"My God!" Cary said, her voice carrying even over the players on the stage. "Is that mule on fire?"

Cithrin felt her eyes go wide and a violent blush rose up her neck through her cheeks and out to the tips of her ears. There was a flicker of movement from the bridge, and then Palliako and Prince Aster running as if dogs were at their heels. Cary pointed toward the street at the far side of the yard. On the stage, Sandr and Hornet were rooted as trees.

"Right over there," Cary said, gesturing in a way that made her breasts bounce. "Honestly. On fire."

Man and boy reached the rear of the cart. The stage shifted as they climbed in the back door. Cithrin imagined she heard whispering voices, but it might only have been her mind playing tricks.

"Oh, no," Cary said and pulled her dress back on. "Sorry. My mistake. Please go on."

There was a moment of utter quiet.

"And I... ah... I say no, Lord Ternigan," Hornet managed. "There will be no wedding this day."

"There shall!" Sandr shouted, stamping his foot. Voice and action commanded the attention of the yard with mixed result. "I'll not be refused by the likes of you. So draw your sword and blades be true!"

The men pulled out wooden blades and began the fight sequence that ended the second act as Cary put her arm around Cithrin and angled her back toward the street away from the play.

"You didn't have to do that," Cithrin said.

"It's only a body," Cary said. "And there are just a few reliable ways to command attention with no preparation. So will you tell me now why I've just destroyed everyone's concentration and halved my night's take?"

"Look north," Cithrin said. "What do you see?"

Cary frowned and peered into the darkness.

"They've got God's own bonfire at the Lord Marshal's revel," Cary said. "And there's more traffic than I'd have thought on the bridges." She smoothed back her hair. There were a few strands of white at her temples that hadn't been there last year. "That's not what it is, though, is it?"

"Dawson Kalliam tried to kill Palliako. Armed men came into the revel. I don't know whose they were, but what's going on there isn't a celebration. It's a civil war."

Cary's face went cool. In a conversational voice, she said something profoundly obscene.

"And the two men hiding in my cart?" she said.

"The Lord Regent and the prince," Cithrin said.

"Well of course they are."

The clatter of hooves came from the great span of the Autumn Bridge, growing louder and louder until they threatened to drown out the voices of the players. Torches appeared at the crest, and moments later a dozen men in the colors of House Kalliam and House Bannien pelted into the street.

"Treachery!" one of the men shouted. "Fire and treachery!"

The audience was on its feet. Cithrin could almost see the fear moving through them, a ripple on a pond. The riders went on, driving their horses deeper into the city. Someone shouted, catching sight of the billowing smoke to the north. The crowd scattered like startled birds, leaving Hornet and Sandr standing forgotten on the stage.

"Pack it in, boys," Cary shouted, striding back into the yard. "We've storm weather coming, and we're staying small until it passes."

A round-faced girl peeked out from the back of the stage. Charlit Soon. She was pretty in a full-cheeked way, and her eyes were wide with the first echoes of panic. Sandr and Hornet looked at each other, and Sandr shrugged.

"Some nights it's a good show, some nights it's a good story," he said.

"What's the plan, Cary?" Smit called from the back.

"Pull up the stage, get the cart into the stable, and let's not have any political opinions for a while," Cary said.

"And our guests?" Charlit Soon asked, her voice fluting up to a bird's chirp at the end.

"We haven't got any," Cary said. "Now move."

Sandr hopped off the stage and started hauling the chain. Hornet disappeared in the back. Mikel appeared in an over-sized black cloak and a false stomach that left him looking pregnant.

"Cithrin," Mikel said. "Welcome back."

I.

n the back of the stable, by the light of a hooded lantern, Geder Palliako and Price Aster became different men. They tried Palliako in four different costumes before settling on Father Hope from The Midwinter Princess, the brown robes and crooked stick making him look older than he was. Aster only took a pair of old breeches tied tight around his waist, a stained shirt, and dirt ground into his hair and skin. Cithrin changed into a peasant dress made for a Firstblood woman and too wide for her hips and bust, but Charlit Soon threw stitches on to bring it closer.

"Can't do anything with the hands," Cary said, surveying the work. "Anyone looks at their palms and you're caught."

More fires were dotting the city, towers of smoke rising higher even than the Kingspire and windblown so that they seemed always falling.

"I have to thank you," Palliako said. "All of you. The danger you're putting yourselves in for me..."

"Feh," Mikel said with a grin. "Sometime we'll tell you about the first time we worked with Cithrin. Made a play about it."

"Let's get our heads out of this noose first, shall we?" Cary said smartly.

"If we stay here, they'll find us," Cithrin said. "One side or else the other."

"If there's only two sides," Smit said. "Lot of times these things wind up more complex than when they start."

Sandr rolled his eyes.

"Oh, worked a lot of insurrections, have you?"

The city was in the grip of riot, the two most powerful and important men in Imperial Antea huddling in fear of their lives before him, and Sandr was peevish at having been upstaged by Cary.

"Didn't I tell you about being in Borja when the plague winds came?" Smit asked. "That was when I'd only just met Master Kit. I must have been twenty, twenty-two. Right in there, and-"

"Gentlemen?" Cary said.

"Sorry," Smit said and lapsed into silence.

The stable reeked of piss and horse shit, and beneath that a growing scent of smoke. Camnipol, burning. Cithrin's gut was a solid knot. She knew that if she ate now-or even if she drank-she'd vomit it all back up. And also, she was exhilarated. She wondered where Paerin Clark was right now. She had faith he'd survived the initial attack and that, barring the mischance that came with the violence, he would be able to find a place of relative safety. But she wouldn't go looking for him, and she was certain he wouldn't come looking for her. He'd be too busy making his soundings of the tactics and politics.

But he didn't have regent and prince to talk with. And she did.

"We can go under the city," the prince said. "It's all ruins. If we can find someplace where it won't collapse, we could stay there."

"Food," Palliako said. "Water. And how do we know when it's safe to come back out?"

"We'll take care of that," Cary said. "Cithrin can come up for supplies. And we can be your eyes and ears. Otherwise, we're just what we are. A half dozen actors trying to keep out of trouble, no?"

"Not much food for an actor no one's watching," Sandr said.

"If we take the stones off that rag the prince was wearing, we could sit in this yard playing to rats and dogs for a year and still have enough for food and beer," Cary said, shrugging. "As far as I see, we've just been hired."

Palliako sat forward, hugging his legs. For the regent of a great empire, he looked a bit lost. It was more than the desperate situation. More than the violence. Dawson Kalliam had been this man's Lord Marshal, leader of his armies. Palliako had called the man's revel, and in return he'd nearly taken a knife. She tried to imagine what it would feel like to have the person you trust most revealed as an enemy.

Easy enough. It had happened to her.

Cithrin walked the two steps to him and sat at Palliako's side. There were no tears in his eyes, but something worse. Something lost and emptied. Cithrin took his hand in her own. He had wide palms and short fingers, the angry welt of an insect sting on his arm.

"Listen to me," she said. "We've only just met and you have no reason to trust me, but do it anyway. These people are my friends, and they're no part of your court or anybody else's. If they say they'll keep us safe, then they will."

"How do you know that?" Palliako said, his voice tight. "You can't be sure they won't turn on you. I need to find Basrahip. I need to see if he's all right."

"We'll find out for you," Smit said. "I mean, not tonight. But when the dust's settled a bit, we can find that out for you. Unless they really burn the full city down."

Palliako's gaze focused on her for what seemed like the first time.

"I don't know you," he said.

"I'm Cithrin bel Sarcour," she said, nodding as she said it. Encouraging him to do the same. And by doing it, begin to mean it. "There. Now you know me."

Clara.

T.

he letter from Osterling Fells was written in a poor hand, the letters awkward as kittens and the spelling approximate at best. There were scribes at the holding, and at least one in the township nearest it. Vincen Coe could have easily had some more practiced hand aid him, but he had not. The text itself was innocuous-the progress of the kennels, the watering tanks to provide for the hunting pack, the number of pups whelped in the spring-and she couldn't precisely object to his having made the report. It was like a light, unnecessary touch on the hand. Like the other letters from him, Clara wouldn't respond. Sooner or later, the boy would recover from whatever madness had fixed his mind upon her. He would find some more appropriate infatuation, and the letters would stop. She put this one down again for the hundredth time, it seemed, and resumed her uneasy pacing.

The night hadn't let her sit still, not even for handwork. The revel had begun in the morning and was set to travel through until the middle part of the night. And with it, something darker. She let herself hope that whatever her husband had in mind, it would fall apart at the last moment. That he would come home annoyed and disappointed, but without anything dramatic having taken place. She told herself it could be like that. That the world tomorrow could look very much like it had yesterday.

She plucked at her sleeves and chewed on the stem of her pipe, teeth tapping against the hard clay. Dawson had lived all his life with the politics of court and the tactics of war. He would be fine. Whatever needed doing, he would do, and they would survive it and the family would, and it would all end well. She fought to believe it. She struggled and she failed.

The first sound to herald the chaos was a single horse running hard into the courtyard. The second was the yelp of the footmen. Dread pulled her toward the main doors almost against her will. When they burst open, Dawson stumbled through on the arm of the door slave. Her husband's sword was in his hand, and blood soaked his right arm and side. His hunting dogs circled the pair, their ears back and faces rich with concern. She must have made a sound, because he looked up at her sharply.

"Arm the house," he said between gasps.

The fear that had been welling up in her broke, flooding her with ice. She didn't know yet what the worst was, but she had no doubt it had happened. She grew calm. She walked to her husband, pushing the dogs aside, and put a supporting shoulder under his arm.

"You heard my lord's order," she said to the door slave. "Spread the word. All doors and gates are to be locked immediately. Shutter the windows. Gather the servants and be ready to defend the house. When that's done, find Jorey and send him to the kitchens."

"My lady," the door slave said, and gave Dawson over to her.

With every step Dawson winced, but he didn't slow. The dogs followed them anxiously. When they reached the kitchens, Dawson lay on the wide oak preparation table and squeezed his eyes closed. As Clara went to the pantry, her head cook came into the room and stopped.

"You aren't armed," Clara noted as she took cooking wine and honey from the pantry shelves.

"No, ma'am," the old cook said.

"You should be. I'll take care of this. You get your people and see that they're ready to fight if the need comes."

"It will," Dawson said. "The need is coming."

The cook scurried away, possibly to find a weapon or possibly to flee the mansion. Clara put the odds about even. At the table, she used a carving knife to slit his shirt, pulling it away from the skin with a wet sound that horrified her. A rag hung from a peg at the table's end, and she wiped away the worst of the gore with it. There were two cuts, one along his ribs just under his left breast, the other above his collarbone. Neither were deep, but both bled freely. She opened the wine bottle, pulling the cork with her teeth.

"They knew," Dawson said. "Not the details, but they knew something was planned. They were ready for us."

"Stop talking," she said. "This will hurt."

She poured the wine into the cut on his side, and Dawson arched back, sucking in his breath. He did not scream. She did the same again with the other cut. His breath grew ragged. With his shirt gone and some, at least, of the blood washed away, she could see a dozen angry red welts all down his right side and out along his arm. They didn't bleed, but the skin around them was hot to the touch and tight as a drum.

"What happened here?" she asked as she prepared to honey the wounds. "Spiders," Dawson said. "That mad bastard cultist must have been carrying a sack of them under his robes. And soon as I cut him, they came boiling out."

"You cut him," she said. It was neither a question nor a statement, but something between.

"If I'd meant to, he'd be dead," Dawson said as she slathered the honey over the lower of his cuts and pressed her cloth to it. "I was trying for Palliako."

With her free hand, Clara pressed palm to mouth, only realizing after that she'd bloodied her own face. Dawson drew her hand away from the cut and pressed down on it himself. It was still bleeding, though not quite as badly.

"You," she began, then tried again. "You tried to slaughter the Lord Regent? That's what this was all about?"

"Of course it was. Palliako didn't give me an option. I did and Lord Bannien and Alan Klin and a few others besides. This wasn't done alone or for glory. We're fighting to save the throne from those foreign bastards Palliako's wedded himself to. Only somehow they knew we were coming. The guards were on alert. It should never have been me holding the blade to start with, but they couldn't reach the high table. Not in time."

Clara's heart darkened. If there was a way to save this, to make it right again, she didn't know it. She could only hope that they would win, and even that was thin comfort.

"What happened to him? Does Palliako still live?"

"I don't know. When I tried to take him, the bastard priest got in my way, and then the personal guard was at my heels. One of the others may have caught him, but I didn't. Stop. Enough."

He sat up. The cuts still bled, though less freely. Wine stained his skin more deeply than the film of drying blood, and the honey shined on him. He was old. The hair on his chest was more grey than black now, and his forehead was high where the hairline had begun to retreat. His sword was still in his hand. She wondered if she had anything to salve a spider's bite, and what sort of spiders a priest carried with him into an ambush.

"What are we going to do?" she asked, proud of herself that the question came out sounding like matter of planning and not a cry of despair.

"We do what we have to," Dawson said. "We win. There are forces on our side. Allies. We have to gather them and defend ourselves. We have to find Aster."

"Find him? He's lost?"

"He is. Once it was done, we were going to throw down our blades right there and surrender to him, but..."

"But now the palaces are thick with violence, and the prince, who was in the middle of it all, is missing," Clara said. "God. Dawson, how could you have done this?"

"It's my duty. And however badly it's played out, the risk was worth taking," he said, his expression closing. He shifted to the edge of the table and let himself down. "I'll want something to wrap this with. And a fresh shirt."