25 · The City That Was Not Supposed to Feed Anyone

assassin caught his wrist before he could put it away.

“That isn't yours.”

He recognised her and smiled.

“The leader doesn't eat promises. Neither do his men.”

Maera slammed him against the post. Dalia called two guards. This time a civilian authority was willing to take charge: she took the ring, recorded the name and ordered the tokens reviewed. Darven would come later and dispute the arrest. Maera chose not to wait for him.

A baker's daughter stole a bag before they reached the bathhouse.

Maera found her beneath a fish stall, trying to open the fastening with her teeth. The girl raised a shard of glass. Her hand did not shake. Across the market, a man watched without approaching.

The dark elf crouched.

“The bag holds bandages.”

The girl did not believe her.

Maera opened it slowly. She let a clean roll fall onto the stone. The man across the way began moving towards the exit. Maera could have followed, but the girl still gripped the glass and had

no intention of being touched.

“What does he charge you?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Then he's a generous man.”

The girl pressed her mouth shut. She was too young for irony to be a defence.

Maera moved her hands away from her knives. When she worked as a teenager in the harbour quarters, some agents called her child so they could treat her as a lost object; others called her assassin so they would not have to see her cry. Sometimes the chosen word depended on whether they had received what she was meant to bring.

“I won't chase you if you leave,” she said.

The girl came out on the other side of the stall. She picked up a bandage before running.

Teren arrived too late to see her. He wanted to ask what happened. Maera pointed at the man moving away among porters. The cleric asked a municipal guard for help. Recognising him, the woman shook her head.

“He has Darven's permission.”

Maera took out her letter for Dalia.

“So does this.”

They did not go to arrest him for a theft. They took his name to the governor and asked for a safe place for the children working under him. Dalia asked who would pay. Teren offered his remaining coins. She looked at them without taking them.

“That feeds them two days. I can't offer two days and hand them back afterwards.”

She summoned the ovens' association and asked them to accept apprentices. It cost her a tax review. Each solution demanded another conversation, and none resembled drawing a knife.

Maera went looking for the girl at dusk. She found her beside a drain with two younger brothers. The elder had a badly dressed wound.

She did not speak of beginning a new life. She explained where the oven would be, what work they would do and whom they could report to if beaten. The girl asked whether people with permission were really reported.

Maera took time before answering.

“Today they are.”

It was not enough for a

promise of the future. The girl followed anyway, holding her brother's hand.

They lodged in a bathhouse closed for lack of fuel. Teren helped a healer organise the sick.

The bathhouse still had a headless statue at its entrance.

The healer said it represented Ina del Muro, a woman who led the evacuation during the great ashfall. She was neither priestess nor mistress of the city. She sold food beside a gate until a school roof began giving way. She organised shifts to carry children out and set up a water station where she once charged for pots of food.

After her death, three families disputed the right to call her an ancestor. The head vanished in a fight between supporters of two governors. No one agreed on how to rebuild it.

“The hands are still there,” the healer said.

They were broad, poorly proportioned hands. One held a pitcher; the other reached into an empty place. Teren could not identify the figure's race. The healer seemed uncertain too. Years

earlier he would have thought forgetting a form of equality. There he suspected it could also hide those who would never have received a statue had they been remembered whole.

A dark-skinned woman left a coin in the bowl. A human boy took it to pay for dressings. No one accused him of profaning anything.

Dalia came to inspect the storehouse. She had suspended the captain who charged for tokens, but Darven wanted him transferred to his own council. The governor refused. He had collected at a civilian distribution and must answer there.

Maera was present. Darven sent to ask whether she supported the decision. She answered that the ring had an owner, and the owner had identified the thief before Dalia's guards.

She added no declaration against the Horde. Nor did she let loyalty make that hand invisible.

Teren carried food to a woman who had refused it from a dark elf. Ivara saw him pass and said nothing. The cleric stopped at the door, retraced his steps and

put the bowl on the common table.

The woman would have to fetch it. He would not let her starve. Nor would he let her make him a convenient messenger for her contempt.

Ivara kept preparing medicines. She did not thank him on anyone's behalf.

On leaving, the cleric brushed the statue's pitcher. It was warm from living hands.

At dusk they climbed the wall. Beyond stretched basalt gardens, grey scrub, a basin of hot streams and the ash fields around the Eye Temple. Four days if the bridges held. Cael was ahead.

Far to the southwest, the Broken Sun desert reflected a whitish light. Sailors placed the Echo Islands farther east of those sands, in an ancient position modern charts still disputed. They would not travel there. The world was too large for urgency to give them the right to know it whole.

Teren ate the last crust of Lina's bread. It was hard. He soaked it in a glass and waited.