Page 25 of The Ragpicker King
“I suppose,” Jerrod said, “if we’re starting to circle this close to one of the Charter Families, the Legate will have to know.”
“The Alleynes do seem as if they might not be trustworthy,” said Merren. “Theyareallying themselves with the Gremonts.”
Kel said nothing. He didn’t quite trust his voice in the moment.
Lin said, “I assure you, marrying Artal Gremont was not Demoselle Antonetta’s choice.”
Kel could hear Antonetta’s voice, soft at the back of his head.Do I want to marry Gremont? No. If I escape wedding him, will the next man my mother selects be just as bad? Most likely.
Most likely not, Ana,he thought now. He was not certain it could be worse, and he felt wrenched and sick inside. If he were someone else, he could offer Antonetta another option. Though he supposed it was the height of presumption to assume she would want to marry him, even if desperate.
Lin glanced at him before turning back to Merren. “I’m a little curious that Raimon told you so much so willingly. Did you put something in his wine, Merren?”
Merren blushed. “Of course I did,” he said, and Kel recalled Merren fussing with the decanter. He felt a mild annoyance with himself; he ought to have guessed, as Lin had. “My own mixture. It forces—well,inclines—one to tell the truth.”
“That was a clever thought,” said Jerrod, and smiled at Merren. He had a way of smiling, Kel had noticed, that seemed unique to Merren; he certainly never smiled that way at anyone else.
Ji-An stretched and yawned. In fact, they were all exhausted, and they wearily gathered up their things before leaving the spiced heat of the noodle shop for the humid night outside. Kel offered to walk Lin to the Sault gates—he needed to return to the Caravel to retrieve Asti, regardless, and he knew Lin would more easily avoid trouble from the Vigilants if she was accompanied.
As for the Dark Assassin, Jerrod and Ji-An both agreed that someone with skills like that must be known in the criminal underworld; Jerrod, seeming aggrieved that he did not already know who it was, promised to seek out answers among his connections. “Being able to Crawl is one thing,” he said, “but to aim like that is another. They shot Raimon through the heart from a rooftop across the street. Not many can do that.”
He sounded almost admiring.
“Remember,” Kel said, “we are trying to catch this person before they kill again, not trying to hire them, Jerrod.”
Jerrod grinned, the moonlight winking off his mask. “We caught you and then we hired you.”
“You didn’t hire me; Andreyen did. And I don’t think they’d make a good ally.”
“You’re just taking it personally because they tried to kill you,” Jerrod said with a grin.
“No,” said Kel, thoughtful. “They didn’t. That’s the odd part. They could have killed me easily enough. But they said I was of use to them.”
“Well, that’s ominous,” said Ji-An. “Try not to be too useful, if you can.”
Kel smiled crookedly. “I’ll do my best.”
It was Third Watch now, and the moon had set. The streets of Castellane were dark, and as quiet as they ever got. They were not deserted, as Kel walked Lin home through the lamplit shadows of the curving streets, but those abroad at such a late hour seemed to knowit was a hushed time. The costermonger pushing his cart did not whistle; the maidservants on their way to light the morning fires at the noble houses where they worked did not chatter among one another. Even Kel, when he spoke, did so in a low voice.
“I suppose,” he said, “I should not ask what it is like.”
“That depends on whatitis,” said Lin, a little amused. It was not like Kel to be oblique.
“Being the Goddess,” he said. “I was thinking on it in the noodle shop. We summoned you so casually for healing, and yet—you are not simply the healer you have always been, are you?”
“No, I am,” she said. “I am that person. I am just also... something else.”
She had tried to explain it to Kel and the others in the Black Mansion, the day after it had all happened. She had been honest in what she told them: In her desperation to get her hands on books in the Shulamat in order to heal her friend, she’d made the claim that she was the Goddess whose return was prophesied in the lore of the Ashkar people. It would be temporary, she had told them, and they should not consider it in dealing with her, for it was a thing that would matter to Ashkar only, and they were not Ashkar.
None of them had really batted an eye—save Andreyen, who had peppered her with questions, mostly about the books they both wanted—yet here was Kel, suddenly curious.
“Did Mayesh say something about it to you?” she asked. They were walking west on the Ruta Magna, and in the distance she could see the harbor, or rather the abrupt end of the city that signaled the place the sea began. The horizon was a single blue band, ocean and sky united. As a child, she had wished she could leap from the walls of the Sault into that blueness—that limitless expanse that seemed to promise an unimaginable freedom. And she had wondered, too: Was the Goddess, somehow, on the other side of that light? In her own limitless expanse, but of darkness, closed off from the world Lin knew?
“I asked him about it,” Kel admitted. “He made it clear he hadno plans to discuss it with me.” He looked a little abashed. “Did I do wrong?”
It was interesting that abashment came easily to Kel; Lin could not imagine the Prince seeming sheepish or unsure of himself. Two boys, raised in the same room, side by side, so close in looks, and yet so entirely different.
She wondered what would happen if she were to ask Kel about Conor. Was the Prince pleased about his engagement, the coming alliance with Kutani? Did he know the Princess at all? Had they exchanged letters, portraits? She felt a little wrench in thinking of it, of Conor admiring the famously beautiful Princess. Perhaps he could not wait for her to arrive. Perhaps he was counting the hours, the minutes.
