Marri climbed from a window on the third floor of the Cistern’s Shadow. Marri had made this climb a dozen times, but the first moments still thrilled her. When she stood on the window sill with nothing behind her but air, and let go of the window frame to reach for the edge of the roof, only her own balance kept her from falling. She had to jump for it, and she had only one chance to grab it. Marri had missed it once and nearly fallen, but she was smaller then. She doubted she could catch herself now.
She jumped and didn’t miss, and pulled herself towards the roof. She threw a leg over the edge and kicked at the wood shingles on the side of the inn, until her toes found purchase and pushed up and over onto the tiles. The tiles were slick with morning mist and she crawled along them carefully, picking out the tight tiles and dodging the loose ones.
The inn’s namesake rose a full story above it. Marri pressed herself against the curved cistern wall and rose, walking her hands up the stones without letting go. She turned and grabbed the edges of the stones with her toes, and dug her fingers into the cracks, and scooted up the wall. The city lay out before her under a blanket of mist. The cistern made the air cool on her back, and it spewed it’s own mist that rolled down over the inn to meet the fog on the street. The tops of the city buildings poked out of the mist like islands.
The bells in the Basilica’s towers rang. Each was a different note, and when rung together they combined into a perfect mournful chord that filled the city. The sound rolled back twice, first off the city walls and again off the mountains that pimpled the eastern horizon. Marri could feel the sound in the stones of the cistern as well as she could hear them. She counted the rings as they flowed over her. Three rings, for three deaths. Marri had a clear view to the mist shrouded square, between the tavern and the shop on the corners, where a gallows poised in the center of its web.
Gaily color flags hung on poles around the perimeter of the square. Occasionally the wind took a break from playing on the bay and picked the flags up and fluttered them around for a bit, then dropped them to hang limp from their cords. Six shapes rose from the mist and climbed the gallows. Three guards for three prisoners.
One of those prisoners, the shorter one in the middle, had been Marri’s friend. The guards stood him on a barrel so the noose could reach his neck. A thread connected each prisoner to the beam above them, like spiders handing on silk.
The curve of the bay framed the Basilica. It’s grey stones seemed to vanish against the water and the horizon. Rain that fell on the Basilica’s roof flowed into aqueducts that radiated from it like spokes on a wheel. One loomed over the street and ended here, in the cistern behind the inn. A dozen other pipes fed the cistern, but none could rival the aqueduct. The entire old city had running water.
Marri had thought once that she could climb along that aqueduct all the way to the Basilica. But when she climbed to the top of the cistern and actually saw it, she found glass shards sticking from the mortar on the top, and the pipe, if she could even fit in it, was too far below the mirror-calm surface to reach.
Marri’s fingertips tingled against the stone. She fought the heat spreading in her palms. She clutched at the stone as the tingle ran up her arms and left a trail of fire behind it. Marri sucked the heat up. She dare not let it escape from her fingers. Goose pimples stood out on her flesh and she shivered.
The sun spilled over the square, finally, and chased the mist away. The mist tumbled over itself in its haste to escape. A magister in a white robe with the wheel and sicle of the Basicilia stood in the open space in front of the gallows and addressed an imaginary crowd. Marri couldn’t hear him, but she’d been there.
Two days ago she and her friend, tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes, had been in that square. They watched the ships come across the bay, sliding so effortlessly across the water with their sails full of wind and gulls swirling around them. Marri hoped to see the Marrigold, her father’s ship, slip between the barrier islands.
Her friend stole a loaf of bread and they tossed scraps to the gulls and laughed as they came wheeling out of the air to snatch the bread before it touched the ground. Marri threw one into a pack of birds and they descended on it in a huff, squacking and crying. One gull snatched the morsel and bounced away and it took a moment for the others to realize they fought over nothing.
Then the gulls chased the thief and attacked him, pecking and beating their wings against the air. Their victim screeched and dropped the bread, but the other birds didn’t let up. They pecked until feathers fluttered in the air.
Marri threw the whole loaf at them but it couldn’t distract them. A few smarter birds attacked the loaf instead, but the others seemed to like the taste of bird flesh better. Her friend summoned water. He was sitting beside Marri, then suddenly he was shooting water from his fingers in thick streams. They braided in the air and struck the attacking birds. The gulls leapt into the air with indignant cries.
He screamed as he did it, loud enough to summon a guard. Marri fought the heat rising in her arms and ran. She hardly saw the streets she ran down. She ran until her breath came in ragged gasps and pain stabbed at her side. She hadn’t seen her friend since, until he climbed the gallows.
The Basilica didn’t take chances with that sort of bad blood. The boy’s mother screamed and pleaded. Marri could only hear snatches of it, between the wind and the gulls. What she did hear was unintelligible. Then they dropped, and the noose cut off the woman’s pleading.
The magister climbed onto the gallows and checked the bodies, then the guards took them down. They didn’t cut the ropes, there was no point in wasting a noose.
Marri slid down the cistern wall to the slick tile roof. A tile clinked out of place and tumbled off the roof. A moment later it chinked against the street.
“Mah-ree!” her sister called from somewhere below. Her voice was faint through so many floors and the roof. Marri only heard it because it got so high and whiney when she yelled like that.
Marri lowered herself over the edge and hung there until she found the window with her feet. Marri swung and slipped through the window. She landed on the straw stuffed matress under the window and bounced to her feet.
“Mah-ree!”
Marri darted from the room. Her feet slapped against the floor boards as she ran down the hall to the back stairs.
Sarah’s voice got all tangled up echoing up the spiral stair. Sarah’s solution to finding Marri was to stand there and holler, probably right in mother’s ear. With a hand on each railing, Marri slid down the stair without touching a single step.
Sarah tried to mimic mother, with her hands on her hips and her head thrust forward, but it didn’t work at all with her curly hair.
“What?” Marri demanded. She imitated mother, too. But she was taller and could pull it off, at least on Sarah. It didn’t work so well when she had to crane her neck backwards.
Sarah rocked back on her heels. “Momma wants you to go get a wagon,” she said.
Meredith looked up from the pot of she had just hung over the fire. “Nitka hasn’t shown up,” she said. “You’ll have to go to market by yourself.”
“Mother,” Marri began.
“Do I have to explain everything to you? Find a farmer with a good load and have him drive his wagon here.” Meredith bent back to her pot. It smelled like porridge, and yesterday’s leavings. “Get now. Go.”
Marri went out the back door, into the narrow alley that ran around the cistern behind the stables next door. Every day, farmers from the country around South Port loaded wagons with their produce and drove them into the new city. They arrayed themselves in the market squares just inside the gates and presented their wares. All of them competed for the inns, but few of them had the variety.
Marri walked down the row of wagons, ignoring the ones that only had cabbage, or corn, or some other single crop. Representatives from the other inns beat her there and picked out the best wagons. They rolled away, one by one, leaving gaps in the line. Marri found one wagon with a wide enough assortment. Potatoes and corn and cabbage and even a melon, flat and yellow on one side.
At first the farmer didn’t believe her, but she convinced him to drive his wagon to the Cistern’s Shadow. He quickly out paced Marri and vanished through the gate into the old city. Marri looked up as she crossed the threshold from sunlight to shadow. The temperature dropped in that single step, from the blistering summer heat to the shade that was only cooler by comparison. The morning breezes died with the mist. Dust sprang up with every step and hung in the air, no wind came to blow it around.
Marri pressed herself against the stone wall, in the shade, out of the way of the steady traffic flowing in both directions. No point in rushing back, her mother would find something else for her to do. Basilican guards stood on both sides of the gate. The wall shaded the guards on the new city side, they stood a little straight. At the other end of the tunnel through the wall, the guards took off their helmets to avoid baking in their plate mail.
The wall ran along the river that had once been the boundary of the city, but had long ago been covered over. Marri could look down through the grates set in the road way and see the arched stonework over the river, and the water far below. A shape like an old log, barely visible in the dim river, swam below Marri, powered by a long tail that swept back and forth. They came from the bog north of the city, swam down the river and invaded the sewers.
The guards could seal the gates to the old city, and wait for an enemy to come into this tunnel, and then open the gates and dump them into the water to feed the bog logs.
Marri passed through the tunnel. The gates loomed over her inside the wall. They had iron bands at regular intervals, with great brass studs and wagon wheels on the bottom to make closing them easier, though Marri could not recall that they ever had been closed. Marri slipped around the gate, trying to stay on the edge of the street out of traffic. She could slip into the alleys here, between the row buildings and the wall, and not get home any quicker but at least with less chance of someone trying to pick her pocket. Everyone she saw in the back alleys was a thief, but at least she knew they were, and she could see them. In the crowds, any one might be trying to rob her or worse, and she would never know they had.
Except, shabby little stall blocked her path. With its torn fabric awning and sides of rotting wood, it looked like it had been there forever, but just a day before this had been a clear path behind the gate. The merchant had built his stall with the gate as one of its sides. If the gate closed, his stall would move with it. The gate, and the building, and the awning all combined to make the recesses of the stall invisible. A tendril of smoke curled out from it, wound around itself in the air, and didn’t vanish until it had trailed into the street. Marri covered her nose to keep the odor out.
Grass grew right up in front of the stall. A layer of dust clung to all the merchant’s wares, like he’d been there for ages. Marri glanced around, everything was familiar. She knew the old city, she knew every little street and shortcut. And she’d climbed up on the wall and looked, and seen enough of the new city even if she rarely strayed from the markets, that she thought she could find her way around pretty good. And this stall did not belong. Marri walked up to it. The stall filled the space entirely, from the gate to the wall.
Dusty bottles marched across the decayed counter in a thousand shapes and colors. Rings, necklaces, and combs hid among them, and wooden figurines stood here and there above the bottles, no two of them alike. Marri scanned over the merchandise, glad that the bottles were too murky to make out what floated in them. Round shapes, and one large jar she thought might hold a hand. Marri reached for the table. Her hand hovered in the air. She reached for nothing, her legs began to tingle.
She should turn away, go another way, find a different alley, but she didn’t. Her eyes settled on a figurine. A woman wrought in red wood. She wore nothing but her hair and flames. Her hair fanned around her, swirling to keep her decent. Tight braids dangled from her bangs, with feathers woven into the ends. Marri picked the figurine up. She ran her fingers over the fine details and couldn’t find a rough spot. The sculpture followed the grain of the wood, almost like the figurine hadn’t been carved but had grown. It felt warm, too, like it was still alive.
“Twenty pence.”
Marri jumped back and dropped the figurine. It clattered around among the bottles. The merchant loomed out of the darkness, his pipe stuck through the gap where his front teeth had been. He picked up the figurine and stood it back where it had been.
“I don’t have twenty pence,” Marri said.
The merchant took his pipe out of his mouth and tapped it out against the spotted back of his hand. “Sixteen, because you’re cute.”
“I don’t have sixteen.”
The merchant replaced his pipe. It clacked against his teeth when he talked. “You want it, you come back with sixteen. Anytime.” He vanished again, into the depths of his stall, only a fresh veil of smoke to show he was there. “Now get. Don’t block my stall.”
Marri glanced around. He didn’t have any other potential customers. She didn’t think he ever had. She turned back to the street, and stole glances backwards at the stall as she left. The figurine seemed to glow where it stood among the bottles, with an inner light, like it was about to burst into flames. Her arms tingled, and suddenly she shivered.
Sarah balanced on the rail in front of the Cistern’s Shadow. Her legs kicked in the air behind her. Marri heard her yelling from two blocks away.
“Mar-ree!”
A knight stood in front of the inn, his horse towered beside him. Mail shone through tears in his tunic. Sarah had stopped yelling, the knight took off his helmet and followed her gaze and found Marri, still half a block away. Mother would be unloading the wagon, so she sent Sarah out front to yell until Marri showed up to check the knight in.
Where the knight was so pale Marri could see the pattern of veins in his face, his squire had skin and hair the color of freshly turned earth. The boy appeared from behind the horse, standing beside the pony also hidden by the massive beast. He stared upwards, at the aqueduct. He glanced over at Marri, for just a moment. His eyes matched his skin, so dark the iris and the pupil blended into a solid black disc.
Sarah went back to her sand box. She smoothed the sand, and traced letters in it with the handle of a spoon.
The knight handed Marri the reigns to his horse. Marri hesitated at first, but the horse seemed passive enough. Perhaps it was merely huge, and not actually fearsome. It snorted when Marri pulled on the reigns, and bared its teeth, and didn’t move until the knight swatted it on the rear. The pony came more placidly, and Marri led both around the inn to the stables.
Kit waited with the doors wide open. Straw clung to his bronzed skin, he had probably been sleeping in it again.
“Did you see that knight?” he asked.
Marri handed him the reigns to the war horse. “Of course I saw him. I just took his horse, didn’t I?”
“Did you see his purse?”
“No.” Marri followed Kit into the dark stables, and waited for him to un-strap everything from the war horse.
“I bet it’s huge.”
Marri glanced back at the knight and his squire. They were only dark smudges now, after her eyes had adjusted. The knight stood with his hands on his hips and looked up where the squire pointed, at the aqueduct. “I don’t think so. He looks a little shabby.”
Kit pulled on a glove and ran his hand down the war horse’s black flank, where the saddle had been. “He has to be rich, to have a horse like this.”
“Horses all look the same to me. All smell the same too.”
“This is a fine horse.” Kit patted the horse. “Well trained, too. It could kill us, you know. Just like that.”
“What if the horse is all he has?”
Kit opened a stall. The horse walked in without being urged, and found the trough, and for a moment they stood there, with only the sound of the horse gulping down water. Kit put his hands on his hips, his right hand perfectly placed to cover the slave tattoo on his side. “I bet I could steal it.”
“I bet you shouldn’t.”
“I can, I’m sure of it. It won’t even be hard.”
Marri thrust the pony’s reigns at him. “You better not. What if he catches you?”
“He won’t.” Kit nodded.
Marri grabbed the knight’s saddlebags from the ground and hauled them out of the stable. They ground in the dirt and thumped up the stairs into the inn, but the neither the knight nor the squire moved to help her. They better not expect her to drag them upstairs too.
Marri dumped the saddle bags in front of the counter and stepped behind it. A racket in the kitchen told her mother was starting lunch. A few quests lingered in the common room. The fire smoldered, just embers in the bottom, buried in ash so they would stay hot.
Marri flipped the log book open, a quill marked the page. Sarah’s scrawl took up four lines, signing out a single guest. Marri picked up the quill, and found the ink.
The knight leaned on the counter. “Sir Thradiendul, of Karpaneken. And squire.”
The squire grinned with two rows of perfect white teeth. “Everyone just calls him Thrad.”
Marri wrote that down instead. Thrad scowled. He took the key Marri proffered and vanished upstairs without waiting to hear where the room was, his saddlebags slung over his shoulder. The squire stood in front of the counter and grinned at Marri, sagging under the weight of Thrad’s war hammer.
“Aren’t you a little young to be a barmaid?” he asked.
“I’m not a barmaid.”
The squire glanced around the common room, at the tables and chairs and dirty floor that Mother would be yelling at Marri to sweep soon enough. “This sure looks like a bar.”
“The girl mother hired last week didn’t show up, she’s the barmaid. I just live here.”
“I’m Jash.”
“Marri,” Marri said. Marri was taller than him by about half a head, which if he’d been from here would mean they were the same age. Marri was taller than all the boys her age, but she didn’t know where brown people came from. They might be shorter there. “Aren’t you a little skinny to be a squire?”
Jash screwed up his face to glare at her. “Becoming a knight takes years. I’ll get taller.”
“Marri!” her mother yelled from in the kitchen. “Marri!”
Marri glanced at Jash, and pushed through the door into the kitchen. Her mother presented her with a melon. Marri took it, and her hand on the back side, which she couldn’t see, sank into it. She dropped it with a start, and it’s rotten inside scattered across the stone floor with a wet plop.
“What do you think you’re doing, sending me a wagon with rotting melons?”
“I didn’t know,” Marri said.
“You mean you didn’t check. Clean it up. And then get the common room ready for lunch. And that knight will want a hot bath.”
Marri looked down at the mess on the floor, and the melon flesh still stuck to her hands. “Can’t you have Sarah…”
“Sarah is five,” Mother interrupted. “Go do it. Now.”
Marri scowled and darted out the back door. She would have to come back and clean up the mess on the floor, and mother would yell at her for slamming the door, but she still enjoyed the way it banged against its frame.
Kit stood just outside the door, leaning against the wall, and bouncing a fat purse in his hand. It jangled with every bump, dozens of coins jostling for position inside it. Kit grinned at her.
“Is that?”
“Surely is,” Kit said. “Want to go count it?”
“Did you take any out?”
“No. I haven’t even opened it yet.” Kit stopped bouncing it and loosened the strings.
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not? I stole it, fair and square.” Kit looked inside the purse. “He’s got to have twenty gold in here. And lots of copper pieces. Don’t look like pence, though. Something else.”
“Isn’t stealing how your father became a slave in the first place?”
“So? He was dumb. I’m Kit.”
Marri punched him in the eye. He lurched back against the wall and fell in a heap. Marri snatched the purse away from him. “You’re just a stupid little stable boy.” Marri stepped on his chest. “Where’d you get it from?”
“The bed stand,” Kit sputtered. “In his top drawer.”
“Fine. I’ll put it back tonight while they’re asleep, and maybe he won’t catch you.”
