The King's Blood

of the exotic if you take him south.”
    “I’ll ask around, then,” she said. “When are you leaving?”
    “Tonight,” he said.
    “Do you have to go alone?”
    The apostate hesitated. It was a question he hadn’t decided yet. The task before him was impossible. As doomed as it was inevitable. His sacrifice was his own, which made it curiously easy. To ask someone else to walk willingly to death beside him was no favor. And yet if it made the difference between success and failure, a world redeemed or lost …
    “Perhaps not,” he said. “There is one other who might help. But not from the troupe.”
    “And I suppose it would be entirely too much to ask what this mysterious errand is that’s calling you away?” she asked. And then, contradicting herself, “You owe us that much.”
    The apostate licked his lips, searching for words he hadn’t used, even to himself. When he found them, he chuckled.
    “This may sound a bit grandiose,” he said, scratching at his beard with one long finger.
    “Try me.”
    “I’m off to kill a goddess.”

Cithrin bel Sarcour, Voice and Agent of the Medean Bank in Porte Oliva
     
    C
    ithrin bel Sarcour, voice of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, stepped out of the bank’s office with her head high, her features composed, and rage burning in her breast. Around her, Porte Oliva was entering its springtime. The bright cloth banners and glittering paste jewels of the First Thaw celebrations still lay in the streets and alleyways, slowly decaying into grime. Snow haunted the shadows where the midday sun couldn’t reach. Cithrin’s breath plumed before her as if her heart were a furnace belching pale smoke, and she felt the bite of the air as a distant thing.
    Men and women of several races bustled on the cobbles before her. Kurtadam with their slick, beaded pelts; thin faced, pale Cinnae; brass-and-gold-scaled Jasuru; blackchitined Timzinae; and fleshy, rose-cheeked Firstblood. Some nodded to her, some stepped out of her way, most ignored her. She might represent one of the greatest banks in the world, but as far as the hazy sky over Porte Oliva cared, she was just another half-Cinnae girl in a well-tailored dress.
    When she stepped into the taproom, the warm air caressed her. The related, yeasty scents of beer and bread tried to gentle her, and she felt some of the knot in her gut begin to ease. The anger slipped, showing itself only a mask for the despair and frustration beneath. A young Cinnae man came forward to take her shawl, and she managed a tight-lipped smile as she relinquished it.
    “The usual table, Magistra?” he asked.
    “Thank you, Verril,” she said. “That would be kind.”
    Grinning, he made an exaggerated bow, and gestured her on. Another day, she might have found it charming. The table was at the back, half hidden from the main room by a draped cloth. It cost a few coins more. When she felt capable of civil conversation, she would sometimes sit at the common benches, striking up conversation with whoever was there. There were more sailors and gossip of travelers farther south at the docks, more word of overland trade north where the dragon’s road opened to the main square and the cathedral and the governor’s palace, but the taproom was nearest to her bank— her bank, by God—and not every conversation needed to be a bid for advantage.
    The Kurtadam girl who most often served in the daytimes brought a plate of cheese and brown bread with a tiny carved-wood bowl full of black raisins. More to the point, she brought a tankard of good beer. Cithrin nodded sharply and tried to make her smile genuine. If the girl saw anything odd in her, the soft fur of her face covered it. Kurtadam would make good card players, Cithrin thought as she drank. All of them wearing masks all the time.
    The front door opened, light spilling into the main room. A shadow moved into it. Without seeing a single detail of face or body, without so much as a cleared throat, Cithrin recognized Yardem Hane. He was the second in command of her guardsmen— her guardsmen—and one of two men who had known her since her flight from Vanai. With that city burned and all its residents dead, that made him someone who’d known her longer than anyone alive.
    The Tralgu walked gently across the floor. For so large a race, the Tralgu could be uncannily quiet. He sat down on the bench beside her. His high, doglike ears pointed forward. He smelled like old leather and sword oil. His sigh