Central Square
Market District, New Sarresant
She’d arrived at the central square early that morning, as she always did when she had sketches to display. It had been days since the madness in the Maw, since her strange encounter with the man in the red coat and the chaos that had followed. The city’s papers had called it a riot, exonerating the city watch for their part in the violence and condemning the Maw citizens for theft and bedlam. She knew the truth, as did every man and woman who had seen it firsthand. Whatever else he’d done, the man in the red coat had distributed a king’s share of food among the poor, and the watch had paid for it by firing their pistols into the crowd. The lies printed in the papers stirred anger that was already simmering among the city’s people, making for hushed grumblings in the Maw’s taprooms, and giving her uncle fits at the thought of venturing outside the chapel. But her sketches sold best when they reflected the goings-on in the city, and she could only resketch the main reliefs of the Sacre-Lin so many times before she needed a few hours’ escape. Today it meant a spread along the walkways in the central markets, close enough to need to shield her sketches from the spray of the fountains near the river’s edge.
“Ooh, daddy, daddy, the ship! I want the ship!” a shrill voice cried, wagging a sausage-shaped finger in the direction of her sketches.
She put on her most humble smile, the one that played best with the nobles and the wealthy, and rose from her cross-legged pose, affecting a reasonable facsimile of a curtsy toward her newest patron. The child, no more than ten, was bedecked in ribbons and silks, with a plump figure suggesting her household had weathered rather well the austerity of a country at war. Her father made a gesture to one of their servants, checking the timepiece he pulled from his hip pocket with a look equal parts boredom and exasperation. A pair of porters rounded out their entourage, already loaded with parcels and trinkets from the day’s affairs.
The servant pointed to one of her sketches of the Queen Allisée. “How much?” he asked in a gruff voice.
She bowed her head gracefully. Ten times the normal price ought to do it.
“A silver mark, sir. Not a print or a wood press. Drawn by hand on the day the ship arrived in the harbor, if it pleases her ladyship.” This she said with a nod toward the child, who had already turned her attention to devouring an apple pastry as she stood waiting beside her father.
The servant sighed and reached into a pouch at his belt for the coin. Had it been earlier in the day she expected he would have haggled. As it was, his little mistress’s wrath proved too fearsome to be risked. Smiling, Sarine pocketed the payment, rolled the parchment into a tight tube, and wrapped it with a piece of twine tied in a simple bow knot. She handed it over with another curtsy and watched them go, sauntering down the street at the child’s pace.
She sat back down on the hot stones, reclining against the embankment behind her. Did the nobles notice, she wondered, the stares following them as they walked? Their world had an undeniable beauty to it, an allure she had indulged in often enough for it to be a permanent fixture in her idle bouts of fancy. But half the city was starving, and the rest close enough to shave with the difference. Like as not the nobles thought the stares that followed them were envy, if they noticed them at all, and the commonfolk knew better than to show anything more. Here in the market, the best way to an easy coin was deference, and respect.
Zi lay on his back, his scales glinting bright green in the midday sun. He seemed to struggle to find the right angle before relaxing and letting his body uncoil across the pavement stones. Frustrating that he refused to allow her to sketch him. A glint of mischief in her eye, she turned to a blank page in front of her, set one of her charcoals to the paper, and—
Don’t.
His gemstone eyes were locked on to her, a flush of red creeping into the scales around his long face.
“Only playing with you, Zi.”
Sketch them instead.
She turned to look, finding a pair of blue-uniformed city watchmen making their way through the crowd. Her stomach sank, remembering the thundercracks and blood from the Maw. It appeared these two were beelining for a street vendor, a thin man in spectacles with a crate lying open atop a blanket he’d spread on the ground. A pamphleteer, though this one hadn’t been hawking his text with the wordsmiths’ usual fervor. She hadn’t noticed him, or hadn’t paid especial attention anyway. Now she craned her neck to see, along with the rest of the street’s occupants.
At first the watchmen stopped and spoke to the pamphleteer, and the man nodded as if in response to a question. She gasped along with the rest of the crowd when they struck him, leather-clad fists taking the man by surprise. He spit blood, eliciting a horrified shriek from passersby as they scrambled out of the way. The watchmen struck again, and the pamphleteer crumpled into a ball atop his blanket. His spectacles clattered onto the stone as one of the watchmen continued yelling curses at him. The other turned his attention to the man’s crate, giving it a swift kick, splintering the wood and scattering straw and paper into the street. He called out, his voice ringing above the now deathly silent market.
“Fantiere’s filth is banned, by order of the Duc-Governor.” He gave the crate another kick. “Possession of banned texts will result in arrest and detainment.”
The first watchman pulled the street vendor to his feet, holding him up while he clapped iron manacles around the man’s wrists. Together they shambled away toward the guardhouse at the district boundary. The other watchman trailed behind them, picking up the ruined crate, made all the more difficult to carry by having destroyed it for the sake of spectacle. A cloak of silence hung over the street’s occupants until the ignoble procession disappeared from view.
And then the market erupted.
Some fled the scene, eager to be away from the violence hanging in the air. Others set to gossip, sharing what they’d seen with each other and newcomers alike. Many, many more inquired as to the contents of the now-forbidden crate. She managed to catch the title in a hurried exchange as a pair of would-be readers rushed past her display: Treatise on the Virtues, by Jaquin Fantiere. It sounded like a religious text, though she suspected from the reaction she’d just witnessed that it was not.
“Here,” a man said in a flat voice, handing her a sheaf of paper. She blinked in surprise.
“What? Who are you?” she stammered, accepting the proffered document by reflex. The man was a common citizen by the look of him, dressed in simple attire. “What is this?”
The man made no reply, only turned and walked down the street.
It seemed like you wanted to read it.
“Zi!” she exclaimed, her eyes darting to the title of the pamphlet in her hand. Sure enough, Treatise on the Virtues. She wheeled around and stuffed it into her pack, glaring at her companion. He’d done something to provoke the man, clear enough, but asking after Zi’s gifts was like trying to squeeze rain from a bank of morning fog. He’d never told her anything about what he could do, and said as much now, lowering his head to lie flat on the stones, his scales a mix of green and purple as he took in the goings-on around them.
Her heart thrummed as she glanced about, expecting someone to have noticed the odd exchange. A few moments passed before the street settled back into a semblance of normalcy. If anyone had noticed, they gave no sign, though that was no guarantee.
“This is lovely, dear, did you do this yourself?”
The voice startled her back to the moment. A woman looked up at her, lines on her face creasing around a smile.
“Yes, it’s a drawing of the Sacre-Lin chapel,” she said. “The main relief. I have a dozen or so, in different angles.” She gestured to a few more of her sketches, displayed in rows along the edge of the street.
“Lovely.” The woman paced a few steps, admiring them.
“A copper penny if you fancy any in particular.”
The woman considered for a few more moments before selecting one of the drawings of the chapel’s smallest glass window. The Oracle’s stern gaze rose from the page, charcoals capturing the distant look in the Goddess’s milky-white eyes. She accepted the woman’s coin with thanks, and a blessing.
By now the market had returned to its business in full, only a low hum of rumors suggesting the earlier excitement. She supposed that was how the people of the city bore it, living their lives in the shadow of the powerful: hope you escaped notice and make the best of whatever good fortune came your way. There was a certain virtue in that. The Exarch may extoll them to courage, vigilance, adherence to duty, but the Commoner preached keeping one’s head down. She laughed to herself at her private blasphemy. Her uncle would not appreciate her inventing new Gods, nor ascribing them virtues mocking the paths of Tritheticism. But what use were the virtues of heroic Gods, inspiring men and women to mighty deeds, when one’s most pressing concerns were scraping together enough coin to buy food and hoping the city watch didn’t take an interest in your affairs?
Her stomach twisted at the thought, recalling the contents of her pack. At least if it came to it, she had her gifts, and Zi’s. The combination had always been enough to keep her safe, to escape the notice of the watch, the priesthood, and the darker sorts, the toughs and street gangs she’d avoided growing up on the streets of the Maw.
“I knew it must be you,” a voice said from behind. “Please, don’t run.”
She turned and found herself face-to-face with the man in the red coat.
“Please,” the man repeated, holding his hands upraised and empty.
Words went dry in her throat. It was the same man she’d seen in the Harbor, and again in the Maw, of a surety. Middling height, on the old side of young, with the beginnings of creases in his skin but no wrinkles or gray in his hair. His red coat was every bit as fine as it had looked from a distance, with the sort of embroidery and rich velvet one paid for in gold, not silver. He wore a long, sheathed knife on his belt rather than the dueling sword favored by some among the noblemen, but otherwise she would have considered him right at home among the denizens of the Gardens, or perhaps the wealthiest merchants of Southgate.
Green, came the thought from Zi.
She frowned, which by itself seemed to elicit a look of surprise from the man. He recovered quickly, offering her an easy smile, the sort certain types of men practiced alone with a mirror before they used it in public.
“Who …” she began, then started again. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re an artist,” he said, looking over her sketches.
“I am,” she said, though instinct carried her a step forward, to interpose herself between him and her drawings. She’d seen this man scatter guardsmen like alley cats, thieving crates of goods from the Harbor and doing something to freeze half a city block of citizens and city watchmen in the Maw. He was dangerous, to say the least, whatever his proclivities for charity. If not for her sketches she might have run, same as she did before. But he took his time, as though he were no more threatening than any other customer perusing her work, as though she were any of a dozen vendors on the street.
“Such detail.” The man paused in front of one of her portraits of the ships in the harbor. “Tell me, these sketches, you did them from life, from observation?”
“Yes,” she replied, still on her guard.
“Do you always work from life?” he asked nonchalantly, thumbing through some more. She nodded.
Then he picked up a sketch of the nobles lounging on the Rasailles green.
“W-when I can.”
“Of course. These really are exceptional. Such a gift.”
“My lord, what is it exactly you want?”
He picked up one of the portraits, a sketch of the building where the Council-General, the elected assembly for the commonfolk, met to do whatever it was they did, ostensibly on behalf of the citizens of the colonies.
“I’ll take this one. And I’m no lord, merely one of the fools who sit on this council.” He made a slight gesture with the portrait to indicate his meaning. “This is a wonderful rendition of the council halls.”
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it when he reached into his purse and produced a gold mark.
“Yours, as a token of good faith. For the portrait, and your name.”
Suspicion flared as she looked between him and his gold.
“I saw you,” she said. “In the Maw.”
“Yes. And I promise you, I bear you no ill will. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“I also saw you in the Harbor, the day the Queen Allisée arrived in port.”
That gave him pause, his smile slipping for a moment.
“So,” he said. “It seems we already know some measure of each other’s secrets.”
Fear coursed through her. Did he mean he knew about her Faith? If he meant to threaten her, she knew damned well the magistrates would take a wealthy man at his word, no matter how absurd the claim. But he raised a hand in a calming gesture before he spoke.
“I assure you, whatever you think I am about, you will not find my message amiss.” He brandished the coin again. “Instead of suspicion, let this be the start of trust between us.”
“A gold mark, for the sketch, and my name?”
He nodded. “And a chance to speak further. That’s all I ask.”
“Sarine, then.” She reached to take the gold from his hand. “My name is Sarine.”
“A great pleasure to meet you, Sarine. My name is Reyne d’Agarre.”
At that moment another pair of city watchmen trotted into view at the end of the square, and d’Agarre grimaced. “This is a poor place for further conversation.” He tucked the rolled-up parchment into his belt pouch. “I’ll send an invitation to my salon. We can speak there, and come to a better mutual understanding.”
She frowned. She wasn’t about to refuse a gold mark, but neither would she betray her uncle’s trust by telling a stranger in the market where to send his invitation. Yet he didn’t give her a chance to reply, striding away as he called back to her.
“Watch for my letter. We will meet again.”