“You know what I’m not hearing?” she said.
“Ah. I suppose I don’t,” Marcus said.
“I’m not hearing anyone say, ‘What do you think, Cary?’”
Marcus glanced at Kit.
“What do you think, Cary?” Marcus said.
She nodded curtly. “I think whatever this thing is you’re trying to find and being so closemouthed about—”
“Well, we don’t know what it is, and—” Marcus began, then Cary lifted her eyebrows. “Sorry.”
“I think whatever this thing is, a bad storm in Hallskar in the winter wouldn’t be good no matter how many people were on the road with you. The captain here knows it and wants us out of harm’s way. Add that he knows”—Cary turned toward Kit—“which apparently you don’t, that the company goes where Master Kit does.” Kit started to object and then stopped himself. “So all of this lip-flapping and masculine self-sacrifice will play just fine on the stage, and the stage is going to Hallskar. I’ll tell the others, send Hornet to buy some horses, and get the rest packing up. It’s about damn time we left this city anyway.”
Cary stood up from her chair, drank down her cider in one swallow, and marched out toward the main rooms of the house and, beyond them, the yard. Kit sipped his own cider more slowly and looked over at Marcus.
“You did give her control of the company,” Marcus said.
“I did. That’s true.”
“I’m thinking she has a taste for it.”
The journey was long, and they didn’t wait for the end of the court season to begin it. The company spent the last of its money on a team of horses to pull the cart and a couple more for the people to rest on when they got tired of walking. Even with the long stay in Camnipol, years of wandering made the company a model of efficiency. Aided by good weather, the journey to Sevenpol took hardly more than a week; they arrived just about the same time they would have been playing at Lord Daskellin’s party if they’d stayed. They made Estinport a week after that. The half of the fleet that hadn’t stayed in Sarakal was in winter port there, and the steep, narrow streets of the city were full with sailors spending their season’s wages and the prize money from the blockade of Nus.
Warships crowded the piers, empty for the most part, and the docks were fragrant with hot tar and fresh sawdust. Most ships flew the banner of House Skestinin below the royal pennant. And below them both, the red field and pale eightfold eye of the goddess.
Cary guided the cart into the yard of a taphouse that stood not a hundred paces from the sea. The air was cold and humid and the cries of the seagulls were louder than the human voices nearby. Master Kit negotiated with the taphouse keeper and got them decent terms for a three-night run. There wasn’t time enough to tailor any of the plays to the local situation or incorporate personalities, so they chose a well-known story where everyone knew the lines. While the players brought down the sides of the cart and prepared the props and costumes, Kit went to scout out boats that might be hired to ferry them across the water to Rukkyupal.
The players knew their business well enough that Marcus would only get in the way. For the better part of a day, he wandered the streets of Estinport with only himself for company. When he stopped in a taphouse for a length of garlic sausage and a mug of beer, he sat apart from the larger crowd.
A singer with a drum sat at the front of the common room, his reedy voice working through a long cycle that Marcus had heard before: the sea captain who went to war and was caught in an ancient magic that took him out of the world so that when he returned, all the people he had known were gone, all the places he had lived had changed. It was a sad song, with the dry beat of the drum carrying it along like a heartbeat. Marcus listened with half an ear, and watched the faces of the men and women in the room. They all looked young. Fresh and untried. These were sailors in a martial navy, and tradesmen, and women with households and market stalls and children of their own, and they all looked as if they were playing dress-up. More even than the players.
He had been that young once, that sure of himself and his ability to remake the world in the shape he chose. And it had been true, within bounds. It seemed like something that had happened to someone else, except when it seemed like it had all happened a week before. When he finished his beer, he walked back out in the cold, the singer’s drum still throbbing behind him.
At the yard, Kit was in the back of the cart in a robe of yellow silk, his arms held out to his sides while Mikel and Smit, needles in their mouths, sewed long, quick stitches at the seams.
“It appears I lost a bit of weight in the last year,” Kit said as Marcus pulled himself up to sit beside them.
“Rewards of a vigorous lifestyle,” Marcus said. “Any luck with the boat?”
“Yes,” Kit said. “We have passage two days from now. It won’t quite break our little bank, but we have a few plays we can rehearse on the way that tend to do well with Haaverkin. The sense of humor in Hallskar tends to run to puns, I’m afraid, so we have to make sure we have the lines precisely.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Mikel said around a mouthful of pins. “This is what we do, right?”
“Apparently so,” Smit said pleasantly. “Try not to turn there, Kit. Changes the drape of the thing.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll try not to.”
The afternoon passed quickly, the low northern sun dashing for the western horizon. The keep brought torches and braziers out to the yard, and as the sunset stained the clouds rose and gold, Marcus stood out in the crowd to guide the laughter and applause or help to remove the hecklers that popped up, one or two at every show. Charlit Soon joined him. The play wasn’t one she’d done before, and since there hadn’t been time to memorize all the lines, Hornet would be taking the nursemaid’s role and playing it in a high comic falsetto. Marcus nodded to her and she smiled back.
“Don’t believe I thanked you for bringing Master Kit back to us,” she said.
“Didn’t know I was doing it at the time,” Marcus said. “But you’re welcome all the same. It’s good to see him back among family.”
“What about your family?” she asked.
He was on the edge of saying that they were dead. Alys and Merian, gone except in his nightmares. Only he didn’t.
“Suddapal. They’re in Suddapal for the time being. If things grow too dangerous there, I expect I’ll meet them again in Porte Oliva.”
“Cithrin, you mean?”
“And Yardem. And the company,” Marcus said. “They’re what I have. I got to see them for a time on the way north, but I couldn’t stay. They had their job. I had mine. But when the jobs are over …”
“When they’re over,” Charlit Soon agreed, and Sandr leaned out from behind the cart, his face painted red and white and his arms flowing with green ribbons.
“Oh. It’s time,” Charlit Soon said, and trotted to the far side of the yard.
Kit came out, stepping onto the stage, and the yellow silk of his costume seemed like cloth-of-gold in the firelight. He strode forward, the stage shifting a bit under his weight. At the edge, he paused. For a long breathless moment, Marcus saw not an actor, not King Lamas the Gold, but Kit. His friend Kit. And he saw the satisfaction in the old man’s face, the happiness and the belonging. The moment passed, and Kit began hectoring the crowd, declaiming, and bringing them close despite the darkness and the cold, with the promise of miracles and of joy.
Clara
When the season’s end came, Clara was not invited to any of the great parties, but Jorey and Sabiha were. Vicarian had not reappeared since the initiation at the top of the Kingspire, and there was no indication of when he would come back down. And so when the feasts and revels that marked the year’s end came and the streets and courtyards of the great houses filled with slave-drawn carriages and ornate palanquins fighting for positions and rank, Clara found herself outside of all of it. Last year, when Dawson had been newly dead, she’d stumbled through her days like a woman half asleep. Now she walked the edge of the Division or looked out over the southern plains, visited the Prisoner’s Span and the taprooms and the fresh markets. The increase in her allowance meant that even as the others around her struggled, she was able to keep herself near to the daily life to which she’d become accustomed. Things did change around her. The market for day-old bread had become competitive, and she gave up the practice of handing it out as charity. The price of tobacco dropped, though, so she could afford something that was actually worth smoking.