“Magistra Cithrin,” Broot said, “I am so terribly sorry this has happened. I told my man to spread the word, but some half-wit bastard wasn’t listening. I swear on everything holy this will not happen again.”
He bowed deeply in his saddle, as if he were speaking to a queen. Cithrin wondered what Geder had said in his orders that would bend a baron of the Antean Empire double before a half-Cinnae merchant woman. She felt a brief tug of sympathy for the man and his terror.
“Anyone can make a mistake,” she said. “Once is a mistake.”
“Thank you, Magistra. Thank you for understanding.”
“Twice isn’t a mistake. This was once.”
“And never again. You have my word. I’ll have Amis whipped raw as an example to the others.”
Cithrin looked down the street at the fluttering flames. Any of them—all of them—would have pulled the children out of the crates behind her. Would, at best, have driven them through the streets. At worst, the Timzinae would have died here on the snow-damp street of their home. She thought of Isadau and, for a moment, smelled her perfume.
“Do that,” she said, with a smile. “Yardem? I think we’ve lost enough time already.”
“Yes, Magistra,” the Tralgu said and made a deep clicking in his throat. The cart lurched forward, and the line of torches parted to let them through. Cithrin caught a glimpse of Amis as she passed, his face a tragic mask. She smiled.
At the dock, a small ship stood at anchor. The captain was a Yemmu, the bulk of his body making do instead of a jacket. He trundled forward to meet the cart, his eyes narrow.
“You’re late,” he said. “Another hour, we’d have missed the tide entirely.”
“There was some business that needed to be done,” Cithrin said.
“Doing what?”
“Establishing precedent,” she said. “We have the cargo here now. Are you still taking the contract?”
“You’re still paying it?” he said, and his tusks made his grin into a leer.
“I am.”
Yardem, Enen, and half a dozen sailors carried the crates across to the gently rocking deck. Cithrin watched as they disappeared. Each crate was a life or two that wouldn’t end here. A child who wouldn’t sleep in an Antean prison, a mother or father, brother or sister who wouldn’t be parted. And one less hold that the empire would have over its newly conquered lands.
Yardem and Enen walked back down, and with the calls of the sailors, the planks rose up. The anchor line rose and the ropes holding the ship to the land cast free. Slowly, the ship moved away into the grey of the snow. It was dangerous weather for sailing and worse for staying on land. Cithrin waited until the ship vanished entirely. The melted snow had turned all her clothes wet as if she’d jumped in the sea, but she couldn’t leave until she saw it gone.
Yardem laid a blanket across her shoulders. She didn’t know where he’d gotten it from, but it smelled of wet animal and it was warm.
“Seems that worked,” he said.
“It did,” she said. “And it will work better next time. And they’ve seen you and Enen, so they’ll know to be careful of you as well. It isn’t a promise that things will go well, but it makes our chances a thousand times better.”
“Suppose that’s true,” he said. “So a hundred this week?”
“I think so,” she said. “This can’t last long, and we’ll regret missing the chances we don’t take.”
“Fair point,” Yardem said. He put his hand on her shoulder for a moment, a silent approbation, then turned back to the cart. Cithrin waited another moment, then followed him with dread thickening in her throat. When she got back to the office, she would have to write back to Geder.
Marcus
Winter came to Camnipol. There was little snow, but the winds that blew across from the northern plains and highlands were bitter. The birds in the city departed until all that seemed to be left were crows and sparrows. The citizens of the city wrapped themselves in coats and cloaks, scarves and mittens, until they all seemed part of a single unified race of the chilled.
For weeks, Marcus and Kit had wandered the streets, striking up conversations with whomever they could. A rag seller’s daughter sitting on the stoop of her mother’s shop. A guardsman at the Prisoner’s Span. Footmen of the wealthy spending their wages at the taproom. Anyone. Everyone. They might begin anywhere—a scar on the back of someone’s hand, the weather, what kind of horses pulled best on a team—and edge the conversation around until they could ask, for whatever reason, Do you know anyone sending messages to Carse?