"I think the third string's out of tune," Kit said.

"Only a bit," Marcus said. "And you aren't paying for it."

Sleep hovered at the edge of Marcus's mind, but never quite descended. Kit shifted in his bedroll, and a falling star flashed overhead, there and gone before Marcus could say anything.

"You know," Kit said, very softly. "I think I could make the nightmares go away. If you wanted me, I could try."

"And how would you do that?"

"I would tell you that it wasn't your fault, what happened to them. I could tell you that they forgave you. Given time, you would believe me. It might afford you more peace. Some sleep."

"If you tried, I'd have to kill you."

"That bad?"

"That bad," he said.

"It wouldn't take your memory of them."

"It would take what the memories meant," Marcus said. "That's worse. Besides, they're not bothering me right now."

"I'd noticed that," Kit said. "I thought it was a bit odd. You've seemed almost content. It's unnerving."

"I had everything in Porte Oliva," Marcus said. "Steady work. A company that respected and followed me. I didn't work for a king. I had Cithrin and I had Yardem. I am, by the way, going to kill him when we're done with this. He betrayed me, and he'll answer for it. You can try your little magic on that if you want."

"I believe you," Kit said. "But you've lost all of that now, haven't you?"

"I have," Marcus said. "I'm finishing up my fourth decade in the world sleeping on dirt and grass beside a man with spiders crawling though his veins. I have to get across the Inner Sea, and I don't know how I'm going to manage it. If I do get there, I'm not certain yet how I'll get back. And when I do, I'll most likely be killed trying to slaughter a goddess. And I feel better than I have since Cithrin beat her audit. When I have something, I worry about all the things I'd have to do to keep it. Out here, I've got nothing. Or at least nothing good. And so I'm free."

"That sounds like a complex way of saying that your soul is in the shape of a circle, turned on its edge," Kit said.

Marcus nodded.

"You know I respect your wisdom and enjoy your company, yes?"

"Yes."

"Nobody likes you when you're being clever."

Marcus drifted to sleep even before the harpist quit for the night. He woke in the morning with dew in his hair and the blue-yellow light of dawn reaching across a perfect blue sky.

T.

wo days later, they were walking past a small streetside cafe when Master Kit suddenly paused, his eyes narrowing at the worked iron sign of a dolphin above the door.

"Something?" Marcus said.

"Perhaps," Kit said. "It's been ... Just a moment, would you?"

Inside, the cafe was dirty and close, the walls stained by years of smoke that came even now from the kitchen, leaving the place in a haze of charcoal smoke, seared fat, and spices that made Marcus's mouth water just smelling them.

A young and angry-looking Timzinae man barreled out toward them, waving black hands.

"Not open yet," he said. "Come back in an hour." "Forgive me," Master Kit said. "Your name wouldn't be Epetchi, would it?"

The Timzinae's eyes went wide, and then disconcertingly did it again as his nictitating membrane slid open with an audible click.

"Kitap!" he shouted, leaping to put his arms around Master Kit. "Kitap, you old bastard! We all thought you were dead by now. You and your friend come back to the kitchen. Ela! Kitap's here, and you won't believe it. He's old and fat."

Marcus found himself carried along on a wave of other people's enthusiasm, seated at a cutting table, and eating from a bowl of something that looked like the waste scraped off a cooking grill and tasted better than anything he'd had in years.

All around him, Timzinae men and women were smiling, and little boys and girls so young that their scales were still light brown were trotted out bored but patient to Master Kit, who delighted over each one. When he introduced Marcus by his full name, he could tell that the first man-Epetchi, his name was-was skeptical. But if old Kitap wanted to travel with a man who pretended to be the murderer of kings from Northcoast, it was apparently fine by him.

They weren't permitted to sleep under the stars anymore. Instead, they had a room in the back of the cafe and bedded down on a thin cotton mattress that had seen cleaner days.

"Friends, I take it?"

"When I first came into the world, I spent the better part of a year in Suddapal," Master Kit said, laying his bedroll out over the mattress. Probably wise. At least all the insects living in their bedrolls were familiar. "I stayed here. Epetchi was just a boy then. Thin as a stick and couldn't think about anything but girls."

"Do you think they can help us, then?"

"I think that if they can, they will. That may not be quite the same thing. But I have more faith in goodwill built with meals and shared stories than goodwill bought from strangers with coin."

"You know," Marcus said, "I didn't force you to pay the finder's fee."

"The world's an odd place," Kit said, and sat down with a grunt. "The last time I was here, everything was different. I was different, they were. Even the building's changed. There wasn't a wall there, at least not that I recall. And yet it was all related. It's as if the world was a stone, hard and unchanging as we lay paint over it, one layer and then another and then another. We change it by the weight of the stories we bring to it, but we only change what's there. Not the stone nature of the world."

"That sounds very deep," Marcus said. "Don't know what the hell it's supposed to mean, though. Do you think they know someone with a good boat?"

T.

he captain of the little sailing boat was a Timzinae woman with a broad face and a wicked smile. At Epetchi's instructions, they met her near the end of one of the long piers. So far from the shore, Marcus felt he'd already left the city. She sat in the back of her boat, wrapping long, braided ropes in patterns that Marcus, in another context, would have mistaken for art. Her name, they'd been told, was Adasa Orsun.

The boat itself was small enough for one person to manage, large enough to carry five if they didn't need to lay in provisions for a long trek across open water. The deck was white as snow and its sails were square sheets of thick canvas dyed the blue of the sea. It bobbed with the waves, a little up, a little down. As close as it rode to the waterline, Marcus couldn't imagine how it would keep from being swamped in a storm. But there were at least a dozen other boats similar to it tied to the pier, so there was something to the design or the handling that made it possible.

That or they just didn't put out to sea if there was weather.

Master Kit made the introductions.

"We were led to understand you might be willing to take passengers south to Lyoneia," he said.

"Might be," the woman said. "For the right price. When are you wanting to leave?"

"Sooner would be better," Master Kit said with a smile. "Can't go for a month," she said with a shrug. "Other work already agreed to."

Marcus didn't need little black things living in his veins to know it was a lie. The woman smiled up at them. The next move was theirs.

"I am a friend of Epetchi's," Master Kit said.

"And so I'm talking to you," she answered. The rope flowed in loops over her arm and cascaded down.

"I can pay," Kit said, tossing her a small leather purse. She didn't open it, just tested the weight in the palm of her hand.

"This gold?"

"Silver. Some copper."

"And a pretty stone I put in," Marcus said. "If we can stop dancing, what's it going to take to get this"-he pointed at the deck-"there?" He pointed at the sea stretching away to the south.

The woman looked at him, then turned back to Kit.

"Who's he?"

"My name's Marcus Wester."

"Sure it is," she said, not looking at him.

"His name is Marcus Wester," Kit said. "And yes, he's that Marcus Wester."

"Is not."

"Listen to me," Kit said with a sigh. "Listen to my voice. This man is Marcus Wester. He is."

"Have been since before people thought much of it," Marcus said.

Adasa Orsun tucked the purse into her jacket.

"All right, then," she said. "Bring your things. The tide's in six hours, and we'll be out on it."

"Because everyone wants to travel with me?" Marcus said.

"Makes a good story," she said, turning back to her ropes. "You best hurry. Get some good food while you're at it. I've got enough to keep everyone alive, but I run a ship, not a kitchen."

As they walked back down the long stretch of tar-soaked logs that made the pier, Marcus shook his head.

"I don't like that," he said. "She doesn't know us. Not really. What if I was a terrible, violent, mean-spirited person? I mean, I'm mostly known for killing my employer. You wouldn't think that would make traveling with me more attractive."

"I think we are the stories people tell about us," Kit said.

"No," Marcus said. "We aren't. We're more than that. And our friend on the boat there is taking a stupid risk by going with us."

"I suppose so," Kit said. "But I'm still glad she is."

Clara.

C.

lara could not tell whether the darkness had taken the city, the kingdom, the world as a whole, or only her. When she rose in the morning, the sky seemed dimmer than it had before. When she ate, the salt seemed both weaker and less palatable at the same time. She slept little, waking in the middle of the night and staring up at the ceiling that wasn't hers. Sometimes she forgot why Dawson wasn't beside her, and then recalled, and felt the despair roll over her afresh. As if it were all happening again.

But she didn't allow herself to stop. If she stopped, she was certain she would never start again. It wasn't even that she would die. She would simply be, still and grey and unmoving. A statue of herself in stone.

"Good morning, Mother," Barriath said as he stepped into the little dining room. "There's eggs ready."

"Thank you, dear," she said. "You rested well, I hope?"

"Well enough."

In a better world, he would have been gone again by now. Back to the north and the ships. His place with the navy. Instead, he would spend the day brooding, going to tap-houses. And she would go instead along the streets and into the courtyards where she was barely welcome and see to it that her family survived this all as best they could. Or at least that part that hadn't died.

The rain, when it came, hadn't been a massive cloudburst, but a slow, low drizzle that made everything damp without cleaning anything. It did, however, bring the colors of everything out: the red stone arches of the Lias Gate looked like the coals from a fire that had almost burned out. The carving of the bear outside the Fraternity of the Great Bear looked less like a dust-colored dog on its back legs and more like a predator. Even Issandrian's overly carved and decorated mansion was lent a kind of beauty by the rain. She would have to tell Dawson about that, only she wouldn't.

Issandrian received her in his withdrawing room, offering her coffee and baked cheese and even a pipe's bowl of tobacco. Clara forced herself to accept less than she wanted. When she sat on the little white-upholstered divan, she could already see from his expression that the news was bad.

"My lady," he said. "I am doing everything in my power, but I warned you at the start how little influence I have. And forgive my saying so, but the Kalliam name is tainted. It's being used among the court members as another way to say traitor."

"Still, there must be something, mustn't there?" she asked, sipping at her coffee. "There were houses who fought at my husband's side. He had those sympathetic to him."

"Not the way the story goes now," Issandrian said. "To hear it, he fought the throne single-handed. The houses whose banners flew by yours were all neutral now and never took arms, and the houses that weren't in the streets at all were fighting on the side of Palliako. Not all will escape judgment, but they will all try to."

"I see," she said, and she did. Court life was always a tissue of reputation and rumor. This was no different.

"I haven't given up all hope," Issandrian said. "There is discussion of an expedition to Hallskar. It's possible that if they go by water, they'll need a captain. I can't get Barriath command of the ship with the actual members of court sailing on it, but there may be cargo ships, and with the right word in the right ear, Barriath could be hired on to take that."

It was, she thought, a terrible lot of conditional phrases for a single statement. Still, she smiled the gratitude that she knew she ought to feel. They chatted for a few moments more, Clara savoring coffee and pipe, and then it was time to keep on. Time to not stop.

House Annerin was gone, leaving the city even before the close of the season and taking her daughter and grandson with them. The intention was to avoid precisely the kind of social call Clara was making, but still, she walked to the door slave and made her enquiries. No, my lady, the family had not returned and were not expected until after the winter. But yes, he could accept yet another letter and see that it found its way to her daughter. At Canl Daskellin's mansion, they were very sorry, but the whole of the family was indisposed. Perhaps if she called another day.

She walked for most of the morning, stopping at half a dozen houses, and hoping without reason to hope that by her presence she could force the world to open a place for her boys.

When, near midday, she returned, feet aching, to Lord Skestinin's house, the fight was already under way again.

"I'm a sailor," Barriath shouted. "I could drink three times that and be more sober than you are waking up."

She was accustomed to the sound of fraternal battle, but the voice Jorey spoke in now was low and cold and unfamiliar.

"You've disrespected my wife in her own home," Jorey said. "You have to leave."

Clara walked through the hall, her spine straight. Not here too. She could stand to fight the world, if she had to. She would endure the pain of waking alone in her unfamiliar bed with the echoes of her husband's death still in her ears, but she couldn't do it all here too. There had to be one place-one-where she could rest and draw strength. If it wasn't her family, she didn't know where it could be.

"I'm not staying," Barriath said as she stepped into the room. "Wouldn't do it on a bet. But take it clear, I'm not the one looking down on Sabiha. She's your wife and so she's my sister, and it's her fairweather friends you're talking to. Not me."

Both her boys turned to her.