcus shot a pained look at Yardem. The flick of an ear was the closest he got to an apology.
“Don’t listen to anything he says, Barth. He’s religious. It makes him nervous when things are going well.”
“Wasn’t aware they were going well, sir,” Yardem said dryly.
Over the next hour, Marcus drank his tankard of ale, ate a plate of roast pork with a black sauce hot enough to bring tears to his eyes, and listened to the talk around the table. Barth kept on Yardem about souls and destiny, but Enen and Roach and Cithrin chewed on more practical matters: how many payments would be coming to the bank proper and how many to the room at the cafe, how to assure that no one attacked whoever carried the cafe payments across the city, whether to make arrangements with the queensmen to help enforce their private contracts. All the business and consideration of a bank’s owner to her people. Cithrin spoke like a woman sure of her fate, and Marcus admired her for that.
The banging of a stick on a tin pan interrupted them.
“Show’s to start!” Mikel’s voice threaded through the noise of the taproom. “Come and watch the show! Show’s to start!”
Marcus dropped a few coins on the table, rose, and, half joking, offered Cithrin his hand.
“Shall we?” he asked.
She accepted his support with a mocking formality.
“It’s what we’ve come here for,” she said. Marcus led her and the members of his new company out to the pleasant cool of the courtyard to watch his old one. The crowd was good. Easily fifty people, and more likely to stop as they went in or out. When Master Kit strode out on the boards, his wiry hair pulled back and a sword strapped to his hip, a few people applauded, Marcus among them. Sandr came out a moment later, pretending to pick his teeth with a blunted dagger.