I had a few hours to fetch money back. Shouldering through the crowded deck, I nodded to Srini. He returned the nod; then I set foot once more in the city of my long captivity.
Perhaps I expected the heavens to open, or the Lily Goddess to speak, or ghosts to rise from the stones. In truth, three paces after clearing the plank, I was the same woman I’d been three paces before. The crowd was simple to thread through after my time in Kalimpura, while my air of swaggering menace came back to me easily enough. All my costume needed now was a weapon to back up the implied threat.
I was Green. I was back in Copper Downs. So far, no one had noticed.
Spindle Street was not difficult to locate. I followed it away from the harbor and through a succession of neighborhoods.
Copper Downs was infected with a furtiveness I did not recall from my glimpses of street life in prior years. Our night runs from the Pomegranate Court had been among people laughing, drinking, following their business through the darkness. From Federo’s hidden attic, I’d observed a city of tradesmen and laborers hard at work. There had been no sense of desperation. People did not spend their time checking over their shoulders, or hesitate to round corners.
Here, now, they did. The only ones who walked with confidence were swordsmen, and the few protected by such guards. Ordinary people-baker’s boys, mothers leading their children, clerks, carters, and messengers-seemed fearful.
Of what? I wondered. The riots were several years past. The Dancing Mistress had not mentioned attacks in the street.
My concept of the geography was still sketchy, but I knew the temple district was off to my right, and the Dockmarket behind me, not far east of the Quarry Docks. The old wall rose some distance to my left. Beyond it lay a district of quiet streets and iron gates, where the Factor’s house stood. That was one place that riot could have claimed and I would not have mourned.
I crested a low rise where Spindle Street bent slightly west of north. The Ducal Palace rose before me six storeys tall, not so much a castle or a fortress as a manor house grown impossibly large. As I recalled, there had been no wall, just a garden. That had become a flowered overgrowth in the cool climate of the Stone Coast. A wooden gate of obviously recent construction stood open where Spindle Street met Montane Street running alongside the palace grounds.
Here was the Interim Council’s treasury.
As I approached, I found my stride slowing. I had exited the palace at this point the day the Duke fell. Could I locate the window in the Navy Gallery through which I’d slipped? From there, I might even retrace my steps. I wondered who was inside besides Citrak and Brine and whatever toughs protected them.
Instead I marched through the wooden gates and up a muddy path to a doorway that had once served the palace as an ornamental entrance to the garden. There I found a young man in poorly tanned leather armor, chewing on a reed. He seemed unconcerned, in contrast to the fearful state of the rest of the city.
“I am looking for Citrak or Brine,” I announced.
“Mikie’s gone off to his mum’s for grub.” The young man’s eyes were hazel. He was as pale as a fat man’s belly, just like the rest of his countrymen. In a few days, they would come to seem normal to me, but not yet. “Brine’s over at council chambers on a hearing.”
“I have urgent need of funds.”
“Ain’t we all, boy, ain’t we all.”
I leaned close. “The Dancing Mistress has returned across the Storm Sea and must buy her passage off the ship Lucidinous.”
“Who?”
Holding in my next words, I showed him Srini’s chit and the letter from the Dancing Mistress. His lips moved as he traced the words with a grubby finger before giving up after two lines. He looked up at me. “You’ll want Citrak or Brine for this, boy.”
There was no reasonable reply to that. So we waited in shared silence for Citrak to return from his mum’s.
When the man did come back, he was annoyed to find me waiting. He was annoyed at the guard for making me wait. He was annoyed at the counting-men within the building for waiting.
I soon realized Michael Citrak was annoyed at everything. He even looked annoyed-slim and fussy with a pursed mouth and frantic eyes that never quite rested their gaze on anyone or anything. His clothes were fussy as well; a maroon cambric shirt that had been pressed to creasing with a flatiron, over tapered wool slacks in a pale gray without a speck of dust on them.
“This is enough money to find you trouble,” he told me. “I know she’s good for it. You lose it, someone will have your head. Probably mine as well. Trusting such a sum to a foreign boy, I don’t know.”
“I shan’t lose it,” I said in my snootiest voice.
He gave me a small velvet purse stitched quickly shut with a silvered thread that had been finished in an ornate knot, then sealed with a lead slug and a wax stamp. Clearly it was not for the likes of me to open such a precious burden.
I tucked it away and bowed once. “A wasting upon your goats, and flux on you and all whom you love,” I told him pleasantly in Seliu.
“Foreigners,” he sniffed.
Grinning, I walked out through the garden, past the guard, and down Spindle Street once more. I was fifteen minutes from the ship. There I would be free of my burden.
Four men, rough-faced and thick-bodied with middle age, dropped off a wagon tailgate as I approached. They didn’t even bother to flank me.
“Give it up, boy,” the one with the thickest beard said. “Whatever you came up this road to fetch from the palace. We don’t got time for foolery.” He held a cudgel. The man to his left was armed with a short knife, similar to my lost bandit blade. The other two flexed their hands like stranglers.
“Are you with Choybalsan?”
“Huh. Smart one, are you? We’re making a living here. You’re losing one.”
“No. I don’t think so.” I took a step back. This would have to be quick, for I needed to return to Lucidinous before Srini thought me a deserter.
“Pound the kid,” the leader said in a tired voice. “Break whatever you want.”
Rushing three steps toward the knife-wielder, I took a high, showy leap. I crashed into his face with my elbows. He was fat and slow on his feet, and tumbled back. My weight went with him to drive his head into the cobbles. I snatched his knife up and turned in one motion to bury it in the gut of their spokesman.
“Good luck making that living,” I snarled. His eyes were wide with shock as he swayed on his feet. Yanking the knife free, I swiped it clean, left and right across his leather shirtfront, then pushed him over with a tap of my fingers.
The other two backed away. I saluted them with the blade, then trotted off to bring the money to the Dancing Mistress.
It was obvious now what the people of this city were afraid of. They didn’t need a bandit king here in Copper Downs when they had each other.
The rain had picked up by the time I returned to Lucidinous. It bore the sharp, dark scent of the ocean. The Dancing Mistress waited at the ship’s rail with Srini. Having a knife in my leggings once more made me happier, though this one was not balanced as well as my old blade. Energized from the mugging, I walked on the balls of my feet.
I might have killed one or both of the two I’d tangled with. Only if the others didn’t fetch some help for their friends, though. In this city, I could be the terror that both the Dancing Mistress and the Blades had trained me up to be.
Stopping next to the base of the plank, I tossed the sewn purse up to the Dancing Mistress. She seemed surprised as she grabbed it out of the air. I scanned the crowd, now mostly sailors and laborers as the debarking passengers and their natural predators had moved on to other business. The Dancing Mistress and Srini counted out the funds, murmuring together. Then she came down the plank followed by Chowdry, who carried a ditty bag he must have cadged from among the crew.