sat with his back against a cool stone wall while Kit measured out the evening meal of nuts and the last strips of dried meat from a foxlike animal Marcus had trapped three days before. His clothes were little more than rags, and he’d had to put another hole in his belt to keep it from slipping off his hips.
The journey had thinned Kit as well. The actor’s handsome face was craggy now, and his beard looked brittle and dull. Marcus took the food with a nod of thanks and Kit lowered himself to sit across the narrow chamber. Likely it had been storage, back when it had been anything. The door had stood a bit ajar for centuries before Marcus was born, its hinges rusted away to black streaks. The ceiling was low enough that any attackers would have to come in hunched and vulnerable, and whatever animal had left its spoor in the corners hadn’t been back recently. It was as good as home.
“Start searching at first light?” Kit asked.
“That suits. And we’ll need to find something to eat. Freshwater. Ancient hoard of the dragons won’t do us much good if we starve to death.”
“I suppose not,” Kit said.
“I’ll take first watch.”
Kit nodded in the growing gloom. Even if they’d found something dry enough to burn, they couldn’t afford the luxury of a fire. Any Southling patrol would see the light of it from seven miles off, jungle or no. Kit yawned and settled down against the far wall. Marcus took his sword in its rotting sheath and laid it across his knees, preparing for the long hours of darkness. Outside their little shelter, something ticked, ticked again, and began a whirring insectile song. Another joined in, and soon the ruins were alive with the sound of inhuman life. The walls and terraces that the dragons had designed were a vast city for beetles and midges, frogs and snakes. And two men whose minds and comprehension of the world was likely nearer to the midges than the dragons. Marcus let himself wonder what the builders of his little shelter would have thought if they’d known, however many centuries ago, that in the vast span of time their work would fall this far. Despair, maybe, that all their efforts were doomed. Or pride that what they did would leave a mark on the world that, though it might change its shape and meaning, would not be erased.
And nothing could ever really boast permanence. Every castle fell in time. Every empire. Every man. Even these walls would eventually be buried by the jungle, though the slow accretion of fallen leaves and grit might take ten times longer than had already passed. There was a kind of consolation in the thought that nothing lasts forever.
“Do you think they’re all right?” Kit asked. His voice was gentle, already half asleep. “Cary and Sandr and the rest?”
“Probably,” he said, and Kit chuckled.
“I keep thinking of things I want to say to them. Two days ago, I thought of a simple, clear explanation for Charlit Soon about why the king’s role in The Song of Love and Salt has to be played as a Haaverkin or Jasuru. When I realized I couldn’t tell her, it was disappointing.”
Marcus grunted.
“And Cithrin. I assume your own thoughts are with her.”
“And Yardem,” Marcus said.
“What are you going to do, when it’s over? Will you go back to them?”
The last time he’d seen Cithrin bel Sarcour, she’d been leaving for Carse with two of his guardsmen and not him. The last word he’d had of her, she’d been lost in the chaos of a political coup in Camnipol. He knew all too well what happened to rich, unarmed women during political uprisings. He tapped a thumb on the body of his blade.
“Once we’re done, I’ll find them,” Marcus said, “and if Cithrin’s hurt or dead and I could have stopped it, I’ll kill Yardem.”
Kit shifted in the gloom.
“You would do that?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.
“Well, I might. Yardem’s good, though, and he’s got reach on me, but one of us will be leaving on a plank.”
“And if Cithrin’s well?”
“Likely the same.”
The chirring song of insect wings was the only sound for a moment. When Kit spoke again, he sounded more awake.
“You’re not having the nightmares any longer, are you? About your wife and daughter. What happened before doesn’t seem to be troubling you.”
“They’ll come back,” he said, meaning the dreams of burning. “They always do.