“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.”
71: THE TRIP HOME
(Kihrin’s story)
Nothing of import or significance happened on our ship voyage to the Capital. We had good weather thanks to Tyentso. Nothing attacked us.
I had all the time I could want to worry over the future.
For the first few days, we made plans we agreed would mean little or nothing, because of the possibility of changing political climates. We weren’t going in blind, mind you. Thanks to the Brotherhood’s information network, we knew that Therin was still alive, as was my mother Miya, and my great-aunt Tishar. House D’Mon had fallen two ranks and was now ranked sixth. Jarith Milligreest was back in the City from his tour at Stonegate Pass, but only for long enough to take care of minor chores before rejoining his father, the High General, who was in Khorvesh visiting their family along with Jarith’s new wife and baby son. Both Thurvishar and Darzin were lamentably still around.