“Better,” I say, appraising my handiwork.
He brushes some of the dirt away, but it’s still pretty effective.
“Did you get a lead on Vesper?” I ask him now that we’re sufficiently disguised.
He nods. “A man came in saying he saw someone of her description struggling with someone in an alley. We’re going to see what he knows.”
“When?”
“Just two days ago.”
Then there’s a chance she’s still alive. I’d nearly given up hope.
“But there’s something else. One of the shadow-born from the trial was reported missing yesterday. And a second one this morning.”
Two more shadow-born missing. Maybe I was right to avoid the trial.
“It could be another coincidence like Marcella,” he says. “There are a lot of people coming and going right now. It’s easy to get separated.”
“But possibly not,” I say.
He nods.
He leads me through a series of alleys that seem to follow the city wall. Twice we cross busy streets, but the disguises seem to hold, or maybe it’s just that people are too preoccupied with the festival celebrations to give us much notice.
We finally come to a nondescript door near a guard tower. We’re close to one of the city’s northern gates, and there’s a lot of foot and chariot traffic coming and going nearby. But no one seems to notice as Ronan knocks on the door in a strange rhythm.
“Selara, Vayla’s Favored Land,” he explains. It’s not the official anthem of Selara, but it’s a fairly common hymn. I recognize it the moment he says it.
A woman with a gruff voice opens a slat at eye level. “Business?”
“Soren Solinus to see Mery.”
“Token?”
Ronan removes something from his pocket and passes it through a lower slat on the door. I don’t get a good look at it, but it glints in the sunlight like a coin.
“Ten minutes.”
The woman closes both slats. Then there are a series ofclinksandclangsas she unlatches a dozen locks. Finally, the door swings open.
We step inside to find what at first glance could be any ordinary home. There’s a bench for greeting guests, a dining table with six chairs, and a kitchen built around a stone hearth. In the back corner, a staircase leads to an upper level.
In Nithyria, the residents of a home like this would be considered solidly middle class. Merchants or healers, maybe.
I wonder who Mery is and why we’re here.
“Safe house,” says Ronan, feeling my curiosity. “A place where assets can be kept protected without bringing them to the palace.”
“Assets?”
“Witnesses, errand-runners. Spies.”
People like my mother. I’m sure she knew all about safe houses. She probably operated some of her own back home in Pyka before the war.
I wish I’d known to ask her about it then. There were so many things I could’ve talked to her about if only I’d known to ask before she died.
“Are you alright?” Ronan mutters. The woman from the front door is opening another under the staircase at the back. She doesn’t seem particularly interested in our conversation, but I’ve learned to be careful who I say things around.
