Corvan passed an alley where children played gada together, kicking and passing a ball of wrapped leather. There were more obviously Tyrean-blooded children than any other kind, but the teams were mixed. A few mothers had gathered to watch, and they stood close to each other regardless of what Corvan would have guessed were their origins, gossiping or shouting encouragement.
Not a powder keg. That was good. A radical shift in power and lawlessness in a city where neighbor hated neighbor would have invited wanton bloodshed. Garriston had seen enough of that.
The water market, basically an outsized version of what Rekton had, was nearly empty except for a few food vendors offering quick meals to passing soldiers and those who had otherwise missed dinner. Corvan bought a few skewers of rabbit and fish marinated in a fiery Ilytian pepper sauce and kept walking.
Before he headed to the Travertine Palace, Corvan walked to the Hag’s Gate. Here, like the Guardian’s Gate and the Lover’s Gate, the statue was worked into the wall. But this time Corvan had no interest in the statue. He had come to watch the soldiers. The gates had closed for the night, though it had doubtless been a long time since raiders had dared move against the city itself. The soldiers who stood at the top of the wall were joking, laughing, talking loudly, even drinking when their superiors left. Corvan had seen archers atop the Hag’s Crown and at the top of the Hag’s Staff—the two towers on either side of the gate—but after the two women settled in, quivers laid down, bows unstrung, they never made a circuit of their respective posts.
So, soldiers with little discipline. Soldiers who had become city guards, through no fault of their own. In the first year of an occupation, the soldiers might be sent against raiders and brigands or patrol the river’s length. After that, they retreated to the city and became guards. The soldierly duties came to seem extraneous, and discipline slipped. Sitting watch in towers where there was never anything to watch for soon became a post where soldiers gambled and drank.
Corvan headed toward the Travertine Palace. Of course, there was no way they were going to let some peasant walk in off the street and meet their prince, so when he got close to the front gate, he ducked into an alley. After Karris had been captured, Corvan had scouted King Garadul’s camp enough to decide that any attempt at rescue would be suicide. Then, as they’d rendezvoused with other generals, swelling the army—most likely with forced levies—they’d turned south. Corvan had headed back to a cave outside of Rekton.
He was almost disappointed that thieves had never found his cache. When Rekton’s alcaldesa had told Corvan that he and his daughter could stay, he’d hidden away everything that could connect him to the war, both for his new home’s sake and his own. He’d shaved off his distinctive beaded mustache and traded rich clothes and weapons for flaxen pants and a dyer’s shop. What had seemed meager gold in his pockets then was now a fortune in his eyes, but in the intervening years it had all been unspendable. No one in Rekton had gold coins, especially not stamped with a Blood Forester satrap’s face.
So now he pulled out the long folded samite tunic, swept off a portion of the ground with his hand and laid it on it. Next came a broad leather belt embossed with crocodiles with tiny ruby eyes in emerald-dotted swamps with diamond-eyed herons. Last, he drew out Harbinger, the sword that had passed to him only when the last of his elder brothers died. A young boy sat on the curb opposite him, silently watching, quizzical. Corvan tried to ignore him. He stripped off his long shirt and pulled out a mirror. With mirror and a skin of water, he did his best to clean himself up. Then he dried himself with the dirty shirt and pulled on his rich clothes. There was nothing to be done about his boots or pants, but the samite tunic and the stress was going to have him sweating enough as it was. After packing his things and strapping Harbinger onto his belt and pushing his hair into something resembling order, he took a deep breath and rounded the corner, approaching the gate.
“I need to see whoever’s in charge,” Corvan said to the guards, walking like a man with purpose.