was up it in a flash. She paused at the top to look down and met Petri’s gaze.
He raised a hand and tried on a smile that didn’t fit. “I wasn’t lying when I said I loved you.” Then he turned with a swirl of his cloak and disappeared into the dark of the street.
“Well,” said a voice that almost sent her tumbling back over the edge in surprise, “that was an edifying conversation, wasn’t it?”
A dark shape over by the parapet. It didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, but a cloud rolled away from the moon and she could make out the glint of buckles on shoes, the hilt of a sword. The shape moved, and she didn’t wait any more. By the time it reached her, and she realised who it was, her sword was out and ready and she’d very nearly disembowelled Dom.
“God’s cogs,” she said with relief as she put her sword away. “What the hells are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
There was something different about him – about all of him. No handkerchief waving about, no dithering. Instead he moved like oiled clockwork, coiled and ready. A quick smile sharp as daggers. And how in hells had he found her?
“Maybe you should have taken him up on his offer. It’s the best one you’re likely to get.”
“I swore when I took my master’s,” she said. “I didn’t unswear later.”
“That’s true, but what did it get you? Thrown out, exiled, not even a pretence at allowing you to explain. Eneko threw you to the wolves. Not the first time he’s done that to one of his duellists either. Well, too late to take Petri up on his offer, so what are you going to do? I mean, getting inside the palace and to Bakar alive would be difficult for a magician, let alone you. And Eneko… do you trust him? Completely? Or would he throw you to the wolves again to save his own skin?”
Kacha looked out towards the guild, hulking and dark against the night sky. She’d looked to Eneko as her father, the guild like it was her family, and here she was, having done nothing wrong but believe in her brother and having faithfully, trustingly served Eneko all those years, and when she’d gone to him after the priest the guards had already been there and he hadn’t stopped them trying to arrest her.
“They used Vocho, you know that? All of them in one way or another,” Dom said. “Used Petri. Used you. Used Vocho. They forced him because they thought he was Eneko’s pet assassin, but we know better, don’t we?”
She said nothing. He was unnerving her, the way he moved back and forth as though he had too much energy. So unlike Dom that she wondered briefly if he was some magician’s illusion.
“They thought he was you. If they’d got it right, you’d have killed that priest, you’d have ruined both your lives. Does that make you feel better or worse?”
“Dom, I don’t—”
“You think he’s an idiot, I gathered that. Cogs knows why, because he’s not stupid. He just has different priorities. He’s not so stupid he’d willingly kill a man he’d sworn to protect. Is he?”
“No.” No, even she knew that, hard though it was to admit. Easier to curse Vocho for a fool, blame him, nurse her righteous anger. A sudden unwelcome thought – that Da had always called Vocho an idiot and she’d picked up the habit lately. And he wasn’t, not an idiot, not how Da meant it. He was funny, careless sometimes, prone to fits of rashness, but stupid he wasn’t. “Why are you—”
But, quick as he’d turned up, Dom was gone, leaving her to spend the rest of the night with new dilemmas to tangle her thoughts and stop her from sleeping.
By the time dawn came she was exhausted and no closer to an answer except thinking she should maybe go back and talk to Vocho. Maybe. Apologising wasn’t something she made a habit of and she wasn’t going to start now. Maybe Vocho wasn’t an idiot, but he hadn’t exactly covered himself in glory, and he had nicely fucked her entire life. It would take a lot more than Dom being cryptic and mysterious and trying to make her feel guilty for that. She held on to her anger like a blanket that could keep out the chill, even if it did have lice.
She climbed wearily down to the street and started the business