No one was in the shop, but quite a few other shopkeepers and passersby were walking toward the alley to see what had happened. Teia scanned herself for blood. It looked like the dress was clean—she’d worried that blood soaking her shift might have wicked through the dress, but as far as she could tell she’d been lucky. She glanced around for a mirror. There was none in the shop.
With her heart in her throat, she stepped back over the window frame and caught a glimpse of her hand—there was blood under her fingernails, and rimming every cuticle. Both hands.
Oh hell.
She stepped out into the street, slipping behind the old woman. The younger man and woman had already walked into the alley and left her to mind her shop.
Glancing over her shoulder, Teia almost bumped into another store owner who was standing in the street, looking torn between minding his shop and going to see for himself. “They say it’s a murder,” he told Teia.
“Orholam bless, that’s awful,” she said. She meant it. A wave of emotion rose up from the depths. She swallowed hard, clenched her fists and jaw.
Not now, Teia. Not. Now.
“That sort of thing doesn’t happen up here,” he said. “We’re good people here.”
She made a sound of agreement and kept moving. He barely noticed her go.
It was terror to walk against the flow of the curious, knowing that looking over her shoulder would make her look guilty. She heard someone running. “Make way! Make way! Watch coming!”
She kept walking. A sharp whistle blew twenty paces behind her.
Don’t run. You look like a helpless little girl. He won’t tackle you; he’ll grab your arm. Then you counterattack. If you run, he tackles you. With his weight against yours, you’re dead.
The whistle sounded again, almost right in her ear. When he grabs your arm, turn with it, bring your elbow to his head to stun him. Then run. Two blocks to an underground gutter. Figure it out from there.
Then, from the pounding footsteps, she realized there wasn’t one guardsman, there were two. Two? Her plan wasn’t going to work for two.
She froze.
The two guardsmen ran right by her.
“Watch coming! Make way!” one of them bellowed. They ran on, and were swallowed by the evening crowds.
Within another block, everything resumed as normal, the crowds unaware of the death so nearby. Teia made her way to a fountain in a market, where some of the vendors were already closing up. She sat on the edge and trailed her fingers in the water as if idly. She sat up, looked around for anyone watching, and rubbed her fingernails on the folded tunic.
“Whatcha doing?” a little boy asked her. He was irritatingly cute. One of the merchants’ boys, no doubt.
“I’m a drafter,” she said. “Begone or I’ll set you on fire.”
The boy’s eyes widened. She faked a lunge toward him, and he bolted. She rubbed her other hand quickly and stood. She had to keep moving, had to get rid of the bloody clothes.
A few blocks away, she found a large mud puddle. She pretended to stumble and pitched the folded clothes into the middle of the puddle, then stepped on them. Mud stains over bloodstains. She pulled the caked, dripping clothes out and put them back into the hat distastefully.
It didn’t look like anyone even noticed.
A block later, she threw away the clothes and hat in a rubbish heap. She circled a few more blocks to make sure she wasn’t being followed, stopped at another fountain and scrubbed her face and hands. Satisfied, she finally headed back for the Chromeria.
No one stopped her. No one knew. She’d gotten away with it. She even still had the letters. Her mind wasn’t ready to start wrestling with what had just happened, though.
Coming back to the Chromeria was like entering another world. A world without murder, without shadows that sprang to life. A safe world. She crossed the Lily’s Stem and headed toward the entrance of the Prism’s Tower, where her room was.
She was almost to the door when she saw a man who looked a lot like Kip, leaning against the wall, flipping through playing cards as if memorizing them. As if there was nothing strange about it.
He didn’t look up.
“Kip?” she said. “Kip!” She ran over to him and threw her arms around him. “You’re alive!”
He didn’t return her embrace, and for one moment she had the terrible thought that this wasn’t Kip after all. She let go of him, stepped back. He did look different: he’d dropped probably another three sevs, his broad shoulders emerging more and more as his fat receded. His jawline more pronounced, face harder without the baby fat to soften it. But it was Kip. Something else was different about him, too. She’d thought she’d seen him in town—and she had. And suddenly fear took her by the throat.