“Still feeling well enough to joke, I see.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Clara struggled to rise, squinting through the leaves. There was more shouting now. And, unless she was mistaken, the crash of swordplay. She felt sure she heard Jorey’s voice raised in command. In the close confines of their shelter, she felt the huntsman’s fast, shallow breath as much as heard it.
“Be strong a bit longer,” she said. “Just a bit longer.”
When he reached his hand to her, she thought it might be the last gesture of a dying man, but his fingers curled around the back of her neck, drawing her toward him with a definite strength. His lips were rough against hers, surprising and intimate and strong. Clara was shocked, but then gave a little internal shrug. The young man might be dead in the next few minutes, so really where was the harm?
When he released her, his head dropping the inch back to the ground, Clara wiped her mouth with the back of a well-soiled hand. Her lips felt pleasantly bruised, her mind by turns scandalized, flattered, and amused.
“You forget yourself,” she said reprovingly.
“I do, my lady,” the huntsman said. “With you, I often do.”
His eyes fluttered closed. His breath remained painful and quick, and Clara lay in the darkness, willing it to continue until she heard voices she knew as her own household, and started shouting for help.
Marcus
Qahuar Em scratched his chin, his head tilted at a considering angle. Marcus kept his expression bland. The table they sat across was polished oak with a burned-in knotwork pattern. It didn’t have the green banker’s felt that Cithrin used. Marcus had expected that it would, but perhaps the customs were different in Lyoneia. The tiny box that sat on the table was black iron with a lid that hinged on the side and the image of a dragon on the front. If there was some significance to the design she had chosen, he didn’t know it.
“I’m sorry,” Qahuar Em said. “This is confusing.”
“Nothing odd about it,” Marcus said. “Banks and merchant houses hold items of interest for each other all the time, I’m told.”
“When they’re closely allied, and one has people in a city where the other doesn’t,” Qahuar said. “Neither of those applies here.”
“Strange circumstances.”
“Which you aren’t going to explain to me.”
“I’m not,” Marcus agreed.
Qahuar reached over and picked up the little box, cupping it easily in one palm. The lid opened with a clank, uncovering a brass key shorter than a finger bone. Marcus scratched his ear and waited for the man to speak.
“Why do I think this is going to be connected to something disagreeable and embarrassing?” Qahuar asked, making it clear from his tone that an answer would be welcome but wasn’t expected.
“I’m authorized to sign a statement that it’s here at the request of Magistra bel Sarcour,” Marcus said. “Press the key into wax and I’ll put my thumb across it so there’s no question we’re talking about the same one. Anything you like.”
The box closed again. The near-scaled fingertips tapped the oak with a sound like the first hard drops of a thunderstorm.
“I’m prepared to take no for an answer,” Marcus said.
“The magistra and I didn’t part on the best of terms,” Qahuar said, pronouncing his words carefully. “She sent you rather than come herself. I find it hard to believe she’s come to trust me.”
“There’s ways you can trust an enemy you can’t always trust a friend. An enemy’s never going to betray your trust.”
“I think she would say I’d betrayed hers, and I can argue she did mine.”
“Proves my point. You two were being friendly back then,” Marcus said with a smile they both knew he didn’t mean.
A soft knock came at the meeting room door. A full Jasuru woman in robes of grey and scarlet nodded to both men.
“The men from the shipyard, sir.”
Qahuar nodded, and the woman retreated, closing the door behind her with a soft click.
“Going well, that?” Marcus asked.
“Well enough. It will take a year at least to have everything in order, but time moves both ways. Actions can have effects long before they themselves happen.”
“Angry letters from the king of Cabral, for example?”
“Sometimes I wish I’d lost,” Qahuar said. And then, “For more reasons than one. Captain, we’re men well acquainted the world. I think we understand each other. Would you answer a question?”
“You won’t mind if I lie?”
“Not at all. You’re a man whose name is known all through the west. At the head of a private army, you could command any price you ask, but you’re working guard captain for a branch bank. You aren’t open to bribery. And—forgive me—you don’t like me very much.”
“None of that’s a question.”
“Are you in love with her?”
“I’ve loved a lot of people, and the word hasn’t meant the same thing twice,” Marcus said. “The job is to protect her, and I’m going to do the job this time.”
“This time?”
Marcus shrugged and kept quiet. The bastard had gotten him to say more than he meant already. Marcus had to give it; Qahuar was good at what he did. The half-Jasuru stood up, his lips pursed. Slowly, deliberately, he put the box in the pouch at his belt.
“I hope I’m not going to regret this,” he said.
“I expect it won’t matter to you one way or the other,” Marcus said. “For what it’s worth, though, I appreciate your taking it on.”
“You know it’s not as a favor to you?”
“Do.”
Qahuar Em held out a broad hand. Marcus rose to his feet and took it. It was an effort not to squeeze a little hard, just to show he could. The man’s bright green eyes looked amused. And maybe something sadder as well.
“She’s a lucky woman,” Qahuar said.
God, let’s hope so, Marcus thought but didn’t say.
Autumn had come to Porte Oliva overnight. Trees that had been lush and full were dropping leaves that were still green in the center. The sunset winds were loud with their skittering. The bay had turned the color of tea, and stank at midday like a compost heap. The queensmen patrolling the twilight streets wore overcoats of wool and green caps that covered their ears. Marcus walked the narrow streets near the port, feeling the first bite of night’s chill, and decided maybe he liked the city after all.
He found Master Kit and the others in a torchlit courtyard between a taphouse and an inn. Smit and Hornet were still putting the last adjustments on the stage supports while Master Kit barked instructions to them, not even in costume yet. A young woman was pacing behind them. She was fair-haired with large eyes that left Marcus thinking of babies and a tight-bound dress that showed her figure. Her hands were knotted before her, fingers wrestling one another like fighters in a melee.
Marcus walked over to Master Kit. Instead of saying hello, he nodded to the woman.
“New one?”
“Yes,” the old actor said. “I have hope for this one.”
“Had hope for the last one too.”
“Fair enough. I have expectations of this one,” Master Kit said. “Calls herself Charlit Soon, and I find she rehearses wonderfully. Tonight we’ll see how she does with an audience. If she stays through tomorrow, I think I’ve found my full company.”
“And she’s what? Twelve years old?”
“Cinnae blood some generations back,” Master Kit said. “Or that’s the story, anyway. She believes it, and it may even be true.”
“But you don’t believe it?”
“I withhold judgment.”
As if she’d heard them, the new actor glanced over at them and then away. Sandr jumped out the back of the cart and waved to Marcus. Either his fear had faded or he was a decent actor. Marcus waved back. Mikel, thin and weedy as ever, came out from the taphouse with a bucket of sawdust, Cary following behind with a broom.