The King's Blood

back.”
    I
    n the back of the stable, by the light of a hooded lantern, Geder Palliako and Price Aster became different men. They tried Palliako in four different costumes before settling on Father Hope from The Midwinter Princess, the brown robes and crooked stick making him look older than he was. Aster only took a pair of old breeches tied tight around his waist, a stained shirt, and dirt ground into his hair and skin. Cithrin changed into a peasant dress made for a Firstblood woman and too wide for her hips and bust, but Charlit Soon threw stitches on to bring it closer.
    “Can’t do anything with the hands,” Cary said, surveying the work. “Anyone looks at their palms and you’re caught.”
    More fires were dotting the city, towers of smoke rising higher even than the Kingspire and windblown so that they seemed always falling.
    “I have to thank you,” Palliako said. “All of you. The danger you’re putting yourselves in for me…”
    “Feh,” Mikel said with a grin. “Sometime we’ll tell you about the first time we worked with Cithrin. Made a play about it.”
    “Let’s get our heads out of this noose first, shall we?” Cary said smartly.
    “If we stay here, they’ll find us,” Cithrin said. “One side or else the other.”
    “If there’s only two sides,” Smit said. “Lot of times these things wind up more complex than when they start.”
    Sandr rolled his eyes.
    “Oh, worked a lot of insurrections, have you?”
    The city was in the grip of riot, the two most powerful and important men in Imperial Antea huddling in fear of their lives before him, and Sandr was peevish at having been upstaged by Cary.
    “Didn’t I tell you about being in Borja when the plague winds came?” Smit asked. “That was when I’d only just met Master Kit. I must have been twenty, twenty-two. Right in there, and—”
    “Gentlemen?” Cary said.
    “Sorry,” Smit said and lapsed into silence.
    The stable reeked of piss and horse shit, and beneath that a growing scent of smoke. Camnipol, burning. Cithrin’s gut was a solid knot. She knew that if she ate now—or even if she drank—she’d vomit it all back up. And also, she was exhilarated. She wondered where Paerin Clark was right now. She had faith he’d survived the initial attack and that, barring the mischance that came with the violence, he would be able to find a place of relative safety. But she wouldn’t go looking for him, and she was certain he wouldn’t come looking for her. He’d be too busy making his soundings of the tactics and politics.
    But he didn’t have regent and prince to talk with. And she did.
    “We can go under the city,” the prince said. “It’s all ruins. If we can find someplace where it won’t collapse, we could stay there.”
    “Food,” Palliako said. “Water. And how do we know when it’s safe to come back out?”
    “We’ll take care of that,” Cary said. “Cithrin can come up for supplies. And we can be your eyes and ears. Otherwise, we’re just what we are. A half dozen actors trying to keep out of trouble, no?”
    “Not much food for an actor no one’s watching,” Sandr said.
    “If we take the stones off that rag the prince was wearing, we could sit in this yard playing to rats and dogs for a year and still have enough for food and beer,” Cary said, shrugging. “As far as I see, we’ve just been hired.”
    Palliako sat forward, hugging his legs. For the regent of a great empire, he looked a bit lost. It was more than the desperate situation. More than the violence. Dawson Kalliam had been this man’s Lord Marshal, leader of his armies. Palliako had called the man’s revel, and in return he’d nearly taken a knife. She tried to imagine what it would feel like to have the person you trust most revealed as an enemy.
    Easy enough. It had happened to her.
    Cithrin walked the two steps to him and sat at Palliako’s side. There were no tears in his eyes, but something worse. Something lost and emptied. Cithrin took his hand in her own. He had wide palms and short fingers, the angry welt of an insect sting on his arm.
    “Listen to me,” she said. “We’ve only just met and you have no reason to trust me, but do it anyway. These people are my friends, and they’re no part of your court or anybody else’s. If they say they’ll keep us safe, then they will.”
    “How do you know that?” Palliako said, his voice tight. “You can’t be sure they won’t turn on you. I need to find