The poor part of town, of which the Dan-Mozan house was one of the few jewels, was located on the south side of the hill near the base, far from the ocean and far from the manor. Thus they did not climb now or descend on this journey so much as they made their way around the bulk of the hill. Since the rich lived high and the poor lived low, as in so many other towns in the March Kingdoms, they passed not from poor neighborhoods to wealthy ones, but from the part of town where the poor had mostly dark skin, or had the Skimmer cast, to places where poverty wore a skin as pale as Briony’s own.

Or as pale as mine before they put all this paint on me, at least.

It was interesting and a little disturbing to be stared at for once, not for who she was—something she had grown used to over the years but was never fond of—but because she was traveling in a group of brown-skinned folk. Some people looked only with curiosity, but others, for no reason Briony could tell, stared with unhidden loathing. A few drunken men even leaned out of their doors to shout after them, but seemed to lose interest when they saw the knives on the Tuani men’s belts.

Briony found it surprisingly hard to be glared at by people she did not know, although she was clever enough to understand it was the other side of the coin from all those folk who had cheered her and showered blessings on her only because she was part of King Olin’s privileged family. But, other side of the coin or not, it was one thing to be loved by strangers, most definitely another to be hated by them.

So this is how it has been for Shaso as long as he’s been here. She could make nothing of the thought just now, with so much happening around her, but she folded it like a letter and put it away to be examined later.

Soon, as the narrow road wound between the close-leaning houses, nearing the waterfront, Briony discovered that they were seeing more brown faces again and more wide-eyed, closemouthed Skimmer folk. The smell of the bay also grew stronger, a slightly spoiled tang that seemed to flavor every breath, every thought. She wondered if she would ever again cross the wide waters of Brenn’s Bay to return home openly and safely, whether her family would ever be together again. Seeing Barrick in the mirror that way had frightened her—was it an omen? Were the gods trying to tell her something? But she knew that people sometimes dreamed of things that worried them, and whether the gods had sent her this waking dream or not, it was certain that Barrick and his fate were the things that most worried her.

They reached a row of ramshackle warehouse buildings along a canal that emptied into Brenn’s Bay, the bay itself visible only a stone’s throw away between buildings, the masts of at least a dozen ships tilting gently just beyond the rooftops.