Chapter 20: Marta the Spy

Following the pace set by Berekker and the Islander soldier meant abandoning any notion of stealth, but Marta was drunk and the men were charging ahead with no thought of what was behind them. Marta was practically jogging, and still they were far enough ahead of her that two quick turns might lose her. Marta was not concerned about them trying to lose her, though. Wherever they were headed, these two were taking the most direct path.

The men stopped at the narrow mouth of a side street. It hardly visible between two whitewashed buildings so close that their balconies nearly touched above the street. Marta slowed abruptly and turned away from the men, wandering across the street toward the bright lights of a tea shop. A white-haired man in a brilliantly red tunic looked up from his game of stones at an outdoor table to frown at her odd behavior. His partner, staring at the embossed board and fingering a stone, did not look up. From the corner of her eye, she saw Berekker wait for the Islander to enter the side street and then follow a moment later.

“Press him in the third octant,” Marta told the man seriously, panting only slightly from her jog. “He’s overcommitted in the fifth.” Then she turned and ran off after Berekker, enjoying a brief glimpse of the players’ confused expressions.

The side street wound steeply downward, and Berekker was out of view when Marta turned in behind him. Too small for city lamps, the street was illuminated in patchwork where light escaped the apartments. Marta ran down the hill until the street turned suddenly to stairs, and she nearly fell. She slowed, chewing her lip and trying to imagine where this street might lead. A few steps after the stairs ended, she stumbled again on an oddly shaped paving stone, concealed in a spot of darkness.

“Stop.” Marta told herself aloud, and then, standing in the street, “Think.”

This street was much steeper than the other side streets they had passed. That meant that it was probably the most direct path to the next of the boulevards that circled the hills— a boulevard that was in no way preferable to the one they had been on. In fact, it was a less efficient way to travel, being downhill and therefore longer. Their destination must be on the boulevard itself. Marta smiled. In this part of the city, carriages tended to run only on the boulevards, ssince they could not traverse the steep connecting streets. If Berekker was looking to hire a carriage, he would go as quickly as possible on foot to the desired boulevard. The street they had taken, where she now stood, would deliver them close to Tyrus Square, where there were carriages for hire at any hour. From there… Marta turned and went as quickly as she dared back up the hill. When the street flattened out, she picked up her pace— she did not have much time. She took the corner back onto the boulevard at a run, straight into the chest of a City Guard.

He was a broad fellow, but he was still knocked back a step by the impact. All the breath left Marta at once and she doubled over. She looked up, hands on her knees, into the frowning face of the guard. He clearly had a good idea of why somebody dressed as poorly as Marta would be running full speed out of a dark street in a nice neighborhood.

“Sorry…” Marta gasped, trying to think, as her head spun and her chest burned. “I…”

The guard grabbed her by the arm. He looked fairly stupid, but she detected remarkably little authoritarian piggishness in his face. He, too, was trying to think, unsure what he was going to do with her.

“Danni Cortone!” She gasped out the name of a newly famous musician— long on looks and short on talent— who held impromptu concerts around the city and held a good portion of the women of Merendir in his thrall. She smiled crazily, made a stupid squeaking sound, and shook off the guard’s arm. The guard made no move to recapture her, but she thought she heard him sigh wearily as she ran off.

Not far away, there was a park where the hill dropped off in a cliff overlooking Tyrus Square. Marta tore into the park, jumping over a pair of startled lovers who were fondling one another in the grass, and arrived at the edge of the cliff just in time to see two figures walk with authority into the square and hire a carriage. The massive bronze statue of Tyrus the Undying stood with his helmet under one arm and his sword raised in front of him, pointing east down the boulevard. Tyrus pointed directly at the east gate of the city, some two miles from the square. Marta thought she had a good idea now of where the men were headed. Why hire a carriage to travel a short distance? And why enlist the collaboration of Endrev Berekker if your plans do not lie at sea?

Marta took a wide, well-lit, rambling, street down to the boulevard that ran to the east gate. If her assumptions were correct, then she was not in any hurry, and if they were wrong, then she had already lost Berekker for the night. Strong drink and running were a poor combination. Marta stopped for a long drink at one of the small stone fountains that were found at most of the city’s major intersections. The mountain water was clear and cold, even after it traveled hundreds of miles through marble and ceramic and stone. After she drank her fill, she rummaged in her bag for her water skin— empty because it was unnecessary in a city full of fountains— and filled it.

The north gate, on the other side of the city, was within sight of the broad Merendir River and approached by a paved road three carriages wide that led all the way to the Addenines. The north gate was as much an event as a place. Banners in a hundred bright colors flew all around it, and the mighty portcullis was raised and lowered with ceremony along with the sun. Swarms of Assessors, hawkers, and soldiers met every traveler. The east gate, however, was used only by fishermen and merchants heading to their summer houses along the coast. It was small and quiet and brightly lit. It was attended by a single Assessor and a single soldier, and they cared little who was leaving the city.

Once, many years ago, Marta and her brother had spent most of a summer a few miles outside of Merendir, scavenging wild berries, sleeping in the sweet-smelling grasses, and living off of bread and cheese and watered wine that a rich benefactor— apparently charmed by the two children— brought twice a week. The memories from so long ago were vague. The man smiled, and smelled good, and when he visited them he would build a fire and roast meat and tell stories of gods and faeries and knights. When he invited them to come live with him, something made Marta balk, and she never decided whether it was something in his eyes or something inside herself. The man had become angry, and Marta and her brother had fled back to the Valley.

Aside from that summer, Marta had only been outside the city walls a handful of times. She was not even out of the sight of the men stationed at the gate before it felt strange to her. The grasses near the gate were beaten down and trampled, and Marta could still hear sounds from the city, but ahead of her was nothing but moonlit prairie and, somewhere, ocean. She could smell the grasses and the ocean underneath the stronger smell of refuse. She thought maybe she heard crickets. She definitely saw a glow from one of the fire pits that lined the roads out of Merendir, and smelled roasting meat. Her stomach growled fiercely, reminding her that she had not eaten in a long time. Marta left the road. She knew that the only people who camped this close to the city were merchant caravans waiting for a morning inspection, or occasionally the Wandering Tribes who were ill at ease in the city, but she mistrusted strangers in empty spaces.

Once she was well off the road, she sat, concealed by the tall grasses, and took a loaf of bread from her bag. She ate half of it hastily, tearing off large chunks, careful not to waste any crumbs, and returned the other half to her bag, still hungry. She could not say how long she would be outside the city. She took a modest swig from her water skin, shouldered her bag, and headed for the sea. The brittle grasses crowded in around her, tickling her bare arms. She kept expecting to trip over somebody asleep in the grass, a fear in stark contrast to her growing awareness of how very alone she was.

The ground grew rockier, the grasses more sparse, until there was only the occasional stubborn patch clinging to the rocks. Clouds rolled across the moon and a gentle rain began to fall. The rough rocks provided sure footing, even in the rain, but the ground was uneven, and Marta found herself moving slowly in the dark. She had been here once before, in daylight, a couple years ago, when a young soldier who had aspired to become her lover— Illio was his name, she thought— had brought her out for a picnic beside the sea. His romantic intentions had been thwarted partly by a rare east wind, which had carried the smell from the outlet of Merendir’s sewer system across the entire coast, but mostly by the unseemly intensity of his anger at the situation. Marta had laughingly dragged the fuming soldier for miles down the coast until she stood, holding her nose and trying not to gag, atop the one of the three immense pipes— as high as the city walls— admiring the epic view of city’s considerable waste befouling the South Sea. On their way out of the city, she had noticed an outcropping overlooking the Sea Wall. She had wanted to climb it that day, but by the time they passed it on their way home, she and Illio were thoroughly sick of one another and could not return to city fast enough.

Now she picked her way in the dark, between tide pools and toward an incline that she hoped would lead to the same outcropping. Tiny crabs darted around her feet. She looked behind her often, but could not see far. Her path grew steeper and the rain grew heavier and before long she was sodden, scrambling up a tumble of rocks with scraped knuckles and squashing boots. She stopped on a flat boulder to tie back her hair and drink some more water. There was a flash of light, and Marta crouched down against the rocks, before realizing that she had just caught her first sight of the ocean and searchlights atop the Sea Wall.

Marta had come to the steepest point of her ascent. The rocks were smoother here, and slick with rain. The silent, ghostly, shapes of huge sea birds circled above her. Marta searched out every handhold and foothold, digging her fingers into slimy cracks, her body pressed against rocks covered in lichen and gull shit. Though steep and treacherous, the climb did not scare Marta. Somebody more fearful might have worried about a misstep and a bloody slide down the rocky face, possibly all the way to the cliff face that was beginning to rise over the rocky shore, but Marta was choosing her steps carefully.

Just before she reached the crest, Marta began to smell the smoke from Merendir. Then she stood on a thin finger of rock, just above the Sea Wall, with the haze and dim light of the city on one side, and the black ocean on the other. Rusty iron spikes, longer than Marta was tall, were fanned out along the edge of the cliff, discouraging, Marta assumed, invading armies from taking the Sea Wall. Marta walked out as far as she could, and was annoyed to find that large portions of the coast were still hidden from her view. She squinted hard against the rain, looking for nearby light or movement. She saw nothing, aside from the bobbing lantern of a sentry moving along the top the Sea Wall.

It was steep, but if she slid down the side of the cliff and stretched herself out to lie on the iron spikes, Marta thought she would be able to see the entire coast. She was already halfway down, before she thought to worry about whether the spikes were set firmly enough to stop her descent, or how she would climb back up. She slid more and more quickly. Rocks scraped her palms and her backside. She dug her heels in hard, trying to slow herself down. Rocks sprayed in front of her, sending a flock of gulls flapping and screaming from their nests. The spikes were set farther apart than Marta had supposed, and she realized with a sudden panic that she might pass between them and fall all the way to the ocean. She grabbed hold of a small, scrubby, plant that held on to the side of the cliff and cursed as a hundred small thorns bit into her hand, but her foot landed on one of the spikes and it did not so much as tremble at the impact. She settled her other foot on the adjacent spike, leaned back against the cliff, and allowed herself a moment with her eyes closed to breath deeply and slow her pounding heart. Then she knelt down, trembling, and lay against the spikes which were, after all, placed too closely together to allow her to fall through.

Suspended above the cliffs, above the circling sea birds, who were still vocally offended by her intrusion, Marta could see the entire coast and the waters beside the Sea Wall. The wet iron, rough as it was with rust, felt solid and cool against her burning palm. She forgot her cuts and bruises, at the sight of a boat, indistinct in the rain, moving slowly alongside the Sea Wall. She was not sure what she had expected— a raid on a ship, or cargo smuggled to shore— but this was not it. She was certain that, somehow, that boat would pass through the gate and into the harbor, and that she needed to be there to see what it was carrying.

Scrambling back up the rocks to the top of the ridge proved easier than she had feared, even though her hand was beginning to stiffen and swell. The moon came out to speed her descent back down toward the prairie. She jumped and skidded among the rocks, sometimes on her feet and sometimes backwards on all fours, until the ground flattened out and she was back among the tall grasses. She was so preoccupied with the possibilities of what Berekker might be smuggling into the city, and the scope of a conspiracy that might allow him to get through the Sea Wall at night, that she did not stop to consider how she would get to the docks until she was passing through the gate, smiling at the drowsy guard and squinting in the light of the lamps.

Tar Bottom was just downhill from the east gate, and the docks were just downhill of Tar Bottom. People argued sometimes about whether Tar Bottom was named for the black pitch that seamen use, the flow of black mud from the river that pressed inexorably against its hovels, or the black skin of its inhabitants, but everybody knew that continentals were unwelcome there. To take city streets to the docks would take her well over an hour, maybe a little less if she gambled on taking winding side streets without getting lost. She had little concept of how long it would take Berekker to traverse the inner bay, or how long it might take her to find a way into the docks, but she wanted to be sure she was got there before his business was finished. She turned into the weedy, empty space between two of the unimpressive shops that catered to the unimpressive people who came and went through the east gate. Then she went along the tree-lined ridge until she found the path down to Tar Bottom.

The path alternated between short flights of steep stairs, and paving stones which had been carved precisely a very long time ago. Now they were now chipped and worn, with grass growing up among them. The trees and shrubs along the path had not been cut back for some time, and the path was dark. At points, Marta had to duck beneath intrepid tree limbs, or push aside bushes that threatened to crowd out the path entirely. She did not know what to expect from Tar Bottom. It had an evil reputation, but the Valley had an evil reputation, too, and the Valley was home. She also supposed there were parts of the Valley that she knew to avoid— the Midlands, for example— and which she would absolutely forbid any Islander she cared about a whit from visiting. She checked the knife in her boot, and the knife between her shoulders. She was carrying more money than she liked, but she supposed she could convince Cadras to pay her back if she got robbed.

The farther the path descended, the more sparse the paving stones became, and by the time Marta emerged into Tar Bottom, she was walking in a narrow stripe of mud. The first dwellings she saw seemed to be patched together from paving stones, pieces of old boats, tree limbs, and any other solid material that might be scavenged, and they did not adhere to any obvious organization, so that Marta stood for a moment, wondering where to walk.

“Lost, mama?” A man whispered, behind her.

Marta jumped and turned quickly. The man behind her was tall, and so close that the first thing she saw was the thick spiral branded into the black skin of a lean, muscular, chest. He was smiling down at her. It was a predatory smile, made more so by teeth that had been filed to points, and long, curving, claws stuck through the ears. His eyes were not entirely cold, though, and Marta thought she recognized his manner— the manner of one who both resents being feared and embraces it.

She did not back away, nor did she smile. She was angry at having been surprised, and she let this show, staring back at him for a moment before answering.

“A little.” She saw, from the corner of her eye, a braided lash coiled at his belt, as well as a wicked-looking barbed knife. The man widened his smile and licked his sharp teeth suggestively. Now Marta smiled, and looked appreciately at the man’s weapons. “Can you show me the way to the docks?”

She reached out to touch the end of the lash, which was a tiny, double-edged blade. The man swatted her hand away and said, “Do not touch.” Then he smiled a different smile. It was still not friendly, but neither was it designed to scare her. He touched his bare chest and told her, “Mashume is an excellent guide, if you can afford him.”

“I believe I can,” Marta smiled.

“I would like to see the money.”

Marta thought briefly about how she might end up paying Mashume less than the entirety of her purse, and cursed her stupidity at bringing a full purse into Tar Bottom. She tried to remember exactly how much she was carrying. She was carrying more than she ever had before, that much was certain— seven weight of silver, plus some change, plus the half weight of silver in the heel of her boot.

“If Mashume is as good a guide as he claims,” Marta said, shrugging off her pack, and searching near the bottom for her coin purse, “then I can pay him three weight of silver.” She knew this price would be adequate for a night of mild extortion. She opened up the purse and stacked three silver on a flat stone. Mashume looked pointedly at the still weighty purse. Marta set another stack of three silver beside the first and said, “These three will be to bribe the guard at the dock.” Finally, she shook the last silver piece and the few small coins into her palm and held the empty purse upside down. “The rest is Berekker’s payment to me to do this job for him.”

Mashume’s eyes narrowed. It was clear that he had intended to take whatever she was carrying, but that he knew Berekker’s name and knew that it would be unwise to interfere in his affairs. It took only the slightest flick of his wrist to free the lash from his side and send it flying. Marta cried out as the slender blade streaked past her head, so close that she could feel the disturbance in the air. She jumped up angrily and looked behind her, to where a rat, cut neatly in half, lay in a spreading pool of blood.

“You…” Marta said through gritted teeth, jabbing Mashume’s bare chest hard with her finger and trying to remember a suitably foul Islander insult, “can go fondle a monkey’s dick.”

Mashume bowed, grinning, and spread his arms. “I apologize, mama,” he said, and chuckled. Marta repacked her bag hastily, fighting the urge to throw Mashume’s silver at him, and stomped off into Tar Bottom, trailed by the still chuckling man.

No lamps lit the windows here, and though few fires burned in the mild night, a faint smoky haze still hung in the air, oily and full of unfamiliar aromas. Mashume walked in front of Marta, humming softly to himself. He did not seem overly concerned with their surroundings. He never looked behind him and rarely looked to his side. He led her confidently between the hovels, which crowded closer and closer together until they were built up against one another, sharing walls and scavenged roofing materials. Marta thought she saw the occasional face in the open doorways, or the occasional figure watching them from a dark passageway, but nobody approached them, except for once, when a child appeared from the space between two lean-tos, holding out his hand and silently imploring Marta with sad eyes. Mashume made a sharp sound and said something in Mahagenian, and the child backed away into the darkness.

They emerged onto a square, or at least a wide, flat, patch of dirt, clear of dwellings and mostly clear of weeds, centered around a small terraced pyramid, built from brown clay. There was a faint smell of death around the place, and Marta went curiously to the pyramid, which turned out be more of an enclosure, with few feet of empty space in the center. Marta stood on her toes to look down at the floor of the structure and Mashume came to stand beside her, scowling slightly. She looked at him puzzled. She could have sworn that his expression was one of embarrassment.

The ground inside the pyramid was covered in a tangle of small bones, picked entirely clean, aside from the ragged body of a squirrel. Marta recoiled a little when she saw that what she had taken to be the animal’s fur was moving.

“Ants.” Mashume said, derisively. “For the old people. For the…” he paused, trying to pick the right word, “peasants.” Marta saw that it was a blanket of ants that covered the squirrel, and that every one of the hundred or more lines that ran around the perimeter of the clay pyramid was composed of hundreds or thousands of carved ants, all marching the same direction. Mashume glanced dismissively down into the pyramid and added, “The ants here are not even powerful. It takes them hours to kill vermin. They could never kill a bull.”

Mashume walked away with long strides, so that Marta had to jog to keep up with him. The buildings in this part of Tar Bottom were larger, and more solid, built out of the foundations of older, ruined, houses. Sometimes an old wall stood intact, or a doorway. Wicker shields were displayed beside many of the doorways, painted with screaming faces. Candle light came from a building ahead, and voices. Marta heard the clatter of dice being shaken in a cup, then laughter, and curses— the only Mahagenian she understood.

A man came out of the building and stood in the street, swaying with drink. He was bald and thickly built. White showed in the stubble on his face, and muscles that must have once been impressive had lost their definition. He hurled some oath back into the building and then turned to stagger toward Marta and Mashume. He did not notice them until he nearly collided with Marta, who had tried to move out of his way, but failed when he weaved suddenly.

Drunken confusion erased the dull anger on the man’s face for a moment, before the anger returned, now amplified and focused. He said something, slurred and foreign, but Marta recognized at least a couple rude words. The palm spirits were thick on his breath. The man reached out for her, but his hand came to rest instead on Mashume’s chest, as he interposed himself between them. Inside the building, the laughter and dice had stopped, and Marta saw that they now had an audience of three, standing in the doorway.

“Mashume!” The old drunk spat, and tried to move around him toward Marta, muttering something. When Mashume moved with him, the old man swung at Mashume’s face. His swing was hard and fast, but inaccurate. Mashume moved his head and the man’s knuckles merely brushed his cheek as he staggered with his own momentum.

Mashume yelled something at the men watching from the doorway and pushed the old man, just hard enough to keep him off balance. The man stumbled backward, cursing and spitting, his eyes alight with rage. As he regained his footing and started to tense for another swing at Mashume, one of the three spectators— a younger man, unsmiling and perfectly steady on his feet— came forward and took the old man by the shoulders, turning him and guiding him, still spitting and muttering, back toward the doorway. The old man tried to take the jug from the hands of one of the men in the doorway, but the man switched the jug to his other hand ahead of the old man’s grasp, and pushed him into the house. He said something short and cold to Mashume, and then retired with his companions into the house.

Mashume’s face was studiously empty as he watched them leave the street. He did not look back at Marta or say a word. He kept walking, and she followed behind him, and soon he brought her out into the broad strip of land that the city kept cleared beside the walls to the docks. He stopped and faced her, frowning and silent, and it took Marta, still a little shaken by the confrontation, a moment to realize that he was waiting for payment. She took off her pack and fumbled through her coin purse for three silver, which she pressed into Mashume’s palm, saying “Thank you.” Mashume inclined his head slightly, still frowning, and then disappeared back into the tangled streets of Tar Bottom.

The rain began anew, harder this time, and Marta made for the nearest gate.

"The dock's closed," came an imperious voice as Marta drew close. Grainger’s men patrolled the docks, but the City Guard manned the gates. Marta smiled to herself and approached the small gatehouse. The somewhat short and pudgy guard moved to stand in front of the door that stood beside the locked gate.

"Come on, Oxxly, it's just me." Marta walked a little closer and the guard squinted at her, rain streaming in front of his eyes. This was not the first time Marta had been to the docks at night, though it had been a while. Certain merchant vessels were notorious for the all-night galas they held, far out at the end of the deep water quays.

"Oh, hi, Marta,” Oxxly wiped his brow with his sleeve. “I'm sorry, but I mean it this time. There's something serious going on in there. Grainger's men all disappeared an hour ago. I have strict orders not to let anybody in."

"You always have strict orders not to let anybody in. That's your job." Marta pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but..."

"Come on, Oxxly. I know that something serious is going on in there. That's exactly why I need to get in. You'd feel really bad if I fell to my death trying to scale the wall in the rain, wouldn't you?"

Oxxly looked over his shoulder. "I could be put in prison..."

Marta felt a twinge of guilt, but ignored it. "This will be the last time, then I'll find another guard to bother." Oxxly looked truly pained. Marta pressed her attack. "Remember when you lost half your wages on horses, and I gave you my bracelet to give to Ari, so you could pretend you’d spent the money on her?"

Oxxly made an anxious sound, whispered "Hurry," and went back into the gate house.

Marta slipped through the doorway. During the day, the area was filled with wagons, crates, longshoremen, and merchants, but in the middle of the night, it was a featureless expanse of grass that gradually gave way to a featureless expanse of sand. Marta took a few steps inside the gate, and then stood motionless against the wall, peering through the rain for a long time. She saw no light, no movement, and no human form, just a line of warehouses that disappeared into the rain, the choppy bay, and the rain-battered sand that separated them. Not knowing what to expect, but thinking it unlikely that anything would happen by this remote gate, Marta cautiously followed the wall toward the warehouses, stopping every few steps to watch for movement.

The distant sound of wood scraping on hard-packed sand made Marta freeze. She hardly dared to turn her head, afraid that the movement would draw attention to her. When she looked toward the bay, she saw a rowboat being pulled ashore. They were so far away that she could only barely make out their forms, but they were still so obvious to her that it was hard to believe that they had not noticed her. She backed up slowly, an inch at a time, until her back was pressed against the wall. New movement drew her attention, as two figures moved across the sand toward the boat. Marta held very still. Somebody else trailed behind the two, heading for the shore, straining to pull a cart behind him. None of them noticed her. As they all convened around the boat, Marta walked slowly toward the warehouses. A voice carried across the sand, but the words were indistinct behind the patter of rain. Crates were moved from the boat to the cart, and then everybody took up ropes and began to pull the laden cart through the wet sand toward the warehouses. Marta crept along the wall, far behind them, until the wagon passed from sight.

Once she knew they could no longer see her, Marta ran. She ran clumsily in the sand. Grit found its way into her soaked boots, scraping against her ankles and the tearing at the tender parts of her feet. It did not take her long to reach the first warehouse. It was a long building, extending out from the dock walls toward the bay— salt-stained, with crumbling mortar and climbing weeds. Looking carefully around the corner down the long line of warehouses, Marta saw lamplight flooding out of a doorway not far from her, with long shadows moving in its light. Marta drew back out of sight and waited.

When she moved out into the open, the lamplight had retreated far into the building, with only a faint glow left in the doorway. Thinking that they might have left a sentry in the shadows, Marta approached on light feet, looking around her at the slightest sound or movement. Clay casts of the Imperial insignia, ponderous and chipped, adorned the warehouse doors. Marta looked inside. The lantern was nearly at the opposite end of the warehouse, but silhouetted in its light was the wagon and the figures of several men. Marta ducked quickly inside, pressing herself into the shadows against the wall.

The warehouse smelled like mildew and spilled wine. The muted drumming of the rain against the roof, the heavy footfalls of the man with the lantern, and a soft, musical, humming were the only sounds inside. Everybody’s attention was on the lantern. Marta dashed through the darkness to crouch behind the wagon. She realized with a start that the humming came from a man standing on the wagon, concealed by the crates, not three feet from her. She held her breath. He seemed not to have noticed her. He did not stop his singing.

Marta hoped that her feet would not be spotted behind the wagon wheels as the lamplight grew closer. A line of coin-sized holes ran around the side of the crate a few inches from her head. Marta pressed her eye against one of the holes, trying to make out the contents. There was a pungent, unpleasant, smell. She could see clear through the crate to the line of holes on the other side, and the lamplight coming through these holes was beginning to reveal a form in the crate when somebody said, “We’ll take it from here,” and then everything happened at once.

She could see only pieces of the action, through the holes on the opposite side of the crate, and Marta strained to make sense of it all. There was a man in a grey cloak, who yelled something she did not understand and delivered a tremendous blow that sent one of the other men flying. A blade flashed and there was a cry of ecstatic pain. Then the shape inside the crate moved, and an eye opened an inch from Marta’s. She yelled and fell backwards and the crate tilted toward her, as something threw itself furiously against the inside. As she scrambled away from the box on her hands and feet, a terrible cry came from inside— feral, high-pitched, and human. Marta was frozen with revulsion for just a moment, before she realized she was crouching in the open. Berekker lay beside her, unmoving, and his bodyguard was coming toward her quickly, holding a bloody sword. Three city guards stood in shock. One looked at the crates, which were now all being shaken back and forth as they were assaulted from within. One looked at the man that lay at his feet in a tangle of bloody grey cloth. One looked at her.

"Marta?" He said, in surprise.

As she turned to run, Marta wished for once that she did not know everybody in Merendir.

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