He hadn’t minded. The life of a guardsman wasn’t harder than that of a carter, and the uniform brought a certain level of respect with it. Most violence could be handled with threat, and when that failed, he had a group of well-armed men from across the city who felt that any attack on him was an attack on all of them. Even the odious duties of collecting taxes and closing businesses that hadn’t given up their share to the council weren’t too awful. It had taken years, in fact, to find a duty among the many duties of the city guard that was so soul-crushingly dull, so arbitrary and absurd, that Damond genuinely dreaded it.
Blood duty was a new thing, a ritual from the west that stank of panic and war-fear. But war-fear had its hand on Tauendak too, and so it went. He didn’t have to like it.
“Tilt your head.”
Damond looked up into Joran’s black eyes. The older man had scales three shades lighter than Damond’s own, and a scar across his cheek that spoke of old violence. By summer, Joran’s time in the guard would be ended, and the old man would go back to whatever he had been. It made him a little easier to negotiate with.
“Not today, eh?” Damond said. “It’s my second blood shift in a week, and I spent all my time since then digging that shit out of my ears.”
“You know the rules. Tilt your head.”
“I’ll give you six lengths of copper to forget it. Just for today. And next time, I won’t even ask. I’ll just put my head on the table and let you pour it in my ears. Not even a grumble.”
“The day you don’t grumble, the sky’ll fall into the sea,” Joran said, baring his sharp black teeth in a grin. “I’ll forget this time, but don’t you forget when we come to the taproom that it was six of copper. Or I’ll have it too hot next. I mean it, I won’t haggle on a finished deal.”
“I’d never ask it,” Damond said, grinning back.
“Then get your thick ass out there,” Joran said, putting the cup of wax back with its brothers beside the fire. “You can at least be on time.”
Damond jumped out of the chair, strapped on his blade, and left the close, warm guard’s station for the chill of the streets before the old man could change his mind. In the half light of the rising dawn, he went up the stairs three at a time, and then across the bridge, running east to the river port. Ammu Qort, the day’s prime, was harsh to men he found shirking their duty, but lazy about checking after the work had started. Damond wanted to be in place well before any inspections could be done.
The cut-thumbs letters had begun arriving just before Longest Night, smuggled past Antean ports on ships from the west. Sheaves of them had been handed around the taprooms and temples. Damond had seen only one himself. The forces of madness are all around, it had said. He’d joked with his cousin that anyone who’d worked for the guard had known that for years. For a time, the letters had been the first subject of everyone’s jokes and speculation—whether they were sincere or a kind of expensive joke, whether the things they said were true or pure invention, whether the people making and distributing them had Borja’s best interests at heart. He’d heard that the letters had been written by pirates, or a Northcoast merchant, or some sort of resurgent dragon cult. For himself, he took them lightly.
Someone else, though, hadn’t. A priest had put something in the letters together with a passage of scripture and petitioned the council. The council—probably influenced by Sarakal’s traditional families in exile—had declared new policies for the guard. And Damond, through no fault of his own, had been introduced to blood duty.
Now, he skittered down the stairs where the bridges stopped and run-walked to the inspector’s station. All along the river, a high wall sank down into the muddy depths and rose high above them. Algae greened the stones from the high-water mark down to the surface of the river, and guards only slightly luckier than himself patrolled the thin walk at its top. When he’d started in the guard, there’d been jokes about Timzinae merchants from Sarakal climbing the walls by night to avoid the inspector’s station. Since the war, the jokes seemed less funny.
Barges stood on the water, shadows on the shining river. In years past, a busy morning might see a hundred boats waiting for the station to come open. Since the war, Damond had never seen more than thirty, and usually fewer. The inspector’s station stood at the end of a walled quay. Whatever goods were to be loaded or unloaded stopped here to be counted, considered, and have tariffs levied. Whoever wished to come into the city or leave it was questioned and examined. Tauendak was a city of the pure, and it didn’t stay that way by opening itself to all comers. Or that was the story it told, anyway. Damond had believed it until he’d been part of the guard.
The number of people the inspector’s station waved through for expedience or changed its mind about for a bribe had scandalized him at first. He’d settled into a professional cynicism since. The cut-thumbs letters had tightened down the passage, as had the fashion of ransom kidnappings in Lôdi before that and the War of Ten Princes in the Keshet before that. Every time the rules became stricter, they also would eventually relax. Antea’s spread across the world was like that too. Whatever the rich and powerful thought, whatever the priests pretended to find in the ancient scripts, the madness of the Firstbloods wouldn’t come here.
Kana Luk, inspector for the Regos, was at her table in the station when Damond came in. It was still dark enough outside that she had her lantern lit, and the flame glittered on the scales of her cheek and forehead.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I’m early.”
“That was a trick. Your ears aren’t done.”
Damond shrugged. “Joran and I must have forgotten.”
“I’m sure that’s it,” the inspector said.
“I can go back, if you’d like. But it might take a while. You know how Joran heads out once his morning duties are done.”
“Any candlemaker in the medina would have wax enough to do the thing.”
“If it’s worth being late—”
“Don’t bullshit me, boy,” she said, a smile in her gruff voice. “I was making excuses to get out of work before your mother licked off your caul.” Damond grinned and took his place, blade and cloth in hand, but Kana wasn’t done. “You watch yourself. I went to the cunning man last night. He said there was great danger coming.”
“He always says that.”
“Does not. Sometimes he says there’s great fortune coming. Or a man to sweep me away in clouds of passion.”
“I don’t know why you give him your money.”
“Promises of danger, fortune, and passion? He’s the most entertaining thing in my life anymore. Now let’s open for work before Qort gets here and finds you idle enough to examine.”
Damond stood by the quayside door, thin blade in one hand, white cloth in the other. Kana opened the door at his side and shouted into the darkness. The voices of the laborers and carters answered back, as they always did. There was a music to the work, and it was the last beautiful thing in Damond’s day.
The first man to come in was a Dartinae, his body thin and lithe, his eyes glowing from within like his brain was afire. He looked from Kana to Damond and back again.
“The fuck is this?”
“New rules, Dabid,” Kana said. “State your name.”
“You just called me by it. I’m Dabid Sinnitlong, just the same as I was last month.”
“I know it,” Kana said. “What’s your business?”
“Grain from the farms down by Sabbit township. Five hundredweight.”
“Nice,” Kana said. “East or west bank?”
“All west,” the Dartinae said. It was a lie, and they all knew it. Someday, Kana would lose patience, and Dabid would pay a thick fine or a slightly thinner bribe. But apparently this wasn’t that day.