The market in the lower South District should not have been this crowded.
Claude moved through it at a casual pace, hands in his coat pockets, the practiced unhurried walk of a man who looked exactly like every other lower-middle class shopper in a market full of shoppers. Plain coat. Cheap boots. A canvas backpack over one shoulder. Cash in his inner pocket. A small pendant around his neck. A sabre, sheathed and folded along the inside seam of his coat in a way that did not show.
He looked completely unremarkable.
This was the point.
Lady Flaure changes her mind faster than the wind changes direction, he thought, threading between two old women arguing about the price of beans. First it was urgent. Then it wasn't. Then it was a joke. Then she said go anyway. I am beginning to suspect she enjoys this.
He was very fond of Lady Flaure.
She would never know it.
He scanned the market.
The stalls being emptied fastest were the practical ones — dried food, charcoal, oil lamps, blankets, cooking pots. He watched a wagon pass at the edge of the square loaded with a small iron stove, three rolled mattresses, and several wooden crates of personal belongings tied down under canvas.
Not regular trade.
People moving.
He crossed the square and spotted what he was looking for almost immediately — a small iron pendant in the shape of a wheel, hanging at the throat of a man examining the price of a sack of rice. Not subtle. The Sanctuary did not believe in subtlety.
Claude drifted over, picked up an apple from the adjacent stall, and turned it in his hand as though considering its quality.
"Brother," he said, with the friendly nothing-to-it tone of a stranger making market conversation. "Why is it so crowded today? It feels like—emdash the whole district is preparing to move."
The man with the pendant glanced over. He had the warm slightly tired face of a man who had been waiting a long time for something good and now thought it had finally come.
"You haven't heard?" he said. "Where have you been, brother?"
"Working."
"There's a new city," the man said. "South of here. Outside the wall. They say a god leads it. Not a human turn god like Flaure—a real god. They say it's about thirty mile out." He smiled. The smile was the kind that hurt to look at. "I'm going. I want to start over. Maybe my luck turns, you know?"
"South of here," Claude repeated, idly.
"South."
"Outside the wall."
"Yes."
Claude tilted his head. "It's not safe outside the wall, brother. Will there be — I don't know — a procession? A group going together?"
"There is. Comes back through the city every few days to gather more. Two days from now, the next one." The man patted the side of his rice sack.
"Safe travels, brother."
"May Agares guide you, brother."
Claude moved on.
---
He needed to send the report immediately. The nearest post office was three blocks east. He cut through the market crowd at a brisker pace now, his mind already drafting the message.
A procession. Outside the wall. Two days. South. They believe a god leads them.
The Seer is not in any branch church because The Seer is no longer in the city. He is at the new settlement.
What if he was not even in Orenthel?
The Sanctuary is not a religious group. It is a relocation operation.
Lady Flaure needs to know. Send a Vanguard runner. The Black Vanguard can have eyes outside the wall by tomor—
A hand landed on his shoulder.
It came from the side. He could not see whose. He could see only the dark sleeve of a coat, the cuff of which had been folded with the careful precision of someone who folded things deliberately.
"Claude Veilnoir."
The voice was low, calm, conversational.
It also pressed down on him with a weight that had nothing to do with the hand on his shoulder. Claude felt the air around him compress — felt his neck refuse to turn upward, his eyes refuse to lift. As though an anvil had settled across his shoulders and was, very politely, asking him to stay where he was.
His hand was already at the inside of his coat. His sabre was already half free of its fold. An instinct of the man who have been in these situation many time.
"Captain of the Black Vanguard," he said pleasantly, through the pressure.
"Hm."
The pressure increased.
He turned his head — slowly, because slowly was all he could manage — and the smile he produced was the most insincere thing he had ever produced in a career that had specialized in producing insincere things.
"Care to support for each other on this turning wheel thing, sir?"
The hand did not let go.
He turned his face fully and saw, finally, who he was talking to.
Pale hair. Purple eyes—the kind of purple that the royal house and palace used in its formal portraits. A coat that was modest at the surface and impeccably tailored beneath, in a way that only a very specific kind of person ever managed.
The smile on the man's face was as fake as Claude's.
"It would be useful," the man said gently, "if you could come with me."
Claude had been the right hand of a goddess for four damm years. He had walked into rooms full of nobles trying to assassinate each other and walked out unharmed. He had killed sixty eight men by the age of today and had felt no particular way about most of them.
His shoulder hurt.
The hand was just resting there.
He recalibrated.
He saw, behind the white-haired man, three other people — a young man with a brown hair, a sharp-eyed woman in a long coat, and a soft-faced young man who looked too tired to be threatening but was watching Claude's hand with the attention of someone who was good at noticing hands.
He recognized two of the three.
His brain caught up.
---
He stepped back, smoothly, and pulled his cocky confidence back into place like a coat.
"And who would you be, Mr. White Hair," he said, raising his eyebrows, "showing up uninvited and putting your hands on me in a public market? Hmm?"
His eyes flicked to the three behind.
The two of them — the brown hairman and the sharp-eyed woman — went completely still. The sharp-eyed woman's hand crept toward her side. The brown hair was already standing too close to her, as though they had practiced standing close to each other when frightened. Their legs were shaking.
Claude smiled.
"You," he said, and the warmth in his voice did not reach his eyes. "Aim. Few years below me at the cadet academy." He looked at Isolde. "And the Deputy Commander Lethward's daughter. And — " he looked at Emil, then back, " — someone, I don't care, doesn't matter."
He did not raise his voice.
"You killed two of my men," he said. "I have orders to handle the Turning Wheel matter cleanly first. Cleanly. But there is nothing in those orders that prevents me from handling secondary matters when convenient." He turned back to Const. "Which brings me to you. You aren't ordinary. So which is it. Are you a player. Or a piece sent by the Council to recruit a handsome face like mine."
Const's expression was tired.
He sighed.
"Just someone who likes investigating things," he said. "Not a villain." He paused. "You can call me Const."
"Fake name," Claude said immediately. "Untrustworthy."
He shifted his weight. His sabre, still half-free, ticked one degree closer to ready.
Behind Const, Isolde leaned in toward Aim and hissed — "Is he actually about to fight the captain of the Black Vanguard? That's the goddess's right hand!"
Aim hissed back — "It doesn't matter. If Const loses, we die here. Whatever happens, we help him. To the end."
Emil added, in a very small voice — "I don't understand any of this, but he looks very strong."
Const rolled his eyes — gently, theatrically.
"You are the first person to take issue with the name."
"Forgive me," Claude said sweetly. "But you, who appear to be in the company of the people who killed my two subordinates — you don't look like a problem to you?"
"Oh," Const said, in the same gentle tone. "I killed them, actually. It was very easy. Slaves who do anything they're told, even dirty things — even on a queen's order — they don't deserve to continue living anyway."
"A slave who don't have their own will are just not worthy of life."
The market noise carried on around them as though nothing was happening.
Claude's pendant flared once, faintly — a thin pulse of light beneath his shirt, gone before any civilian would notice.
Const's hand, half-raised, closed quietly around a small locket at his own collar and folded it shut. The motion was unhurried. The motion was also, very specifically, a guard.
The pressure between them tightened.
A passing woman, carrying a child on her hip, saw two men staring at each other with the wrong kind of stillness and stepped between them with the courage of strangers.
"Oh come on, both of you. Whatever this is. Not in front of the children."
She glared at both of them.
The pressure broke — not gone, but reduced.
Claude let the smile reset on his face.
Const lowered his hand from the locket.
"Apologies, ma'am," they both said, at the same time, with the same false warmth.
She muttered something and walked on.
---
The five of them, by silent collective agreement, began walking toward the post office together.
Claude in front. Const half a pace behind. Aim, Isolde, and Emil tucked close behind Const, like ducklings.
"That feeling," Emil whispered, after a block, "I think — I think that was bloodlust. Real bloodlust."
Aim and Isolde nodded slowly.
---
At the post office Const and Claude reached the counter at exactly the same moment.
Both of their hands extended. Both of their letters appeared. The clerk looked at them.
For three seconds neither of them moved.
Then Const, with a small thin smile, withdrew his hand and gestured.
"After you."
"Why thank you," Claude said.
He sent his letter. The clerk took it and disappeared into the back. Claude stepped aside.
"And who," he said, with the same warm hostility, "are you sending yours to, Mister Bad Manners?"
"A close correspondent," Const said. "A very intelligent person. Don't be too curious. You might effect them with your incurable brain shrinking disease" and that wouldn't be great."
They walked out of the post office side by side.
Outside the door, both of them resumed pressing the air around them flat.
"Don't let it go to your head," Claude said pleasantly. "I can feel that you're strong. But I became Lady Flaure's right hand by beating a great many strong people. Strength is not new to me."
He kept walking.
A pace behind, Aim leaned toward Isolde and muttered — "Const can be quiet and reasonable, or completely unhinged. There is no middle setting."
Isolde sighed. "Can't really complain. We followed him here."
---
Two days earlier.
In the eastern district church, during the Sunday gathering, Const had appeared at the back of the chamber without warning. He had crossed to the bench where Aim and Isolde sat, leaned over, and said quietly:
"South. With me. Both of you. We leave now."
Neither of them had asked why.
Neither of them had said no.
---
Emil ran ahead.
He came around the front of the group, planted his feet, and stood with his hands reaching Claude and Const shoulders.
"What is this about," he said. "What killing? Whose?"
Aim and Isolde made small simultaneous gestures of don't, don't, please don't, but they were too late.
Claude looked at Emil.
Const looked at Emil.
Neither said anything.
The pressure on the air between them rose again, slowly, like water filling a basin.
Emil swallowed.
He kept his hands there.
The street kept moving around them — people, carts, the noise of a crowded district preparing, without knowing it, to walk out of its own city.
Nobody moved.
Yet.