The King's Blood

looking for something that might have been a tap-room or a wayhouse. All she saw was a thick flicker of smoke to the north.
    “All right,” she said. “We have to cross.”
    “We can’t do that,” Palliako said. “We’ll be seen. We’ll be
    recognized.”
    “We can stay here and see who finds us,” she said. As if to punctuate her words, the sound of shouting floated across the broad, empty air and echoed against the Division’s walls.
    “It’ll be all right,” the prince said.
    “Wait,” Cithrin said. She plucked the thin crown off the boy’s head. From the weight, it was silver throughout. She heaved it over the edge, sailing it out through the wide air. “Lie down. Help me rub muck over this. Do it quickly.”
    It was a long, breathless minute, but the white formal robes of the Prince of Antea was reduced to rags. The pearls and gems were sewn on too tightly to pull free, but their glitter was at least dimmed. It would have to do.
    Cithrin led the way, and at the top of the bridge she paused. In the north, the Kingspire was alive with hundreds of torches, and also larger flames. A building was burning, the column of rising smoke lit by the fire at its foot. Cithrin didn’t know the city well enough to guess what it might be. There were lights along the Silver Bridge too—the torches and lanterns of riders spreading fast from the battle. The news would be all through the city soon. She didn’t know what that would mean except that the time left to find shelter was fading. Lights were also spreading along the edge of the Division, flowing along the top of its eastern face. Coming closer to her. On the west, visible now, was the steady glow of glass lanterns and even, in a courtyard with its back to the precipice, something that might be a theatrical troupe’s cart silhouetted by the lights of the stage.
    Palliako’s voice was unsteady.
    “I don’t… um…”
    She turned to look at him only to find him staring at her. Without thinking about it, she’d hoisted herself on top of the curved body of the trees that made the bridge. She was suddenly aware of the abyss beneath her, and only a few feet of sloping, oiled wood between her and the air. A wave of light-headedness swept over her, and she stepped back, heart racing.
    “I’m all right,” she said. “I’m fine. Keep going.”
    Yellow House was unmistakable once she saw it. Three floors high, each one narrower than the one below, so that every level had its own small courtyard looking out over the Division. The walls were the improbable color at the heart of a daisy, and the yard was half filled with men, women, and children looking up at the lowered stage and the people standing on it. The yard wasn’t more than a hundred feet from the massive stone sockets where the Autumn Bridge ended. But with so many eyes needing no more than a flicker to see them make the crossing to the back of the cart, it could as well have been a mile. On the other side of the Division, torches were drawing closer to the Autumn Bridge. She drew her two charges into the shadows beside the bridge.
    “Stay here,” she said. “When you see the people in that yard turn away, run to the back of the cart and tell whoever’s there that Cithrin sent you and that you need to be hidden. You understand?”
    The prince nodded.
    “But,” Palliako said. “But what if…”
    “Listen to my voice,” Cithrin said. “You can do this.”
    She made her way to Yellow House’s yard, her eyes flickering over the crowd. Familiar voices came to her. Hornet and Sandr, declaiming to one another the way she’d heard them do a thousand times before. There would be someone in the crowd to lead it. There, in the rear, Cary sat in the middle of a group of five. As she watched, Sandr delivered one of the punch lines, leaning on the words too hard. Master Kit would have chided him for it. Cary was the first to laugh, and the crowd followed with her. Almost trotting, she made her way around the edge of the crowd. Cithrin saw Cary’s recognition by the change in the angle of her shoulders and the faintest nod known to humanity.
    When she came to her side, Cary’s eyes narrowed. Cithrin leaned close, whispering in her ear.
    “I need you to make the whole crowd look away from the stage for a few seconds. I know Sandr will kill us, but it needs to be done and done now. Can you?”
    Cary’s smile was wicked.
    “You should know by now, sweet sister, I can do anything. Good to see