There was no sign of a seal, either, so it was either a copy or a forgery, though it was puzzling that anyone would bother to forge such a prosaic letter.
The sounds of lovemaking were building to a crescendo now, full of grunts and incoherent endearments. Seregil
nudged Alec’s shoulder and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Alec rolled his eyes, shaking with silent laughter.
The lovers came to what sounded like a mutually satisfactory conclusion and tapered off into panting moans and laughter. A happy couple, but who?
After a few moments of silence the light went out and they heard the study door softly open and close. Seregil had barely gained his feet when the door beside him swung open and a burly young man strode out completely naked and apparently quite pleased with himself. He went to the edge of the balcony and leaned on the stone railing, humming a little tune under his breath. He was too young to be the duke, and the duke’s adult sons by his first wife were off at war. Probably a servant taking advantage of his master’s absence for a little fun.
Touching Alec’s wrist, Seregil inclined his head toward the door and silently slipped into the darkened room. Alec followed close behind. The happy lover remained oblivious. There was no choice now but to use the study door. Seregil led the way into the dark corridor and into a bedchamber a few doors down, praying it was unoccupied. It was, and had a disused smell.
They waited there, listening at the door until they heard the happy swain leave the study, then crept back inside. Alec kept watch while Seregil sat down at the desk to copy Princess Elani’s letter, using the duke’s fine parchment and expensive ink. With that done and the documents returned to their hiding places, they hurried down the steep servants’ stair at the end of the corridor, boots whispering on the worn wooden risers.
There were watchmen at the front door and other main gates, but not in the well yard. In a spinning room they squeezed out through a tiny window that a larger man couldn’t have managed and dropped twice their height to the muddy ground below. After that it was a simple matter to scramble over the wall behind the well and make their way along a ditch to the highroad. They kept watch over their shoulders as they went, prepared for an outcry, but the villa
was dark behind its ornate stone wall, the night still except for the raucous din of the crickets.
Satisfied that they had gotten away clean, Seregil gave Alec’s braid a playful tug. “I’m glad you heard the lovers coming our way. It would have been a shame to spoil their evening.”
“And ours. Home?”
Seregil patted his shirt where he’d hidden the letters. “Home.”
They took passage on the Nimbus, a small coastal trader, and reached Rhiminee just six days from when they’d left. The evening sun cast the ship’s rushing shadow ahead of them, flecking the surface of the busy harbor with touches of gilt and turning the towering cliffs above the Lower City pink. Joined by the crooked, climbing line of the walled Harbor Way, the Upper City, with its palaces and great markets, crowned the bluffs while the Lower City spread out around the head of the broad bay below-a jumble of warehouses, customhouses, tenements, guild houses, and countless taverns and cheap brothels catering to sailors and traders.
Alec leaned on the rail beside Seregil, watching the city draw closer. They didn’t cut much of a figure today in their rough, well-worn traveling clothes-long linen shirts, stained leather breeches, and salt-stained shoes, with long knives hanging from their belts and hair hidden under their faded straw wayfarer’s hats.
The stench of the Lower City rolled out to meet them on a hot land breeze as soon as they passed the inner moles. Alec scratched absently under one shoulder blade as the sailors furled the sails and the ship glided up to the stone quay. Even without their coats, they were soaked through down the backs of their shirts and under the arms. Thanks to the roles they’d had to play to get into Reltheus’s house, it had been nearly a week since they’d had a decent wash.
“I’d give just about anything to be in the House baths right now,” Alec murmured.
Seregil sniffed himself and grimaced. “We’ll need a wash first before they’ll let us in.”
As soon as the ship docked, they shouldered their packs and slipped over the rail, anxious to lose themselves in the crowd. Here they might be recognized, if someone got a good look at their faces.
The reek of spoiled fish and sour milk hung on the air as they hurried into the maze of stalls and booths in the harbor market.
The beggars were thick as flies here now, many of them proud souls forced to it by rising prices caused by the interminable war. As they passed a bread stall a young boy dodged out with a loaf under his arm, the baker’s boys in hot pursuit. They soon caught the lad and had him down on the ground, kicking him as he cried out for mercy.
It only took a moment for an angry mob to form, coming to the boy’s aid. As Seregil and Alec watched, the baker and his boys were knocked down and beaten, and the stall set on fire.
Seregil shook his head sadly as they made their way into the relative safety of the twisting streets of the slum beyond. “It’s a wonder the city hasn’t burned down already.”
Here the tall tenements leaned against one another like drunken friends, with washing drying over the windowsills and women shouting to their children playing in the filthy street below to come home as it grew dark. The Scavenger crews didn’t patrol this sort of neighborhood very often. Garbage lay stinking in the gutters.
Children ran up to them, begging coins, and Alec tossed them a handful of pennies. They left the children scrambling for the coins and rounded a corner into a narrower lane where big black rats were making a meal of a dead dog. It was growing dark, but Alec caught sight of what looked like a child’s body slumped against a rickety fence across the street. A few rats were crawling over it, as well.
“Hold on.” He went to the boy and bent over him for a closer look. The child was an emaciated little thing. His eyes were open and Alec thought he was dead until he saw the boy’s chest rise and fall. Alec patted his cheek lightly. “Hey boy, what’s wrong?”
But apart from breathing, the child showed no more life
than a doll. His eyes were dry and dull, and there were specks of dirt caught in the corners of his lids.
Alec looked around at the blank walls and empty windows. “Someone left him here to die.” Life was cheap in this part of the city, especially the lives of children.
Seregil nodded. “There’s a Dalnan temple a few streets over. They’ll care for him there.”
Alec passed his pack to Seregil and gathered the boy in his arms, then almost wished he hadn’t.
There was no resemblance, of course, but the slight weight of that spindly little body reminded Alec far too much of Sebrahn, his alchemically begotten “child of no mother” he’d lost so recently. But he swallowed the sudden swell of pain and said nothing.
The temple was little more than a shrine cramped between two taller buildings, and its sacred grove consisted of nothing but a pair of apple trees. A few sleepy brown doves cooed softly from the shelter of their branches when Seregil pulled the string of the small iron bell beside the gate.
Two brown-robed young women wearing the drysian’s bronze lemniscate came out to greet them. Their welcoming smiles turned to concern when they saw the boy.
“Maker’s Mercy, another one!” the taller of the two exclaimed softly.
“We just found him lying in an alley,” Alec explained. “I didn’t feel any broken bones, and there’s no blood.”
The other woman held out her arms, and Alec passed the child to her. “We’ll see that he doesn’t suffer,” she promised.
“You’ve seen this before?” asked Seregil.
“A few. Some new summer fever, I think.”
“Thank you, Sister.” Alec, raised a Dalnan, gave her a silver sester.
“Maker’s Mercy on you both, for helping a child of poverty.”
Alec knew a thing or two about poverty, himself.