ONE
In retrospect, Moria should not have pulled her dagger when she was attempting to pass through the imperial city unnoticed. In truth, the pulling of the dagger was not so much a mistake as the throwing of it. Even the throwing of it wouldn’t have been as grievous if her blade had missed its target. But if Moria pulled her dagger, she would throw it, and if she threw it, she would not miss, so the problem, she reasoned, could be traced back to the man responsible for the throwing of the blade.
Of course, there was a reasonable chance she’d have been recognized even without the incident. All the city knew that the Keeper and Seeker of Edgewood were at the palace. Northerners weren’t exceedingly rare, but when people were watching for a pale-skinned girl with red-gold hair, it was difficult to affect a sufficient disguise. And then there was the matter of Daigo…
“I need to go into the city,” she’d told him earlier as she’d fastened her cloak.
He’d walked to the door and waited.
“No, I need to go by myself. Quickly. Before Ashyn gets back.”
Daigo had planted himself in the doorway and fixed her with a baleful stare. The huge black Wildcat of the Immortals was her bond-beast, as much a part of her as her shadow. A very large, very conspicuous shadow. Luckily, unlike her sister’s hound, Daigo didn’t feel the need to stick to Moria’s side like a starving leech. He’d kept pace with her along the rooftops.
Moria was to meet Ronan in the third market, where merchants traded among themselves and with the casteless. He’d said to meet by the perfume stall. Presumably her nose would lead the way… except the crush of people meant she could smell only the stink of overheated bodies. The din of shouted barters didn’t help. For sixteen summers, she’d lived in a village where “market day” meant four carts along an open roadway. This was enough to make her head ache.
Taking a moment’s break, she spotted a man following a girl of no more than twelve summers. He made her think of the children of Edgewood, held hostage by the former marshal. Orphaned and terrified, children who trusted her – and she was forced to trust the emperor to save them… while he entertained dignitaries from some kingdom she’d never heard of.
As frustration flared, Moria watched the child. A merchant’s daughter, her simple dress adorned with mismatched beads and crooked embroidery. The girl went from booth to booth, picking out the cheapest baubles and bargaining with the merchants.
The man following her had leathery skin and the squint and rolling gait of a fisherman. Eyeing pretty young girls two castes below him and thinking them unlikely to complain, perhaps even welcoming his attention.
Moria drew closer, her hand under her cloak, fingers wrapping around her dagger. She would let the man see that she was watching, in hopes that would frighten him off. If it did not, she would allow him to see the blade. A plan so devoid of her usual recklessness that even her sister would approve.
Then a large woman – her arms loaded with goods – waddled into Moria’s path. Moria swung around her, and by the time she did, the fisherman was right beside the girl, whose attention was fixed on some trinket.
As the man’s hand snaked into the folds of the girl’s dress, Moria launched her blade. Her second blade followed so fast they seemed to fly as one. The daggers pinned the man’s cloak to the stall behind him. There was a near-comic moment as he ran in place, pinned by his cloak. When he realized what bound him, he slipped free of his cloak.
Before he could get more than two paces, a shadow landed in front of him and let out a snarl that reverberated through the square. People screamed. People fled.
It was not, Moria mused, an inconspicuous entrance.
Daigo pounced. The fisherman let out a scream and dropped to his knees, hands shielding his head. The wildcat plucked one dagger from the wooden stall, took it to Moria, and returned for the second.
“He touched you?” Moria asked the girl.
“Yes, my lady.” The girl flushed. “Inappropriately.”
“I saw.” Moria waved to two men standing nearby. “Deal with him.”
She turned to walk away, as if she could make such a spectacle and then slip into the crowd. It didn’t help that there was no longer a crowd to slip into, most having fled the huge wildcat. Those who remained closed in as they realized who she was.
“My lady…”
“Keeper of Spirits.”
“Moria of Edgewood.”
“A blessing, my lady?”
Moria reached into her pocket for a handful of coppers, blessed and threw them, hoping to slide away in the scramble that followed.
A woman caught her cloak. “My thanks to you, Keeper. He has bothered girls before.”
“He won’t anymore. I truly must —” She looked over her shoulder, but people pressed in, blocking her escape.
“I heard your wildcat has a name,” a little boy said as he squeezed through. “The court Keeper’s cat has no name, but they say yours does.”
“Daigo.”
The boy reached out to pat the wildcat. Someone yelped a warning, but Daigo sat there, ears back, bracing himself to suffer the attention. Soon a half dozen children were patting and poking him.
“We must go,” Moria said. Before someone tells the guards I’ve left the palace court. She was not a prisoner, but she’d been ordered to stay within its walls for her own safety.
“Did you truly throw those daggers?” one of the girls asked.
“Like bolts of lightning,” an old woman in the crowd said.