The King's Blood

never been like this before when I’ve been. Never seen it this happy either. Stay close. The inn’s not far.”
    Cithrin clenched her teeth and pressed on. If it had been Porte Oliva, the heat of bodies and the jostling wouldn’t have been nearly as bad, only because it would have been familiar. Here, the sky was a different shade of blue and the air was thinner and everything was different.
    The inn was thankfully fronting its own courtyard. No carts were trying to press their way through, no one came there who didn’t have business. Cithrin felt as if she were stumbling into it.
    “Wait here,” Paerin Clark told her. He ducked into the shadows of the inn. The stone walls were like a fortification’s. Bright cloth hung from the windows and doorframes like a fine veil on an ugly girl. Someone shouted from the street, an angry buzz in the voice, and Cithrin wished that Marcus and Yardem had come with her. The journey to Carse had been one thing. It had been a move against Pyk Usterhall and the encroaching control over her bank. Coming to Camnipol had been a whim, a moment’s madness played out over weeks. She held her elbows, trying to be small.
    She closed her eyes, but it didn’t help. The noise of the street was the roar of a river. Voices and iron-wheeled carts. Dogs barked, chasing rats into the shadows and then back out again. One voice was calling out an offer of apple tarts and two coppers each. Another promised a play at dusk. Another merely shouted invective and abuse.
    Cithrin’s heart began to race before she knew why. The voice announcing the play. She knew it.
    “Smit!” she yelled, straining to be heard. “Smit! Is that you?”
    And a moment later, from very close and terribly far away, “Cithrin?”
    “Smit! Over here,” she called. “I’m by the inn.”
    He stepped out of the crowd like he was walking onto a stage, nowhere and then suddenly there. His eyes were wide with surprise and delight, and Cithrin ran over to him, throwing her arms about him. He whooped and lifted her in the air.
    “What are you doing here?” he asked as her feet touched ground again. “I had you playing the magistra for a long run.”
    “Still am,” she said, not taking her arms from around him. Of Master Kit’s players, she’d never been as close to Smit as she was to Cary or Sandr. Or Opal, though that didn’t bear thinking of. But having Smit here in the middle of the strangeness and far, far from home made her reluctant to let him go, and he didn’t object. “The holding company sent me with a few others to get the lay of the land with the new regent.”
    “And the end of the war,” Smit said. “It was bad trade there for a time, but we’re swimming in coin now. You have to come see us. We’ve put together a version of the Lark’s Lament with all local references. Took us a long time to get all the names right, but now all the people we’re making fun of come every other show just to hear their names said. S’brilliant.”
    “How is everyone? What’s Master Kit doing?”
    Smit’s face darkened.
    “Master Kit’s gone,” he said. “Gave over everything to Cary and headed out. Said something gnomic about killing gods and went like dandelion fluff in a high wind. Miss the hell out of that man.”
    “I’m sorry,” Cithrin said. She couldn’t entirely imagine the acting company without Master Kit.
    “We’ll do. Cary’s a damn bit harder on us, but she’s got a good eye. And the new one, Charlit Soon—d’ya know her?”
    “Met her a few times,” Cithrin said, and someone bumped Smit forward into her.
    “You two get some privacy!” a man’s voice shouted. “Don’t care to see you rubbing on each other!”
    “Lick my ass!” Smit yelled over his shoulder. “Anyway, she’s gotten better. Really growing into the roles.”
    “And Sandr?”
    “Sandr’s Sandr.”
    “Well. Pity, that.”
    “I’ll tell him you said so,” Smit said with a grin.
    “You won’t,” Cithrin said, taking her arms away for the first time and hitting him lightly on the shoulder.
    “You’ll come see us, though? We’re at a taproom called Yellow House. Not the cleverest name, but it’s hard to mistake since the whole place looks like it’s painted in yolk. It’s just at the edge of the Division by the one bridge. Autumn. Autumn Bridge.”
    “What’s the Division?”
    “Big crack down the middle of the place. Yellow House, by Autumn Bridge. Say that?”
    “Yellow House by Autumn