Qinnitan wished she spoke the language better. “No. But thanking. And for the carrying, thanking, too.” She clambered down out of the wagon. She had encountered this Blueshore farming family on the road and had bartered the dead priest’s donkey to them for lodging, food, and clothes during the time it had taken them all to reach this town on the eastern edge of Brenn’s Bay. The farmer, who was asking a port reeve where in Onir Beccan’s fish market the wagon could be set up, nodded to her. Three of the family’s four children were asleep after the long day’s ride, but the oldest shyly waved farewell.
She walked through the center of the town but passed by the market, continuing instead until she reached the town walls and could look down at the port, which stretched away north for a little distance along the intricate coast of the wide bay. Surely somewhere in this muddle of ships, she could hire someone with the money she’d stolen from Daikonas Vo who would take her away from here without asking questions. If Vo had been carrying her to the autarch’s camp at Southmarch then she would be happy to get on almost anything going in the opposite direction. But what after that? She could never set foot in Xis again—to do so would almost certainly mean death. But Hierosol, the only other city she knew, was also in the autarch’s power. Where else could she go?
Qinnitan stared across the bay toward the sunset skies over Southmarch Castle. Every now and then a dim thump flew to her on the wind—it had only just occurred to her that she was hearing cannons firing. Those must be the autarch’s guns, the same ones Sulepis had used to level the walls of Hierosol. And here she stood, separated from him only by the width of the water! She flinched a little and took a step back, as though he might suddenly reach out all the way from the farther shore.
Anywhere but here, she told herself. Anywhere but this close.
The Onir Beccan Market was the best and biggest fish market in all of Blueshore, and the healthy portion it took from all the catches sold there by fishermen from all the cities along Brenn’s Bay had been enriching the ruling Aldritch family for at least two centuries. It was a bustling, successful place, oddly no less so now even with war on its doorstep, and it was the first real city she had seen since Agamid. As Qinnitan walked through the marketplace between arguing Blueshoremen, hurrying cooks, ostlers and innkeepers and drunken Marrinswalk sailors, she was reminded of the seafront in Great Xis, a place she seen only once since she was a child, on the night of her escape from the Seclusion. Perhaps it would not seem so impressive now, but as she remembered the port’s mad crush of people and the sights and sounds and smells that could exist together nowhere else on earth, she felt a terrible pang of homesickness for the places where she had grown up and the people she had known as a child. But her parents had all but sold her, she reminded herself, and her childhood friend Jeddin had nearly gotten her killed, so what exactly was she missing?
Still, she had certainly been happy at the docks. She remembered one time she had gone with her father when he had to speak about a job for her older brother. While he was talking to the dock factor, little Qinnitan had wandered off and spent a blissful time alone in a world of dreams and miracles and mysteries. She had seen a man selling monkeys and another selling parrots, and then one of the monkeys had got loose and climbed up among the parrots and what screaming and shouting there had been! She had also seen a real witch, a woman being carried along the waterfront on a litter by two bearers, an old, cruel woman weighted down with necklaces of gold, with a face like a sea turtle, and everywhere she passed, the people behind her turned away and made the pass-evil sign, or spat on the ground.
Qinnitan had also seen a man dancing on crutches even though he had no legs, and another who could set his skin on fire and then blow it out again, both performing for coppers. She saw children singing and dancing, too, and many of them did not seem to have parents. Young as she was, she had still been a little envious of them.
Now, ten or more years later, far away from her home or even any thought of having a home, she again touched the feeling from that long-ago day, being alone but not lonely, of being solitary and yet sufficient. Because what else was there to… ?
Qinnitan banged into something and suddenly found herself tangled in a heavy cloak or cloth. Her arms caught, she lost her balance and fell, and something large stumbled over her, driving her knee and elbow into the stony cobbles so that she cried out in pain and even cursed a little.
It was only when the man yanked his cloak away from her, almost knocking her over again, that she realized she had collided with a soldier and made him fall. His friends, three more soldiers, helped him up.
She was confused and frightened by the way they all stared at her, but it was only when one of the soldiers said, “She curses in the name of Nushash!” in perfect Xixian that she realized she must have said something in her native language.
Before she could even begin to guess what four Xixian soldiers were doing in a fish market in Blueshore, they had surrounded her.
“What a funny thing to find in the middle of nowhere,” another soldier said, also in flawless Xixian, accented ever so slightly with the vowel sounds of the southern desert. “A sweet little girl from home. She could be your sister, Paka.”
“Watch your tongue,” growled the one who must have been Paka. “This little whore is no sister of mine.” He grabbed Qinnitan’s arm and began to hurry her across the wide market. “But she does have a few questions to answer. Don’t you fools remember? We’re supposed to have our eyes out for girls this age who speak Xixian—that’s straight from the Golden One’s minister. If you’d let her go, we’d have been facing the torture-priests.”
The other guards, trotting after him now, lowered their heads and muttered in shamefaced piety at the mention of the autarch’s name.
Qinnitan could not believe her ill luck. Panicked, she tried to break away, but Paka the sergeant had her tight.
“No use struggling,” he told her. “You’ll just get hurt.”
When they came out of the darkness at last it was not in martial procession like the Rooftoppers, but in a small group—Yasammez, dark as a crow’s wing, her chief eremite Aesi’uah (the name drifted into Barrick’s thoughts like an echo), and two hulking shapes—Deep Ettins, the Fireflower whispered to Barrick, the largest of them no less important a figure than Hammerfoot of Firstdeeps.
For a moment Saqri and her many-times-great-aunt only stood looking at each other, then Saqri stepped toward her and extended her hands to Yasammez. Their fingers met and they both stopped again, but what passed between them was deeper than any embrace. It went on and on, a river of meaning passing silently between them.
Barrick watched, unmoving. Rafe the Skimmer caught his eye and grinned as if this momentous reunion were some kind of surprise the Skimmer youth had arranged all by himself. The giant Hammerfoot’s expression was harder to read, even with the whispers of insight that flooded Barrick’s skull, but it was not hard to see dislike and distrust in the creature’s deep-sunken eyes and sour expression.
Saqri and Yasammez finally stepped away from each other, so Barrick could compare them side-by-side. The family resemblance was unmistakable, but so were the differences: although at first glance neither of them looked to be out of the prime of womanhood, Saqri had a softer, more rounded face. Yasammez had the look of a predator, her nose strong, her cheekbones high and sharp, her eyes tilted up at the outer corners as if she stood in a perpetual wind. Her black armor—she wore every piece except a helmet—added to her dangerous appearance.