Geder Palliako thought he was in love with her. Love, like something out of the old epics. He’d spilled a little salt with her, and now they were soul mates. She went back to the letter. See you in the daylight the way we were in darkness. Yes, she knew what he meant by that.
“Well, shit,” she said to no one.
But, on the other hand, I’ve given orders that you and the agents of the bank aren’t to be bothered.
She tucked the letter away and pulled herself to her feet. The world still felt fragile, but she could walk and speak, and if she could manage that, she could do anything. She stepped out of her office and down to the guard quarters. Low clouds pressed, threatening an early snow. Enen and Yardem were sparring in the yard, blunted swords clacking against each other. Their focus on each other was intense, and she had to call their names before they stopped.
Yardem strode over. In his leather practice armor, he looked like a showfighter. His ears twitched, his earrings jingling. Enen pulled off her vest. She’d taken the beads out from her otter-slick pelt, and it was dark with sweat.
“Is there a problem, ma’am?” Yardem asked.
“Several,” Cithrin said, “but they aren’t at issue right now. Where do we stand on the evacuation?”
Enen scowled. It wasn’t something they talked of openly. At least it hadn’t been.
“It’s progressing,” Yardem said. “We had half a dozen children and their mothers out last week.”
A crow called from the wall of the yard, as if offering its opinion.
“I’m going to have orders soon,” Cithrin said. “I’ll want the two of you to carry them.”
“Orders for what, ma’am?” Enen asked.
“I want to get a hundred more children out this week.”
Yardem and Enen exchanged a glance.
“Not sure how we can do that without asking for trouble,” Yardem said.
“We have an advantage,” Cithrin said. “It seems we’re above the law.”
The snow began in the middle of the afternoon, small hard dots that tapped against the stone streets and blew in little whirlwinds about her ankles. Cithrin had sent word to Magistra Isadau’s network that the work had been compromised and never to speak of it, even to deny it had existed. Word of what the spider priests could do was making its way through the city in whispered conversations and ciphered notes. Giving the information out as widely as she could had been her only defense until now.
But even as the network quietly collapsed, some information still came to her. Seven families had gathered together to hide their children from the Antean forces. They were secreted away in a shed behind a dyer’s yard. A woman and her twelve-year-old son had taken refuge in the crawlspace beneath the house of a minor merchant, and the merchant was starting to get uncomfortable with the prospect of keeping them there. A tanner at the edge of the city had sent a message that he had people in need of help, but without any other details. Suddapal was rich in desperate people.
They started with a single cart with half a dozen large closed crates in it. Yardem drove the team with Cithrin beside him. Enen sat in the cart proper, her blade at the ready. The horses walked through the snowy streets, their breath blowing cold and opaque as feathers. Cithrin tried to bury herself in the grey wool coat she’d worn. The first stop was the merchant’s house. Yardem carried one of the crates on a wheeled pallet, striding to the servant’s entrance with the bored air of a man who did this every day.
When the door opened to them, a nervous-looking Timzinae man stared out.
“I’m Magistra Cithrin. We’re here to accept delivery,”
“Oh, thank God,” the man said, and ushered them in. The runaway Timzinae woman and her son both fit into the crate, though there wasn’t much space to spare. For seven families’ worth of escaped children, they’d need a larger cart.
“God bless you, miss,” the mother said. “Thank you for doing all this for me.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, but she thought, Thank Isadau. I’m doing it for her.
Yardem hauled the crate back out with a bit of help from one of the merchant’s servants. Then it was off to the tanner’s. Six people ranging in age from eight years to seventy were warming themselves in the stinking sheds. Cithrin saw them safely bundled into the cart. The others would have to wait a few hours more.
As the cart trundled back toward the center of the city, torchlight marked where Antean soldiers blocked the road before them. Cithrin’s breath came shorter and she lifted her chin. She had the sudden bone-deep certainty that trusting in Geder’s words had been a terrible mistake.