The men on the roof hadn't moved in forty minutes.
He lay flat against the warm tiles, one eye closed, the other pressed to the scope. Through the lens, the old coachman looked small.
"Vance."
A few meters away, leaning against the wall of a birdhouse, Vance took a pull from his flask. The alcohol went down, and he made the sound of a man being personally wronged by it.
"What."
"What do three whistles mean."
"..."
"Kill everyone." Vance said it with the confidence of someone who had stopped caring whether they were right. "Including the old man."
"Oh, okay."
Vance stared at the wall across from him. Something moved behind his eyes.
"Wait."
"Hm."
"No. No, that's... I think it's kill the old man, the kid who isn't Anat, and the third person."
"Oh, okay."
"Right." Vance took another pull. Inhaled through his teeth. "But if I'm wrong, you're taking the blame."
"Oh, okay."
Vance looked down at the man next to him. The man hadn't shifted position. Hadn't reacted. Just lay there with his eye to the scope and his finger resting where it always rested, completely unbothered by the possibility that he was going to kill people.
Poor bastard, Vance thought while looking at sniper laying next to him.
***
Kihoko had worn men's clothing since she was twelve, not because she had to but because she had decided to, and no one in the Ingraisia household was ever successfully in explained to her why she needed to act and dress ladylike.
She stood at the gate in a coat that cost more than most people's furniture, her hair swept back, her posture the kind that gets described as effortless by people who don't understand how much effort goes into making something look effortless. The beauty was the kind women measured themselves against privately and said nothing about publicly.
She kissed her father on the cheek. He kissed her back.
"Be safe, father." The smile she gave him was genuine, warm, reaching the eyes.
Then she turned it a few degrees toward her stepmother, and it became something technically identical and entirely different. Smaller. Cooler. Her voice dropped half a register.
"Mother."
Her stepmother smiled back with the particular pleasantness of a woman who had long ago decided that engagement was beneath her.
The carriage waited. The family sigil on its door caught the morning light.
Behind her, Katlego who had heard his name pronounced badly enough times that he had developed a faint reflex of resigned dignity at the sound of it, kept his expression composed as Lord Ingraisia looked between him and Marcel with the gravity of a man entrusting something irreplaceable.
"Kathlegho. Marcel." The name landed the way it always did. Kathlegho absorbed it. "Keep our beloved daughter safe."
They bowed in unison.
"As we promised," they both said, "we will always protect her, Lord Ingraisia."
Katlego said the same words a half beat behind, which was close enough to unison that no one commented on it.
They entered the carriage. The door closed. The horses moved.
Katlego sat back and let the mispronunciation settle somewhere it wouldn't bother him for a while, as always.
...
The driver snapped the reins, and the carriage lurched into motion, the Ingraisia gate receding behind them.
Marcel waited until the wheels had found their rhythm before he spoke.
"Dear?"
Kihoko was looking out the window. "What."
"I have to ask you again, why...."
"Please don't." She didn't turn. "I don't need to justify my decisions to you. I never have, why start now"
"I'm not asking for justification." Marcel kept his voice even, reasonable, the voice of a man who believed being reasonable was the way to her heart. "I want to understand. Shouldn't we at least come to understand each other? For appearances if nothing else."
"No." She said flatly while she watched the street pass. "I never wanted this farce. For all I care, I'll die a spinster, and the word can form whatever opinion it likes."
"Come on..."
"Marcel." Katlego said it quietly, like a man begging his friend from making the same mistake.
Marcel turned to look at him with the expression of someone who had just been handed a betrayal they hadn't ordered.
Katlego met the look with the patience of a man who had used up the last of his mental energy with a similar and recent situation. "Please. Stop."
Marcel's jaw tightened. He looked between the two of them, with Kihoko turnedto look at him, Katlego with his face arranged into careful neutrality, and arrived at the conclusion that he was the only person in this carriage willing to have an honest conversation, which was a conclusion Katlego had learned not to argue with directly.
"Fine." Marcel pivoted. "Then at least explain more. This Andreas. You gave me nothing except that he's interesting. What does that even mean?"
Kihoko finally turned from the window.
She looked at Marcel for a moment with the expression of someone deciding how much a thing is worth.
Then she said: "As a matter of fact, I'm revising our arrangement to two hours and two contracts."
The silence that followed was brief and terrible.
Katlego turned and pressed his forehead slowly, deliberately, against the carriage wall.
"Goddammit," he said, as if he's about to cry.
Outside, the city continued without comment.
***
The city came up gradually, first the smell of it, then the noise, then the press of buildings closing in on either side as the old coachman navigated through the roads with the ease of someone who had made this approach many times.
The streets were full of people and with fewer buildings when they entered.
They were less poeple and the building were taller, had narrow allies or non at all between them twenty minutes later.
Andreas noticed it the way he noticed most things, quietly, without particular investment.
He looked at Anat. Then at Nanna.
"Did you plan to stop anywhere?"
Anat shook her head. Nanna followed a beat after.
"Here is fine then."
The old coachman obliged without being asked twice, drawing the horses to a stop with the practiced ease of a man who had learned not to question where people wanted to be left. He reached into his coat and put the whistle to his lips.
Three short notes. Clean and unhurried.
On the roof, Vance and the sniper heard them.
He looked down at the sniper, who had not moved.
"Shoot the ones that come out first and the Old man second."
"Oh, okay."
The sniper's finger settled.
The carriage door swung open.
Andreas stepped out first and his head snapped back as bullet pierces through his temple and he dropped below the frame of the door before Anat could process what she had seen, before Nanna could draw breath.