The southern gate was preparing to close when they reached it, but Kit talked their way through. Likely his appearance was enough. As they passed through the slit of a gate and along the passage through the stone, Marcus had the sense that the guards shied away from the priest.
The twilit streets of Camnipol bustled with men and women of half a dozen races hurrying home before the final darkness of night. Yardem took the lead, moving through the alleys and squares with an air of passive boredom that Marcus recognized as deceptive. He matched it, and Kit—better practiced than either of them—practically blended into the stonework. At every corner, Marcus was ready to see the robes of the priesthood waiting for them. For him to come this far and die in a street brawl would be just the sort of humor the world seemed to enjoy.
The compound they reached was small. A grey stone wall surrounded it. A lantern hung from a black iron sconce by the gate. Yardem paused there.
“Should I know where this is?” Marcus asked.
Yardem pounded on the gate, three times, then two, then two again. “No, sir. It’s the compound of the Baron of Ebbingbaugh.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Geder’s estate,” Yardem said as the gate opened. “Took it from a man named Feldin Maas back before he was Lord Regent. Supposed to retire here when the prince takes the throne. Meantime he lets his father use it.”
An ancient-looking Jasuru woman ushered them in with an air of anxious confusion that suggested she hadn’t welcomed guests to the house often enough to be quite sure how it was done. The gardens were large, but from what Marcus could make out in the dying light, poorly tended. A small paved area flickered with light, and night air carried the scent of flowers and the sound of voices. Marcus recognized them.
Cary caught sight of them first, and she walked from the light into the shadows, falling into Kit’s arms as he fell into hers. Then Mikel, then Hornet and Sandr and Charlit Soon, and Lak, still uncertain of his place in the company. They stood together, heads pressed to each other’s shoulders, their eyes wet with tears, and Kit in the center, beatific joy on his face. Marcus had seen it before. After so many partings and reunions, some part of him expected it to become rote or common or insincere, but it never was.
However often they came together, the troupe always felt it deeply. Even when the players themselves had changed. It was, Marcus thought, part of walking a stage and calling forth the emotions of the crowd. To do what they did, they had to feel deeply and authentically and without reserve, just the way that doing what he did—overseeing the death of men both under his command and on the enemy line—meant falling back into step with Yardem despite months or years apart as if they’d only walked into adjacent rooms for a moment.
A thick-bodied man with white hair and a smile that looked as if it didn’t get used much came out of the house and spread his hands to them.
“Welcome to my son’s house. Come in, please. Come in. I broke out the good wine. It’s a celebration,” the older man said, but his voice had the high drone of anxiety and fear beneath it.
Marcus followed him down a hall to a well-lit drawing room with panels of thin mesh fit into frames instead of one wall. It let the breeze through, but discouraged the insects. And there, sitting side by side on a silk divan, were Clara Kalliam and Cithrin bel Sarcour. Cithrin’s smile was part rueful and part defiant. She rose to her feet and walked to him.
A traitor lump knotted Marcus’s throat. Something that felt like sorrow and pride and fear.
“Magistra,” he said.
“Captain Wester,” she said fondly, but casually. As if they had only walked for a moment into adjacent rooms. Yardem coughed once, in a way that meant I see it too. Cithrin wasn’t his daughter. Had never been his daughter. And still, a hell of a woman they’d raised, he and Yardem and the players. A long way she’d come. “I assume you’d like a private word?”
“Several,” he said.
She turned and nodded to Clara, who returned the gesture. Cithrin led the way into the garden. Nightfall had called up a fountain of moon lilies. The gentle scent soothed like the murmur of a river. Moonlight refashioned the leaves in silver and black. Cithrin sat on a low stone bench, and glowed in the moonlight herself. He lowered himself beside her, fighting the urge to take her hand. For a moment, he envied Kit.
“Didn’t expect to find you here,” Marcus said. “Last I’d heard you were safe in Carse.”
Cithrin chuckled. “Last you heard I was in Carse, anyway. There’s no place safe. Not now.”
“Got Barriath Kalliam to carry you here?”
“He’s back north with the ship now, in case we need a way out. I think he may have soured on my company.”
“Yardem told me some hairwash about you confronting Geder Palliako and… I don’t know. Turning him sane and good with the power of your kiss? What is the plan here? Because all I can see looks like a particularly gaudy kind of mad.”
“Don’t raise your voice,” Cithrin said.
“Apologies. I’m bone-tired and scared as hell. Every hour you spend in this place puts you and all those back there at risk.”
“I agree we should move quickly,” she said. “But this is our best hope.”
“Then our best hope is shit,” he said. “Listen to me, Cithrin. You cannot change Geder Palliako.”
She turned sharply. “I don’t want to. I need Geder, and more than that I need Geder to be Geder.”
“The man is evil, Cithrin. We can put bows and bells on it and dance ribbons into maypoles—”
“Stop that,” she said, annoyance in her voice.
“Stop what?”
“Making him into the story about him. He’s not Orcus the Demon King. He’s not war incarnate. He’s just a person, and my job is to judge people and risk and what losses are wise to hazard in return for what rewards.”
“He’s a person with a history of hacking people to death if he feels betrayed by them,” Marcus said. “And not to make the knife too sharp, but he feels betrayed by you.”
“Yes, I am putting my life at risk. And yours and Clara’s and Barriath’s. All of us will be killed if I’m wrong. But the return if I’m right will be everything, and…”
She turned away, her lips pursed like she’d tasted something sour.
“And?”
“And I’m right,” she said.
Marcus wove his fingers together over his knee. From the house, Charlit Soon laughed and Sandr’s grieved voice floated behind it, the words less clear than the tone of them. Everything in Marcus’s body was screaming to throw Cithrin over his shoulder and run. Find a way to get her away from the city and the little kings who threw children to their deaths as a kind of political punctuation mark. The urge was larger than oceans, vast and powerful, and he recognized it from a lifetime of nightmares. It was the same thing he felt when he wanted to draw Merian and Alys from the fire. The want to save her was as complete as for his own wife and daughter, and it was as impossible. It left him trembling.
But then, he hadn’t understood her when she wanted to turn gold into paper either, and everyone had seemed to think that terribly clever. So maybe he just didn’t see what she did. Faith in her was as good a bet as anything.
“What’s the job, then?” he asked.
Her face took on a calm seriousness that was better than a smile. “In the short term, see to it that we aren’t interrupted. Especially not by any of the priests. I’ve arranged a bit of a theater piece. I believe that having his father with us gets us past the first barrier, but there will be some dangerous spots.”