Hade gave her a razor-sharp smile.
I stepped closer and lowered my voice. “Men like Ulmar Hreban don’t see other people as human beings. He doesn’t want you. He cares only about what you represent—the means to prove to other men that he is superior. He will stop at nothing to obtain that.”
Galiene drank her tea. “Thank you for the warning.” Her expression told me that my warnings were not needed.
“Elaut sold you out. You will find the money hidden in his pillow.”
Her eyes went wide.
“When you reject Hreban, he will take Adelai and use her to torment you. You will do everything he asks, and at the end, he will kill you both. When his knights run her through, you will think of your brother and the blood on his white tunic, the one your mother embroidered. You will not resist as they cut you down. You will die in a fire, bleeding and hugging your daughter’s lifeless body. You must bring her into the Garden. Hreban cares about public opinion and won’t risk attacking it directly. Don’t wait. Go right now. This is the only help I can offer you.”
I turned and walked away, down the stairs, across the main floor, through the tunnel, and out the door into the sunshine. Nobody followed me.
CHAPTER5
The bells of the Red Basilica rang a melodious din. The higher-pitched, smaller bells struck a quick rhythm, punctuated by the deeper clang of the larger bells, and finally a single deep chime of the great bell rolled through the city and lingered, reverberating in the air. Noon.
I paused and leaned against a wall of the building to rest my tired feet. Past me, the current of the passersby flowed through Bluestone Square.
Kair Toren was a riot of people, sounds, and color. Most buildings in this part of town had simple lines, sturdy towers, and thick walls, built with a beautiful calico stone, a sandy beige with swirls of cinnamon and white curving through it. And there was a surprising amount of glass. Across the square, the sun glinted on the upper floors’ windows and a beautiful glass sign in red and teal marked an alchemy shop.
Countless people moved against that backdrop, traders, shoppers, city guards, knights . . . I saw actual knights in armor. I had expected it to be clunky and rigid, but it was sleek and fitted, and they moved in it as if they were wearing sweatpants. People carried swords and maces on their belts, and their long cloaks flared as they walked. Women who weren’t in armor wore dresses and gowns in every color, actual gowns, and their hair was braided and styled with hair jewelry. Men out of armor preferred jerkins and tunics, although I saw a couple in robes.
As I watched, a woman in a pretty cloak, accompanied by four guards, passed me, walking some relative of a Tasmanian tiger on a chain leash. A craftsman with two teenage apprentices followed, lecturing them on the right way to pickle cabbage, and behind them an old man carried a wooden frame on his shoulders with brilliantly colored birds perching on each side.
Across the street, a woman in a wheelchair rolled in the opposite direction, surrounded by a gaggle of young girls. One of them held the door of the alchemy shop open, the second pushed her chair, and the other two scurried into the store, as the woman’s raised voice carried over in the familiar cadence of a teacher giving a lecture, “Remember the rule. Everything is poisonous, everything is hot. Touch nothing and do not put your hands in your mouth . . .”
I’d read about it over and over, I’d imagined it, and here it was, right there. Right in front of me. All this wonderful magical weirdness. I wanted to just wander about like a toddler at an amusement park, going, “Ooo, look at this.” But there was no time.
I had hightailed it out of the Garden like my butt was on fire. For the first fifteen minutes I just walked, paranoid that they would chase after me. By the time I reached the Bull Gate again, I’d decided I was in the clear and concentrated on the most important thing—putting a roof over my head.
I went to the Inn Quarter. It took me an hour and a half of determined walking to get there. I tried the White Stag, the Squire’s Rest, and the imaginatively named Softer Beds, the three cheapest inns in the quarter. All three required the Rellasian equivalent of a “credit card for incidentals,” meaning they wanted proof of identity.
I offered to prepay. I offered to pay double. That just made them more suspicious. They booted me out the door, and the Softer Beds clerk went a step further, called me a lowlife, and told me to never come back. Apparently, only their beds were softer, not their service. Asshat.
I had to find a private room to rent. The books didn’t deal with real estate in detail. There were references to characters purchasing properties or finding lodging, but none of it was specific enough.
I returned to the signboard in Bluestone Square. I vaguely remembered seeing something about rent, when I was stumbling about in the rain, looking for a date on the official announcements pinned to it. I was right. The front of the sideboard was for official use. The back served as the medieval equivalent of Craigslist, announcing everything from lost dogs to rooms for rent.
I’d gotten to that signboard around ten am. It was two hours later, and I had seen five rentals so far. Three wouldn’t rent to a woman unattached to a guild or a workshop, one was a straight-up hovel with one communal bathroom for seven people, and the landlord of the last one gave me the creeps.
I had about seven or eight hours of daylight left, and I was down to my last available rental. If this one didn’t work out, I would have to move on, and I had no clue where another signboard might be. Maybe this one would work out. I would get to it as soon as my feet stopped hurting.
A whiff of freshly baked bread floated past me. My mouth watered. I turned.
A peddler was coming up the street toward me. He carried a tray with a strap around his neck, and it was full of pastries. Fresh, flaky, golden pastries, with crispy crust. Oh my god.
How was I so hungry? I had breakfast six hours ago . . . Oh.
The vendor zeroed in on me like a wolf spotting a lame rabbit. “Mushroom handpies, tress?”
Yes, all the handpies. All of them. “How much?”
“A quarter.”
I reached into my cloak, dug two quarters out of my bag of money by feel, and dropped them into his palm. He plucked a little envelope folded from some sort of leaf from the stack on his tray, slid two handpies into it, and handed it to me.
“Thank you, terr. Do you know where Prodoe Street is?”
