locked now. He’ll show you in the morning. Yard’s through the other door, if you want a smoke or a piss. Just be sure to draw the bolt on your way back in.”
When the pallet was made up and Vertus had gone upstairs to his own bed, Nate listened. No more voices could be heard in the parlor. The courtier must have left. Carefully, quietly, he slipped out into the yard. He couldn’t see much in the darkness: some vague shapes that were probably bushes and other vague shapes that were probably trees, and in the back, a coffin-like shape that was probably the privy. The air smelled like mud and urine and, faintly, something spicy and herbal.
Mostly, though, it smelled like garbage. The bin in the back corner was overflowing. Nate picked his way through the garden to it; nearby, as he’d expected, a gate had been built into the high wood fence, so the slopman could grab the bin without bothering the household. The latch was simple and in a moment he was outside in the alley. It was barely wide enough for a single person, and Nate’s fingers found waist-high scores in the wooden walls from the slopman shoving his cart through. He followed the scores to another alley, and another. Porterfield’s broad squares and paved streets gave the impression that the neighborhood had been planned but the alleys told another story. It would be easy to get lost here, but Nate had been raised in the wilderness: he had a good sense of direction, and he knew that eventually the slopman’s marks would lead him to the avenue. Soon, he found himself on the street, around the corner from Limley Square.
Ahead, he could see Lord Bothel, standing on the corner and peering anxiously in the other direction. The streetlamps hid the lurid colors of his clothes and his curls were wilting slightly in the fog. Nate tapped him on the shoulder. Bothel—whose real name was Charles, and who wasn’t a courtier any more than Nate was Lord Tensevery’s former apprentice—started, and frowned. “I thought you’d come from that way.”
“I didn’t.”
“You can almost see the old pig’s yard from here, that’s why.” Charles lit a pipe and his wilted curls shone in the brief flare of brimstone. “All well?”
“All well. You’ll tell Derie for me?”
“When I see her. Good luck to you. That old man is a nightmare.”
“Thanks,” Nate said. “Nice clothes, by the way.”
Charles scowled, kohl wrinkling around his eyes. “Blow it out your ear,” he said. Then he walked away, the quick clip of his heels on the whitestone pavement echoing through the empty square. They had been friends for nearly their entire lives. When they were ten years old they’d had a fight under one of the wagons, and Charles had broken Nate’s nose. Nate watched him disappear into the fog. He had not asked where Charles would go; they were all safer if he didn’t know. But he suspected that it was the last he would see of his friend for a long time.
* * *
For the first weeks, Arkady wouldn’t let Nate do anything but wash herbs. He wouldn’t even let him pick them from the garden. Which was ludicrous, because the herbs in Arkady’s garden were spindly and sad, none of them truly useful. The old man wasn’t quite what Nate thought of as a nightmare, but he was certainly unpleasant. He wasn’t the worst healer Nate had ever seen—that honor went to a man on the other side of the Barriers, who rinsed out the nasal cavities of his patients with a mixture of powdered mouse bones and turpentine—but neither was he the best. Still, he never hit Nate, and Vertus had been right: they ate well, although not abundantly. Sharp cheese, well-cured meat, plenty of wine. And if there was sawdust in the bread, Nate couldn’t taste it.
His tiny pallet in the kitchen was hard and the blankets smelled as if they’d been rained on and not allowed to dry properly. If the house had been his, he would have put the lab in what was now the front parlor, the room where he’d first met Arkady with Charles; it had the best light and the best ventilation. But the dim, stuffy lab was still the best equipped that Nate had ever seen. There was glassware beyond his wildest imaginings and cabinets upon cabinets upon drawers upon shelves of neatly labeled supplies. Even if the herbs were substandard, most