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  I didn't hesitate, just slid up the sash and gathered my cloak around me. I flung one leg over. The wood, rotten, creaked alarmingly as I put my not-insubstantial weight on it. I put my other foot down. I stood, heart hammering and certain I would plunge to the cobblestone alley below. The balcony held.

  It was only wide enough to stand with my back to the building, and I inched my way toward the next window. Just before I got there, I lay down on the freezing, splintered wood and pushed myself on my side until my head was just below the window. Piles of guano from the birds that had given the Dancing Dove its name crumbled and oozed beneath me.

  With the light burning bright inside and the darkness out, it was easy enough for me to lift my head and peek in. Lir sat in a threadbare chair, legs spread, his shirt unbuttoned. The drunken man Daelyn had brought up from downstairs sat across from him, prick in his fist and tongue flopping. As I watched, Daelyn poured more wine from the flagon, and the man drank. His pumping motion faltered, and his eyes fluttered. Daelyn slipped onto Lir's lap and began to kiss him. The drunken man let out an appreciative hoot and masturbated furiously for a few more moments. Then, all at once, his hand fell slack from his wilting erection, his head lolled, and he slid off the chair onto the floor.

  Daelyn got up from Lir's lap and bent over the man. "He's dead out."

  "Good. Leave the note and we'll be on our way."

  "Sweet Buck," Daelyn said as he scribbled. "Thanks for the lovely fuck."

  "Nice. It's a wonder you didn't read that downstairs."

  Daelyn made a face a Lir. "It will be enough to convince him his half-remembered lustful fantasies were true. He'll say we spent the entire night, should the need arise, though it won't since nobody could possibly suspect me of taking part in such an escapade."

  "Not you." Lir shook his head.

  Daelyn continued to scribble, but my attention was focused on my fight master. His hair had come loose from its braid and tendrils curved over his forehead and cheeks. His bare chest, which I'd seen dozens of times already on the field, now captivated my gaze as it looked half-hidden by his shirt. The bulge at his crotch told me that no matter what their true purpose in bringing that man upstairs, he'd enjoyed kissing Daelyn.

  Again, hot jealousy flooded me, and this time, it was not at the thought of Daelyn making love to a stranger. It was at the thought of Dae making love to Lir.

  My stomach rose, and I put my hands, stiff and burning from the cold, over my eyes. I was a wreck. A mess. A bundle of emotion and lust, confusion and despair.

  I thought I might be going mad. Love was not for me. Could never be for me. Not even the most casual sexual expression was safe for me to indulge in. I knew this, as I'd always known it. My body was betraying me, but my heart –

  "What's that?" Lir's voice had come closer. "I thought I saw something outside the window."

  In less than the time it took to think, I'd pushed myself off the balcony and hung by my fingertips over the side. The balcony shook and creaked as Lir leaned out to look around. I held my breath, fearing he'd catch my scent or hear my breath.

  "What is it?" Daelyn asked.

  Lir didn't sound convinced of his own reply. "Naught. Let's go."

  The balcony creaked again, louder this time, as they both left the window and came out. My fingers, numb with cold, began to let loose. I cast a terrified glance over my shoulder at the icy ground below, afraid not of being hurt when I fell but of them finding out I followed. The Art had taught me how to fall. I landed on my feet and rolled in the filthy alley, and ended up on my feet.

  My fear intensified in the next moment when three shrouded figures entered the alley, the one in the center being held upright by the other two. I ducked behind a wall of barrels overflowing with refuse. The one on the right paused and sent a low whistle upward. An answering whistle came from above me. I heard Lir and Daelyn's footsteps moving away from me, toward the figures in the alley.

  "Whist!" cried one from below.

  "Who goes?" Lir whispered back.

  "Daelyn's three," came the reply. I recognized the voice of Penryn. "Vermonte thinks Freet here had to puke, and that me and Moravian brought him out. We're supposed to take him back home to bed."

  Daelyn's low chuckle made the hair on the back of my neck rise. "Most well."

  In moments Lir and Daelyn scuttled down the ladder I hadn't noticed earlier. They headed off down the alley, and I followed them. The chimes rang three. The curfew had begun. Though in any other circumstance the Prince Regent of Alyria would have been allowed free passage on its streets curfew or no, Daelyn and his comrades did not flaunt their presence. They had gone far past the poetry house district, past even the merchant district, to the very edge of the city. We passed tight knots of Rosten's soldiers, though most of them had been concentrated around the poetry district, where the posters and pamphlets had been appearing.

  Of course, Daelyn would know where and when each group of guards would be, and when to move past them. In addition, Lir would know how to move past the soldiers on feet quiet enough not to attract their attention. There are some who say a master of the Art can cloud men's minds, and watching Lir that night, I would agree.

  What surprised me was the seriousness of their journey. No laughing. No flirting. No coy comments from Daelyn. Only swift and steady progress through the shadowed alleys and streets toward the edge of the city.

  I'd expected to see Daelyn and his crew putting up more posters, leaving more leaflets, perhaps even scrawling some words on walls. Instead, they ducked through a narrow gate I recognized. Just outside the walls were joba melon fields, with other fields beyond that. Beyond that – the mountains that bordered Alyria and kept us from contact with Elitan.

  I paused inside the gate and watched them move across the field. The moon had risen, and without the buildings to block it, cast a silver sheen over the frost-covered ground. Their feet crunched in the remains of the joba vines. Five figures, standing tall, on what mission?

  Not even the Prince Regent would have adequate explanation for this.

  I couldn't risk going through the gate after them, not across the open field, through the bright moonlight. However, I'd spent enough days supervising the loading of my uncle's wagons to know my way around this area. They were heading toward a ramshackle, three-sided hut that in the growing season housed refreshment for the follies who worked the fields. I could reach that shack from behind, by scaling the fence a bit further down and creeping up through the grove of low vesta bushes.

  Close to the front edge, the bushes grew nearly up to the shack itself. I wriggled through the bushes' thick trunks, below the lowest of their branches, until I lay almost directly in front of the small building. Vesta bushes are low growing, but dense, and while the branches carried their share of deadly sharp thorns the length of my forefinger, and I kept my belly pressed to the frozen ground.

  From my vantage point I could look without obstruction toward the shack's open front. Four other dark figures huddled in the shadows, and in another moment, I saw one more separate from the darkness and step toward Daelyn and the others.

  The moonlight was bright enough for me to see that figure's face as it leaned forward to give Daelyn a kiss of greeting, and what I saw made me bite my tongue to keep back my gasp of surprise. It was a woman, clothed in dark trousers and doublet, but no coat or cape to hide the clearly rounded shape of her figure. Her hair hung to her shoulders beneath a fur-edged cap, fur gloves shielded her hands from the cold, while boots on her slim legs came to her knees and were also edged and tied with strips of fur. She had the same cheeks, the same nose, the same full and pouting mouth as the Prince Regent of Alyria.

  Daelyn drew back from her kiss and held both her hands in his own. "Greetings, Sister."

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I'd thought all the other offspring of King Harrigan had died. To hear Daelyn address a woman as "sister," to hear the word turned from an obscenity into a salutation of affection