He waited until he was almost certain that the others were asleep, then took himself through a short passage to a latrine that had been hacked out of the frozen ground. When he came back, rather than pulling the blankets over himself, he went to find Kit. As he’d expected, Kit’s eyes were open and bright.
“Well,” Marcus said. “Seems our friend may not have found the thing he was looking for.”
“No, he hasn’t,” Kit said. “And more, I think he’s close to giving up the chase. At least so far as this part of the world goes.”
“Think he’s wise in that?”
“No,” Kit said, his voice so low it was hardly audible even inches from his lips. “No, I think he’s being kept from it. Kirot was lying when he said there was nothing to be found here.”
“Seems we’ve sung that song before,” Marcus said. “Are you up for another verse?”
“Give us a week in Kirot’s company, and I think I can manage something.”
“Good that we have the powers of chaos and madness on our side sometimes. Still, I don’t know what we’re going to do with another damned magic sword.”
Cary muttered something, turned and stretched out one leg toward the dying fire.
“It isn’t a sword,” Kit said. “And it isn’t a giant.”
“What, then?”
“I don’t know,” Kit said, his eyes bright and merry. “But I believe I can find out.”
Cithrin
Cithrin lay in bed, her eyes focused on the ceiling. Focused on nothing. The pale ceiling looked blankly back down. The cracks in its plaster made shapes and faces. The pillow was too warm or else too cold. Another night without sleep. What did she need it for, anyway?
At last she pulled herself up and went through a rough parody of her morning ablutions. When she came out into the corridor, she was as nearly herself as she was likely to become. And in truth, very few people if anyone would notice how poorly she felt. It was the advantage of living a life of professional deceit that she could choose how much to show and how much to keep to herself. It was one of her primary skills. No one would see how she felt. Or that, at least, was the thought.
“You all right, Magistra?” Enen asked as soon as Cithrin stepped into the dining room. The smell of eggs and fish and peppers assaulted Cithrin’s nose, but she didn’t gag.
“Fine,” she said, sitting across from the Kurtadam woman. “Just didn’t sleep well.”
“Anticipating the Lord Regent’s arrival.”
Cithrin’s smile felt painted on and chipped at the edges.
“I suppose I am,” she said amiably.
The runners said that Palliako was still a day and a half away, and on the march. He was being accompanied by three hundred sword-and-bows detached from the siege at Kiaria for the sole purpose of seeing that he arrived safely on her doorstep. She didn’t know whether to feel flattered. Every day since she’d had Geder’s letter from Kiaria had been a little harder than the one before, but she told herself that once he had arrived and she could fall into the role she’d prepared for herself, it would be better.
“Where’s Yardem?” Cithrin asked, more as a way to postpone getting food than from any genuine curiosity.
“Off doing a little last-minute work,” Enen said. “Making the rounds of all the people we’ve worked with to let them know not to expect anything from us for a time at least. We figured that with the extra soldiery and Palliako himself and his priests lurking in the doorway, it’d be better to wrap up any outstanding business.”
“Probably true,” Cithrin said. It was the kind of thing that she should have thought. There were enough times in her past for her to know when she was drinking too much, and she was drinking too much. The knowledge made her feel slightly more in control of things, though it wasn’t going to have any particular effect on her actions. She would go right on drinking too much.
When her body finally felt it could stand the idea of food, she ate a sliced apple in cream and drank a cup of coffee, and afterward, she kept it down. She felt an unwarranted pride. She was the voice of the Medean bank in two cities. She was responsible for saving hundreds if not thousands of Timzinae from the occupation. And as her crowning glory, she didn’t puke up her food like a newborn babe.
There were fewer guests in the compound now. The courtyards were empty. The quarters where refugees had slept and eaten and talked and led their lives were abandoned, with only their old straw mattresses and rag-worn clothes left behind. The day before had been taken up with that.
She’d dreaded going to all the refugees who had accreted around the compound and asking them to leave. She knew as well as they did that there was no place to go, and so she’d expected grief and recrimination. Not her best prediction, since for the most part she got as far as explaining that the Lord Regent of Antea and a force of soldiers protecting him were very likely to come to the compound. Almost before she’d finished the last syllable, they were packing up their meager belongings and their confused children and heading out into the winter. They might die of cold in the streets. They might try walking to the Keshet or Orsen without food or water enough to make it two days. Cithrin wished she could go with them.