reeds and trawling the riverbed, coming up for breath and then diving again. Vocho stood staring at the spot where Kacha had disappeared before a splash of water revived him and he joined in, wading into the deeper parts by the bridge stanchions, calling Kacha’s name. He thrashed around for what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than a minute before he felt something on his leg. A hand.
When he pulled her out, she was coughing up lungfuls of water, cold as a week-dead fish but alive, and that was almost all that mattered. Almost, because he might not want her dead – there was that long-ago promise to Da, if nothing else, and he did love his sister when he remembered to – but he couldn’t still that dark little voice in his heart, telling him he had to beat her, had to be better, whatever it took, if he wanted Da to see him over the glow of the perfect Kacha.
She lay on the grass, coughing up water for a long time. Petri hovered at Vocho’s elbow, but he ignored the fool.
“You saved me,” Kacha said in the end, sounding surprised.
“What happened?” someone else asked, Vocho didn’t know who, but he cursed them in his head.
Kacha shook her head, sending water flying from her hair. “Tripped, I think, and too close to the edge. Should have been more careful. That’ll teach me, right?”
Vocho laughed with the rest of them, relief flowing from them all like the rush of the river. All except Petri, who watched Vocho with a care that made his heart miss a beat. He said nothing, did nothing overt, but it was plain all the same. Petri knew.
Chapter Fourteen
Kacha kept her head down in the tailor’s shop where she was hiding as two swordsmen went past. She worked her way further into the shop – it was the perfect place to hide for a little while, until any pursuit was gone. Rack upon rack of shirts in every imaginable colour were crammed against breeches, tunics, cloaks, dresses, scarves so there was barely room to pass between. She almost felt if she pushed far enough, she’d walk out into a different city under a different sun, and wished that she could. Maybe under another sun she could be another person: one who didn’t have to be perfect, didn’t get betrayed, wasn’t forced into being the sensible one whether she wanted it or not.
The shopkeeper came, shoving his way through his merchandise with practised ease, but she waved him away and pretended to browse, keeping an eye on the doorway and the street outside as much as she could.
What the hells was Petri about? It didn’t seem like him at all, not the man she knew. She needed to look at the papers again, somewhere quiet, and she needed some answers.
When Eneko had given her and Vocho that last job, he’d said the priest had “important business” to attend to and needed a small discreet escort. She hadn’t asked much more – for a long time she’d been doing as Eneko asked without question because she trusted him. While she’d lately had her suspicions about the dark jobs he gave her, she had no reason to wonder about a normal job like this. Vocho had just been happy with the price.
They hadn’t asked questions then, but it was time to start now. She pushed her way back to the front of the shop, cast a careful eye over the street, saw nothing to alarm her, no Petri or his men, and hurried to the one place that might be able to tell her what she needed to know.
The streets were quiet, eerily so, as though the population could feel some storm coming and had shuttered themselves away. She kept her hood up against a chill evening breeze dragging wisps of scrawny fog through the streets, and against any chance of being seen. The streets were empty but the church was crowded – it always was.
The church was a marvel, everyone said so, built soon after the prelate came to power on the ruins of a Castan temple to the Clockwork God, resurrecting his worship along with the god himself. The huge main doors ran on clockwork, linked to the same great waterwheels that powered the change o’ the clock, the bronze duellist at the guild and the Clockwork God that sat between the guild and the palace. Above the church door was inscribed “the only