A thin Jasuru woman in a flowing gown of braided cotton stood at the center of the room, her hands contorted in claws, her eyes narrow. Her black tongue passed over sharp teeth, and her scales shone the color of brass. With a shout, she lifted her right hand, a sphere of bright air forming around her fist. She gritted her teeth, shouted again, and the globe burst into a bright violet flame. There was a scattering of polite applause.
Cary leaned in against the table, her eyes narrow, as the cunning woman called forth a second ball of flame, this one orange.
“Maybe you can tell me,” she said. “Why is it so many cunning men go in for performance?”
“You’d have to ask them,” Marcus said. “Can’t see why they wouldn’t, though. Impressive to look at, some of it.”
At the far end of the table, Hornet said something that made Charlit Soon roll her eyes and Sandr laugh hard enough to slop beer out of his cup. Yardem, sitting beside Hornet, smiled patiently, his ears drooping to the side in a way that made the old soldier look like a patient rabbit. Outside, the night wind had a chill to it that was the first real hint of winter. There would be plenty of warm days still to come. But Carse was almost as far north as Rukkyupal, and if the currents of the ocean warmed Northcoast and chilled Hallskar, it didn’t change the fact that it was late to start a long march for anywhere.
No one had said the words yet, but Marcus was fairly sure they’d be wintering in Carse. Long, dark nights in the cold he’d borne once with Alys and Merian. Walking south to Porte Silena was starting to sound like the better option, even if it meant facing the armies of Antea alone and on foot.
“I just would have thought… you know. Calling fire from the air?” Cary said, moving her hands in tight but dramatic gestures. “That has to be good for something more than copperweights at a taproom.”
“You mean fighting?” Marcus said.
“For instance,” Cary said.
“Not really,” Marcus said. “I mean, it’s impressive to look at, but if it’s not faster than a bow or a blade, it’s not a trick you’d be likely to do twice.”
The actor bit her thumb, considering, and nodded. “That’s a fair point.”
“It’s the difference between what you do and what I do,” Marcus said. “No offense, but what matters to you and Kit and the others is what looks best to an audience. What matters to people like me or Yardem? What kills the other person fastest. The two aren’t the same.”
“No,” Cary said, a distant look coming to her eyes. “I suppose they aren’t.”
Marcus was silent for a moment. Mikel came in from the darkness. His thin frame made him seem younger than he likely was. He grinned and came to the table, where Halvill made room for him. It was odd the way the players and the guards had become a single group after the flight from Porte Oliva. But sea travel had a reputation for changing people in ways that they did not change back. They sat together now in groups that mixed one with the other and made no distinction. Enen and Hornet and Yardem and Charlit Soon all shoulder to shoulder on the bench. Even Magistra Isadau was there, with her niece Maha. The only ones missing were Master Kit and Cithrin.
No. That wasn’t right. They weren’t the only ones.
Marcus looked over at Cary. Her hair was pulled back in a thick braid. Her eyes were dark, seeing something that wasn’t in the room. Of all the players, he felt he knew least which of her feelings were truly hers and which the artifice of her trade. He’d seen her pretend everything from heartbreak to joy, lust to horror, cold rage to naïve trust. He didn’t know that he’d ever seen the actual woman. It was part of why he liked her.
“I’m sorry about Smit,” he said.
“I am too,” she said, and didn’t speak more. Marcus didn’t press.
“Captain!” Sandr called from the foot of the table. “Where’s the magistra? She should come with us. Like the old days!”
“Thing about the old days,” Marcus said. “They’re old.”
In truth, Cithrin was still at the holding company’s compound, and Marcus wasn’t sure anymore whether it was captivity or choice. With the ships in port, the wealth of Porte Oliva had been taken by the king and the proclamation put out that, as an act of loyalty to the sovereign of Northcoast, letters of transfer from the Medean bank were to be treated as the gold they represented. The bank had begun making trades using the papers where real money had been. Marcus had even escorted the first of them at Cithrin’s request, walking through the streets of Carse from the branch run by Magister Nison to a fletcher’s hall partnered with the bank. The journey had been planned in advance, as clearly a show as anything Cary and the players ever did. Marcus, Yardem, Enen, and half a dozen of Magister Nison’s people making a great show of protecting a thin sheaf of papers. It had felt like manning the walls of a fort built from sticks and pillows, but he’d understood the bank’s reasons. If they wanted people to think of their bits of scribble as being the same as gold, then they needed to be protected as gold would be protected. That it was ridiculous didn’t seem to matter, and so he had scowled at the passersby and kept his hand on the hilt of his sword. Unsurprisingly, no one had leapt to the attack and stolen the papers. Marcus wondered whether anyone ever would.
“We’re thinking of putting on The Pardoner’s Wife,” Cary said.
“Really?” Marcus said, trying to recall which play that was.
“Mikel knows all Smit’s lines. It’s a short solve, though. We need more people if we’re going to have the full selection to pull from. And there’s the problem of not having a cart. Or costumes. Or props.”
“Mmm,” Marcus agreed, drinking from his cup. The beer was better than he gave it credit for.
“I was wondering if you thought… Cithrin is in a strange position here, isn’t she? I mean, she’s not precisely locked away and she’s not precisely not, if you see what I mean.”
“You’re wondering if she’s in a position to underwrite the company?”
“Wondering, yes. I don’t want to presume on the friendship, but there’s been a fair amount of work we’ve done and risk we’ve taken doing what amounts to her business.”
“I can ask.”
Cary nodded, swallowed, looked back at the Jasuru woman just as the cunning woman tossed all four of her globes of fire into the air, where they annihilated each other with a series of reports like tiny thunder. The cunning woman spread her arms and grinned. The sweat running down her face and neck made her seem oddly vulnerable. The players shouted and clapped and stamped their feet as she bowed. Enen tossed a bit of silver to her, and half a dozen of the other patrons of the house followed suit. Cary shook her head in disapproval.
“She needs people leading the audience,” Cary said.
“You think?”
“Nothing convinces people to throw coins like a bunch of other people throwing coins.”
“Or letters of transfer,” Marcus said, trying to imagine the Jasuru woman being caught in a storm of crumpled letters.
The door of the taproom slammed open and Kit rushed in. His hair was disheveled and his eyes wide in a way that set Marcus’s heart racing before the old actor was halfway across the room. Yardem’s ears went straight up, and the Tralgu began to pull himself free of the bench.