“Hold!” the guard captain cried.
Yardem pulled the team to a halt. Cithrin thought she heard someone weeping in one of the crates behind her. Please be quiet, she thought. You’ll get us all killed. The guard captain rode forward. He was a broad-shouldered Firstblood, axe and dagger at his side. Snow clung to his hair and beard. Cithrin’s heart fluttered and she fought her body’s sudden need to move—fidget or worry her hands or bite her tongue. She smiled coolly. The captain’s gaze lingered on the crates and he stroked his thin beard. Before he could speak, Cithrin did.
“Do you know who I am?”
The captain blinked. He’d expected to be the one controlling the conversation. His eyes narrowed and a hand fell toward his axe. Cithrin didn’t see Yardem shift in his seat so much as feel him.
“What are you hauling?” the guard growled.
“Don’t change the subject,” Cithrin snapped. “I asked you a question, and I expect an answer. Do you know who I am?”
A nervous pause followed. Cithrin raised her eyebrows.
“Why should I?” the captain asked at last, but his voice had lost some of its power. She’d put him on the defensive, which was either a good thing or the beginning of a terrible cascade.
“Because I am Cithrin bel Sarcour, voice of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva and Suddapal, and you are under specific orders from the Lord Regent that neither I nor anyone in my employ are to be bothered. And yet you are bothering me. Why is that?”
“We had word there were rebels,” the captain said. “Man said they were hiding in a house near here. We’re to check anyone going in or out.”
“You aren’t to check me,” Cithrin said.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the guard said. “But I got orders. It’s just a look in them crates and under your cart to see—”
“Where’s Broot?”
“Ma’am?”
“Where is Broot? The protector Ternigan named. Where is he?”
“At his house?” the captain said, his discomfort making it a question.
“Yardem, drive us to the protector’s manor,” Cithrin said. “You. What’s your name?”
“Amis, ma’am?”
“You can follow us.”
“I … I can’t,” he said. His hand wasn’t by his axe anymore. “I’ve got to stay and check carts.”
“Well, you have a choice, then. You can come with us to the protector and we can clarify that you, Amis, have gone against the express orders of the Lord Regent, or you can let us by and stop wasting my time and interfering with my business. And then, when you and your men go back, you can ask what would have happened to you if you had chosen to take me before the protector.”
He knew he was being toyed with. Even in torchlight, it showed in his eyes. But he wasn’t certain. Cithrin sighed the way the woman she was pretending to be would have. Her belly was so tight it hurt.
“Wait here,” he said. “You and yours don’t move. I’m sending a runner.”
“That was a mistake,” Cithrin said, and leaned back to wait. The captain rode back to his men, and a moment later one of the torches detached from the group and sped off into the city.
Despite the snow and the wind, the cold wasn’t as bitter as she’d expected. The autumn hadn’t given up its hold. Yardem’s breath and hers ghosted, and the horses on the team grew bored and uncomfortable. In the back, Enen paced, her footsteps making the cart sway slightly. All along the street and out along the spread of the city, the falling snow gave buildings and water a sense of half-reality. Sound was muffled and distant, but she still caught the drone of strings for a moment from somewhere not so far away.
“It’s a prettier city than I thought when we came here,” Cithrin said.
“Has its charms,” Yardem agreed.
“Are we going to live through this, do you think?”
Yardem shrugged.
“Couldn’t say.”
“I’ll wager a fifty-weight of silver that we do,” she said.
Yardem looked over at her. His face was damp from the snow and his expression the mild incredulity of not knowing whether she was joking. Cithrin laughed, and Yardem smiled. It seemed to take half the night, and was hardly more than half an hour, before the torches came back. Ten of them. Cithrin leaned forward. Her toes and fingers were numb and her earlobes ached.
The new torches mingled with the old, and she heard the bark of voices. A moment more, and five men were galloping toward her. The one who didn’t carry a torch was the impressively mustached Fallon Broot, Protector of Suddapal, wearing a dining shirt and no jacket.