The Tyrant's Law

Cithrin




There are two books on my bedside table,” Isadau said. Months of close contact let Cithrin see her anxiety. The others—even Yardem—almost certainly didn’t.

“Probably,” Kit said. “Certainly you believe there are.”

“I also have a lamp there.”

“No, Magistra,” the old actor said. “You do not.”

Isadau sat back in her chair. Her smile might almost have been amused, but her inner eyelids were fluttering madly.

It was profoundly strange. Cithrin had walked out on the Tenthday routine, her mind occupied with thoughts of the bank and the war, Isadau’s network for refugees of the old conflict and the coming one, and her own growing sense of dread. When she came back, Captain Wester was sitting in the courtyard and Master Kit was walking in from the street. She’d heard of people who’d gotten fevers and lost their minds in them. She had to think it felt similar. Isadau didn’t seem to be put off her stride, but for her these were two men loosely associated with the bank who’d arrived much as a courier might. For Cithrin, they were two people she’d trusted and relied on who had left her without a word and arrived without a warning. She wanted to run to them both and hug them and yell at them and make sure they would never go away again, and so instead she fell into a politeness and distance that she hated even as she employed it.

They gathered in a private courtyard with a small fountain and ivy growing up three of the four walls. It was cool and beautiful, and the tiny clapping hands of the ivy’s leaves meshed with the muttering of water to make eavesdropping almost impossible. Marcus and Yardem shared a bench, while Master Kit perched on the fountain’s edge. Cithrin sat in a chair beside Isadau. A servant brought a small wooden table and filled it with cups of cool water and bowls of cut apples. To anyone in the household, it would have seemed nothing more than another meeting among hundreds where the two magistras spoke about the private doings of the bank.

Captain Wester’s absence hadn’t been kind to him. He was thinner than she’d ever seen him, his cheeks gaunt and his neck so ropy that she could trace the individual muscles and tendons. Master Kit also looked worn down by the road, but with him it almost seemed like a shedding of old clothes. His eyes were brighter, his smile just as open and pleasant, and the darkness of his skin a testament to weeks out of doors. He had none of the greyness that dulled Marcus’s skin, and his eyes hadn’t taken the same slight tint of yellow.

And then, just as Cithrin began to feel she had her balance back, Master Kit had pricked his thumb with Yardem’s dagger and tiny black spiders had come out.

“And if you were to speak to me,” Isadau said.

“I would be very difficult to disbelieve,” Master Kit said. “Even those things which you had evidence against, you would eventually find some way to justify.”

“Even if it was absurd?”

Master Kit’s smile was melancholic.

“I have tried to dedicate my life to the discovery of the world as it truly is,” he said, “and even knowing what I knew, it seems I have been unable to avoid believing absurdities. I believe I could convince you of anything.”

Yardem made a low sound in his throat, part growl and part chuckle. Master Kit’s glance was a question.

“Just recalling all our philosophical debates,” Yardem said. “You could have won all of them if you’d cared to.”

“I hope I chose my words carefully enough to respect the beliefs I did not share.”

“All the same,” Isadau said, “you are an abomination.”

Cithrin scowled and began to object, but Kit beat her to it.

“Certainly I agree that I have a potential for evil that those unlike me do not. And I am afraid that this present violence is the fruit that grew from that bloom.”

“What is it they want?” Yardem asked, his voice a low rumble. “The other ones.”

“I believe they want to bring the world together under the banners of the goddess,” Kit said. “To place everything within her and make it part of her flesh. Before I fell from grace, I was told that we were waiting for a sign, and when that sign came we would return to the nations of humanity, stand against the forces of the dragon, and free the world at last from lies and deception.”

“By spreading their story,” Marcus said.

“Until there are no other stories,” Kit finished. “By ignoring or destroying anything that failed to match with the certainties of the goddess who is immune from lies.”

Magistra Isadau sat forward, her head sinking into her hands.

“Geder was that sign,” Cithrin said.

“In a sense, yes,” Master Kit said. “Though if it had not been him now, I suspect it would have been another at another time. I suspect signs are fairly easy to see for one dedicated to seeing them. And if a high priest believed that he had seen the hand of the goddess at work in the world, he would only need to say it, and it would become as true as anything else. As certain, at least. I don’t know the man who has taken the high priest’s place.”

“Basrahip,” Cithrin said. “His name’s Basrahip.”

“I assume he was initiated after I left,” Kit said. “But what he believes, he believes sincerely. And all the other priests will also believe. And then anyone who listens to their voices. And then … everyone.”

“Explains some things,” Yardem said.

Marcus turned to the Tralgu. “Explains what, for instance?”

“Why the Anteans haven’t been sent back with their tails between their legs,” Yardem said. “They’re overreaching badly, except that they keep winning. They’ve found a way to use this on the field. Give false reports to the enemy or some such.”

“Not to mention all the rumors about Geder’s strange powers,” Cithrin said. “All that about how he speaks with the dead and the fallen warriors rise up to fight alongside him. It’s not the man I met. Easier to think that’s one of those tales the priests convince everyone of than that it’s actually true.”

“And right now,” Magistra Isadau said through her fingers, “at this moment, the only people in the world who understand what this war is and what it means are sitting in this garden.”

“Yes,” Marcus said.

“You,” Isadau said, turning to Master Kit. “How do we stop this?”

“I don’t know,” Kit said.

Isadau nodded. The nictiting membranes closed over her eyes.

“Komme has to be told,” she said. “Oh, God. I have a very long letter to write, don’t I?”

For the rest of the day, Cithrin tried to go about her usual routine, but it all seemed false as rehearsing a play. There were contracts to review, but the armies of Antea were on the roads already, carrying the false goddess’s banners. The histories of the bank hadn’t quite all been read through, but Marcus and Master Kit had come and neither were quite the men she’d thought they were. Though that was more the case with Kit than Captain Wester. She tried sleeping, but the late summer sun defied her. She tried working, but her mind escaped its leash. She wanted to be back in Porte Oliva or Carse, someplace where she understood the system of the world. Suddapal, with its echoes of Vanai and Camnipol, was too complicated. Or if it wasn’t the city, she had become too complicated for it.

Master Kit and Captain Wester joined the family at dinner, and anything else would have seemed strange. Kit regaled the table with stories from his years on the road, and Cithrin watched as people fell under the benign and compassionate spell of his voice. It was that same magic that had brought Sarakal into ruins. And Vanai. Only no, Vanai had burned before Geder’s discovery of the temple. That atrocity, at least, hadn’t been driven by the things in Master Kit’s blood.

She’d hoped to find Marcus alone after the meal, to sit with him. Breathe the same air. She felt that she had a thousand questions for him, only she didn’t know what any of them were. In any case, Marcus went to his room claiming exhaustion almost before the last plate of beef found its way to the table. Cithrin sat alone in the crowd as eating gave way to music and talk. The only one who seemed equally distracted was Isadau. When Master Kit withdrew from the hall, Isadau didn’t follow him. So Cithrin did.

The old actor was sitting alone in one of the smaller rooms, a wool blanket draped over his shoulders, when Cithrin came in.

“Kit,” she said.

“Ah, Magistra Cithrin,” Kit said, shifting on his bench to make room for her. “Have I mentioned how pleased I am to find you doing so well? It’s a long way from the last caravan out of Vanai.”

“I don’t know,” she said, sitting. “Seems like the same place to me, almost.”

“Yes, I suppose I see that,” he said.

“Are you … are you really you?” she asked. “I mean … I don’t know what I mean.”

“I think I do,” he said. “I carried a secret with me for many years, and now it’s uncovered. It must change how you see me, but I feel like the same man I always have been. My affection for you is what it was. My fears for the future haven’t changed. I feel more threatened, I suppose. But that may only be truth. When your friend Isadau said I was an abomination—”

“She didn’t mean it,” Cithrin said.

“She did, Cithrin. She very much did. And I think I understand why.”

A cricket took up its song, and then another. The chirping was thinner than it had been at midsummer. Fewer insects and a slower song.

“Marcus left when I was gone away to Camnipol.”

“Yes,” Kit said. “That must have been hard for you, his disappearing that way.”

“I was fine,” Cithrin said. Then, “God, you know that was a lie, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Kit said. “But it’s one that speaks well of you both.”

“Having him back … just back. It’s like Magister Imaniel popping up out of the grave and coming to the dinner table. Magister Imaniel or else …”

“Or else your father?”

“I didn’t know my father,” Cithrin said.

“Ah yes. I remember that,” Kit said. They were silent for a time.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Kit said.

“Basrahip. The priests. If they were looking for something, what would it be?”

“What do you mean, looking for?”

“Sending out hunting parties. Looking in the empty places in the world.”

“Well,” Kit said, then took a long, deep breath, giving himself time to think. “I think we have established that I may not have perfect insight into the workings of the priesthood. But I would think they were looking for other remnants of the dragons’ power. Something like the Timzinae or the sword that Marcus and I recovered. Are they? Looking, I mean.”

“I think so,” Cithrin said. “We’ve been getting reports from someone in Camnipol. We aren’t sure who. But one of the things he said was that there were expeditions going out. And one of them is being led by a Dartinae man I almost worked with in Porte Oliva. He gave me a dragon’s tooth.”

“Did he really?” Master Kit asked.

“I think he did,” Cithrin said. “I suppose it could be a fake.”

“I wonder …” Kit said.

“I could show it to you.”

“What? Oh, thank you, but no. I was remembering something Marcus said about men like me being driven into hiding once. A very long time ago. If my former companions are searching for something, I imagine it’s because they want to possess it or destroy it. Either way … What do we know about this man in Camnipol?”

“Almost nothing,” Cithrin said. “If Isadau doesn’t object, I can show you the reports.”

“I would very much like that.”

Cithrin felt a thickness in her throat, a sudden welling up of sorrow. Master Kit’s brows furrowed and he took her hand. Cithrin shook her head until she could find her voice. When she did speak, the words were thick.

“Now that he’s started this, he’s not going to stay,” she said. “Is he?”

Comprehension washed over Master Kit’s face. He looked down.

“I expect Captain Wester will remain here to protect the compound as best he can until the city’s fallen. Beyond that, I don’t know,” he said, and then chuckled ruefully. “In truth, Cithrin, these days I feel I don’t know anything.”

The armies of Antea arrived in the morning unopposed. It was understood that the fighting would be in Kiaria, where the soldiers had gone. Even a token resistance to the invaders in Suddapal would have meant a few dozen corpses and nothing more. They didn’t even try. The morning sun slanted down over the roofs and tent-thick commons. The Antean carts rolled through the streets, and soldiers marched behind them. Timzinae refugees who had left their homes behind to escape this same army sat quietly at the sides of the roads. Cithrin stood by the compound’s wall and watched. After so long, the mass of Firstblood faces seemed wrong. Out of place.

“Don’t stare, ma’am,” Yardem said. “Someone might take offense.”

“And what if they do?”

Marcus answered. His voice was tired.

“There’s still going to be a sack. If we’re lucky, it’ll be a short one, and centered someplace else.”

“What?” Cithrin said. “The soldiers just loot the place? Go through like bandits and take what they want?”

“If we’re lucky,” Marcus said again.

“We’ll stand against them,” Cithrin said.

“We’ll take everything of value in the compound,” Marcus said, “put it in the yard here, bar the doors, guard the windows, and hope for the best. This is going to be a bad night.”

He was right. It was. Through all the long hours of the night, Cithrin sat with Isadau in the relative safety of her office, reading by a small brass lamp, and remembering none of the words. The guards—Yardem, Enen, Marcus, and even Master Kit included—kept watch. Once, near midnight, voices came from the streets, a mad whooping followed by screams and then the sounds of something large and possibly wooden being broken. Then near dawn, the unmistakable sound of blades. Cithrin felt fear and fatigue grinding in her belly. She wanted badly to be drunk. Even if the worst came, at least she’d be insensible.

The morning air stank of smoke. Plumes of it rose from near the water, and Master Kit watched them with an expression so closed it frightened her. She remembered hearing that he had friends in the city. Their houses might be fueling those fires. Or their bodies.

Isadau stepped into her compound to survey the damage. Half of what they’d left out had been taken, and the other half destroyed. She lifted the remains of a lacquered box, and then let the pieces fall from her hands. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but otherwise her expression could have been carved from stone. This was more than her bank. It was her family’s home. It was her city. That she’d known this would come didn’t seem to pull the blow. She found Marcus and Yardem speaking with Jurin. Marcus nodded in salute. The gesture was familiar, and Cithrin felt herself clinging to it.

“Could have been much worse,” he said. “It was a near thing, but we didn’t lose anyone. And the Anteans are all falling back. Worst may be over.” Cithrin coughed out a mirthless laugh and Marcus nodded as if agreeing with her. In the street, someone was wailing. “Likely, they’ll send an order. The bank’s powerful enough they’ll want someone at the naming of the new protector.”

“Isadau?” Cithrin asked.

“It’s who I’d chose,” Marcus said.

“I’ll go with her.”

Marcus frowned and Yardem’s ears went forward, but neither of them made an objection.

“Come back when it’s done,” was all that Marcus said.

Cithrin went back to her rooms and changed into a formal dress and put up her hair. The city might be conquered, but the Medean bank was more than a city; it was the world. She would not pretend to be humbled. When she was done, she touched her lips and cheeks with rouge, vomited into the chamberpot, and applied the rouge again. The cut of the collar didn’t call for a necklace, but she put one on anyway: the silver bird in flight that Salan had given her. No one else might know the defiance it signified, but she would. When the order came, carried by a sneering Firstblood in Antean uniform, she accepted it on Isadau’s behalf. It was, after all, addressed to the magistra of the branch, and technically she fit the description. They were to come to the central square of the third city at noon. Lord Marshal Ternigan would accept their formal surrender of the city and introduce the new protector of Suddapal. Also every household was to surrender any weaned children younger than five against the good conduct of the city. There would be no exceptions made. Any children not turned over to the protector’s men would be killed without question.

Half an hour before the time came, Isadau let Cithrin guide her out to the street. The magistra wore ragged grey mourning robes and her eyes seemed empty. Shocked. When they passed the temple, a vast banner the red of blood hung from its roof. The eightfold sigil of the goddess looked out from its center like an unblinking eye, the symbol of nothingness. And below it, the body of the cunning man and priest that Cithrin and Yardem had snickered at from the pews. Terrible things had been done to him.

“She doesn’t even exist,” Isadau said, her voice quiet and brittle.

“She doesn’t need to,” Cithrin said.





Clara




When Clara’s only work had been the running of her household, it had still been enough to fill most days and even bring some occasional worries to bed. When things were well—and they were well more often than not—Dawson and the children were utterly unaware of the mechanisms and habits that kept the shoes cleaned and the food brought from the kitchen. If she asked Dawson to please keep his hunting dogs out of the servants’ quarters, he saw only her somewhat trivial focus. She didn’t tell him that one of the maids had been mauled as a girl and broke into sweats whenever the animals trotted through. Dawson would have told her to get a different maid, but this one had been the best at polishing the silver, and accommodations had to be made whether Dawson knew of them or not.

Her plan of battle was simple enough. Find competent, trustworthy servants, treat them with respect, and let them do their work. Listen when spoken to. Remember everybody’s name and something about the peculiarities of their lives. Forgive any mistake once, and none twice.

In the long, subterranean struggles between the women of the court, she held her own. Someone else might have a more fashionable tailor or hairdresser in any given season, lured away by promises and bribes, but Clara’s was always perfectly respectable, and they didn’t leave her in times of difficulty. As compared with some who thought training servants meant alternating between throwing fits and showering them with praise. She couldn’t count the number of ladies of the court who, one time and another, had managed to throw their own houses and lives into chaos by losing the service of their more competent staff.

And running a household, she supposed, was not so unlike running an empire.

As the long days of summer began to grow short again, she found herself invited to more informal gatherings. Women who had pretended not to know her began smiling or nodding to her when she walked through the more affluent streets of the city. Few went so far as to speak, but some did. The gossip around her shifted from the balls and feasts at the season’s opening, and turned toward the preparations for its end. Clara smiled and laughed and wished people the best in ways that made it clear she didn’t care for them. She fell into the patterns of the woman she’d been for most of her life, and it felt like wearing a mask at a street carnival.

Behind it, she was cataloging everything she heard. Of Geder Palliako’s inner court, Daskellin was far and away the best political mind. His daughter, who had been putting herself in compromising situations with Palliako before he’d been named Lord Regent, had fallen back into propriety. So perhaps Daskellin had gained a better insight into the kind of man Palliako was. Emming was a blowhard who played the gadfly on trivial matters and followed anyone more powerful than he was when the issue had weight. Mecilli was an honest man with a reputation for caution and tradition that most reminded Clara of Dawson. The two would have been friends, except that Mecilli had spoken out against dueling and Dawson had decided the man was a coward. Noyel Flor wasn’t dim, but he was the third generation of his family to be Protector of Sevenpol, and in everything he considered what was best for his city first and the empire as a whole after. Lord Skestinin commanded the fleet, which made him valuable to Geder, but he was also family, now that Jorey and Sabiha were married.

And, of course, there was Ternigan.

The Lord Marshal was an excellent strategist and had more experience commanding in the field than anyone else at court, and perhaps because of his habit of strategic thought, he’d placed himself on the winning side of almost every conflict in a generation. By being the man of talent, he made himself someone to be won over. Someone to be wooed.

And so he also made himself vulnerable.

For Geder to fall from power, he had to be alienated from the best minds in the empire and surrounded instead with charming idiots and the pleasantly incompetent. Knowing what she did of Geder’s temper and distrust, she thought the exercise might not be that difficult. At least not with low-hanging fruit like Bassim Ternigan.

The temptation was to rush. To hurry. To create some crisis out of the whole cloth. The wiser choice was to wait and listen until the world in all its incomprehensible complexity presented her an opportunity, and then to be ready for it. She stayed at court as much as she could, maintained what friendships she had, and tried to keep her private role gathering information as loyal traitor separate from being her sons’ mother.

It was not always possible.

“Having a permanent port on the Inner Sea will change everything,” Vicarian said around a mouthful of roast pork. “There’s rumor that Palliako’s going to send Lord Skestinin there.”

“Well, Father hasn’t mentioned anything to me,” Sabiha said. She was looking better, Clara thought. Brighter about the eyes, easier with her smile. She wasn’t a pretty girl exactly, and all the more interesting for that. “All he’s said is that wintering in Nus will be much more pleasant than Estinport.”

“May just be a rumor,” Jorey said.

“Likely that,” Vicarian agreed. “Honestly, I thought the court was the breeding ground for unfounded guesses spoken as fact, but it’s nothing compared to the seminary. I think it’s because we’re supposed to spend so much time praying that we all get bored.”

“Don’t be impious, dear,” Clara said without any real heat in her voice. “And don’t speak with your mouth full.”

“Yes, Mother,” Vicarian said. With his mouth full.

Though she had known that he might arrive at some point, her middle son’s arrival in Camnipol had been a pleasant surprise. It had occasioned dinners at Lord Skestinin’s manor three nights in a row with the family and a few close friends. Elisia had even come with her child, Corl, but without her husband. Seeing her daughter and grandson had been joyful in a way that Clara hadn’t expected, but even as she cooed over the boy, her other self was noting that dining with Jorey and Sabiha wasn’t too shameful for Elisia’s delicate social sensibilities any longer. It would be interesting to see if the effect outlasted Vicarian’s visit. If so, it would hardly have been a year before Dawson’s treason was being forgotten. Only, no. Not forgotten. Ascribed to someone else. The attempt on Geder’s life and the plot against Simeon and Aster were both hidden assaults by a vast and shadowed Timzinae conspiracy now, and in the process, the truth of the matter was forgotten. It was eerie to watch it happen, but it was also to Jorey’s benefit, so while she could see the rank injustice of it, she couldn’t think it entirely evil.

“I’m not sure you can accuse him of impiety, Mother,” Elisia said. “It’s his newfound piety that brought him, after all.”

“My piety’s not newfound,” Vicarian said. “It’s my appreciation for what it’s going to take to get a placement worth having. Everyone with any power at all is tripping over their toes to study under Minister Basrahip.”

“Is his cult that important?” Clara said. “Why, it seems only yesterday everyone was laughing down their sleeves at it.”

“It’s nearly the only important sect in the kingdom now,” Vicarian said. “Temples are going up in Kaltfel, Asinport, Nus. Now Inentai and Suddapal. And everyone’s assuming Kiaria, once Ternigan’s burned it clean enough for civilized habitation. All of them are dedicated to the spider goddess. Anyone who’s keeping strictly to the old rites won’t be placed there. And there’s talk of converting the temple in Kavinpol. This is the first time Minister Basrahip has taken on initiates from outside wherever he was out in the Keshet. Everyone put in for it.”

“But you got lucky,” Jorey said.

Vicarian grinned, and Clara could see for a moment the boy he’d been at six years old. “May have called in a couple favors for it.”

It was what she had hoped for, of course. After Dawson’s death, she had done everything she could to see that her children were safe, that they had the chance to reinvent themselves in Palliako’s court. She had only lost Barriath, and that to exile rather than death. And yet she sat in the dining hall with the richest dinner she’d enjoyed in months, the windows all opened, and the evening breeze setting the candles to flutter and snap, and her pleasure was tainted by doubt. She felt she was helping her boys scramble up a tree as she cut it down. But that was simplistic. If Palliako fell and a new Lord Regent took his place, the court would still be made from the same people. Rearranged by the rupture, perhaps, as they had been before and would be again.

Still, she could wish that Vicarian had saved his favors for a better occasion.

After the last of the meal was finished, Elisia made her farewells and went off, Corl and his nurse trailing along behind with her guardsmen. Clara wasn’t sure when walking with guards had become normal for members of court, but it was now. Then they sat together in Lord Skestinin’s narrow drawing room. The taste of Jorey’s tobacco reminded her what real leaf was like. She was in real danger of becoming used to the cheap-ground that sold in the alley mouths near the Prisoner’s Span. They joked and played at tiles and cards. Except that Dawson and Barriath weren’t there, it was a perfect evening, and it passed too quickly into night.

When, at last, Clara prepared to make her own farewells, Jorey took her discreetly aside.

“I haven’t been keeping you up with everything,” he said. “I didn’t want to raise hopes if I wasn’t sure. But from the last letters I’ve had, I think Lord Skestinin is going to back me at court. Between his word and Geder still seeming to like me, I think I’ll be able to take on the management of some of his lands while he’s with the navy.”

“That’s lovely, dear,” Clara said, tears jumping to her eyes. “I’m so glad for you. And Sabiha too. She’s … I’m so glad you married her. She seems simply perfect. And by that I mean strong, because strong is so important in a woman’s life, even if no one particularly says it.” She was babbling, words flowing without her knowing what they would be or if she meant them.

Jorey took her hand and pressed something into it. A small cloth purse of the sort she usually took her allowance from him in.

“It comes with a slightly better income,” he said. “Sabiha and I talked about it, and we wanted you to have part too.”

“Oh, I can’t,” Clara said, her fingers curling around the coins. Clutching them. “Really, you mustn’t.”

“I must, Mother. And I will.”

It didn’t help stop the tears. She kissed Jorey’s cheek and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

“You are very good to me,” she murmured. “You have been very, very good.”

“I turned you out,” he said.

“Of course you did, dear,” she said, and for a moment, her new self spoke. The woman she was still becoming. “I will always be complicit in what your father did. It’s part of who I am now. Your distance from me was necessary, and it still is. You did right.”

“Still—”

“No, dear. No still. No if only. What your father did and what I do can’t be part of what you are. Not any longer. Don’t be ashamed of that. If I’d had more strength and wisdom, I’d have gone on my own.”

Jorey looked at his hands.

“I don’t believe that for a moment,” he said. “But thank you for saying it.”

Vincen Coe waited at door to the street, chatting with the door slave and looking in the torchlight like a servant waiting for his master. That gave Clara pause. Treating Vincen as if he were only what he had been before seemed somehow monstrous. And yet what option did she have? She could no more invite a lesser huntsman formerly in her husband’s service to sit at the table with Jorey and Vicarian than she could call Dawson back from the dead. She tried to imagine Vincen sitting in the drawing room with Jorey. Or worse, with Elisia. The familiarity with someone so clearly of a lower class would make her daughter’s eyes explode. She really was more Dawson’s child than her own. Nor would it be a kindness to Vincen to place him in a context in which the gulf between their stations was made obvious.

Sabiha was the one to see her safely to the door, to Vincen’s arm, as was appropriate after all for the lady of the household. She’d done the same a thousand times while Dawson sat in the drawing room with his dogs. Vincen stepped forward, bowing the way he would had he been only what he seemed. Clara had the sudden and powerful impulse to put the young man’s arm around her waist. Sabiha would certainly have been shocked, but she had also stepped outside what women were permitted, and shocked wasn’t the same as scandalized.

“Clara?” Sabiha said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes, dear, I am. Just lost in my own mind for a moment.”

Sabiha took her hands and smiled into her eyes. Clara smiled back from across a gulf as wide as the Division that only she knew was there. Then the moment passed, and Clara marched off resolutely into the dark streets of Camnipol, Vincen walking a pace behind and to the left, as a good servant would until they crossed the bridge and Clara brought him to her side. Even with his injuries and the time spent recuperating, Vincen’s arm was solid. Clara tried to remember when Dawson’s had been the same, but in truth, he hadn’t. Strong, yes. But Vincen was a degree shorter than Dawson had been, and the proportion of his arm different. Their two bodies couldn’t be mistaken. Vincen was unavoidably and utterly Vincen, and Dawson was gone past all recall. She had mourned him for a year, as best she could when she was mourning everything else and rejoicing in between.

It had been a year, and imperfect as it was, she had done the best she could. Her children were reestablishing themselves in the lives they’d chosen or forged or found.

All around them, the city was preparing for a bad winter. The men and women of noble blood knew that the food would be thin this season the way they knew a particular march, recognizing it by the first notes. The men and women in the streets of Camnipol would be the ones playing the instruments and singing the melodies. For Jorey and Sabiha and even Vicarian, it would be the difference between eating meat every day or only once a week. For Abatha and Vincen, for Aly and Mihal, it would be the difference between eating every day or every other. And as hard as winter would be, spring before the first crops came would be worse. It expressed itself in small ways: the timbre of the voices of begging children, the weariness and resignation in the shoulders of carters, the growing competition for day-old bread. Things she might have lived and died and never have known had only a very few things gone differently.

And instead, here she was, walking through the darkness with this peculiar, unlikely masculine animal at her side. They reached the far side of the Division, passed by the great yellow taproom with the same band of players she’d seen there before in the yard, declaiming to perhaps a dozen people.

“You know that I am entirely too old for you,” she said.

“You’ve said so, m’lady,” Vincen replied as he had before.

“You should find a woman your own age.”

“None of them are as lovely as you.”

She coughed out a laugh. “And I’ll wager you played with fire when you were a boy.”

“M’lady?”

At the mouth of an alleyway she paused, and he paused with her as she had known he would. She put her hand on his shoulder and, before he could grasp what was happening, shoved him into the wall. She felt the impact in the palms of her hands. She only had to bend her neck up a little to reach his lips, and she kept the pressure constant, pinning him in place like a flower pressed in a book. Her mouth opened his, and she bruised him. For a moment, he was too shocked, and then he wasn’t. When she stepped back, he staggered.

Her breath was fast, her heart racing. The warmth in her body was strange and wild and familiar as an old coat, long forgotten and rediscovered. When she laughed, it came from low in her throat. It came from the girl she had been at eighteen.

“My lady,” Vincen said unsteadily.

“Clara, Vincen,” she said. “My name is Clara. Now take me home with you.”





Marcus




The first days of an occupation said a lot about the war that brought it about. In the best case, the new protector would reach out to the older, established powers in the city and find ways to make the habits and expectations of the citizens work gracefully under the new regime. The worst was slaughtering everyone and burning the place to the foundations. Suddapal fell in between. There were few fires, and what there were got doused quickly. Three ships sank during the sack, and given the number of vessels at the docks, Marcus suspected they’d been scuttled by captains who for whatever reason couldn’t put out to sea. The physical city itself was treated, for the greatest part, with respect. But it was the respect of an owner for their property. It didn’t bode well for the citizens.

And neither did the march of children.

Suddapal had three gaols, a legacy of the different cities it had been before they grew together. One stood safely inland with great stone walls around lines of iron cages. The second was at the top of a cliff near the shore with cells that lay open to the weather, foul or fair. The third was an island with only a single bay and currents cruel enough to defeat even the most experienced swimmers. All three had been emptied of their prisoners and refilled with the young. From his first glance at the children packed twenty in a cage meant for six, Marcus understood what he was seeing. Not a city folded into the empire. Not a people made subjects. Slaves, then, at best. And more likely, the culling that Kit had feared. The man did pick the worst times to be right.

The new protector—an improbably mustached Firstblood named Fallon Broot—had set a curfew for all Timzinae in the city. No one on the streets from dusk to dawn. Marcus had seen a fisherman at the piers shouting that the catch would be gone before he was on the water. The new Antean portmaster had him whipped in the street until there were bright tracks of raw meat along the chitined back. A dozen soldiers watched, laughing.

All of it put Marcus in an odd place. Like the Anteans, he was Firstblood. Like them, he was an unfamiliar face in the city. He could walk the darkened streets that the citizens no longer could. And more than that, he could pass unremarked by the new masters of Suddapal because he looked like them. Even Enen and Yardem, not technically bound by the curfew, would be noticed for their race. Marcus looked like what he was, a Firstblood soldier out of uniform and a little long in the tooth. He looked like nobody. He could ferry messages between the elements of Magistra Isadau’s shadow company with less danger than anyone else in the branch.

Or at least less danger from the invaders.

“Isadau sent me,” Marcus said, his hands at his shoulders, palms out. The blade pressed against his throat.

“The hell she did,” the Timzinae man holding it said.

“My name is Marcus Wester. I’m guard captain for the Porte Oliva branch.” It might not be true, but going into the complexities of his employment seemed like a poor decision. “I came here with Magistra bel Sarcour.”

“Prove it.”

“You have seven children hidden in the attic right now. You sent the message this afternoon as a letter asking about a loan for a new millstone.”

The blade came tighter, drawing a trickle of blood. The compound around him was less than a fifth of the bank’s size. Hardly bigger than a Northcoast farmhouse. They were in the dining room, the remnants of the night’s meal still on wooden plates. In addition to the man presently in position to open his throat, there were four by the benches with knives. This, Marcus thought, would be a profoundly stupid way to die.

“System could have broken,” the man behind him hissed. “Been intercepted. How do I know you’re not one of them?”

“Because I don’t have fifty Antean soldiers outside throwing lit torches through the windows and putting arrows in anyone who runs out,” Marcus said. “Why would they bother trying to trick you?”

There was a long pause. The blade went away, and Marcus put his hand to his neck. The cut wasn’t much worse than he’d do to himself shaving, but it was embarrassing to have been overcome. His reflexes were getting slower. He wondered if it was another effect of the poisoned sword he’d left with Yardem and Kit or just the creeping in of age.

“Sorry,” the man said, wiping his blade clean of Marcus’s blood. “Can’t be too careful.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Marcus said. “I have a message from the magistra. There’s a ship going out to Pût tomorrow just before noon. Captain’s name is Brust. His ship’s got a double hull.”

“A f*cking smuggler, then,” one of the men at the table said and spat. “I hate smugglers.”

“What exactly do you think it is we’re doing?” Marcus said crossly, and a pounding came at the street door. The Timzinae froze.

“In the name of the Protector, open the door!” a voice called. The accent was Antean. The man who’d been ready to kill Marcus moments before pushed him back into a pantry closet.

“Stay here,” he said. “Don’t make a damned sound or you’ll get us all killed.”

Marcus nodded and pulled the door almost shut. Through the slit he left himself, he could hear the doors open and the Anteans pushing in. The voices were harsh, pressing in over each other. Marcus wondered if the children hiding above him could hear it all too.

“We had a report. Someone came here in violation of the curfew,” a new voice said, and Marcus felt his blood go cold. He peeked out. The man wore no armor, but brown robes. His wiry hair was pulled back and his long face could have been Kit’s twenty years ago. One of the priests. The man with the blade drew in his breath to lie and doom them all and Marcus stepped out of the closet.

“That was likely me,” he said.

“And who are you?” the priest said. There were four more Antean blades behind him, and God knew how many waiting in the street.

“Marcus Wester. I work for the Medean bank.”

The priest’s eyes narrowed as he consulted the spiders in his blood. Marcus’s flesh crawled a little, just thinking about it. Behind him two of the Firstblood men exchanged a glance. Nice to have the name recognized.

“What are you doing?” the blade man said.

“Telling the truth,” Marcus said, and stopped himself before he went on with, We have nothing to hide. Because of course they did.

“Why are you here?” the priest asked.

“Business. The magistra had a note this afternoon about a loan for a new millstone. She wanted me to follow up on it since she can’t. Curfew and all.”

“A millstone? Was there nothing else?”

No would be a lie. Marcus smiled and shrugged, his brain casting about wildly.

“I can get you the note, if you’d like,” he said. And then, “You won’t find anything else in it.”

“And yet when you heard us, you hid in a closet? Why was that?”

“I’ve been in occupied cities before, and they can be intimidating. I got scared, and I didn’t think it through.”

The priest cocked his head, nodded. “Thank you. It seems there’s no violation here.”

“You shouldn’t be doing business with bugs,” one of the swordsmen said. “What kind of merchant works with these?”

“Bankers can be surprisingly flexible where there’s money involved,” Marcus said. “But I’ll tell them what you said.”

It was over, but there was still a chance it could go the other way. If the Anteans still thought of themselves as coming to enforce the curfew, they’d go now. If not, there was still plenty of chance for a bloodbath. But with him and the five Timzinae, the odds were good that at least one of the Anteans wouldn’t walk out. Apparently the swordsmen came to the same conclusion.

“Next time, you open the door faster,” he said, pointing his blade at one of the Timzinae who hadn’t actually opened the door at all, “or there’ll be trouble. You understand me?”

“I do,” the Timzinae man said, and the Anteans withdrew, scowling as they went.

When the door was shut, Marcus sagged down onto a bench. The sense of narrowly avoiding death left him slightly nauseated. There was a time when things like that had felt exciting, but he’d been a younger man.

“You all right?” the blademan said.

“I am,” Marcus said. “Or anyway I will be. Listen, those priests? You can’t ever lie to them. Or listen to them if you can help it. They’ve got spiders in their blood that give them power over truth and lies.”

The blade man’s nictitating membranes closed, and he nodded slowly.

“All right,” he said. “You say so.”

Marcus chuckled mirthlessly. “Well, I have a friend. If he told you, you’d think it was true.”

This, Marcus thought, isn’t going to work.

They’re good people,” Magistra Isadau said. “Reliable. They won’t say what they know.”

“And in another situation, that would matter,” Marcus said. “But you built all this thinking you’d have to deal with swords and magistrates. Cunning men, maybe. Torturers. But this? These things change everything. The network you built didn’t take the spiders into account.”

The Timzinae woman gazed out the window, her face hard as stone. The meeting room looked out over the street, the city. The wind was coming in from the north, pulling low clouds with it. It wouldn’t rain, or not much; the mountains north of Kiaria would have wrung the clouds dry. All of Suddapal’s rain came from the south. What these brought was the first bite of the coming winter. Marcus looked at Cithrin. She had the distant, calm look that came when she was thinking. That was good. One of the magistras of the Medean bank needed to be able to look at things coldly, and Isadau’s grief was going to make that hard.

“What would you recommend?” Cithrin asked.

“First off, tell everyone what we’re working against. The biggest advantage they have is that people don’t know what they are. But be quiet about it. It’s a hard thing to believe unless you’ve seen it, and if they start marching the priests through the streets with speaking trumpets talking about how they can’t tell when you’re lying, people will believe them and we’ll be right back where we are now.”

Cithrin nodded. “And we can’t work together. Not safely. It has to be individual, uncoordinated efforts. We’ll need a way to support them without anybody knowing who’s giving the support or who’s receiving it.”

“Don’t see how that’s practical,” Marcus said.

“Really?” Cithrin said. She seemed genuinely surprised. “It isn’t difficult. We put a bounty on safe children. Anyone who brings a child from Elassae to Carse or Porte Oliva is paid out of a fund that’s administered by … oh, I don’t know. A mysterious figure in black, only of course it’s really the bank. Anyone who cares to add to the fund can send gold to some particular address and we won’t know who they are. Anyone who arrives with a child gets the payment without questions being asked. How they get there is their own problem. They solve it however they solve it, and they can’t be betrayed, because we won’t know.”

“They’ll send assassins,” Isadau said. “The Anteans will send men to kill whoever does it. They’ll send their filthy priests.”

“So we have guards and make them cut thumbs, just like on any contract,” Cithrin said. Then, to Marcus, “I can draw up a full plan in a day or so. If Komme approves it, we can have it in place before the first frost.”

“And how would we tell people?” Isadau snapped.

“Piece of chalk, and a dark night, and as many walls as you can reach,” Marcus said. “Best not to get caught, but that’s going to be true of any of this.”

“And it doesn’t have to be only the children,” Cithrin said, her voice a mix of contemplation and pleasure. “We can put bounties on anything we want done. Bring proof that you’ve killed an Antean soldier or stolen their food or interfered with the flow of orders. The same coins can pay for any number of things. That’s what makes them dangerous. Of course, it’ll be messy. We’ll have to expect a certain amount of fraud. Unless … If we had Master Kit—”

“It’s a good thought,” Marcus said, “but we’ve only got one of him, and I’ll need him worse.”

Cithrin’s expression fell. He’d guessed it might. He tried to ignore the knot of guilt under his ribs. He ran his fingertips against the grain of the tabletop and waited for her to speak.

“Need him,” Cithrin said, trying to keep her tone light. Merely curious. “What for?”

“Job hasn’t changed,” Marcus said. “We have to kill the goddess. I’m taking Kit to Camnipol. We’ll see if we can’t find that mysterious source of yours and learn what we can about the expeditions they sent out. What they’re looking for. Whether they’ve found anything.”

Isadau’s voice was harsh. “You’d take the one man we have who can match their power and run after shadows?”

“I’d take the sword too.”

“Why?” Cithrin asked.

“May want to kill some priests.”

“No, I mean why would you go to Camnipol? Why that?”

Marcus took a deep breath. In the street, a mule brayed.

“Did Yardem ever tell you about Gradis?”

“No,” Cithrin said. “I’ve only heard the name when they called you the hero of Wodford and Gradis.”

“All right, so this was the second year of the war between Lady Tracian and Lord Springmere. I was still dancing Springmere’s tune, idiot that I was. Gradis is a keep in the middle of a mountain pass. Dragon’s road runs right through it. Lady Tracian had it, and if she’d kept it, her supply lines would have been solid as stone. The thing was, she had about as many men as I did, and she had position. So I sent out a force just outside arrow’s range. Not a big one, but with all the banners. Springmere rode with it. I was there. Our three greatest allies, and not just their men, but them in person. Well, Lady Tracian saw us all out there like something out of a poem, and she knew she could take us. Sent her men out after us. So we fought for bit, and I sounded the retreat. We pulled back about half a league and reformed. Her men reformed, and we did it again. Better part of a day, she beat us back and back and back. And when she was pulled far enough back, all the sword-and-bows we’d left behind poured in and took the keep. No banners. No great men. Hardly any cavalry. Just the right force in the right place at the right time to win the fight that mattered.”

“I see,” Cithrin said.

“I don’t,” Isadau said.

Marcus scratched his neck and accidentally set his cut to bleeding again. “Normal strategy is going to lose. As long as they have the priests, we’re Lady Tracian winning battles and losing the war. But they have a weakness. Something that scares them. I don’t know what it is. As drunk on their own stories as they are, I’m not sure they do either. But whatever they’re looking for, I’m betting it’s the little force in the background that actually matters.”

“When,” Cithrin said, then coughed. “When will you go?”

“Don’t see much advantage in waiting.”

She swallowed. He had known her so long, he could see the mask slipping into place, and it left him aching.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?” Cithrin bel Sarcour, voice of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, asked him. Her tone was a thing of ledgers and contracts. Hearing her pull away from him ached, but there was nothing to be done about it.

“Nothing,” he said. “Don’t mind me. Just … I’ll be back. When I can.”

“Of course,” Cithrin said, and the crispness and politeness of her voice meant, Unless you die or something keeps you or you change your mind. Or stop caring whether you come back.

I would never leave you, he wanted to say, except that it was what he was doing.

The last of the meeting dragged on like a dog with a broken spine. When it was done, Cithrin retreated to her room, chin high and eyebrows arched, her stride low in her hips the way Kit and Cary had taught her to look older than she was. Marcus leaned out the window and spat on the ground. He found Kit and Yardem out by the stables with two fresh horses. The green sword was wrapped in wool and strapped on behind the saddle with his bedroll. Marcus felt a small pang of regret that they wouldn’t have their little Kesheti mule.

“How did it go, sir?” Yardem asked.

“As well as could be expected.”

“Poorly, then.”

Kit made a small sound that lived halfway between a chuckle and a groan. Marcus pulled himself into the saddle.

“It’s a long way to Camnipol,” Marcus said. “Most of it through the leavings of a war, and autumn coming on besides. And at the end, a city full of spider priests. And someone writing letters, but we don’t know his name or what he looks like. So this should be just lovely.”

“But there is hope,” Kit intoned.

“Sure,” Marcus said. “As much as there ever is. Yardem?”

“Sir?”

“The day I take back the company?”

“It’s not today, sir.”

“No. It’s not. Watch after Cithrin for me.”

“I will.”

“And thank you for … Well. Just thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

“All right, then,” he said. “Kit? Let’s go find some trouble.”