70: THE RAVEN RETURNS

(Talon’s story)

Faris watched the crowd mill through the streets of the Lower Circle. Most of the crowds in the Capital vanished during the monsoon months. They drained from the City to return to farms and fields, where they made extra metal helping with planting or simply escaped the floods of the rainy season. The New Year marked the official end of the monsoons, and the City’s population exploded to nearly a million people as its migrant workers returned. Everyone took to the streets for the weeklong New Year’s celebrations of thanks to the gods. Nobles expressed their humility and success with gifts and gestures of generosity. Tradesmen timed their return to the City to show off new wares. The whole event was overcrowded and frantic, filled with too many people all trying to fit in too small a space.

For a thug like Faris, it was heaven, a mugger’s market where he could leisurely pick off the juiciest targets and make every Shadowdancer quota. He watched the roaming crowds like a barn owl looking at a field of mice, a situation of such plenty that he could afford to take the time to pick the perfect target.

A flash of gold caught his eye. Faris bent forward from the rooftop where he was perched with the rest of his boys.

“Hey,” he muttered to himself, then turned his head and smacked Dovis in the arm. “Hey!”

“What?” The younger boy rubbed his forearm.

“Look at the boy in the blue,” Faris said. “The one with the guards and that other kid walking next to him.”

“Yeah? Looks like a royal.” The kid shrugged, although the embroidery on their chosen mark’s clothing earned an appreciative glance.

“That’s Rook,” Faris said. “That’s gods-damned Rook. I can’t believe it. That’s Rook!”

“What? No!” The group responded with skepticism and disbelief.

“This is our chance. Let’s get him.”

Dovis put his hand on Faris’s arm. “Are you sure, boss? Those are armed soldiers down there. That doesn’t make for a good mark.”

Faris slammed his good hand across Dovis’s face. “Shut up, rat. This is my team. We do what I say.” He pointed down to the crowd. “We follow him. We follow him and wait for an opening. There’ll be one. Always is.”

Kihrin held up a piece of elaborate jewelry decorated with hematite and silver. “Can you make this larger?” he asked the vendor.

“But of course, my lord. How much larger would you like?” The merchant leaned over with great courtesy. He could smell the sale.

“About, oh—” Kihrin held up his hands about two feet apart. “It’s for a horse,” he explained to the bemused and now wide-eyed man.

Galen blinked next to Kihrin. “What?”

The gold-haired boy nodded. “I’m sure she likes jewelry.” He kept a completely straight face, although his blue eyes danced with mirth. Kihrin turned back to the jewelry. “Let me know when you have something. Deliver it ahead. The Blue Palace, yes?”

“Yes, my lord. Uh, for a horse?” The merchant hadn’t quite gotten over his shock.

“She’s a very special horse.” Kihrin winked at the man.

Kihrin was laughing inside, thinking of how that would probably be misinterpreted.^* Somehow that made it even better.

Kihrin made a show of continuing to look at the jewelry, placing brooches against his agolé or Galen’s, looking at belt clasps and jeweled shawls. He watched as the guards gradually moved to stand outside the tent, which wasn’t very roomy to begin with.

He tapped Galen on the shoulder and crooked a finger for the younger man to follow him toward the back of the tent. When they reached the very back, he tipped the shopkeeper several thrones plus the price of two dark brown sallí cloaks meant for rich merchants and then ducked through the back entrance. Kihrin gave one cloak to his brother and spread the other one around his own shoulders, covering the distinctive D’Mon House blue.

“Run,” Kihrin whispered to his brother.

Galen hesitated, but then Kihrin had grabbed his agolé and was pulling him through the crowds and the boys were both laughing as they sprinted away from their minders, losing themselves amongst the street fair. They paused, grinning and holding their sides, to catch their breath.

“Think we lost them?” Galen asked.

Kihrin nodded. “For a little while, anyway. Long enough, I think, for us to have a little—” He paused, his gaze swinging upward.

The crowd had parted to form a small empty circle around them, as if the mass of people had an innate survival instinct suggesting Kihrin and Galen weren’t safe. Into that gap stepped a familiar face, and Kihrin groaned.

“Hey, lookie here,” Faris said. “If it isn’t old Rook, all prettied up. Taking your girlfriend to see the street fair?”

“You know, even for you, this may be the worst mistake you’ve ever made, Faris.”^*

Faris didn’t seem to agree. “Oh no. I’m so going to enjoy this.”

Kihrin looked around. No sign of guards who might be catching up to their location, no sign of other Houses’ guards who might be inclined to interfere, and no Watchmen who could be called in as protection. Faris smiled unpleasantly, and Kihrin saw that he had his whole gang with him. They had knives and saps and small little clubs that could be tucked under cloaks.

“What do we do?” Galen asked. His hand rested on his sword.

“Same thing we did last time,” Kihrin admitted. “Run!” He pulled a knife from his belt, flipped it up, and tossed it. The handle smacked against one of the adolescent’s hands, but several of them had ducked to avoid the possible blow and it bought them a small opening.

Kihrin ran to the side of a market stall, where boxes led to a cart that could be climbed to reach a trellis, which in turn reached the roofs. He paused when he realized that Galen was not behind him.

“Galen. Come on!”

The young man had his newly purchased brown sallí cloak in one hand and his sword drawn in the other. As the gang continued to chase Kihrin, Galen threw the cloak over several of their heads and ran one man through with his sword. Galen stepped to the side, then sliced the sword across another boy’s groin. There was a stunned gap of silence as the street thieves realized that they had picked on a real swordsman and several of their number had already paid the price.

“Forget him,” Faris yelled. “I want Rook.”

“You should be used to disappointment by now!” Kihrin yelled. He only had a few knives left, but with those few he could make the street gang below second-guess the wisdom of their goals. He tossed one of the knives at a second thug, followed quickly by a throw at another target that hit true.

Faris looked around to realize that he was rapidly running out of gang members, and Galen was heading his way.

“This isn’t over, Rook!” Faris shouted, and then he ran into the crowd.

As Kihrin climbed back down from the roof, Galen cleaned off his sword on the discarded cloak. “We should wait for the guards,” Galen told him.

“Oh, hell no,” Kihrin said. “We’re out of here, right now. Come on. Have you ever been to a brothel? Because believe me when I say this is the time to get us off the street.”

“But we don’t have time to go all the way to Velvet Town . . .”

Kihrin smiled and tried to act like he hadn’t been rattled by Faris’s appearance. Truthfully, he’d almost managed to forget that there were members of the Shadowdancers who would gleefully shiv him at the first available opportunity. And there were others who, like Faris, didn’t need the excuse of Butterbelly’s murder. He didn’t like that he’d put Galen in jeopardy, although if he were being honest with himself, Galen had saved the day.

He spotted the painted board of a massage house and ducked into the tent, hand around Galen’s wrist. His brother seemed a little panicked, so Kihrin whispered, “Relax. It’s just a massage. Nobody’s going to do anything you don’t want.”

“Right.” Some of the stress seemed to go out of him.

A short, fat man took one look at them, immediately decided that their coin was made from the right metal, and ushered them into separate rooms—just separations in the tent made by hanging more panels of cloth. Kihrin wasn’t planning on getting a massage or any of the other no-doubt stellar services the mobile massage service offered, just in case Faris managed to track him down and came back with more people. He just wanted the additional distraction.

He was about to tell the cloaked woman who entered the room this fact—that he was going to pay her metal and she’d have to do absolutely nothing for it—when she flipped back her hood.

“Ola!” He started to rush forward and then paused. “Ola?”

She’d lost weight. She’d lost so much weight she was almost unrecognizable, although her coloring was the same as before. Her skin was loose from the quick slimming and hung in folds. Her eyes looked haunted.

“Yes,” Ola said. “It’s me.”

But Kihrin didn’t close the gap between them. “There’s a mimic . . .”

The woman nodded. “I know the one. I managed to escape her, although it wasn’t easy. Oh, Bright-Eyes. My boy.” She held out her hands to Kihrin and moved forward.

He didn’t let her get too close. “How did you find me?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to leave the palace. I know you well enough to know you’d duck out the back of that merchant’s tent. Then it was mostly a matter of following the shouts and screams. You still do love trouble, don’t you?”

He scowled. All that was possible. Ditching the guards would have been easier than ditching a fellow Shadowdancer.

“Ola . . . Ola, what’s happened to you?”

Ola grimaced. “Well, ain’t it clear enough? On the run from the Shadowdancers. On the run from everyone. It don’t exactly give a girl much chance to eat, now do it? And it weren’t easy to find you, either . . .”

Kihrin looked down at himself, which reminded him that his kef was beautifully embroidered and made from the finest materials, that his clothes were bejeweled and worth a fortune. He looked back up at the woman he had once considered his mother. “Why didn’t you tell me? When were you going to? If I had known my family . . .”

The Zheriaso woman shook her head. “I was doing what I thought best for you, child—”

“That’s never been your style.”

Ola closed her mouth, exhaling through her nostrils, and then nodded. “Maybe there’s some truth to that, child. But that don’t change our situation now, do it? I need to get out of the Capital.” She pointed a now bony finger at Kihrin. “You could stand to come with me. You and I both know that there ain’t nothing but pain for you in this City.”

Kihrin looked to the side, looked to where he imagined Galen was being treated to some hopefully appreciated affection. “I can’t just—”

“You want to bring him with you?” Ola said. “It doesn’t bother me none, but you best make sure he’s real serious about wanting to leave all the riches and wealth behind, because once we’re all gone, there’s no changing his mind later.”

“Where were you thinking?” Kihrin asked.

“Doltar,” Ola said. “So far south that Quur would never find us. We can settle down, live our lives, not be looking over our shoulders forever.”

“When?” Kihrin raised an eyebrow. “Now?”

“No, not until the end of the Festival,” Ola said. “No ships will be leaving the harbor before then. You’ll come with me, yes?”

Kihrin thought about Galen, and he thought about someone else besides. “You’ll take two. Will you take three?”

Ola clasped him on his shoulder. “Yes.”