The next few weeks was mired with a certain air of uncertainty regarding our places, specifically, mine. Often times I found myself watched by strange servants, soldiers, from the tops of the terracotta rooftops or from the edge of a marbled patio. Men and women and children, all shifting their gaze when I caught them. I don’t remember an hour within those few weeks where I could relax my shoulders. Even in the dinners with the Crows. Even in the solitude of my tavern sleep. Not once did I feel relief from the King’s men. The children as I soon came to realize, were taken. I had found it so one day in the second week of my house arrest, going up the Kilm Tavern steps with a tray of apple sauce and some toast. I had knocked on the door to no avail and after feeling the dread in my stomach, had opened it. The windows were open and a draft blew the curtains. The bed sheets were prim, flat and fresh on the bedding. But no children. No clothes. They were gone.
  I don’t know where they went. I asked Vincent about it and he had simply told me they were taken to the orphanage. Which? I had asked. He shrugged. Xerxes answers to no one, Vincent said. That was the last time I spoke to him in a while, the last few words we shared in that month and they were wasted on a dinner table over mutton and lizard skewers.
  The watchful gazes grew bolder. They did not pretend after a while. None of them felt at hazard, whether it was child spy or otherwise. They all stared at me. In the alleys, while I bought rugs, or sampled bottles of wine or practiced in the soldiers court.
  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked Kal.
He shrugged.
  “Don’t make a scene, you’ve still got us.” He said. 
  That was on week three. 
  On week four I noticed soldiers outside our tavern, soldiers who paid no mind to the Crow’s who left at unholy hours or who came back drunken and stuttering and sloppy in the middle of night. No. It was me who caused them to grip their shields and tighten around their sword hilts. It was me who made them stiffen their spear lengths. Me. Me alone. 
  By the fourth week I was certain they would kill me. Often the tavern maid would come up to my room with food, the same tavern maid. Brunette hair in a bun, pale skin with rosy cheeks. One of the few pale girls I’d seen in this city. Expecting a knock one day, I waited by my bedside, reading a little book of poetry by Marcus Vitrasos. I turned my gaze to the door to find it…silent. A pregnant silence that lasted one hour. A new maid had come, with a new tray of food and a dead look on her face as if she were delivering me some dire news.
  I did not eat that food.
  I had Kal sneak me in meats. Obrick, fruits. Edwin, cooked rice porridge. Like I was a pet being fed.
  It was then, at the brink of it, eating my porridge from a little leather pouch that I realized this was insane. I dropped it to the floor and stormed out my room, blades by my waist, with the burning intention to kill King Xerxes. Anger up to my shoulders, up my neck where the veins bulged. My eyelids were peeled. As if pinned to my face, dry and red and vascular. I walked down, stomping every step the way. I brushed against guests, Crows, the bar keeper. I went through the velvet dividers, and then a rotating door. Out the tavern, I came upon the street with my eyes focused on the platoon up ahead. Bronze soldiers drinking from moleskin canteens, their eyes never taken from me even as they tilted their heads. The sun beat hard. My blood ran thick and cold and although the desert was hot, I felt nothing but numb.
  I took a deep breath. Took a few steps. And a horse passed me by, a Crow sitting on top with a look of confusion on his face.
  “Captain?” He asked.
  “I ain’t a captain.”
  “Oh…right.” The Young Man said. “Are you ready?”
  “Ready for what?”
  “We’re going to the eastern front. Escorting a bunch of traders through the Kalebra Road. Didn’t no one tell you?”
  “No. No one did.” I said. 
  My grip eased on my blade and I turned, crossing the street. Crows were coming in and out, on horse or in frantic runs with bags of food or tools or saddles pressed against their shoulders. Soldiers with their collarbones compressed against the giant barrels of water and wine. Oxen tired, groaning as they toiled pallets of spears and swords. 
  The streets were clear. The merchants and the whores and the children all braced in the cool of alleyways, fanning themselves as the mercenaries labored. Sweat down all our faces, the hot winds blew across.
  I had started looking for Xerxes, and I had ended looking for Vincent. And where was he?
  Well, sitting under a tree. Of course.

 

  Somewhere along the end of the street, leading up to the castle keep. The number of guards intensifying and staring at me as I passed them by. Evil glares on their faces, the shadows of their helmets making their face shadowy and gaunt. As I went up, the number of Crows increased as well. Black armored specters. Some carrying banners in pairs. New faces. They wielded curved blades, some of them. Sandaled, black sashed, leather armor chest pieces on them with the insignia branded on their shoulder. 
These were not my men. Certainly not anyone I knew. 
  I finally stopped by a side house leading up to the capitol, or perhaps, a bit of a court yard. There I saw him underneath the giant shade of what appeared to be a palm tree with a waiter over his head delivering a small drink in front of him. Something orange and frothy that left a bright mustache on him. He sat with a fat man and with a tall, lanky fellow. Both purple and obviously men of some sort of respect. Not mine, of course. 
  Nobility with nobility. I looked at him from the middle of the street, a thin metal fence latticed and with giant ferns growing in between the gaps separated us. I stood tall, staring. He turned his head and caught me. Vincent rolled his tongue in his mouth, his eyes skated left and right and he started smiling and shaking hands. The two looked with wide eyes, scrunching their faces and returned his cordial leave. He went through a door in the back of the courtyard and I imagined his trek and tracked this imaginary figure through the walls until he was out. 
  A maid came. Stopping him. Vincent stuck one foot out and the white robed servant ducked, head down, and put his shoe on. The other now.
  I crossed my arms. 
  “What’s this?” I asked.
  “What’s what?” He said.
  I stepped and fiddled with my pockets, knocking sand off my step and into the lower ones. A pebble ripped past us, stomped by the hooves of a passing horse. The metal horse shoe stamped into the dirt.
  “Do you know where I’ve been?” I asked. “Do you know how much has happened to me?”
  “Yes.”
  “So you know I’m being watched?”
  “Watched. Nothing more, it was a precaution the King Xerxes wanted.”
  “My ass!” I pointed. People started to stare and I put my finger down. “He’s waiting to kill me when I’m alone.”
  “No he’s not.”
  “How do you know?”
  “Because I’ve spent all month convincing him not to.” Vincent said. “And now you may have an opportunity left in you.”
  “To?”
  “To prove yourself loyal to him. To not fail and compromise like you did before.”
  I rubbed my nose and looked about the platoons of men. It was a long line leading all the way down to the front gate, miles and miles away. A whole army of black spilling out of the city gates like oxidized blood out of a wound. The city tainted and smeared by Crows. 
  “Is that why you’re going to the east?” I asked. “To prove yourself.”
  “It’s why all of us are going.”
  “Why didn’t you tell me?”
  “I didn’t want to add more stress to your life.” He said.
  “No. No. You just sprung it up on me last minute instead, that’s great.” 
  “If only you knew.” Vincent drew me in by my shirt. “If only you knew how many times I’ve saved your life now. Please don’t throw it away.”
  I pulled his hand off me and looked. The silver haired conqueror. Red eyed. Blazing sword by his side, pristine pale armor. An apparition. The only dove amongst the Crows.
  “Why?” I asked.
  “Because you are mine.” Vincent said. “Mine and mine alone, to live and die by my word. That’s why. And your order is to live.”
  He turned. His cape flowing mad against the hot wind coming up the steps. He stepped down, then turned and begun giving orders to two men holding a box at each end. I sighed and looked up. My arms shook, my palm rested at the butt of my handle. To die at a moments notice, to live by just the same arbitrary gesture. This was the way of the Crows. This way and no other way; the featherweight upon the cosmic scales that decides one fate over another.
  I took steps down, the soothing sounds of waterfalls lipping over balconies and into little fonts on the bottom. Tunic’d men with helpers popping grapes and berries into their bloated throats. Soldiers. Peasants in the dark like obscure insects in cracks along the floors.
  I took steps. Rubbed my eyes. 
  I passed Vincent and he turned to me.
  “We leave tomorrow, by the way.” He said.
  Right. Tomorrow.