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Mayesh’s power was far more secular. It was tradition for the Court to have an Ashkari Counselor, who was chosen by the Palace, and had been so since the time of the Empire.
Prince Conor was still speaking, his words rising and falling, strumming the chords of independence, of freedom, of Castellane. The crowd surged like a wave intent on crashing at the Convocat steps; some gazed at the Prince with tears in their eyes.He could change the Law with a word,Lin thought.He has the power to decide what is and is not forbidden. And somewhere, in the shadows of the Convocat, my grandfather is standing. If he were another man, he could take up my cause with the Palace.
Mariam cried out softly, stumbling as the crowd shoved them. “Lin! There is something wrong—”
Lin swung toward her friend in alarm. Mariam had her hand pressed to her throat, her eyes wide and frightened. Her cheeks were flaming red, and the blood at the corner of her mouth was as red as the Prince’s silk.
“Mariam,” Lin breathed; leaping forward, she was just in time to catch her friend around the waist. “Hold on to me,” she said as Mariam slumped against her. “Hold on to me, Mari—”
But Mariam had become deadweight; she bore Lin to the ground with her, and Lin crouched over her, terrified, as the crowd around them murmured and backed away.
Lin tore the scarf from her hair and folded it, sliding it under Mariam’s head. Mari was breathing hard, her lips tinged faintly with blue. Lin’s chest tightened with panic; she did not have her physician’s satchel with her, or any of the tools of her doctor’s trade. She was surrounded bymalbushim—some were staring, but most were ignoring her and Mari. They would believe it was not imperative upon them to help Ashkar. The Ashkar were meant to help themselves, but Lin had no idea how she could get Mari back to the Sault like this—
The crowd parted. Lin heard shouts and the scrape of carriage wheels on stone. She looked up and saw, ringed in a haze of bright sunlight, a carriage the color of flames, red and gold. The blazon of Castellane, the golden lion, snarled from its painted place on the door.
A Palace carriage.
She blinked up at it, dazed. Felt Mari’s hand on her wrist, heard her murmur a question, and then the driver clambered down from his seat perched at the front of the carriage. He had gray hair and wore the livery of the Arrow Squadron; he bent down to lift Mari, who cried out weakly.
Lin sprang to her feet. “You’re hurting her—”
“Mayesh Bensimon’s orders,” the man said crisply. “To take you both back to the Sault. Or would you rather I left you to walk?”
Mayesh.Lin knew she ought not be surprised—who else would have sent a Palace carriage for her? She said nothing as the man brought Mari into the carriage, laying her down across a velvet-upholstered seat.
She glanced up toward the top of the Grieving Stairs. She half expected to see Mayesh there, lurking in the shadows behind the Prince, but there was nothing: only Conor Aurelian, his hands outstretched to the crowd. She thought he glanced at her for a moment as she climbed into the carriage after Mariam, but there was too much of a distance between them. Surely she was imagining things.
The man slammed the door after her as Lin sat down and drew Mari’s head into her lap. Mari’s eyes were closed, blood crusted at the corners of her mouth. Lin stroked her hair as the carriage began to move, and only then realized she had forgotten something in the square.
Glancing out the window, she saw her bloodstained scarf, fluttering like a broken bird’s wing on the pavement. Something about the sight of it seemed unlucky. She shuddered and looked away.
Many ask now whether there was a time when everyone performed magic, but the answer is that there was no such time. It is true that there was once no body that controlled magic, no great authority that ruled how people could use it. But that does not mean everyone is born with the talent for it.
The great scholar Jibar has said that it is best to think of magic like music. Some have aptitude for it, while some have the ability to learn it note by note. The greatest users of magic, those who rise to become sorcerers, have both.
—Tales of the Sorcerer-Kings,Laocantus Aurus Iovit III
The streets were full of revelers, clogging up the passageways. Usually respectable merchants’ daughters danced in the roads, their hair whipping like ribbons; the doors of taverns were propped wide, spilling roisterers onto the cobblestones. Music drifted down from wrought-metal balconies overhead, along with handfuls of stiff colored paper cut into the shapes of phoenixes, swords, ships, and other symbols. A crown cut from yellow paper had tangled itself in Asti’s reins; a girl in a white dress threw red hearts from an open window. Conor caught one out of the air and tucked it in a shirt pocket. Conor wore an unremarkable black Valdish cloak, his favorite disguise for wandering the city streets without being recognized; its hood was pulled up, covering his face. Kel wondered what the girl would think if she knew she’d given her paper heart to the Prince himself.
The young men entered the city, unrecognized and without guards. Or so Conor seemed to think; Kel suspected guards in the shadows watched them as they went. Jolivet’s Arrow Squadron, ready to intervene in the case of danger. But it was only a suspicion, and Kel did not voice it. It mattered too much to Conor to believe that he was free, if only for a few hours.
It was the sort of night that usually charged Kel with burning energy, left his veins humming with the contemplation of possibility. He wondered if it was the same energy that seized sailors as they approached the horizon and whatever might lie beyond it: uncharted islands, buried gold, ruins from the time before the Sundering.
They passed into the Temple District and turned toward Hourglass Street, where many found their own golden ruin in the night. Here there had once been an alluvial plain, reclaimed before the Empire fell and covered over with a skin of bricks bound together with gypsum and quicklime. The area was crisscrossed with canals; the water in them, fed by underground streams, ran a sluggish dark green beneath arched metal bridges.
Signs hung in front of the gabled “shops” that lined Hourglass Street. Each bore a painting indicating what sort of distraction one might find inside. Most were simply bodies twined together in some form of erotic congress. Others required deciphering: a female figure peering through a door, a man with a rope around his neck, a young woman carrying a flowering vine while another woman knelt at her feet.
Kel could remember the first time he had been here with Conor. Perhaps they had been fifteen. They had both been nervous, with Conor trying hard to hide it. He had said:Pick which one you like.
Kel had realized Conor didn’t know which place to select, either, or what to ask for. He was leaving it to Kel, because it didn’t matter if Kel seemed inexpert or ill at ease. So Kel had picked the Caravel, because he had liked their sign: a tallship with white sails, an open book beneath, its pages forming the waves on which the ship charted its course. He had introduced himself and Conor to the madam, Domna Alys Asper, who had been more than delighted to welcome them. To be able to boast the patronage of the Crown Prince would surely bring other clients to her door. She had given them each a gold hourglass, emblazoned with a ship. These, she had explained, were theirs to keep, and to use each time they visited.
In the Temple District, the cost of pleasure was measured inturns of the hourglass. One could have as many hours as one liked with a courtesan, enjoying their company and skills, as long as one could pay for each hour. Thus Hourglass Street had gained its name, and that night Kel had lost his virtue, over the course of two turns, to a red-haired courtesan named Silla.
Domna Alys had been correct about Conor, too. In the years since, the Caravel had become a favored gathering place for members of the noble families on the Hill. Where Conor went, so went the fashions for everything from clothes to amusements. Never mind that Kel had been the one to choose the Caravel; there was no need for anyone else to know that. Besides, Kel had become quite fond of Domna Alys over the years. Why shouldn’t she profit?
She was there tonight, hurrying to greet them as they left Asti and her brother, Matix, in the care of Caravel’s discreet footmen. Red and gold lamps dangled from thin metal wires above the front door; brothels, too, could be patriotic. Alys waved them inside the small entryway, smiling. “Monseigneur!” She glowed with pleasure at the sight of Conor. “And my young lord.” She bowed to Kel. “What an unexpected delight. Your friends, I think, have already arrived.”
Falconet, then, and whoever he’d brought with him. Kel sighed inwardly.
