The King's Blood

human races, and taken lovers from three. Master Kit, he’d been. Kitap rol Keshmet. It was a name he’d given himself even before that, when he had delivered himself into the world out of a womb of desert stone and madness. He’d played a thousand roles. And now, God help him, there was time for one more.
    One last.
    “Cary?” the apostate said. “A word?”
    The long-haired woman nodded, slipped her needle into her sleeve, and laid the handful of beads carefully into a cupping fold of the gown’s cloth. It looked casual and unthinking, but not one bead would escape that little nest. The apostate nodded, smiling, and strolled toward the next shelter in the common yard, empty apart from a cold iron brazier and a stone bench. The brick paving was wet where the rain struck, the subtle red and green deepened and enriched until they seemed enameled. He sat on the little bench and Cary sat at his side.
    Now that the time had come, he couldn’t ignore the sorrow any longer. It had been there for weeks. The fear was an old companion by now; a fire lit in a common house in Porte Oliva months before when he had first heard word that a banner of the goddess flew in Antea. Sorrow had only come later, and he had put it aside as long as he could, telling himself that the thickness in his throat, the weight in his breast, would keep. They would keep no more.
    “Master Kit?” Cary said. “Are you crying?”
    “Of course not,” he said. “Men weep . We find crying undignified.”
    She put her arm around his shoulder. Like a sailor sipping his last freshwater before a voyage, he tried to drink in the feeling of her beside him—the bend of her elbow at the back of his neck, the solid weight of her muscles, the smell of verbena and soap. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and nodded his assent. It took a long moment before he could speak.
    “I believe we will need to find another player,” he said. “Older man with a certain gravity. Someone who can take the paternal roles and the villains. Lord Fox. Orcus the Demon King. Those.”
    “Your roles,” Cary said.
    “Mine.”
    Raindrops as small as pinpricks tapped the thatching above them, the bricks before. The practiced blows of false swords and the grunts of the boys swinging them. Hornet had been with the company longer than Cary. Smit played more roles. But Cary would guide them. She would hold the little family of the road together after he was gone, if anyone would.
    “What’s happened?” she asked.
    “There’s something I feel I have to do,” he said.
    “We’d help.”
    “I believe you would try. But …”
    “But?”
    He shifted to look her in the eyes. Her arm slid away from him. Her eyes were as dark as her hair, and large enough to make her seem younger than she was. He could see her now as she had been that first night, seven years before in the free city of Maccia, dancing in the public square for coin. She’d hardly been a girl then, feral and hungry and distrustful of anything masculine. Talent and ambition had burned off her like heat from a fire. Opal had warned him that the girl would be trouble and agreed that the price would be justified. Now Cary was a woman full-grown. He wondered if this was what it would feel like to have a daughter.
    “I am afraid I wouldn’t be able to do what was called for if I was also protecting all of you,” he said. “You are the family I’ve made. If I can imagine you safe and content, I think I can sacrifice whatever else is needed.”
    “You’re expecting a high price, it sounds like,” she said.
    “I am.”
    Cary sighed, and the wry smile that haunted her lips in times of trouble came to her. Remember this , he told himself. Remember the way her lips twist and her eyebrow rises. Keep it close. Pay attention.
    “Well, piss,” she said.
    “For what it carries, I am truly sorry to go.”
    “Do you have anybody in mind to take the roles?” she asked.
    He could see the pain in her. He was betraying her, abandoning them all, and she would no more blame him for it than cut off her toes. He wished he could take her hand in his, but she’d chosen the tone for their conversation, and he didn’t have the right to overrule her. Not any longer.
    “There’s a group that makes the northern circuit. Paldrin Leh and Sebast Berrin. Three years ago, they had two fighting for the same roles. Find them, and you might get someone who already knows the lines. Paldrin’s a Haaverkin, but that might add a touch