Steppan wasn’t in the room, and neither was his sword. He wasn’t in the tiles hall where they would sometimes spend the evening playing against the old men with missing fingers and teeth. He wasn’t in the alley or the common rooms. The addict who lived in the room next to theirs hadn’t seen him since midday. Annoyance bit into Asa’s giddiness, but not so much as to erase it entirely. And the solution to the puzzle of Prince Steppan’s vanishing was perfectly clear, if only in retrospect.
Near midnight, Asa stepped onto the street beside the river that overlooked the quay. Steppan sat with his legs hanging out over the water, his gaze fixed on the pens. Where the workhouse overseer had been that morning, torches like flares lit the bars and the captives. Ten men and six women ranging from hardly out of childhood to approaching dotage huddled together, property of the workhouses now. There would be more before they shipped out. Asa had seen the pens so packed that there hardly seemed room enough to breathe. Seven guards stood or sat, laughing with one another, water and fog making their voices seem close and far away at the same time.
“We’re too late,” the prince said.
“How do you figure?”
“She’s already sold.”
Standing at the pen bars like a bird in a menagerie, Zelanie, daughter of Jost, for all the good that had done her, looked out toward them. Her gown was yellow-brown but had probably started out as pink or white. On the river, a barge hove into sight. A smuggler or a cadre of young men from the city in search of adventure. Asa’s exhaustion and pleasure and anxious anticipation of what was still to come bubbled up in laughter. Steppan’s expression was as stark as a slap.
“It’s uncomfortable for her,” Asa said, “but it’s temporary. And we can’t get her without going through this part.”
“What?”
“Think it through,” Asa said, sitting beside him. “Take her before she’s sold to the workhouse, and we’re stealing from her family. They live here. They know people. If they held a grudge, it could cause real problems. But if she’s sold, her father’s been paid. Whatever brothers or sisters or aunts needed the money already have it. When she goes lost now, it’s the workhouse that’s losing her. They can stand it better, and they’re less likely to know who’s behind it, and even if they do, it’s a small loss to them and a small risk to us. They’ll be taking a hundred people at least on their barges by the end of the week. One less they’ll hardly notice, and even if they did, they come here three times a year for a week or less each time.”
“You planned for this?”
Asa clapped an arm around Steppan’s shoulders, grinning. The despair in the prince’s eyes shifted first to disbelief, and then something like admiration. The expression was sweet as honey and intoxicating as wine to Asa, and it justified the whole day’s effort.
“All this and more, my friend. I planned all this and more. But I need rest, and so do you. Tomorrow’s a long day, and I’ll need my wits about me. So come back to the room. I won’t be able to sleep if I’m worrying where you’ve gotten to.”
They rose together, and across the darkly turning water the girl stared out at them. Drunk with cleverness, Asa raised a hand, hailing her like a friend, and after a moment, she waved tentatively back.
Finding the hunters was easy enough. They hadn’t come to be subtle. Sending a message to them was hardly more difficult. Half a dried apple was enough to buy a dozen street couriers. But until the men stepped out onto the rooftop court, Asa hadn’t been sure they would come.
It was a low, gray rooftop, no larger than a peasant’s bedroom would have been on the other bank of the river, but palatial by the standards of Sovereign North Bank. It huddled beneath taller buildings all around it, so that even though it was technically open to the sky, there was only a tiny square of dull blue above them. The view was mostly of walls. Drying laundry hung from gray, unglazed windows, and someone had built a dovecote across the alley below them that filled the air with alarmed coos and the stink of droppings. A squat iron brazier belched out a thin, foul smoke. A girl no more than nine years old bowed before the hunters, jabbering in the tongue of Far Coiris and pointing them on toward the table where Asa sat, waiting with three cups and a stone bowl of cider.
The men walked with the ease and grace of those accustomed to violence.
“We talked to you,” the one with the paper in his belt said. “Asa, you called yourself.”
“Good to be remembered. Please, sit down.”
The men exchanged a glance, then sat, arranging themselves so that no one could approach unobserved.
“Seems I recall you didn’t know anything.”
“No one on the north bank is ever what they seem,” Asa said, pouring cider from the bowl into all three cups. “I wasn’t sure then what made the most sense for me. I know where the chancellor sleeps, you see. And that he’s not a man who is safe to cross. I spoke with him yesterday.”
The hunters both tensed. Asa gestured at the cups of cider, letting them choose first and then drinking the third almost dry to allay any fear of poison.
“And what was it you said to him?” the one with the paper asked.
“That you two were here and hunting for him. Oh, please. Don’t look at me like that. As if he didn’t already know! Likely, he had word of it the moment the pair of you came down the wall. I also convinced him not to kill you, and you’re welcome for it. I sold him a scheme to rid himself of the pair of you at essentially no risk to him. He believes that I’m on his side.”
“And yet here you sit with us.”
Asa nodded. “It’s a sad fallen world, filled with bastards and confidence men. I weep for it.”
“What’s your price?” the other hunter said, then coughed and shot an angry glance at the foul little brazier.
“Right to the point,” Asa agreed. “I appreciate that. I want letters of amnesty. Two sets, and signed by the mayor.”
The second hunter laughed once, but the first leaned forward. Neither one had touched the cider.
“You’re asking a lot, friend Asa,” the first hunter said.
“Why are we having this talk?” the second one asked. “This freak of nature knows where Rouse hides. Break a couple fingers, and we’ll know too.”
“But you won’t be able to get him out from his protection,” Asa said. “I’m not only offering information. I’m your partner now. He won’t put himself in a place to be caught unless someone he thinks is his ally draws him out. You can walk the bridges and streets for the rest of your lives and not find him. Or you can do as I say and be home by nightfall.”
Somewhere below them, a man’s voice rose in an angry shout, and another answered it, syllable for screaming syllable. Asa took another sip of cider and waited.
“How would you draw him out?” the first hunter asked.
“Ah. An excellent question. I’ve already made my first contact, so he’s already prone to view a note from me as legitimate. Once we’ve picked the right place, I’ll send to him. And when he comes, I’ll poison him. Nothing that would kill him, of course. But something that will take his strength and his will, at least long enough to put him in chains, yes? No fighting. No violence. Everybody wins.”
The second hunter laughed, coughed, and shook his head.
“You’d poison a poisoner?” the first hunter said, fidgeting in his seat. His face was growing pale.
“I’m not saying it would be easy,” Asa said. “There would have to be some sort of misdirection. A plate of honeyed dates, for instance. Something like that. A suspicious refreshment he could be wary of and avoid. There’s nothing like keeping out of a trap to make a man feel safe. And then, with his guard down …” The second hunter coughed out another laugh, but his eyes were having trouble focusing. Asa smiled and went on. “And, of course, I’d take something to counteract the effects before I sat down.”