The Tyrant's Law

Clara




She felt young. It was disturbing and strange and wonderful. Her body felt warmer, not as a metaphor for some spiritual truth, but actually warmer. Even as the days grew shorter, the dark pressing its advantage at dawn and dusk, even as the leaves traded their green for yellow and brown and red, she left her jacket and shawl at the boarding house. The cold winds with their promise of the coming snows felt soothing against her skin, like they were holding in check some painless and glorious burn.

She had never seriously imagined taking a lover. Like anyone, she’d admired men, been aware of them. Tempted by some in an unspoken and diffuse sort of way. But to move from that appreciation to action of any sort was impossible. She was a married woman. She loved her husband and been pleased with him. Dawson had been a thoughtful lover, and his delight in her matched hers in him. There had been neither call for another man nor the boredom or complacency that might give reason to hope for such a call. And now she had given way. If the court knew, she would be even more ruined than she had been before, though that was more because Vincen was a servant. If she’d found herself in the arms of some well-positioned widower with property, title, and slightly more years than her own, the only people to object would have been the ones who wanted to anyway. Vincen was young, beautiful, poor, and without standing or blood. He was too good for her and beneath her station. And when she lay in the darkness of his room, the sheet her only clothing, and thought of it all, it seemed not only to do with the animal joys but also with the act of rebellion. Taking Vincen Coe, huntsman and youth, to her bed meant that anything was possible. Anything could be done.

She was rougher with him than she had ever been with Dawson. More selfish. Because that was possible too.

The danger wasn’t that she would be discovered, though that would have been unfortunate. No. The greater peril was that her heart would take the wrong lessons from her experience. That she would become incautious and let the soaring sense of freedom and possibility sweep her to a place where possibilities vanished. A cell in Palliako’s gaols, for instance. Or a grave.

So as the days passed, and the closing of the season grew near, she tried to think. To keep her analysis of the world cool and detached and passionless, and she flattered herself that she succeeded more often than she failed. The siege at Kiaria, like the one at Nus, was taking longer than Palliako had hoped. After Suddapal and Inentai, the war had seemed to have a kind of momentum. Opinion was divided now, some feeling that Ternigan was at fault, others that perhaps even the great armies of Antea with the blessings of their newly adopted goddess were subject to the limits imposed by exhaustion, hunger, and the legendary defenses of the Timzinae stronghold.

It was, Clara thought, probably the opportunity she had been watching for. And because her heart and her flesh were in something of a riot, probably was good enough.

All that remained was putting the scheme in place. And for that, there were a few preparations that needed making, and specifically one item that she would require. Because Ernst Mecilli had not been close to Clara, she had no correspondence from him, and even if she had attempted the acquaintance, it would almost certainly have been his wife or daughter who returned the letter. For a sufficiently large sample of his hand, she needed letters. Asking for them seemed dangerously candid, and so she resolved to steal them instead.

Curtin Issandrian’s home had become shoddy since his fall from grace. The filigree and gilding that had brightened the façade seemed faded, chipped, and tawdry. The torches that marked his gate were old and burned out. The man himself wore the years hard, but his smile was genuine and his manner as gracious as it had ever been. Of all Dawson’s enemies, Clara felt most fond of him.

“A letter from your husband?”

“It would have been just at the end of the war with Asterilhold, when he was still Lord Marshal,” Clara said. “You and I had spoken about the role Alan Klin was playing in the effort, and I mentioned it to Dawson as you requested.”

“For which I am still grateful,” Issandrian said. “Though it seems I don’t have the knack for choosing allies whose stars are on the rise.”

Clara smiled and folded her hands together on her knee, pulling her shawl closer around her shoulders.

“None of us knew then what would come,” she said. Any more than we know now what may happen next, she didn’t say. “I thought he said he had written to you on the matter. And I hoped you were the sort of man who keeps his correspondence.”

Issandrian laughed, and the lines around his mouth seemed deeper than they had. How odd that they should both have suffered so much, and so differently.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am that man. But a letter from Lord Kalliam would have been something to remark on. I can’t think I’d have forgotten it.”

“Would it be forward of me to ask that you check? Just to be sure.”

“If you’d like,” he said.

“Excellent. Thank you so much,” Clara said, rising to her feet as if he had invited her to his private study and she were only accepting. To his credit, he saved her the embarrassment of being corrected and went along with the pretense. The corridors of the manor were wider than her own had been, and the red carpet that marked their center seemed faded and dusty. Through the great windows, she caught glimpses of the estate across the courtyard where Feldin Maas had lived when he lived. Where Clara and Vincen had faced the traitor’s blade with Geder Palliako and Minister Basrahip at their side. Somewhere in that garden, Vincen had tried his best to bleed to death in her arms. He had kissed her for the first time there. It was Geder Palliako’s now, since he’d been named Baron of Ebbingbaugh. It was where he would retire to when Aster claimed the throne.

Without knowing what would come or what shape the world might take, it struck Clara as quite unlikely that Geder would ever live in that house again.

“I hear that Ernst Mecilli is doing quite well for himself these days,” Clara said. “You and he were close, weren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Issandrian said. “A few philosophical debates one time and another, and an unfortunate attempt to negotiate sugar rights in Pût that we both came to regret. But I wouldn’t say we know each other particularly well.”

“It’s just I was thinking of letters, I suppose. Dawson always said Mecilli’s were awful pieces of work. Impossible to tell what the man meant.”

“Really?” Issandrian said as he opened a wide oaken door. “He always seemed cogent enough to me.”

Clara suppressed a smile. Mecilli had written to Issandrian.

“I suppose it might only have been Dawson’s temper,” Clara said. “He would sometimes see what he chose to see.”

“We’re all like that, one way and another.”

So we are, she thought.

Issandrian’s private study was a thing of beauty. If all the rest of this manor house was gone slightly to seed, this, at least, was maintained. The windows looked out on a small garden, and a stone Cinnae woman looked back, her skin the mottled texture of granite, ivy curling up her side. A whole wall was taken up with books, the leather spines in a dozen different shades. Clara sat on a divan of yellow silk and pretended to look out the window at an angle that let her watch Issandrian’s ghostly reflection in the glass. He took a parquet box down from a shelf and began extracting bundles of folded paper, each wrapped in ribbon. One, she guessed, for each correspondent. As his attention was on the pages, she unwrapped the shawl and pushed it discreetly between the divan and the wall. Her heart was beating fast. Everything was going so well, it was difficult not to giggle.

“Your gardener is doing a lovely job,” she said.

“Hm? Oh, yes, I suppose so. He seems a little tolerant of snails and slugs sometimes.”

“I suppose they need their advocates too,” Clara said.

Issandrian sighed and sat behind his desk.

“I’m sorry, but there is no letter. If there was one, it never arrived here. There was a time I pinned some not inconsiderable hope on hearing a kind word from your husband.”

“Well,” Clara said. “Thank you for looking. It’s probably silly of me. I just hoped to find something written in his hand. We lost everything when they took the estate.”

“You know,” Issandrian said, “Palliako hasn’t named a new baron for Osterling Fells. I’ve heard tell that he’s only waiting until he can give the title back to Jorey. If he does, there may be things you only thought were lost.”

“I can hope,” Clara said.

“It’s been a bad few years, hasn’t it?”

“It has,” Clara said. A brief pang of guilt touched her. Curtin Issandrian was an unlucky man, but he wasn’t a cruel one. If anything, his errors in judgment spoke of too much compassion. To exploit him seemed … not monstrous, but rude. It wasn’t a thing that a well-bred lady would do. She rose to her feet, smoothing the fabric of her skirt, and Issandrian stood as well.

“Thank you again,” she said.

They walked back toward the main halls more quietly. Issandrian’s expression was turned inward, and his hands clasped behind his back. Without the long, flowing hair he’d once affected, he seemed older. More worn. Clara waited until they’d almost reached the main hall, then stopped.

“Oh dear,” she said. “I seem to have forgotten my shawl.”

“I’ll have it fetched for you.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” she said, turning back. “I’m still spry enough to walk. Wait for me here, I’ll just be a moment.”

She walked with a brisk rolling gait until he turned the first corner. After that, she ran. When she reached his study, it was the work of a moment to yank her shawl back. She plucked the box from its shelf, muttering to herself as she opened it. Her fingers flew through the bundles. Alan Klin. Mirkus Shoat. Two old-looking bundles from Sesil Veren. And there. Four thin letters on cream-colored paper bound with a white ribbon. Lord Mecilli. She wrapped her shawl around them and shoved the box back into place, then hurried out of the study. Issandrian met her halfway back to the hall, and she raised her shawl in triumph.

“It fell behind the divan,” she said. “I was near to giving up when I found it.”

“I’m glad the hunt succeeded without the need for dogs.”

“That would be embarrassing. Setting out the hounds to help poor Lady Kalliam find her things. Too plausible, I suppose.”

“Not at all.”

At the door to the street, she turned to him, placing her hand on his arm as she might with an old friend. Issandrian put his own hand over hers. There was no sense of flirtation, but rather a kind of shared sorrow. For a moment they stood there, old enemies from a conflict that no longer mattered. His stolen letters were in her other hand, and she felt the urge to apologize, not for what she’d done, but on behalf of the world. That they, who should somehow have been friends were not, and would not be. The moment passed, and Clara walked out into the street and turned south for her rooms, Vincen Coe at her side.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

Back at the boarding house, Clara untied the white ribbon and laid the letters out on her bed while Vincen retrieved two more lamps from unused rooms. Clara read over each of the letters, searching for particular words and phrases, the personal idioms that would mark a letter as coming from the man himself. There were several. He was quite fond of the phrase in the unfortunate event that and the word abysmal. Then she took note of the specifics of his hand and the way he formed his letters. She needn’t match it perfectly, of course. The note she intended to write in his name was something written quickly and in a state of agitation. Even if Lord Ternigan were to have letters from the true Mecilli, it would be natural to expect some departures from the usual form.

Vincen came in behind her, a plate of stewed apples and bottle of wine in his hands. They made the room smell like a kitchen in the middle of baking sweets. Clara composed the rough draft of her letter, writing the words in her own neat hand. Then she read it to Vincen, taking breaks when he fed bits of apple between her lips and also to feed him. The wine was dry and a little harsh, and the fumes went to her head. Soon she was laughing, and Vincen with her. When he began kissing her, she pushed him away. There would be time for that later. This needed to be done quickly. If the letter reached Ternigan after Kiaria fell and he was already on his way home, the scheme would fail.

She drank water and paced until she was certain that she was sober, then drew out the pen, ink, and paper she’d prepared. She wrote the whole letter twice for practice, making note of where the loops and lines of her own handwriting deviated too far from Mecilli’s. Once she was certain, she took out the thick paper she’d bought. It wasn’t the cream color of Mecilli’s but it would do.

Lord Ternigan,

I do not have time now to wait and consider. The council I have heard has convinced me that we must act, and act swiftly if we are to act at all. You have been away from court for all of the season leading the army, but I have no doubt you have heard of the abysmal failure that Palliako has become. As the food supplies in the city wane, his popularity among the court and the low people has begun to plummet. Half the court is laughing down their sleeves at him, but the other half—the half to which you and I belong—understand the seriousness of the problem.

I will not walk the dragon’s path as Kalliam did, but myself and my allies have determined that it is time to gently remove Palliako from the Severed Throne and put the care of the empire into more seasoned and steady hands. You have led the army with distinction. Forgive me for my candor, my lord, but time is short and I feel I must speak plainly. You are the one obvious choice. We are unanimous in our decision, and if you knew the names of the men who’ve agreed, it would astound you. I am sometimes surprised we can agree on the day of the week or the direction of the sunrise, but we have agreed upon you.

In the unfortunate event that you are not willing to make this service to the empire, I beg you to destroy this letter and never mention it again. But if you are willing, send word to me not at my house, but addressed to Lirin Petty at the Cold Hammer stables. I have an agent there who will retrieve your word and deliver it to me.

I understand this seems sudden, but I assure you it has been building for some time. If you respond, do so quickly. Palliako grows less stable by the day, and we cannot wait much longer.

Whatever your decision, please consider me your friend and ally,

Lord Ernst Mecilli





Clara put up her pen with a flourish and blotted the ink quickly. A hasty blotting paper covered a great number of sins. Put side by side with its fellows, hers still stood out. And it wasn’t only the paper stock. She had to hope that the differences would be ascribed to the rushed nature of the letter. For the composition itself, she thought it struck the right notes. Flattering but also hinting that the tide might turn without him. If Ternigan proved true to his reputation, he might not agree to conspire, but he would at least not close the matter definitively. That was enough for her purposes.

She folded the letter, sewed and sealed it. She had no copy of Mecilli’s signet, so she used no wax. The money she’d saved from her increased allowance would buy a fast courier. It still might be weeks before she knew whether there was a fish on her hook.

Vincen’s objection wasn’t one she’d considered.

“The Cold Hammer,” Vincen said. “You’ve spoken to them about this?”

“Not this, precisely,” Clara said. “I’ve said that if a letter arrived under the Petty name, to hold it for me. They don’t know who it will be coming from nor what it will say.”

“But Clara,” he said, and her name on his lips still had the strange joy of transgression, “they know it’s going to you. Palliako will investigate this. If he goes there, he might track the conspiracy back to you.”

“It won’t happen.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“The man who’s watching for the message was a footman in my house. When his wife birthed their first boy, I went to visit her myself. The babe was ill, and I paid for the cunning man that saved him. The man would move the sky if I asked him to,” Clara said. “Certainly, he won’t balk at a few simple lies.”





Cithrin




Marcus left her again, this time more explicably. There was less confusion. Less of the inexplicable hollowness. Half of her was angry with him for going, but the rest of her seemed resigned. He was leaving her because he felt he had to, and looking at it coldly, she agreed. She was under her own protection now. She had been for over a year. It was only seeing that her half-ackowledged hopes that it might somehow go back to what it had been—or more likely what she only imagined it had been—dashed that felt so cruel. So she took her childish sense of abandonment and added it to the list of things she had to mourn.

It was a long list.

The next Tenthday, there was no march through the streets. The occupying forces didn’t respect the tradition and had sent out an edict prohibiting groups with more than four Timzinae from gathering together in public or ten in private. The temples were empty even where the priests weren’t dead. So instead, Isadau had the little chapel in the compound cleaned with vinegar and soap. Candles and incense burned on the humble wooden altar. Cithrin left her shoes in her room in the morning and walked there, joining the others silently. Jurin, Isadau, and Kani knelt at the front in their finest clothing. Cithrin sat in the middle with the other guests who had taken hospitality in the compound and were now trapped there by the occupation. The servants sat at the back. There were considerably more than ten Timzinae in the room, but no one mentioned it. There weren’t any Anteans either.

Still, Cithrin wondered what would happen if the spider priest came back and asked whether there had been any violations of the edict. It made her uncomfortable to risk the notice of the new authorities without need. There were so many needful risks still to take that wasting them here seemed decadent.

When the time came for the priest to arrive, Yardem Hane stepped out from the hallway. He wore a dark robe that went to his feet, and the rings in his ears looked different from the usual. He lowered his eyes, gathered himself, and brought his wide chin up.

“I am not a priest of your faith,” he said, and his voice rolled through the air like a distant landslide. “Nor, any longer, of my own. I was once a holy man, though I am not now. Magistra Isadau and her siblings have asked me to speak here today, and I agreed to the request so long as I could make it clear that I am not a priest.”

Cithrin smiled. She could see the discomfort in the Tralgu’s wide, canine expression, even if the others couldn’t. Her sympathy for him expressed itself as amusement.

“I have seen a large number of cities fall. Sometimes I’ve been part of the reason that they did. Sometimes I was one of the men who’d tried to protect them and failed. But for whatever reason I was there, what I’ve seen followed a pattern, and though I make no claim to righteousness, I hoped to share that with you here.

“Often when we gather in places of worship, it is in celebration. Celebrations of marriage or of birth. The smaller celebrations of the good in our lives. Even funerals are celebrations of lives well lived. And also we come together to mourn the evil and the sorrow and the pain in the world. Our failings and the world’s. We acknowledge these to each other because, whatever our race, whatever the shapes of our bodies and the inclination of our minds, doing this makes us more human. And by more human, I also mean more holy.”

Cithrin’s amusement and embarrassment on Yardem’s behalf had fallen away. His voice was warm and soft as old flannel. Someone behind her was weeping now, and Yardem frowned in thought. His huge hands patted at the empty air in front of him.

“When a city is taken in war, the loss to those who loved what the city had been is great. But that loss is doubled because we fear to mourn it. For good reason. There are men in Suddapal now who would beat us, possibly kill us, if they felt we were disrespectful of them. In every city I have seen that suffered what your city suffers now, there is a numbness and sense of being cut off from each other. It’s a funeral where no one laughs and no one cries, and it leaves us emptier than the loss alone would have. And so, today, instead of a religious service, I was hoping we might have a funeral for the cities that we have lost. Nus and Inentai and Suddapal. And Vanai.”

To her surprise, Cithrin felt tears in her eyes. She kept her chin high. She might weep, but she wasn’t going to snivel. Yardem spoke for a few moments more about Suddapal and when he had come to the city as a younger man. How it had changed in the years since, and how he had, and how the differences in them both had given him a sense of kinship with it. Then he asked Magistra Isadau to stand, and she spoke about the innate conflict of being a woman of business with her first loyalties to power and profit, and at the same time a citizen of the five cities. And her favorite places within them. Then Jurin spoke about showing his son the cavern at the center of the commons for the first time, and walking with his grandmother to the marketplace the last time she went. He talked of the fear he felt for the children taken by Antea. And soon, Cithrin was making no pretense of dignity, nor was anyone else. One by one, the people stood and spoke or else only sobbed, and Cithrin wept with them.

She didn’t see Yardem come to her side. His hand was simply on hers, and then without knowing how it had happened, he was leading her up to the altar. The faces looked up at her, waiting for her to speak. I can’t do this, she thought, and from the back of her mind a small voice replied, Yes, I can.

“Suddapal wasn’t my city,” she said. “That was Vanai. The Antean army took it … took it from me. And they took the people who raised me and loved me, if anybody did. There was a place by the canal by the bank house where there was a little boy who sold coffee with his father, and they … they took them too. They took everything there and they burned it.”

A sorrow she hadn’t known was there opened in her, vast as oceans, and she hung her head for a moment and Yardem stepped toward her. She put out a hand to stop him, gritted her teeth, and raised her head.

“I haven’t cried. I haven’t mourned. I haven’t let myself be angry for that loss. I never felt it because feeling it would have broken me. And now, with all of you here as witness, I am broken. I am broken, but I’m not dead. And I am not finished.”

The hand that touched her shoulder wasn’t Yardem’s. Magistra Isadau turned Cithrin to her, wrapped her arms around Cithrin’s shaking body, and pulled her close. Cithrin wept, and more than wept. She howled like a baby who’d lost her mother and her father, which she also was. She screamed into the older woman’s flesh, and she did it with half a hundred men and women watching her do it, and she felt no shame.

“Good girl,” Isadau murmured. “Oh, good, good girl. You’ll be fine. Your heart isn’t going to die. You’re fine.”

Cithrin held the Timzinae woman close and would not let her go.

It’s going to fall apart,” Yardem said. “All respect, the network was dangerous when it was only standing up against soldiers, bureaucrats, and cunning men. These tainted priests make it impossible.”

“I know,” Isadau said. “Two of the people who agreed to work with me have already missed meetings. I was able to get word out that if the priest questions you, not to answer any questions. They aren’t lying if they don’t speak.”

Yardem grunted like he had taken a blow. Isadau raised her eyebrows.

“Not speaking can be made difficult,” he said.

The courtyard had turned from lush green to leathery brown as if overnight. Autumn had come to Suddapal, and the crispness of the air said that winter would come quickly behind it. Isadau sat on a wooden stool, her body rigid and tense. Yardem stood at ease, a soldier again instead of a priest. Cithrin’s pacing contrasted with their stillness, but she couldn’t help it. Movement made her thoughts feel clearer and the knot in her belly less likely to lead to vomiting again. Fallen leaves crackled under her feet and skittered away from her toes where she kicked them.

“We have to make contingency plans,” Isadau said, “in the event I am detained by the new magistrate.”

“Why?” Cithrin asked.

“Because she’s going to be detained by the new magistrate,” Yardem said.

“She doesn’t have to be,” Cithrin said. “She can go to Carse.”

“I won’t abandon my city,” Isadau said. “I know that I can’t help for much longer. But so long as I can, I will. If anything, it’s you who should leave. I’ve written to Komme. He agrees that losing two of his magistras is worse than losing one.”

“I won’t leave you,” Cithrin said. “I won’t go while you’re here.”

“Then I’m afraid Komme is going to have a very unpleasant year,” Isadau said. Jurin stepped into the garden and nodded to Isadau. The magistra rose to her feet. “Please excuse me,” she said, and followed her brother out.

Cithrin kicked a small pile of leaves. Her mind felt like a cat in a cage, pacing, looking for a pathway out because she wanted it to be there more than from the expectation that it would be.

“She’s doing exactly what Marcus said,” Cithrin said. “She’s fighting battles and losing wars.”

“She knows she’s doomed. She’s made that choice. Her informants are already being caught up. I’ll be surprised if they don’t come for her by next Tenthday.”

“God damn that woman,” Cithrin said. “That stubborn, senseless—”

“If she can save one more child before she falls, it will have been worth it to her. And there’s no one else who can do what she’s doing. She knows the city. She knows the people. It’s the only advantage she has, and in most conditions, it would be significant.”

“It’s going to get her killed.”

“It is.”

Cithrin said something obscene, then she stopped. Yardem’s ears went flat.

“Magistra?”

“I know people too,” she said.

Dear Geder—

I’m sorry I haven’t written to you sooner. At first it was that I was so busy with the business of the bank that even though I kept meaning to, I never seemed to find the time. And then, after it had been so long, I started feeling awkward about it having been so long. I know it sounds stupid, and I suppose it is. But there you have it. I didn’t write, and I’m sorry for it, and I’m writing you now.

And, to make matters worse, I’m writing to ask a favor. Since last we saw each other, I’ve been reassigned within the bank. I am now the voice of the Medean bank in Suddapal, which I believe technically makes me one of your subjects. And while I understand the need for security, I’ve found some of your commanders here a bit difficult to work with. They have military minds, which is all well and good for what they’re doing, but difficult for someone trying to run a business. I was wondering if you could put in a good word for me? If you could even just assure them that I’m not involved in any devious conspiracies against you, I think it would make things better all around, and not only for me.

Tell Aster I miss him, and you, and that terrible cat-piss stinking hole we lived in. Who would ever have guessed those would be the good old days?

Your friend, Cithrin bel Sarcour





“You. Are. Mad,” Isadau said as she sat at her desk, the draft of the letter in her hand. Her face had gone ashen.

“It’s a better plan than yours,” Cithrin said. “I didn’t put together your network. I can say that without lying, and so I can talk around any hard questions better than you. And if Geder does this, his people will think twice before they come too near to the bank. None of those are advantages you have, and they aren’t ones you can get. These are mine. Your advantages are that more people know your role and are in a position to betray you; you’re Timzinae, and Geder’s decided to hate the Timzinae; and … well? What else? That may be all you have to bring to the table.”

“Cithrin, you must not do this.”

“How long is it going to be before your network collapses? Weeks? Days? I can keep some version of it running for months at least. Maybe more. I can do it better than you can. Forget about me. Forget about the bank. If your work falls in a week, who will help the people a month from now? If you leave and leave now, there will still be help for them. If you stay, you’re condemning them. You’re condemning every person that I could have helped if you had let me.”

Isadau folded the page and put it on her desk as gently as if it might shatter. Or she might. Cithrin waited.

“Reckless without being stupid,” Isadau said.

“Is that a yes?”

“It would work better with both of us present,” Isadau said. “Send your letter. Give me the cover to work. I will stay here with you.”

“No,” Cithrin said. “On one hand, you’re genuinely guilty and I’m not. And on the other, this is my price. You give me the bank. You leave. I help as many people get out from under the occupation as I can, and if the chance comes to do the empire some damage, all the better. But in return, you’re my first client. You and whoever else you pick will leave the city now for Birancour or Herez or Northcoast. I don’t want to know where you’re going. Only that you’re gone, and that I can’t call you back. It’s important that I be able to not lie about that.”

Isadau bent forward slowly, her hands at her belly. She looked as if she were laughing or in pain, but she only rested there a moment, bent half over, her eyes closed and her lips in a smile that looked like pain. When she opened her eyes again, she was herself.

“I had resigned myself to dying, you know,” she said.

“I did,” Cithrin said, and the tears threatened to come back. “It was f*cking annoying.”

“I accept your proposal,” Isadau said. “But not for me. You took the negotiation when you held the lives of the children you could save that I couldn’t.”

“Attacking at the base. You were justifying your plan to yourself because it was selfless,” Cithrin said. “I undermined that by pointing out that it left innocent lives on the table when my plan recovered them. And since you only had one overwhelming argument, it all came down. If you’d wanted to win, you’d have needed to show that the bank would lose less capital if you stayed or that the cost of your leaving was significantly greater than staying here and being caught.”

“Only you’d have had arguments prepared against them.”

“Still do, if you’re tempted,” Cithrin said.

“Imaniel taught you well,” Isadau said.

“So did you.”

Magistra Isadau left the next day, going overland with Jurin, Kani, and almost half the household. They left a few minutes apart so that they might be mistaken for several unrelated groups and to keep within the dictates of the laws against assembly. Isadau was in the last group to go. She wore a simple traveling gown with a split skirt for riding and a hood she had plucked up to hide her face. Astride her little mule, she looked more like a hardland farmer than the voice of the most powerful bank in the world. Cithrin walked beside her to the gate. In the street, four Antean soldiers were laughing and kicking stones down the road like boys. One looked over when the gate opened, but his expression was bored.

“Thank you, Cithrin,” Isadau said. “Please save what you can, but don’t die here. Not for me.”

“I’m in this war to win,” Cithrin said. “If you see Pyk or Komme, tell them what we discussed about putting up a bounty system. I’ll see you again when I see you.”

Isadau urged the little mule on, and Enen closed the gate behind her. Cithrin turned to look at the compound. When she’d come here, it had been a strange, threatening place. Now it was in fact a thousand greater threat to her life, and she didn’t fear it at all. This was her place now. Her word was the word of the bank, and it had the force of gold and Komme Medean behind it.

“Nicely done, ma’am,” Yardem said.

“Thank you. Now let’s go about not regretting it, shall we?”

“Yes, ma’am. There’s the matter of the letter to the Lord Regent.”

“I know. Call for a courier and we’ll send it. But I need to write one other first.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

In Magistra Isadau’s office—Cithrin’s office now—she sat at the desk and gathered her thoughts. The breeze through the windows was chilly, and she kept her cloak on. The flames from the lamp only warmed the air a little. The refugees Isadau had taken in still made music that carried through the afternoon air. The kitchens still filled the world with the scents of baking bread and roasting meat. One might almost imagine it had always been like this, and that it would always be.

She took a clean sheet of paper, a brass-nibbed pen, and a jar of ink. When she wrote, it was directly into the bank’s cipher, as if it were her natural language.

Komme—

I regret to find myself with somewhat awkward news to report. It seems I’ve taken over another of your banks.





Marcus




The fastest route to Camnipol was west to Orsen in the Free Cities, and then following the dragon’s road north through the eastern reaches of the Dry Wastes. The first danger was the Antean army camped before the massive gates of Kiaria. Holding to the south would avoid the soldiery, but the siege was going on too long. The Anteans would be pulling food out of the countryside as quickly as they could, and that meant Kit and Marcus were going to be two travelers in a countryside filled with desperate people. While they had the poisoned sword and Kit’s spiders, neither one would be much good against an unexpected arrow. Then there were the mountains that divided Elassae from the Free Cities. They’d spent more than their fair share of time among mountains in the Keshet, but winter was coming on, and an early snowstorm would also negate all their advantages, though Marcus would sometimes imagine Kit shouting, You shall not snow at the low grey clouds. Those, at least, were the extraordinary dangers. Bandits, hunting cats, snakes, and fevers barely warranted mention.

“It seems to me you’ve been quite cheerful,” Kit said.

“I suppose I am,” Marcus said.

“Not having as many nightmares either.”

“They’ll be back. They always are. But it was good seeing Cithrin and Yardem again.”

“Mmm,” Kit said with an amused smile.

Orsen was the easternmost of the Free Cities, and the best defended. It was built on a high, flat-topped mountain that stood in the center of a plain. Marcus had traveled a fair part of the world and never seen another detail of geography to match the flatness of the landscape interrupted by the massive stone. The mountain was also odd in that its stone was ruddy granite that seemed more in place in Borja or Hallskar. Coming into the valley, the thread of red soil radiating from it showed where centuries of rain and wind had begun to erode the mountain down into the more familiar soil. It seemed to Marcus that something immense and strange had happened here, long ago, and no one knew what it might have been. But there was a dragon’s road and a defensible patch of land, and that was all humanity needed to make itself at home.

Rather than take the time to follow the narrow, switch-backed roads up to the city itself, Marcus and Kit stopped at an inn at the mountain’s foot. The groom, a young and painfully thin man, took their horses. A woman perhaps a decade older than Marcus and still young enough to be vital welcomed them as they entered the dim warmth of the common room. The knot of Antean soldiers at the table nearest the fire looked up at them with flat and empty expressions. Marcus nodded and took a seat not far enough to seem like he was avoiding them, and not so near that his murmurs to Kit could be easily heard.

The lady of the house brought them mugs of good cider and plates of gristly pork with a pepper sauce that kept Marcus from knowing whether the meat had started to turn. He watched the soldiers out of the corner of his eye. The five of them hunched close to each other, talking low. Every few seconds, one or another of them would glance over at Marcus.

No, not at him. At Kit.

“Interesting,” Marcus said.

“What?” Kit asked, drinking his cider and ignoring his meat.

“Our friends at the next table there. I do believe they’re deserters.”

“Really?” Kit said, and began shifting on his bench to glance at them. Marcus put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“Think so,” Marcus said. “And I think they recognize you as looking as if you might be one of the priests. Because ever since we stepped in, they’ve been jumpy as mice that smell a cat. And seeing how they outnumber us more than double, I’m thinking we’re in a position that—”

The Anteans rose in a group, drawing their blades. The benches they’d sat on clattered to the ground as Marcus drew his own blade and put himself between the attackers and Kit. The lady of the house screamed and ran out the door. The chances she’d be back with timely help seemed thin.

“There’s no need for violence,” Kit said, and his voice filled the space. “You can put down your—”

“Shut up, you bastard!” the nearest of the Anteans shouted. “One more word out of you, and I swear we’ll cut you down and burn whatever comes out.”

Five men, Marcus thought, was a damned lot of people. But they hadn’t attacked yet. If anything, they seemed more frightened. He backed up slowly, pushing his table with the backs of his legs as he went, trying to clear a path for the men to leave if they wanted to.

“They followed us,” a dark-skinned one at the back said. “Lani, they followed us.”

“Well, and if they didn’t you just told them my name,” the man at the front said. “And thanks for that.”

“Lani?” Marcus said. “My name’s Wester. We don’t need to—”

The attack was fast and disorganized. Lani jumped forward, his blade swinging high. Marcus blocked and made a low counterstrike by long habit. Lani grunted with pain, falling half a step back and preparing for Marcus to press the advantage, but by then two of the others had stepped to their leader’s side. Marcus could see them preparing to attack in unison. He couldn’t block them both.

Kit’s cider mug came from behind him in a low, fast arc and shattered against the nose of the man on Lani’s right. Marcus thrust at the one on the left, who fell back, cursing.

“I don’t want this,” Marcus said. “We’re not hunting you.”

“We’re not going back!” Lani shouted, and then as if on a signal, all five men turned and bolted for the yard, leaving Marcus and Kit alone in the common room. Marcus moved forward carefully. Retreating to the next room to set up an ambush was an idiot’s plan when you already had five blades to the opponent’s one, but working with the assumption that his enemies weren’t idiots would have had its drawbacks as well. Keeping the blade at the ready, he moved forward step by careful step. The sound of hooves pelting away down the road left him feeling a little more certain, and when he reached the yard, the thin groom’s confused expression and the cloud of dust in the west were enough that Marcus sheathed his blade. Kit’s familiar footsteps came up behind him.

“Well,” Marcus said. “That’s not good.”

“Don’t you think so?” Kit asked. “It seems to me it might be quite a hopeful sign. Men are beginning to abandon the Antean army. And did you hear what they said to me? Cut me and burn whatever comes out? That sounds to me as if some other people within the enemy forces have begun to see that something odd is going on, and they aren’t celebrating it.”

“That’s true,” Marcus said. “It’s not what I meant, though.”

“No?”

“I’m fairly sure they stole our horses.”

“Ah,” Kit said. “That’s not good.”

“Isn’t. You think you might be able to use those uncanny powers of yours to find us some replacements?”

“I assume we can walk up to the city. It might take some time to earn enough to buy horses, but we can try.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of walking up to someone on a nice horse and asking them to let us use it.”

Kit made an uncomfortable kind of grunt and Marcus looked over at him.

“I believe the power—her power—can become a path of corruption. An opportunity, as it were, to lose what is most valuable about ourselves.”

“Yeah. Saving the world here, Kit,” Marcus said. “Let’s keep focus on that.”

The old actor sighed.

“Let me see what I can do.”

Once they’d reached the dragon’s road, they moved as fast as a courier, changing for fresh horses twice a day. The fields, farms, and wild places of Antea spread around them like a vast grey-brown cloak. The trees were shedding their summer green. In the fields they passed, Firstblood farmers rode on mules with whips at their sides while Timzinae men and women harvested the last of the autumn crops—pumpkins and gourds and winter wheat. Whenever they passed a low temple, the banner of the spider goddess flew from its roof. And even with all this for warning, Marcus was surprised when at last they reached Camnipol.

Coming from the south meant that the great city stood on an escarpment above them. They went up the trails to the southern gate with only the massive walls to see. Within them, Camnipol might have been empty for all Marcus could tell. It was only when they passed through the tunnel in the wall and emerged into the wider city that the full extent of the place became clear. All around him, buildings rose two and three and four stories high. The streets were thick with people, Firstblood mostly, but Tralgu and Jasuru and Dartinae faces as well. None of those were what stopped him. There was something he couldn’t quite explain—a grandeur and a weariness and sense of terrible age—that seeped through the city itself. He’d known many cities in his life, and until he walked into Camnipol for the first time, he would have said that he understood what it meant for a city to have a personality; that every gathering place of humanity had its own customs and idiosyncrasies, that the coffee in Northcoast came with honey and in Maccia with cardamom. Camnipol was something else again. Here the personality of the city wasn’t just the contingencies and customs of the people in it. It was something that grew out of the stone, that scented the air. Camnipol was a living thing, and the people in its streets were parts of it the way that skin and ligaments and muscles made up a body.

And what was strangest of all, it wasn’t a secret. It was as obvious as the sun the moment he stepped inside the walls. Kit reined in beside him.

“Your first time in Camnipol, then?”

“They didn’t hire many mercenary companies when I was in the trade,” Marcus said. “I spent more time at little garrisons. God. I’m gawking at the place like a child.”

“Wait until you see the Division,” Kit said. But it wasn’t the great chasm of the Division that caught them up next. When they turned a corner into a wider square, the Kingspire came into view, rising into the sky higher than any human structure should. In the midday sun, it seemed almost to glow. And high up, almost at its top, a vast banner flew.

When he’d been a boy, Marcus had seen a spider’s egg crack open and thousands of tiny animals with delicate pale bodies no larger than a grain of millet spin out thread into the breeze. He’d watched them rise up in the sun, thick as smoke and tiny. And later in the summer, his father had showed him a vast web at the edge of the garden where a massive yellow-and-black beast of a spider had made its home. The thing had been big as a fist, and its web strong enough to catch sparrows. Marcus still remembered the chill of understanding that had come to him. Each one of those tiny grains floating on the wind had gone out into the world and grown into a monstrosity like this one. And like that, each little banner they had seen, dyed whatever red the locals could manage, painted with the eightfold sigil, and hung from the temple’s eave, had been a grain. And the massive cloth that floated in the air over Camnipol was the beast they would grow into.

The grimness in Kit’s expression told Marcus that the old actor understood and was thinking along the same track.

“All right,” Marcus said as they rode across the square to a public stable with the inexplicable sign of an ice-blue mallet over the gate. “What’s the plan, then? Start asking people if they know who’s been sending letters to Carse and wait for someone who tells us no to be lying about it?”

“It sounds inelegant when you put it that way,” Master Kit said, chuckling. “I have spent some time in Camnipol, and I have some ideas where we might begin.”

“Well, you can be the one who’s wise in the ways of the city,” Marcus said. “I’ll be the one that hits whoever needs hitting.”

“That seems a fair division of labor.”

Rather than pay for stabling, Kit sold the horses at a decent profit, though Marcus suspected it was nowhere near what he could have gotten, and they began their walk through the city. A nail maker greeted Kit by name, and they stopped to talk for the better part of an hour. Then a butcher’s stall run by a Jasuru woman with scales more green than bronze and three missing fingers. Then an old man at a tavern who called Kit Looloo for reasons that Marcus never entirely understood. Everyone they met was happy to see Kit, but the stories they told of life in the city were eerie. The Lord Regent, they said, was a brilliant man with powers more subtle than a cunning man’s. Food was growing short, in part because the farms hadn’t worked at capacity since the war with Asterilhold and in part because so much was still being sent to feed the army in Elassae. The cult of the spider goddess was a blessing for the city, and since it had come, everything was going well. The streets weren’t safe after dark. Too many people were hungry. Camnipol had become more violent and dangerous because of the Timzinae and their agents. Twice, Kit’s friends told of a secret ring of Timzinae who’d been stalking the streets at night and stealing away Firstblood women. In one version, they’d been taken to a secret temple under the city and slaughtered as offerings to the dragons. In another, they’d been found in a secret room in the manor house of the traitor Alan Klin, which only served to show that Klin had been as much a tool of the Timzinae as Dawson Kalliam.

It was almost night when they reached the Division. The great chasm ran through the city’s heart like a river. Marcus stood at the center of a span and looked down. The depth of it left him breathless.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. How many bodies would you guess go into that in the course of a year?” Marcus said. Then, “Kit?”

Kit’s face had gone pale. Marcus followed the man’s gaze to the far side of the great canyon. A building four floors high and painted the yellow of egg yolk loomed on the farther side of a common yard. A stable stood off to the south with carts and horses enough to mark the place as a wayhouse and a tavern. Kit began to walk toward it in a drunken stagger, and Marcus followed, confused until he saw what Kit was walking toward.

The cart looked much the same as it had when Marcus and Kit and the others had hauled it as part of the last caravan from Vanai half a decade before. Two of the boards on the stage had been replaced recently, and the new wood stood out brightly from the old. Kit put a trembling hand to it. A tear tracked down his cheek.

“Hey, you old bastard,” a rough voice called from behind them. “Watch whose cart you’re feeling up.”

The woman, thin across the shoulders with dark hair pulled back in a braid, swaggered across the yard. Two men walked behind her. When she reached them, she fell into Master Kit’s arms. The two men wrapped arms around the pair until all four were in a tight knot of affection and humanity. The larger of the men turned his head to Marcus.

“Good to see you too, Captain,” Hornet said.

“Always a pleasure.”

Hornet pulled back an arm, inviting him into the huddle, but Marcus declined with a smile.

“Cary?” Master Kit said, half choked with sobs. “What are you … how did you come back here?”

“You made an assumption there,” the other man, Smit, said. “You see how he made that assumption?”

“I did,” Hornet said, grinning. Cary only looked up at Master Kit with a smile of defiance and pleasure. She looked like a child whose father had come home from a journey of years.

“You’ve been here all this time?” Kit said, disbelief in his voice. “This same yard for … ? How can that be?”

“Cithrin came by with a little side work,” Cary said. “Brought us enough money we could sit tight for a time.”

“Been pretty much playing to dogs and pigeons the last six months, though,” Smit said. “Nothing like being in one place seasons in a row to take the novelty off a production.”

“We’re all still here, though,” Smit said. “Sandr left for about two weeks once, but the girl caught on to him and he reconsidered.”

“Why did you do this?”

“So you could find us when you came back,” Cary said. Her eyelashes were dewy. “Because you were coming back. You couldn’t leave us behind.”

“But I had no way to know that …” Kit said, and then ran out of words.

“You see? That’s the problem with always playing the wise-old-man roles. You start taking them off the stage with you and thinking you’re Sera Serapal with all the secrets of the dragons in your purse and acting like it’s miraculous every time you’re wrong about something. I always knew you’d rejoin us. I only made it easier for you. And,” Cary said before he could object, “I was right.”

Master Kit laughed and spread his arms. “How can I argue against that?” he said. “Thank you. This is the sweetest gift the world has ever given me. Thank you for it.”

Cary nodded once, soberly. “Welcome home,” she said.





Geder




The first group of Anteans to be initiated into the mysteries of the spider goddess stood in the great hall of the new temple. The pearl-white ceiling arched above them all, and fine chains with crystal beads flowed down from the top like dewdrops on a spider’s web. Three walls of the hall were glowing with lamps fashioned from shells that glowed soft gold, but the south was open, and Camnipol stretched out below them. The carts in the streets were no larger than Geder’s thumbnail, the heads of the people as small as ants. It had taken him the better part of an hour just to walk up to the hall, and his thighs ached a little from the effort.

The dozen initiates knelt in two rows of six, their heads bowed. Their robes were simple ceremonial white. For once, Basrahip was the center of attention with Geder sitting at the side. The huge priest stood at the dais with the open sky behind him. A smaller banner with the eightfold sigil hung behind him, and the light coming through the cloth made it seem bright.

“The life you once knew is over,” Basrahip intoned. “The veil of deceit will soon fall from you. In this time, you will be lost and vulnerable, but we, your brothers, will stand at your side. You will hear the truth in our voices, and we will lead you to see the world as it truly is.”

“We accept this gift,” the twelve initiates said as one. They bowed their heads to the floor.

Basrahip lifted his hands and began to chant ancient syllables. Geder felt the terrible urge to cough and swallowed hard to try to keep the sound from interrupting. As he wasn’t an initiate, he wasn’t strictly speaking supposed to be there, but Basrahip had given permission for him to be present for the welcoming. After that, things became private and mysterious, but from what Geder had read that was true of any cult. He didn’t take the exclusion personally, though he did wish Basrahip had been a bit more forthcoming about the details of what the men would be going through. It was only curiosity, though.

Geder’s interest in the theology and practice of the priesthood was real, but it had its limits. The history of the world as the spider goddess knew it was endlessly fascinating, but when he came to asking more practical questions—who would be the best candidate to become a priest, what were the trials the initiates would go through, how long did the process require—it became more like another ceremony in a life that had become thick with them. When he’d asked Basrahip why women didn’t serve as priests of the goddess and the answer had hinted broadly at something to do with menstruation, Geder stopped pursuing the questions.

When the chanting was ended, four of the minor priests came forward with a ceramic cup, offered a drink from it to the first of the initiates, then led him away into the depths of the temple. This they repeated eleven more times, and by the time the last young priest had been taken back to discover whatever secrets there were to discover, Geder was secretly getting bored. When Basrahip came to him to say that the welcoming was done, Geder was happy to hear it.

“My thanks again, Prince Geder. As her power spreads through the land, so will your glory.”

“Good,” Geder said as they walked back toward the stairways that led down into the more commonly used levels of the Kingspire. “Because as far as I can tell, my glory is stuck fast in the north of Elassae.”

“The stronghold of the enemy,” Basrahip said, frowning. It was rare to see him look so disturbed. It occured to Geder, not for the first time, that the rise of the spider goddess had, in a sense, come at the worst possible time. True, without the plot against Aster and King Simeon, he wouldn’t have had reason to spend a summer tracking rumors of the Righteous Servant back to the hidden temple, but it seemed that since then, Antea had been drawn into one battle after another. Basrahip would say that it was the lies of the world pained by the arrival of truth, but Geder could still wish that it had happened at a gentler moment in history.

“I’m sure we’ll take it before long,” Geder said, starting down the stairs. His personal guard waited at the foot, not being quite so deeply in the good graces of the goddess as Geder was.

Basrahip shook his massive head. Somewhere far in the distance above them, someone started screaming, but Basrahip took no notice of it. Geder put it down as being part of the ceremony.

“The battle against the lies of the world must be fought. Long or brief, costly or quick, it does not matter. She will prevail, and we with her.”

“It’s just that they won’t come to parley,” Geder said. “Ternigan says he’s tried calling it eight times now, and they won’t come down. And the walls at Kiaria are too high for speaking trumpets to reach the men at the top.”

Basrahip paused, and Geder went down a couple more steps before he realized it and turned back and up at him.

“Is there something you are asking me, Prince Geder?”

“Well,” Geder said. “I don’t want to … I mean. I was only wondering if there were any other gifts that the goddess had that might help with this particular problem?”

“There is one other,” Basrahip said. “Patience.”

Geder nodded. The screaming from the temple was getting louder, and there were more voices now. Basrahip looked back toward them, then turned to Geder and sat on the stair.

“We will be tested many times. The world will resist her truth because the world is a thing of lies. But she cannot be beaten and all who stand against her will be ground down. The world is entering into her, and we are her bearers. You and I.”

A particularly high and sustained shriek caught Geder’s attention. Basrahip chuckled and put a hand on Geder’s shoulder and pointed up the stairway with a gesture of his chin.

“Them as well,” he said. “All of us are her creatures. And those who are not will be, or they will be erased from all places under the sky.”

“But it’s going to take patience.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that after Nus fell and Inentai, I thought …” He waved the thought away. “I’ve kept you long enough, though. Take care of your new initiates, and let me know if there’s anything more I can do to help.”

“I will, Prince Geder,” Basrahip said, then rose and ascended again. At the bottom of the stair, a massive bronze door had been cast in the image of a huge lion. Geder walked through it, and two priests closed it behind him. The thick metal rang with a sense of finality and the sounds of human voices went silent. Geder sighed and began the long descent to his own rooms. He was beginning to regret putting the temple at the top of the spire. It was wonderful for the symbolism and security, but it was such a long walk.

Another decision he was beginning to regret was having the reports from the expeditions brought directly to him. When he’d given the order, he’d thought it would be interesting. Diverting. He’d read book-length essays about adventurers before, and as near as he could recall he’d expected the letters from the field to be similar. And also that this way, he would have the feeling of being part of it. An adventurer himself. In practice, it felt like reading any other report on the small functions of the empire.

But he’d asked to do it, and to turn it away now would make him seem unreliable and petty. So when the aged servant delivered his personal correspondence in a silvered box, it was stuffed with things he didn’t actually want to read.

“Will there be anything more, Lord Regent?” the old man asked, his bow a model of obsequiousness that bent him almost double.

“No,” Geder said. Then, “Yes, bring me some food. And coffee.”

“Yes, my lord,” the man said. With a sigh, Geder pulled out the first letter. Emmun Siu was in the back country of Borja. He had lost one of his men when they came to an obscure village near the foot of a strange mountain and the man had fallen in love with a local girl, married her, and refused to continue with the expedition. He had found three different sites where there had once been buildings, but thus far there had been nothing of interest apart from a particularly well-preserved wall with an image that appeared to be a pod of the Drowned circling a complex device. In Lyoneia, Korl Essian was apparently being very careful in how he went about buying provisions for his two teams, and his descriptions of them filled twenty pages on both sides. Dar Cinlama, who had started this whole mess in the first place, was interviewing Haaverkin along the coast of Hallskar concerning their different social orders, which in this case appeared to be something between extended family and gentleman’s club. Cinlama went into some detail about the different rituals and their significance—one order would set small stones to match the positions of the stars, another enacted a complex play involving eels and a man in a bear’s skin that appeared to be a retelling of an ancient war between Haaverkin and Jasuru and also very possibly the origin of the Penny-Penny stories that had spread through the whole world by now. They were the most interesting reports, and they were from the man Geder liked least of all the explorers. He read the letter through to the end, though, and took what pleasure he could from it.

Then there were the other letters. Most were disposed of by his staff, but invitations from the highest families were still presented to him directly out of courtesy to the nobles. The end of the season was almost upon them, and with it one last paroxysm of fetes and balls, feasts and teas. There were five marriages he’d been asked to speak at. The last wedding he’d been to had been for Jorey Kalliam and Sabiha Skestinin.

Another letter lay at the bottom of the box. It was written on decent paper, but not the thick near-board of the others. It wasn’t a hand he recognized. He tore off the thread it was sewn with, and unfolded it. All the air went out of the room.

Tell Aster I miss him, and you, and that terrible cat-piss stinking hole we lived in. Who would ever have guessed those would be the good old days?

Your friend, Cithrin bel Sarcour





It wasn’t a long letter, and he read it ten times over. All he could think was that she had touched this page. Her hand had been against it. She had made this fold in the paper. He held it to his face and smelled it, looking for some trace of her scent. Cithrin bel Sarcour. Tell Aster I miss him. And you.

The servant came back, a plate of delicately spiced eggs in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

“Get me a courier,” Geder said. “Get me the fastest courier we have.”

“Shall I call for pigeons and a cunning man as well?”

“All of them. Everyone,” Geder shouted. “I need word to reach Fallon Broot tonight.”

He canceled all of his plans, rescheduled the meetings. And the word went out to Suddapal by every means he had. The Medean bank in Suddapal was not to be interfered with in any way. Its agents were to have total freedom of the city to conduct any business they saw fit. They were not to be questioned or detained. If there was any concern regarding the activities of agents of the bank, they were to be referred to Cithrin bel Sarcour at the bank, and her judgment on the matter was to be considered final. This by order of the Lord Regent himself.

When it was done, he took Cithrin’s letter in his pocket, called for his private carriage, and rode for Lord Skestinin’s little manor house as if chaos itself were after him.

Jorey seemed surprised to see him, which was fair. He hadn’t seen anywhere near as much of Jorey as he’d meant to when the court season started. Things had just piled one upon another until all the days were full. Sabiha made her greetings in the drawing room, and then left the two of them alone. Geder gave the letter to Jorey with trembling hands and Jorey read it soberly. When he was done, he read it again, then, frowning, handed it back.

“What do you think I should do?” Geder asked.

“Well, I suppose that depends on the situation in Suddapal. If you think that the bank—”

“Not about that,” Geder said. “About writing back to her. About … maintaining relations. With her.”

Jorey leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He looked older than he had just a couple of years before. He looked like a man grown, and Geder still felt like a boy. At least in matters like this.

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking me, my lord.”

“My lord,” Geder said. “It’s only us here. You don’t have to do that. But Cithrin is a singular woman. She’s smart and she’s beautiful and she’s powerful in her way. And once I’m not Lord Regent anymore, I’m only going to be Baron Ebbingbaugh, and even then, I don’t know that she’d care to be a baroness. And of course there would be a scandal because she isn’t of the noble class, and Aster would have to induct someone with Cinnae blood—”

“You’re asking,” Jorey said, “how to woo her?”

“I am,” Geder said. “I don’t know. You’re my only friend who’s ever won a woman. How did you make Sabiha love you?”

Jorey blew out a long breath and sat back in his chair. His eyes were wide and he shook his head like a man trying to wake from a dream. “Geder, you never fail to surprise me. I … I don’t think what happened with me and Sabiha will help you. The situation was so different from what you’re saying.”

“I don’t need you to write letters for me,” Geder said, with a laugh meant to lighten the mood. “It’s just I’ve never done this before. And I’m afraid … I’m afraid she’ll laugh at me. Isn’t that silly? Here I am, the most powerful man in the world, for the time being, and I am so desperately afraid she’ll think I’m funny.”

“You aren’t,” Jorey said. “You’re a thousand different things, but funny isn’t one.”

“Thank you,” Geder said. “What … what can you tell me? How do I write to her? What do I say?”

A servant’s footsteps came down the corridor, paused, and then trotted away quickly. Sabiha was keeping the world at bay. Geder felt a little warmth in his heart for her, just for that.

“What did I do? I talked to her. And I listened to her. I don’t know, Geder. It wasn’t a campaign of war. I didn’t draw battle plans. I saw her at some function. I don’t even recall what, and I thought she was handsome and smart and had twice the soul and spine of anyone else in the room. I wanted to know her better, and I asked for the pleasure of her company.”

“And then it just happened,” Geder said.

“Well, no. There was a time she thought I was just looking to get her skirts up for a few minutes and then never speak to her again, and that took some getting past. And I wasn’t always my best self then either. But we came to understand each other. Trust each other.” Jorey raised his hands, helpless.

“And the other?” Geder asked.

“The other?”

Geder looked down. His skin felt like it was burning in the sun. He wanted nothing in the world more than to leave now. Walk away and pretend the conversation had never taken place. Except he needed to know, and there was no one else he could ask. When he spoke, his voice was low and steeped in shame.

“How do you tell a woman that you … want her?”

“Oh,” Jorey said. And then, “God.”

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just … I don’t know. I’m vaguely grateful and amazed every time Sabiha comes to my bed, and we’re married. How do you tell her? Honestly? Gently. With humor or soberly. Howl it at the moon. I don’t know.”

Relief flooded Geder’s heart like water on a fire.

“I thought I was the only one,” he said.

“No,” Jorey said. “I think men have been trying to find the way to say that for all the generations there have ever been, and the fact that there are generations at all means we must get it right sometimes.”

“Thank you, Jorey,” Geder said. “I should get back to the Kingspire, I think. I have a letter I need to write.”

“Yes,” Jorey said. Just as Geder reached the door, he spoke again. “Good luck, my lord.”

The carriage drove through the night, wheels clattering against cobbles, horseshoes striking stone. Geder leaned against the thin wood and looked out through the window.

“Cithrin,” he said under his breath, “I think men have tried for all the generations there have been to say what I am trying to say now, and that there are generations means they got it right sometimes.”

He could do this. And if he stumbled and got some things wrong, it would be all right. She would understand. It was Cithrin. He closed his eyes and remembered her.