“Yeah, well, travel with a guy long enough and you start picking up his bad habits. You have no idea how many times I almost killed him when we first started. I never bothered, because I expected the jobs would take care of that for me, but somehow he kept surviving.”
“Well, I’m glad to see things worked out for you both. Gwen is a fine woman, and you’re right—you couldn’t do better.”
“So you’ll wait?”
“I’m afraid not. I was ordered to return immediately.”
“But you’ll come out to the Winds Abbey afterward, right? If you were not there, it would be like not having my fath—well, an uncle, at least.”
Arcadius smiled, but it looked strained. After a moment of silence, the smile disappeared.
“What’s wrong?” Royce asked.
“Hmm… oh, nothing.”
“No, I’ve seen that look before. What is it, you old coot?”
“Oh—well, probably nothing,” Arcadius said.
“Out with it.”
“I was just in with the regents. With them were a sentinel named Luis Guy and another very quiet fellow. I’ve never seen him before, but the name was familiar. You used to speak of him often.”
“Who?”
“They introduced him as Lord Merrick Marius.”
CHAPTER 13
THE HOUSE ON HEATH STREET
Mince was freezing.
The dawn’s wind ripped through the coarse woven bag around his shoulders as if it were a fishnet. His nose ran. His ears were frozen. His once-numb fingers—now stuffed in his armpits—burned. He managed to escape most of the heavy gusts by standing in the recessed doorway of a millinery shop, but his feet were lost in a deep snowdrift, protected only by double wraps of cloth stuffed with straw. It would be worth it if he learned who lived in the house across the street, and if that name matched the one the hooded stranger had asked about.
Mr. Grim—or was it Mr. Baldwin?—had promised five silver to the boy who found the man he was looking for. Given the flood of strangers in town, it was a tall order to find a single man, but Mince knew his city well. Mr. Grim—it had to be Mr. Grim—explained the fellow would be a smart guy who visited the palace a lot. That right there told Mince to head to the Hill District. Elbright was checking out the inns, and Brand was watching the palace gate, but Mince was sure Heath Street was the place for someone with palace connections.
Mince looked at the house across the street. Only two stories and quite narrow, it was tucked tight between two others. Not as fancy as the big homes but still a fine place. Built entirely of stone, it had several glass windows, the kind you could actually see through. Most of the houses on Heath Street were that way. The only distinguishing marks on this one were the dagger and oak leaf embossment above the door and the noticeable lack of any Wintertide decoration. While the rest of the homes were bedecked in streamers and ropes of garland, the little house was bare. It used to belong to Lord Dermont, who had died in the Battle of Ratibor the past summer. Mince asked the kids who begged on the street if they knew who owned it now. All they could tell him was that the master of the house rode in a fine carriage with an imperial-uniformed driver and had three servants. Both the master and the servants kept to themselves, and all were new to Aquesta.
“This has to be the right house,” Mince muttered, his words forming a little cloud. A lot was riding on him that morning. He had to be the one to win the money—for Kine’s sake.
Mince had been on his own since he was six. Handouts were easy to come by at that age, but with each year, things got tougher. There was a lot of competition in the city, especially now, with all the refugees. Elbright, Brand, and Kine were the ones who kept him alive. Elbright had a knife, and Brand had killed another kid in a fight over a tunic—it made others think twice before messing with them—but it was Kine, their master pickpocket, who was his best friend.
Kine had taken sick a few weeks earlier. He began throwing up and sweating like it was summer. They each gave him some of their food, but he was not getting better. For the past three days, he had not even been able to leave The Nest. Each time Mince saw him, Kine looked worse: whiter, thinner, blotchier, and shivering—always shivering. Elbright had seen the sickness before and said not to waste any more food on Kine, as he was as good as dead. Mince still shared a bit of his bread, but his friend rarely ate it. He hardly ate anything anymore.
Mince crossed the street to the front of the house, and to escape the bitter wind, he slipped to the right of the porch stairs. His foot sank deeper than expected and his arms windmilled as he fell down a short flight of steps leading to a root cellar. Mince landed on his back, sending up a cloud of powder that blinded him. He reached around and felt a hinge. His frozen hands continued to search and found a large lock holding the door fast.
He stood and dusted himself off. As he did, he noticed a gap under the stairs, a drain of some kind. His fall had uncovered the opening. Hearing the approach of the butcher’s wagon, he quickly slithered inside.
“What will you have today, sir?”
“Goose.”
“No beef? No pork?”
“Tomorrow starts Blood Week, so I’ll wait.”
“I have some right tasty pigeons and a couple of quail.”
“I’ll take the quail. You can keep the pigeons.”
Mince had not eaten since the previous morning, and all their talk about food reminded his stomach.
“Very good, Mr. Jenkins. Are you sure you don’t require anything else?”
“Yes, I’m sure that will be all.”
Jenkins, Mince thought, that is probably the servant’s name, not the master of the house.
Footfalls came down the steps and Mince held his breath as the manservant brushed the snow away from the cellar door with a broom. He opened it to allow the butcher entry.
“It’s freezing out here,” Jenkins muttered, and trotted out of sight.
“That it is, sir. That it is.”
The butcher’s boy carried the goose, already plucked and beheaded, down into the cellar and then returned to the wagon for the quails. The door was open. It might have been the cold, the hunger, or the thought of five silver—most likely it was all three—that sent Mince scurrying inside quick as a ferret without bothering to consider his decision. He scrambled behind a pile of sacks that smelled of potatoes and crouched low while trying to catch his breath. The butcher’s boy returned with the birds, hung by their feet, and stepped out again. The door slammed, and Mince heard the lock snap shut.