“I’d have given myself a fair head start,” Yardem said. “All respect, sir. You were going to loot her bank and hire a company to march into the middle of someone else’s civil war.”
“What of it?”
“It was a bad idea.”
Marcus tightened his grip on the blade, his mouth bending into a scowl. For three long breaths together, they stood motionless. He felt the rage in his breast reach its high-water mark and then recede.
He pressed his lips together, and then lowered the blade.
“Fair point,” he said. “So. Where do we stand?”
“Pyk Usterhall’s running the Porte Oliva branch. Cithrin’s agreed with Komme Medean to a year’s apprenticeship with Magistra Isadau, and then a year back in Porte Oliva. Only it’s not certain we’ll make the full year here. Antea’s expected to invade at any moment. They’ve sent runners to say if we hand over the people responsible for the coup in Camnipol last year, they’ll leave, but no one seems to know who that would be. We’ve sent most of the bank’s capital out of the city, but the local magistra’s dedicated to staying and helping people get out of harm’s way for as long as she can. Cithrin’s apparently decided to do the same. And Roach just got married, only we’re calling him Halvill now.”
“Halvill?”
“His name.”
“Ah.”
“You, sir?”
“Well, the war’s actually being driven by a set of mad priests who have power over truth and lies. The plan was to kill the spider goddess they worship and take away their power, only it turns out she’s a figment of their collective imagination. Kit used to be one of them, but he turned apostate. He’s at a café down by the port having what’s left of his faith collapse around him.”
“I see.”
“Oh,” Marcus said, holding up the blade. “Magic sword.”
“Full year.”
“Has been,” Marcus said. Then, “It’s good to be back, though.”
“Happy to have you, sir.”
Cithrin
There are two books on my bedside table,” Isadau said. Months of close contact let Cithrin see her anxiety. The others—even Yardem—almost certainly didn’t.
“Probably,” Kit said. “Certainly you believe there are.”
“I also have a lamp there.”
“No, Magistra,” the old actor said. “You do not.”
Isadau sat back in her chair. Her smile might almost have been amused, but her inner eyelids were fluttering madly.
It was profoundly strange. Cithrin had walked out on the Tenthday routine, her mind occupied with thoughts of the bank and the war, Isadau’s network for refugees of the old conflict and the coming one, and her own growing sense of dread. When she came back, Captain Wester was sitting in the courtyard and Master Kit was walking in from the street. She’d heard of people who’d gotten fevers and lost their minds in them. She had to think it felt similar. Isadau didn’t seem to be put off her stride, but for her these were two men loosely associated with the bank who’d arrived much as a courier might. For Cithrin, they were two people she’d trusted and relied on who had left her without a word and arrived without a warning. She wanted to run to them both and hug them and yell at them and make sure they would never go away again, and so instead she fell into a politeness and distance that she hated even as she employed it.
They gathered in a private courtyard with a small fountain and ivy growing up three of the four walls. It was cool and beautiful, and the tiny clapping hands of the ivy’s leaves meshed with the muttering of water to make eavesdropping almost impossible. Marcus and Yardem shared a bench, while Master Kit perched on the fountain’s edge. Cithrin sat in a chair beside Isadau. A servant brought a small wooden table and filled it with cups of cool water and bowls of cut apples. To anyone in the household, it would have seemed nothing more than another meeting among hundreds where the two magistras spoke about the private doings of the bank.
Captain Wester’s absence hadn’t been kind to him. He was thinner than she’d ever seen him, his cheeks gaunt and his neck so ropy that she could trace the individual muscles and tendons. Master Kit also looked worn down by the road, but with him it almost seemed like a shedding of old clothes. His eyes were brighter, his smile just as open and pleasant, and the darkness of his skin a testament to weeks out of doors. He had none of the greyness that dulled Marcus’s skin, and his