Broot and his men were still where he’d left them, standing in the street. Basrahip had joined them as well. Geder walked out to them and shrugged.
“You were right,” he said. “She’s gone.”
Broot’s nose was swollen and bruised. When he spoke, he sounded congested. “I’m sorry, my lord.”
“Not your fault,” Geder said. “This was my mistake. I … misunderstood.”
Basrahip put his arm around Geder’s shoulder, and Geder leaned into the priest.
“I’ll call your carriage,” Broot said, and a few minutes later Geder was rattling down the rough, wide roads past squares and marketplaces, all of them blighted and emptied by the winter cold. He thought he would never feel warm again, and he didn’t care. Suddapal spun past his eyes without being seen. When the carriage stopped, he was mildly surprised to find himself at the protector’s mansion. A footman helped him down. Basrahip helped him up the stairs.
“Jorey,” Geder said. “I need to get a message to Jorey.”
“Yes, Prince Geder.”
“We have to take the army back from Kiaria. Just leave enough to keep them from getting out, take back the rest.”
“As you say,” Basrahip agreed.
“I need them. I need all of them. And the priests. I need them too. I need everyone.”
“They are yours,” Basrahip said. “You are blessed of the goddess, and her will can bring you all that you wish.”
“Good,” Geder said.
Basrahip paused in the doorway.
“Tell me,” he said. “What do you want?”
When Geder spoke, his voice was rough and sharp as a serrated blade.
“I want to find Cithrin.”
Marcus
In the aftermath of the storm, the sky was as wide, calm, and clear as a highwayman’s smile, and Marcus put as much faith in it. With every step along the rocky shore, he was aware of the capricious power of the world around him. The clouds in the sky might be nothing or they might be the vanguard of another storm bent on wiping them all from the face of the world. And while they might be able to find their way back to the lodge house of Order Murro, they also might not. Or the Haaverkin might decide not to extend hospitality. Or, for that matter, the earth might open up and swallow them all.
Truth was, Marcus was feeling more than a little jumpy.
The stone shore stretched out before and behind them. Frozen waves cracked and shattered. Spears of ice lay white and silver in the sunlight. The air was thick with the scents of salt and cold. Even wrapped in half a dozen layers, he started shivering if they stopped for too long. It was the third day of their search along this stretch of shore, and the tide was beginning to turn already. If they didn’t come across something soon, it would mean another day’s waiting. Another chance for bad weather or angry Haaverkin or any of a thousand complications and dangers Marcus hadn’t thought of yet. The poisoned sword was slung across his back. It wasn’t useful against all threats, but it might help with some.
“Hey!” Sandr called. “Look at this!”
Marcus turned, his senses sharpening and ready for danger. Sandr stood near the high-water mark where the stones became land. He held what looked like a long, crooked stick, bent once in the middle and once at the end.
“What is it?” Cary called.
“I think it’s a crab’s leg,” Sandr replied. “Big, isn’t it? Catch one of these, it would be a good meal.”
“It would or you,” Cary said.
Sandr shrugged and dropped it back where it had been. Marcus walked forward. The stones grated against each other under his feet. He swept his gaze back and forth across the ground in front of him, moving slowly, his eyes a little unfocused, waiting for some detail to draw his attention. So far, Sandr was winning the prize for most interesting discovery.
“You’re sure about this, Kit?”
“No,” Kit said. “I’m sure that old Kirot thought there was something out here, but he may have been wrong.”
Marcus stepped across a gap between two larger stones, wary of the thin coating of ice that made them slick and treacherous.
“Would have been nice if we had a damn clue what we were looking for,” he said.
“Not a giant, not a sword,” Kit said. “Not a weapon, not a medicine, and no sort of armor.”
“How about a rock?” Marcus said. “You think any of these might be a magic rock?”
“Possibly,” Kit said. “But probably not.”
The storm had lasted three days, and so for three days and nights they’d sat in the great, smoky lodge house, trading stories with the Haaverkin and playing songs. Cary and Smit had danced a number in way that caught the attention of the Antean force and left Marcus wondering whether there was something more going on between them than he’d guessed, but the Haaverkin didn’t seem impressed by it. People who weren’t thick with insulating fat and heavily tattooed didn’t have much erotic charge for this crowd.
When at last the weather broke, Dar Cinlama and his men packed their things, offered to travel with them one last time, and then headed south for Borja before they froze in place. Marcus had to admit that their plan had an appeal. Dar Cinlama was powerfully impressed with himself, but he told a good tale and he didn’t drink more than his share of the beer. It was enough to win him some respect as far as Marcus was concerned, even with who he was working for.
“How do you think it’s going out there?” Marcus asked.
“Out there?”
“In the world. Where there are people.”
“I don’t know,” Kit said. “At a guess, poorly.”
“That was my thought too.” He stepped forward. A flash of yellow in one of the small tidepools caught his attention, and he leaned close. A tiny starfish clung to a stone. Probably not the source of earth-shattering magic. “Do you think Cithrin and Yardem are all right?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s why they call it a guess.”
Kit smiled. “Well, then, since I know that they are both clever and competent, I would guess that they are fine, whatever’s happened.”
“But you don’t know that.”
“No.”
They moved on, Marcus sweeping his eyes over the ground, then moving forward. Sweeping, and moving forward. Almost half an hour later, he spoke again.
“I keep thinking about the war. About how it’s just like all the other wars I’ve seen, only it isn’t.”
“I’m not certain what you mean,” Kit said, and squatted down.
“Find something?”
The actor reached into one of the salt puddles. When he drew out his hand, he had a thin stem of hollow bone.
“Pipe stem,” Kit said. “It might been carried in by the waves.”
“Or it might have been dropped by someone walking this same path. I’m going to call that a good sign.”
“But you’d been talking about war.”
“Right. I’ve seen a lot of wars fought for a lot of reasons. Pride. Fear. Power. The right to use land. Trying to keep someone else from using land. Even just the bull-blind love of winning. And I look at what Antea’s been doing, and I see all of that. But the other thing—and I’ve always seen this no matter who’s fighting and whatever they’re fighting for—is once you’re in a war, you want out of it. You want to win or you want to sue for peace or you want to get away from the mad bastards who are stabbing at you. Even the ones that love winning don’t love the war. And that’s not something I see.”
“Ah. I understand. You’re thinking of this as if Antea were at war.”
The stone under Marcus’s foot shifted and he danced back. “There’s some evidence that it is.”