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“This isn’t necessary,” Bella said, too dignified to whine but getting as close as she possibly could. “We’re already in disguise.”

“But they already know your face and found your campsite and wagon,” Andre said. “That gives them a pretty good idea what you’ll look like now. You need to do something to throw them off the scent or they’re going to recognize you as soon as you get in line at the gates.”

“They have sketches of my face. Changing my clothes isn’t going to make my face any different, Andre!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Bella. People don’t look at faces first when they’re unsure who they’re looking at; they look at attitude, posture and clothes. Those things make identity clear long before anyone gets close enough to see a face. Anyone who looks at you knows who you are even if they’re like me and they don’t have the first clue who you are, specifically. They can tell you’re not who you’re dressed as.”

“So put me in a diff -” She grunted in a distinctly undignified fashion as Ragi adjusted things. “In a different dress or something. This is downright demeaning, not to mention sacrilegious.” 

Ragi took a step back and looked her up and down. She’d done her best to cinch down the girdle Andre had borrowed from the costumes but it still didn’t fully disguise her figure. “Maybe she should put it on under her chemise?” Ragi said. “It might sit a little more naturally that way.”

“I have it on good authority that it won’t,” Andre said. “Isobela had to play a man in a few shows in the early days of the troupe and I’m told she never looked perfect either. But this is supposed to be more comfortable. Don’t worry, a Herald’s scapula is loose enough to cover a multitude of sins.”

“Must we go as Heralds?” Bella’s dignity was giving way, her voice pitching further and further upwards as time went on. “Ragi could pose as a knight and the two of us his squires.”

“I don’t have a knight’s costume that would fit him and, even if I did, it would have heraldry that most people would recognize from a play. Besides,” Andre started holding scapulas up in front of Bella, examining their fit. “You’re too thin to pass for a full grown squire and too tall for a page boy, whereas you’re just the right size for an apprentice Herald who’s fasting.”

“He has a point.” Ragi said.

Andre settled on a scapula painted with the jagged, criss-crossed lines of the King of Scars and threw it over one of her shoulders. “Maybe now you understand why it’s uncomfortable to play into something that’s not real.”

“The Kings are real,” Bella replied, studying the garment with a skeptical look, “that’s the whole reason I don’t want to pretend to know more about their Heralds than I should. Their rites and rituals are all very secretive. What if I’m asked to do something sacred and I don’t know how to do it?”

“Tell them to come to me,” Ragi said, pulling on his own disguise. The heavily embroidered collar marked him as a senior Harbinger, of far more importance than the Omen Heralds most people knew, to say nothing of an apprentice. “I’ll make some excuse and they won’t question it.”

“Or just remind them the Kings don’t like to be worshiped,” Andre muttered, folding up the extra costumes they wouldn’t be using. He would make his own once it was time to go.

“What?” Ragi popped his head up through his collar and fixed Andre with a hard look. “Where did you hear that?”

“I…” Andre trailed off, trying to remember. The fact of the matter was, no one in Mastroianni’s troupe was a Herald and they spent most of their time on the move so Andre’s familiarity with the Kings and their Heralds was almost nonexistent. He didn’t really know much about them beyond what came up in the average script. Yet he’d always taken it for granted that the beings who visited on your day of death and the people who burned incense to curry favor with them were distinct and separate groups, with the greater being quite unimpressed with the lesser. He gave a lame shrug and tossed the costumes in one corner of the tent he’d conjured for them to change in. “It’s just something I heard, once.”

Ragi crossed his arms over his chest, his forgotten scapula wadding up between them. “Where?”

“I don’t remember,” Andre replied, scratching nervously at the side of his neck.

“Does it matter?” Bella asked, belting her own disguise around her waist. “I plan to say as little about the Kings at the Corners as possible. If I get something wrong they may decide to change the day of my death!”

“That’s not how it works,” Ragi huffed, beginning to straighten out his own garments. “They don’t control the date, they just know when it is.”

The conversation was making Andre increasingly uncomfortable so he forced a change in the subject, moving over to Bella and tapping her belt. “You should wear this further down on your hips. Right now anyone who looks at you can tell you have a woman’s waist.”

She turned bright red but began adjusting her belt.

“Andre.” Ragi’s voice had gone completely flat. “I know that standards are very different on the stage but please keep some boundaries.”

He yanked his hand away from Bella’s waist, suddenly embarrassed, and said, “Of course, signoire. My apologies.”

“Hurry up and get into your costume, Andre,” Bella hissed, cinching her belt tight to keep it from slipping in its new, more precarious position. “The town gates will close in a few more hours and we need to be inside them when they do.”

“Not a problem,” Andre replied. “We can be at the east gate in less than fifteen minutes and make the docks in an hour.”

“We’re not headed to the east gate,” Bella said. “We need to go through the western gate and make for the low passage.”

“Bella…” Ragi’s voice had taken on a reproving note.

“You’ll never reach them before the magistrate can hand them over if you don’t take the low passage,” Bella insisted. “Speed is the key, signoire.”

Something changed between the two of them when she called him signoire, rather than by name. A strange tension filled the air, like a battle of wills being fought behind a veil of courtesy. “Signorina, you must understand the difference between what you want and what is necessary before you speak of what is or is not the key to it. You must get on the ship. Andre is willing to help me find my family.”

“That’s true,” he put in, “but I would be more willing if we can do it with more speed. How much time will this low passage save us?”

“It’s the difference between reaching the magistrate’s cells tonight and in a few days time,” Bella said. “And it will only open for me.”

“What if the guards have already shown the people there your picture? They could already be subborned by the captain or the magistrate.”

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “No, Andre. Trust me, they are not.”

Andre gauged the distance in his head, adjusting for the number of people camped around the walls and the fact that there was no true road running the perimeter of Fionni. “It’s a couple of hours to the west gate from here. Won’t it be easier to cross inside the city?”

“You’ve never been inside the walls, have you?” Ragi asked. “At this time of day the streets are about as busy as they can be so at best it will take just as long. With our luck these days it will take much longer. We can’t afford the delay.”

“Why not?”

“Because, based on the scouting I did over the last week, the only usable entrance to the low passage we’ve located is inside the west gate,” Ragi said. “Once it’s closed for the night so is our access to the passage.”

That all sounded very bizarre to Andre but he wasn’t going to press the matter too hard. The Maestro had dozens of friends and connections he counted on in big cities and he never liked discussing them much, either. “How easy is it to get to this entrance? Will we need a distraction?”

“It depends on how alert the guards are,” Ragi replied. “It couldn’t hurt. Why, did you have something in mind?”

“Yes.” Andre reached into the pile of costumes and pulled one out, then started pulling it on. If he was going to walk all the way around the city he didn’t want to concentrate on conjuring a disguise the whole way. “We’ll have to make a brief detour, though.”

The best part about the outskirts of a city like Fionni was that there were as many people plying their trades outside the walls as inside them. Not all merchants wanted to pay the city’s exorbitant gate taxes, after all. Andre was able to locate everything he needed inside of half an hour and the only thing that was particularly expensive was a clay pot large enough to suit his needs.

Ragi watched him mixing things together skeptically and said, “Are you sure that will work?”

“As certain as a stagehand can be,” he replied. “I’ve made this stuff hundreds of times.”

“Hurry it up,” Bella said, her voice a bit ragged.

“I’m going as quickly as is safe,” Andre replied, giving her a skeptical look. “I’d think you would appreciate a moment to rest, the way you’re dressed isn’t meant for long hikes.”

She nodded, doing her best to breathe deeply. “I noticed.”

It didn’t look like things got any easier for her as they went the rest of the way. Even carrying the remaining costumes in a roll on his back Andre had a far easier time of it than she did and, by the time they reached the west gate, Bella was pale and sweating badly. Still, there wasn’t much they could do about it without revealing their disguises.

As they approached the gatehouse Ragi gave Andre a nudge and murmured, “Where?”

It was a good question. The afternoon was waning and traffic into the city had slowed to a trickle, with most of the gate packed by people leaving for the day, their business complete. That actually made Andre’s task more difficult, as he needed somewhere to put the jar where it wouldn’t be seen for a minute or two. His eyes drifted back and forth across the road, looking for inspiration.

“What about…” Bella paused to draw in a shallow breath. “On a wagon?”

“Too unstable,” Andre replied, having already considered and dismissed it. “The jar has to stay upright. Besides, I don’t see one going into the city right now and one going away might get too far before things get exciting.”

“You said you can do this with your gift as well?” Ragi asked.

“Yes, but only where I’m at. We want to get some distance first.” His gaze settled on a small willow tree near the gate where a couple of people had been waiting to meet an empty wagon just emerging from the gatehouse. “There. We’ll take a quick break in the shade and set things up there, then head into the city.”

Bella appreciated the break, flopping down among the roots of the tree and exhaling as much as she could. “I thought wearing one of these the normal way was bad. This is so much worse.”

“Softly now, softly,” Ragi murmured as he sat down beside her.

“Be glad Heralds of Scars grow out their hair or we’d have had to tie up and hide that somehow, too,” Andre said quietly, setting his pack on the ground and extracting the pot. He removed the wax stoppers from its top and the small hole he’d drilled into the side near the base. Then he reached in, conjured some water in the palm of his hand and used it to bathe her forehead.

“Oooh,” Bella muttered. “That’s nice.”

A side benefit, Andre had mostly done it in case someone watching was wondering why he’d bothered with the jar at all. For a couple of minutes they sat and rested. Once Bella’s breathing had evened out Ragi motioned for them to get up and, with a mix of groans and complaints, they did. Andre had left the jar out and as he got up he hid it from the road with his body and mimed resealing the lid. Instead of putting the wax stopper back he conjured a flint and steel then struck them into the mouth of the pot several times. A soft pop and the sudden smell of tar told him he’d accomplished his goal.

The flint and steel vanished and he mimed putting the pot into his pack, except instead he pushed it into a hollow of the treeroots. Then they got up and headed towards the gatehouse.

There were two guards standing behind a table, one standing and one seated, both looking incredibly bored. A locked moneybox sat on the ground beneath the table and one of the ubiquitous charcoal sketches of Bella was tacked to the table itself. As they approached the gate the seated guard glanced over all three of them then fixed his attention on Ragi. “Good omens, Harbinger.”

“Good omens,” Ragi replied. “What price for passage, signoire?”

“Five lira per head.”

Ragi forced a grin and said, “Half for the boys, I hope?”

A cold sweat formed on Andre’s back one pinprick at a time. Why was he haggling when they could just pay the tax and go?

“If they’re old enough to be acolytes they’re old enough to pay the full price,” the guard said, barely even acknowledging Ragi’s attempt to wheedle down the cost. “Fifteen for the three of you.”

“Fine.” Ragi dug into his purse and had just finished counting the coins out into his hand when a cry went up.

“Fire!” Someone was calling from behind them. “Fire!”

Everyone turned to look and Andre naturally spun with them. Sure enough, a thick, greasy plume of smoke was billowing up from the roots of the willow tree as the tar and oil stuck to the inside of the pot burned. Most of the crowd surged away from the tree in a nervous but orderly fashion.

Ragi slapped his handful of coins down on the table with a metallic rattle, drawing the attention of the two guards back to the present. “There you go.”

Neither guardsman seemed terribly interested in the trio of Heralds on their doorstep now so they waved them through the gate as a half dozen of their comrades hurried out of the gatehouse, carrying a barrel of water between them. No one paid any attention to the three of them as they passed through the walls towards the city.

A third of the way through the gatehouse they came upon an open door leading to the stairs up to the city walls. From the way it drifted slightly on its hinges Andre guessed some of the guards that had run out with the barrel had come from up there. Instead of walking by it, like he’d expected they would, Ragi stopped then reached out to close the door.

After which Bella rapped on it with a curious pattern of knocks. Before Andre could ask why they were doing any of this she opened the door again and stepped through into a tunnel that was almost pitch black, sloping down into the earth. Ragi motioned for Andre to follow and hurried after her. The door was already drifting closed behind him and Andre reached out to push it back only to discover he couldn’t. Pushing against it was like trying to push against a team of oxen.

In just a few seconds the doorway was going to be too narrow for him to fit through and he had no idea what was going on. A frantic glance told him the gatehouse was still basically empty. He could run into the city and try to meet up with Bella and Ragi there. Even if he couldn’t locate them the Maestro and the rest of the troupe would be through the gates in another day and a half. He didn’t have to go in after the two of them.

But he did.

He got no more than three steps over the threshold before the door closed with a barely audible clunk and left him entirely in the dark.