happened upon it, she would have thought it was sweet and touching. She would have imagined the woman to whom it had been written and the man who’d put pen to paper, and she would have envied them. Only she was the woman, and the man was Geder Palliako. And worse than that, she could see where this unreal version of her had grown from. She remembered feeling fond of Geder, the frightened little man who was trying to protect the boy put in his charge. She remembered watching them working puzzles with complex stories about Drakkis Stormcrow and sleeping dragons. She remembered kissing him, and more than that, wanting to kiss him.
Only now he was coming here thinking that he was still the man he’d been that summer, and she was the woman he imagined her to be.
“Well,” she said, softly and to herself. “Fuck.”
The scratching at the door startled her back to herself. The last of the wine had gone, though she didn’t remember drinking it. There was more in the kitchens, and she badly wanted another bottle. The scratch came again.
“Come in,” she said, her words perfectly sharp. One bottle wasn’t enough to leave her drunk. Tonight, three might not suffice.
Enen opened the door. A Timzinae man she didn’t know was at the woman’s side. He wore the rough cotton of a dockworker.
“Someone asking to see you,” Enen said, her voice soft and gentle in a way that told Cithrin of the fear that had brought this man, whoever he was, to her. Cithrin willed herself to sit up a little straighter. There was room enough in the chair for her and Geder’s lover; there would be enough for Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour too.
“Come in,” she said.
The man stepped in. His nictitating membranes were clicking open and closed and he held his hands in fists tight against his sides.
“I’m sorry for bothering you,” he said. “Only I heard about you from Kitap, and I thought … I thought …”
“Kitap?” Cithrin said, and the man’s face fell. Then, “You mean Master Kit?”
“Yes. You might have called him that. He used to live with my family, back before he was anything in particular. My name’s Epetchi. Maybe he talked about me? Or Ela?”
“He may have,” Cithrin said. “Now that I think of it, he may have.” She didn’t remember him saying a thing, but she knew from someone that there had been a café run by friends of his down near the docks.
“He said you might be able to help people. That you were a good person. A friend.”
Cithrin smiled the way she did in any negotiation and nodded toward the divan.
“Tell me what’s going on, Epetchi,” she said.
His niece had been one of the children taken from the prison, only she’d been hurt in the flight. He was hiding her in his storeroom, but she had a fever and it was getting worse. He didn’t dare go for a cunning man for fear that they’d be turned in to the Anteans. As he explained himself, the high whine of anxiety faded from his voice and a deeper, lower kind of fear came in. One more like despair.
Cithirin listened carefully. The fumes of the wine faded quickly, and her mind danced over the problem. Epetchi was right, of course. The protector’s guard would be watching the cunning men. The priest would be questioning them and anyone else whose work it was to give aid to the desperate and in need. When he shrugged and went silent, she pressed her fingertips to her lips and thought.
“Come with me,” she said. He followed her out to the guard room. Yardem and Enen were both there.
“Yardem, do you know of any cunning men willing to die because I put them on a list?”
“Know one I could ask.”
“Do that,” Cithrin said. “Then get him to this man’s café. He’s a friend of Kit’s.”
“My sympathies,” Yardem said seriously, and then broke into a grin. Epetchi laughed.
“You know him too, then?”
Cithrin stepped back. Yardem would see to it now. She walked through the corridors, back to the kitchen for two more bottles, and then to her room. She’d done enough of her business for the day, and if she went there, she would only read the letter again. She didn’t want to do that.
The plant that Isadau had given her that first day still sat on her sill. Its small, thick needles hadn’t gone brown with the autumn. Cithrin sat on her bed and watched