The King's Blood

greasepaint, had let himself be led into the fallen house, and down to where an ancient archway still held the stone above it at bay. There was only a foot or so of open air between the rubble and the archway’s top, but cats went in and out through it freely. Cithrin had gone first, crawling into the darkness with only a small candle carried in a thick glass lamp. The hole was so small, she had to pull herself along by the elbows, but when she’d gone in a half dozen yards, she called back. It opened wider. There was space. They should join her.
    Aster had gone next, the stones scraping under him. Cithrin had kept calling until he found her.
    And then it was his turn.
    When he’d been a boy Aster’s age, he had been the son of the manor in Rivenhalm. There had been no boys of his station within a day’s ride in any direction. Climbing trees, leaping from precipices into distant water, crawling through caves. These hadn’t been the things of his childhood. He had no experience of adventure to draw from. Inching forward, the daylight fading behind him, Geder was aware of the great weight above him. The old stone pressed on the air, thickening it. The rubble grew deeper, pressing his back against the ceiling until he almost had to slither, snakelike. The stink of cat piss grew stronger. At one point, he felt sure that he’d turned the wrong way in the darkness, that he was lost and buried alive.
    But then the glimmer of Cithrin’s candle caught his eye. When he tumbled down into the half-filled chamber, he was sure there would be blood soaking his knees and forearms, but the candle revealed only a few pale scratches.
    Aster had volunteered to go back out to the actors waiting under the open sky. His eyes had been bright and excited. When he came back, he had a string tied to his ankle. Together, they pulled a tray through the tiny crawl-space: candles and blankets and sealed jars of raisins and water and dried meat. It wasn’t enough to live on for long, but it would get them through the day. Cithrin shouted her thanks, and the faint voices of the others answered and then went away.
    The room was part of a buried garden. The flowerbeds were still visible between ancient columns. An open turning led to a smaller space where the corpse of a tree lay against the still-standing stones of a great wall. A crushed doorway led deeper into the bones of the city, rooms that might once have been a house. The space was too small for anything that wasn’t a cat, and the dust on the ground was thick and undisturbed by human feet. Everything stank of cat, but Geder found that the scent faded with time.
    “Well,” Cithrin said. “This will do nicely.”
    “We should look more in the back,” Aster said. “Might be another way out.”
    “Better that we don’t. It’s not on anyone’s path. If we go farther in and find a space that people are using, we might be discovered. Better that we stay here where nobody goes.”
    “Who would be down here?” Geder said. “This place is a hole. Literally. It’s a hole in the ground.”
    “Every city in the world has its poor,” Cithrin said. “And say what you want about this. It’s shelter. That’s why we’re here.”
    M
    ore than the violence, what haunted Geder was the betrayal. He lay in darkness, hands behind his head. Cithrin had gone out for food and news. The cats whose lair they’d appropriated were staying away except for the occasional distant scratching of claws on stone. Aster’s deep, regular breath said the boy was sleeping. He wished he could sleep too.
    When he closed his eyes, he saw Dawson Kalliam. He saw the knife in his hand and the blood on Basrahip’s fingers. It didn’t make sense. This was Jorey’s father. Geder had helped the man expose and destroy Feldin Maas. He’d trusted Dawson with his armies. Dawson Kalliam was a friend. A patron. He saw the knife again, the cold hatred in Dawson’s eyes.
    If Dawson was an enemy, then anyone could be. For any reason or for no reason at all.
    It was terrible and crushing, and since Aster was asleep and couldn’t know, Geder let himself weep a little from the fear and desolation.
    There were small noises here. The cats who still stalked the deeper ways, tentative scouts coming near and then scrabbling away in panic. There were neither rats nor mice, the prey kept away, Geder assumed, by the stink of the predators. Now and then, he also heard the ticking of pebbles and flakes of rock as something