The Tyrant's Law

Clara




Well, it’s mostly the bits the butcher usually throws away, but there’s enough salt in it, anyway,” Aly said, putting the soup bowl in front of Clara.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Clara said, picking up her spoon.

“I’m sure it’s not,” the other woman said, laughing. “But the company makes it better, eh?”

Aly lived in a small apartment on the fifth story of a narrow building. Her table was small enough that it was cramped even just with the two of them. The weak winter sunlight pressed in through dingy curtains and made the place seem warm and cozy, even though it was in fact almost as cold as the street.

With the court gone from Camnipol and the winter turning the black-cobbled streets to grey, Clara had given more time to the friends she’d made at the Prisoner’s Span. Ostin Soukar, the odd little man who kept forcing his way into homes that weren’t his, and being caught by the magistrates’ men because he’d fallen asleep there. Ishia Man, who was sweet as honey sober but fought like a bull when he got drunk. Aly Koutinen and her son Mihal. They were criminals, and some of them violent. There were many, many people she had met and spoken with whom she’d not choose to be in a room alone with, but taken as a whole, they were not particularly better or worse than the noblemen who debated at the Great Bear and fought in the dueling yards.

“Did you hear about Sasin?” Aly said.

“No,” Clara said, sipping at the weak, watery soup. “And I don’t dare to ask what’s happened this time.”

“Tried to take the begging cup from that one-legged Tralgu sets up by the northern gate. You know the one? Well, the one-legged bastard hopped up on his one foot and beat poor Sasin blue with his cane. Now they’re both in the pens with all those roach babies.”

“Well, warmer than the cages, at least,” Clara said.

“Don’t know,” Aly said. “I’d rather take my chances with the wind than live around Timzinae. I think it’s wrong to put them in gaols with real people. Animals live in a menagerie, and they’re all just a kind of dragon that got made short and stupid. I say put ’em where they belong. Bread?”

“Please,” Clara said. “And … wait, where’s my bag? Ah, here. I’ve brought my own contribution to the meal.”

Aly’s eyes brightened as Clara pulled the little jar from her bag.

“No. Really? You’ve got butter?”

“Just a little bit,” Clara said. “But enough to share. Here you go.”

Aly grinned and began spreading the soft cream on the dark crust of bread.

“You know,” Clara said, “the Timzinae weren’t any part of what Dawson did.”

“Yeah?” Aly said. “Well, not what I’ve heard, but I suppose you’d be in a better place to know. Still, there’s no question that they’ve been conspiring against the throne. If not your man, then the others. And really, dear, you might not have known it. They had their little hooks into Lord Ternigan, after all, and who would have thought that?”

“I suppose,” Clara said, taking back the butter jar.

After their little meal, Aly walked down the street with her and east, toward the Division. Vincen was huddled by a smithy along with a dozen other people, watching the smith hammering away at his anvil, drawn by the warmth of the forge. Aly took her leave with a half-mocking curtsey, and Clara kissed her cheek. When she put her hand on Vincen’s elbow, he turned and smiled.

“Anything interesting?” he asked.

“Not today,” she said. “It’s astonishing how little palace intrigue changes when one takes away the palace.”

The news of Lord Ternigan’s death had come first from a cunning man in Camnipol who shared dreams with one on campaign in Kiaria. At first, of course, no one believed it. The dreams of cunning men were swift, but they weren’t particularly reliable. Then the birds came with little notes that confirmed it. Lord Ternigan had been plotting against the Lord Regent and Prince Aster, and only Geder Palliako’s brilliance and uncanny ability to root out corruption and purify the court had saved the kingdom from another battle on its own soil.

Within hours of the birds’ arrival, guardsmen were closing Ternigan’s mansion in the city. Granted, there was less to do with the season over and Ternigan off on campaign before that, but what there was—tables, beds, silver—was hauled in carts to the Kingspire. Before the night was through, vandals had broken into the abandoned house and put it to the torch. By morning, Lord Ternigan had gone from the hero of the nation to a loathed traitor and puppet of the Timzinae.

Seeing it play out that way fascinated Clara. She had seen the story of Geder Palliako take form. From his unmasking of Feldin Maas and King Lechan, to Dawson’s rebellion, and now to a second Lord Marshal’s betrayal. That the facts in each case were utterly dissimilar didn’t matter; it was the story that remained the same. A dark conspiracy threatened the kingdom, and Geder Palliako, blessed by the goddess, brought it to light. And while she had expected that there would be a growing sense of fear in the city when Lords Ternigan and Mecilli fell, she’d been wrong on several counts.

First, Mecilli’s name hadn’t been mentioned, and his house and honor remained intact. But beyond that, and more interesting, was the sense of comfort that the news seemed to bring. As if by repeating the form of last year’s betrayals, they had become familiar, and the story’s end always left the throne safer and more secure, the dangers lessened. There was even, she thought, a sense of anticipation. A looking ahead to the next traitor, the next betrayal, and the next act of redeeming violence. In one way, she thought the general willingness to embrace stories with that shape and pattern might ease her work of driving Geder’s best advisors away from him. But in another, she found herself complicit in the growing legend of Geder Palliako.

“Clara?” Vincen said.

“I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “My mind wandering.”

“Shall I take you home?”

Clara smiled and tugged on his arm. They walked together through the streets arm in arm. It was a small indiscretion. Even the last stragglers of the court were gone by now, and any who were there on winter business would likely be as pleased not to be seen as she would. Among her new acquaintances, an older woman with a younger lover was hardly cause for comment. Crows called from the eaves and sparrows darted down into the depths of the Division. She had the sudden memory of Dawson looking at Geder in his black leather cloak and the priest in his brown robes. Crows and sparrows, he’d called them.

As they walked, Clara began planning her next letter to Carse. She could, of course, give a great deal of information about what had happened to Lord Ternigan, but she wasn’t certain that would serve her well. Perhaps it would suffice if she could simply repeat what she’d heard on the streets along with an additional fact or two that was private to her. She could also report on the levels of food in Camnipol, and the miserable state of things in Palliako’s prisons.

She felt Vincen’s steps falter before she knew what was wrong. He drew his arm free from hers and stepped to her side. She followed his gaze. There before the boarding house, a grand carriage sat with footmen and drivers at the ready. The device on the side announced House Skestinin. Clara felt the air leave her body. Something had happened to Jorey. Or Sabiha and the new babe. She walked faster, not running. Not quite.

Jorey sat in the common room like an emerald on dirt. His jacket was a pure white with silver buttons and his cloak was black leather. When she stepped through the doorway, he rose, smiling.

“Jorey?” she said, fighting a bit for air. “What’s happened? Where’s Sabiha?”

“Sabiha’s with her father by now,” her son said, stepping forward to take her hands. “And I’ve come to take you home.”

The first taste of fear came to her. Vincen came in behind her, taking his place as a servant, and Abatha behind him, her mouth pinched and distrustful. Clara felt her face grow pale.

“Home? I don’t understand. I am home. I live here.”

“Not anymore. It would cause a scandal for the Lord Marshal’s mother to live in a rented room.”

Clara sat down slowly, her head light. Jorey sat on the bench at her side, taking her hand in his own.

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ve heard what happened with Lord Ternigan,” Jorey said. “A messenger bird caught us at Sevenpol. After all that’s happened, Geder decided he wanted someone he trusts as Lord Marshal. And apparently he’s been waiting for the moment to help me redeem myself with the court.”

“You? After all that Dawson did?”

Jorey’s smile lost some of its brightness.

“I repudiated my father in front of the court,” Jorey said. “And Geder … considers me his friend. Apparently that’s enough. He’s given me the army. I’m going to take control of the siege at Kiaria. And what’s more, I’m bringing Vicarian with me. Minster Basrahip has given permission for him to come and study under the priests in the field.”

“My God,” Clara said, pressing her fingers to her lips. “This can’t … this can’t be right.”

“It’s a gift, Mother,” Jorey said. “It’s everything we were hoping for.”

She felt as though her heart were dying. A little hole had opened in her chest, and everything was flowing out through it like water draining from a basin. I don’t want to go. I’m happy here. I can’t be the woman I was before. Don’t go. Don’t do this.

And then, Get a hold of yourself.

She smiled and lifted her chin. Jorey wrapped his hand tightly around hers.

“The last time you went to war with Geder Palliako, it ended badly,” she said. “Are you certain this is what you want?”

Jorey kissed her hand. His smile was gone now, and the beautiful jacket and cloak seemed more like a costume than the clothes of the Lord Marshal of Antea.

“It doesn’t matter what I want, Mother. It’s what I worked for, and it’s what I have to do,” he said. “Can you understand that?”

In the doorway, Vincen Coe stood with his eyes downcast, his expression empty. The nights of sleeping in his arms were over. The mornings waking up beside him. In Lord Skestinin’s house, there would be no more walking arm in arm. He would call her my lady again, and not Clara. The injustice of it was exquisite.

It’s what I worked for, and it’s what I have to do. She had raised him in her image after all.

“I understand,” Clara said. “Let me gather my things.”

Lord Skestinin’s manor had been closed for the winter, and setting a house in order wasn’t a simple task. When Clara stepped down from the carriage, she could already hear the voices leaking out to the street. Inside, the dining room was still draped in dustcloth, and the pale halls were damp from having only just been scrubbed. Three maids were turning down her new room for her. A widow’s room with beautiful view of the winter-dead gardens and a narrow bed. She sat on it as she might have on the creaking frame that she’d become used to. The mattress was so soft, she felt as though she were sinking into it. As if it were devouring her.

“Will there be anything else, my lady?”

Vincen stood in the doorway, and his face looked grey as stone. His hair was pulled back and he stood stiff and straight. He would have rooms in the servants’ quarters now. A bunk and maybe a small stove. A box for his things. I didn’t choose this, she thought. Forgive me.

“Not at the moment, Vincen,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Always, my lady,” he said, and the tone in his voice made one of the maids look up in surprise. So not even that much was permitted. Clara watched him walk away. She waited for the space of two breaths, then rose, pretended to brush dust from her skirts, and strode out to the corridor as if she owned the house and everything in it. Vincen was walking slowly, his hands clasped behind him.

“Coe?” she said. “Might I have a word with you?”

He turned as if stung and stood there silently. She raised her eyebrows.

“C-certainly,” he said.

“Excellent. This way, please.”

She walked toward the gardens, but instead of opening the iron and glass gate that led into the yard, she turned left into the gardener’s alcove. As she’d suspected, it was empty.

“Close the door, please,” she said.

“My lady …”

“Stop that, Vincen. Stop it now.”

He hesitated. There was fury in his eyes.

“Clara,” he said.

“Much better. Now close the door.”

“It will ruin you,” he said. “I will ruin you. When you were disgraced, it was different. You were like us. But you’re rising again, and if we’re—” He stopped, and began again, his voice hushed. “If we’re seen alone together, it will destroy you.”

“I have been destroyed,” she said. “It didn’t kill me.”

“It will hurt your sons. Your daughters. Your standing in court. I won’t risk you. I can’t do that.”

“Do you really think I would be the first woman in court to have an affair?”

Vincen closed. She saw it happen.

“I’m sure many women in places of power have had affairs with servants,” he said. And there it was. The gulf she could not cross. He was a servant again, and she was a woman of standing.

“You said you would follow me anywhere,” she said. “Perhaps you meant anywhere but back.”

“I will go find my quarters, m’lady. With your permission.”

She stepped over to him, reached past him, and pushed the door closed. His mouth was hard and unresponsive at first. But only at first.

“I have not changed,” she said. “I am the same woman I was this morning. It’s only circumstances.”

“I know, Clara,” he said. “And I’m the same man. It’s just … it’s just that I’m having a terrible day.”

“I am too. But it won’t be the last day there is.”

He kissed her again, and there was a real hunger in it this time. She put her arms around his shoulders and pulled him close. They stood there for a long moment and then stepped back from each other.

“Find your rooms,” she said, “and then explore this house from the basement to the roof. Know it as well as you would a hunting grounds. Learn everyone’s name and their place and, as best you can, their schedules. I will do the same. I don’t know how we can make this work, but we will.”

“And your letters to Carse?”

“Those too,” she said. “Though it seems I won’t be trying to alienate Geder from his new Lord Marshal. Which is a pity as it went so well last time.”

A distant voice caught her. A man’s voice calling Mother!

“Vicarian’s come,” she said, opening the door again and pushing Vincen out before her. “Go. Now. I will find you later tonight.”

She listened to Vincen’s footsteps fade and turned to look at the ghostly reflection of herself in the windows of the gate. The woman who looked back seemed almost unfamiliar. She smoothed her hair.

“Well, then,” she said, and the woman in the glass looked back at her with a gentle smirk. She turned back to the main part of the house, slipping again into the guise of noblewoman and baroness, and followed her boy’s voice to the main part of the house. She found Jorey and Vicarian standing in the front hall grinning at each other. Vicarian’s robes were the brown of the spider priests, and his face looked thinner than when she’d seen him last, but also oddly bright. She had the sense that if she touched him, he would feel fevered.

“Mother,” Vicarian said, catching sight of her.

“No, stay there,” she said. “Let me look at you.”

Vicarian laughed and took a pose. The initiation hadn’t changed him so much, then. She came forward and embraced him, and there was no strange heat, no sense that he had changed. It felt good having her boy back in her arms. Two of her boys.

“So,” she said. “You’ve studied the cult of the spider goddess. Has she made you pious at last?”

“You know,” Vicarian said, taking her arms in a way uncomfortably similar to Vincen, “I think it actually may have.”

He led Clara down the corridor toward the drawing room. The servants scurried around them like mice.

“A pious priest,” Jorey said. “That’s a miracle to begin with.”

“No,” Vicarian said, his voice becoming serious. “No, really. There was nothing I learned in any of the studying I did before this that compares. The goddess isn’t just a set of stories we’ve gathered up and decided to guide our lives by. She’s real.”

“I would have said thinking God was real was obligatory for a priest,” Clara said, stepping into the room. The dust covers had been removed and a fire set in the grate. Vicarian shook his head.

“You would, wouldn’t you? But the seminary isn’t like that. We talk and we read and we pray, but it’s corrupt. It’s all empty and corrupt, because you only have to say that you believe. With the goddess, it’s not like that at all. It’s … hard sometimes. But she opened the world for me.”

Clara smiled and nodded.

I’ve lost him too, she thought.





Geder




Until he was set to travel across Elassae with three hundred sword-and-bows as his personal guard, Geder hadn’t understood how exhausted his men had become. They pulled themselves up in the morning, thin-faced and ash-skinned. They broke down camp, loaded the carts, and moved across the fields and hills where no dragon’s road led. Even the mounted men seemed to sag down in the saddles. They looked to Geder like the spirits of the dead that were supposed to ride with his armies. The short days and cold weather meant stopping to make camp when it hardly seemed past midday, and then long nights in his tent. Geder was torn between the tugging impatience to be with Cithrin in Suddapal and a horrified sympathy for the men, brought to this sad state by Ternigan’s mismanagement.

“Do you think he meant this to happen?” he asked Basrahip one night after they’d finished a meal of chicken and rice. Peasant food, but more than the soldiers had.

“I do not know, Prince Geder,” Basrahip said. “And he is beyond all asking now.”

The leather walls of the tent popped and boomed in the wind. Outside, there were no trees, but a forest of stumps. Everything had been harvested for the fires of the army months before. The farms stripped, the animals slaughtered, and the countryside left bare. Even the low brown grass of winter seemed dead beyond reclaiming. It looked to Geder like the empty plates left after a feast. A world that had been eaten. He couldn’t imagine how it would be coaxed to bloom again in spring. The burned farmhouses would sow no seeds, the unturned fields wouldn’t raise up grain or fruit. If there had been cattle or sheep, they were dead now, or else spirited underneath the mountain at Kiaria. The war had left wounds on the body of the land that would take years to heal, and even then there would be scars. Geder found himself wanting badly to be away.

Basrahip sucked thoughtfully on the bones of the birds, stripping the last slivers of flesh from them. His plate was a pile of pink sticks in a jumble.

“I was thinking,” Geder said. “It might be wiser to go on ahead. We’re almost to Suddapal. If we took a dozen of the strongest men and rode fast, we’d be on the outskirts of the city in two days at most.”

“If you would like,” Basrahip said.

“But do you think it would be safe?”

Basrahip turned his calm gaze on Geder and smiled.

“It will not matter if we fall now. Even if we do, others will come and carry her banner. The will of the goddess is alive in the world. You are her chosen and I am her basrahip. And even we are—” He paused, looking around him. He picked up a thin, rubbery bone. “Even we are as this before her.”

“Yes,” Geder said. “I don’t actually find that as reassuring as you might expect.”

Basrahip laughed as if Geder had made a joke.

That night, Geder sat up, unable to sleep. The only sounds were the wind and the moaning of his suffering men. He’d read reports of winter campaigns, and they had all sounded unpleasant, frankly miserable, but they hadn’t prepared him for this. Sitting at his camp desk with a small lantern, he watched his breath ghosting. He didn’t like to think of it, but perhaps Ternigan’s treachery was only partly to blame. Almost all the men of fighting age had spent most of a year in Asterilhold before they went to Sarakal, and now Elassae. Even with the will and power of the goddess working for them, there were limits to how much work a body could do. It was clear now that Ternigan, whether through incompetence or malice, had done the army terrible damage. There was a part of Geder that wanted to send them all home, to let them rest. Only that would leave the heart of the Timzinae conspiracy still safely in their stronghold.

But perhaps there would be a way to send some home, at least. If they reduced the number of men in the field to only enough to keep the forces trapped in the stronghold from escaping rather than trying to assault the inner doors again, for instance. And there were more priests now, so that if the Timzinae decided at some point to accept parley—

When he heard the first shout, he thought it was only some guardsman, drunk and overly merry. Then another came. And another. The night was alive with voices. He rose from his desk, his heart fluttering in his chest. The unmistakable sounds of weapons came through his tent walls. He grabbed his sword and ran out more from fear than courage.

Outside the tent, the camp was in chaos. To his left, down a gentle slope, the tents of his army were being knocked askew. He saw his own men flailing desperately at the dark bodies of Timzinae. To his right, a half dozen enemy soldiers were by the makeshift corral. The gate was knocked down, and they were whipping the beasts out into the night. His personal guard were all around his tent in a circle, their blades at the ready.

“What are you doing?” Geder shouted at them. “We’re being attacked! Go help them!”

Someone screamed from the encampment, but Geder couldn’t tell who or where. The pounding hooves of the escaping horses was growing louder. His guard didn’t move.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Geder screamed. “Don’t just stand there! We’re being attacked.”

The riders came out of the darkness. Three men on horseback, barreling into the rough formation of his guard, swinging soot-black blades. Geder lifted his blade and danced away.

“That’s him,” one of the riders shouted. “The fat one. That’s Palliako.”

“To me!” Geder shrieked. “Assassins! To me!”

His guardsmen outnumbered the riders four to one, but the mounted men had the advantage of height and power. Geder kept backing away into the barren lands. There was nothing to use for cover, no stand of trees or deep-cut ditch to hide in. His lungs burned with fear and cold. He could see a group of his sword-and-bows running toward him, and he tried to get to them and the safety of their weapons, but it was too far. He heard the pounding hoofbeats coming. He turned, lifting his blade with a cry of despair. The great black beast sped toward him, the rider standing high in his stirrups, a sword in his upraised hand that seemed to blot out the stars.

The impact came from the side and sent Geder tumbling out of the path of the charge. In the moonlight, the brown robe looked like a paler shade of night. The priest stood before the attacker with no time to so much as dodge.

“Basrahip!” Geder screamed, realizing as he did that it wasn’t the high priest, but one of the new initiates. The blade came down, taking the new priest in the jaw and spinning his body as he fell. Blood spattered horse and rider, and the swordsman leaped from his saddle toward Geder. The moonlight shone on tight bronze scales.

A Jasuru. Geder felt a stab of confusion and outrage. Why would a Jasuru want to hurt him? He’d only made war on Timzinae. He fumbled for his sword.

The Jasuru stopped and clutched at his eye. Behind them, the horse he had been riding began to scream and kick. Geder’s sword-and-bows arrived at last, pressing themselves between Geder and his attacker, but the Jasuru had dropped his sword and started clawing at his eyes. He couldn’t be certain, but Geder thought there was blood on the man’s fingers. The black horse screamed again, bucked, and ran madly away into the night.

“Stand away,” Basrahip said. “Do not approach. The hand of the goddess is upon him now.”

“F*ck,” one of the soldiers at Geder’s side said. “Can she do that?”

The Jasuru fell to his knees and began to scream low in his throat. He thrashed, clawing at his arms and neck. Geder looked around. His personal guard had pulled one of the other riders from the saddle and were savaging him. The other seemed to have fled. Basrahip stood at Geder’s side, the one remaining initiate behind him. The Jasuru screamed again. Basrahip raised his hands and walked toward the screaming man.

“You feel the hand of the goddess, sinner,” Basrahip said. “Your days of lies are ended. Say now, who sent you?”

“Get them off of me!” the Jasuru howled. “Please God, get them out of me!”

“You have no hope but me,” Basrahip said. “Listen to my voice. You have no hope but me. Who sent you?”

The Jasuru collapsed to the ground, and Geder thought for a moment that he’d died. Then, weakly, his voice came.

“Callon. Callon Cane.”

Basrahip turned back. His eyes met Geder’s, and Geder shrugged. The name was nothing to him.

“Who is Callon Cane?”

“For God’s sake, kill me. Kill me.”

“I am your only hope of peace. Who is Callon Cane?”

“He’s some rich bastard in Herez. Put a price on the Lord Regent’s head. Me and Siph and Lachor found a mess of angry Timzinae ready to help us if we made the try. Thought if we hit fast—Oh God. They’re in me. They’re under my skin! Kill me! Please, by all that’s holy, kill me!”

“No,” Basrahip said. “That will not happen. The hand of the goddess is upon you now.”

The Jasuru screamed, his body arching until only his toes and the top of his head were touching the ground. Basrahip turned back to Geder.

“You must not approach him, Prince Geder. You and your men should return to your places. There is no danger now.”

Geder felt a wash of relief, but he didn’t sheathe his sword.

“What happened to him?”

“The hand of the goddess is upon him,” Basrahip said. “He is our brother now. We will care for him as we would any initiate to her truth.”

Geder’s jaw dropped.

“Are you serious? Basrahip, he just tried to kill me.”

“The goddess is upon him. He will not rebel again.” The Jasuru screamed again and kept on screaming, barely pausing to catch his breath. Basrahip put a wide hand on Geder’s shoulder. “The lies and sin are being burned out of him. It will take time, but he will become holy or he will die.”

“You’re sure about this?” Geder asked.

“I am certain.”

“Well. All right,” Geder said. “But this won’t make it easier to sleep.”

Suddapal was a strangely diffuse city. It had no wall, no defenses. Not even a solid marker to say where the city began. Shacks and low buildings became a bit more frequent. Paths crossed the wider track that Geder and his men had been following. And mile by mile Suddapal grew up around them. The spot where Fallon Broot and his men waited to greet him wasn’t particularly different from any other, but they made it the edge of Suddapal by their presence. Geder gave the order to sound the halt and climbed down from his carriage.

Fallon Broot looked older than the months since he’d left with the invading army could explain. His face seemed pinched, his skin an unhealthy color. Geder felt a rush of sympathy for him. Broot was a decent man, and well-meaning, but possibly not suited for the burdens of authority.

“Lord Regent,” Broot said, dropping from his saddle into a deep bow. “Welcome to your city.”

Geder grinned. “You don’t need to bow to me, Broot. We’ve known each other long enough we can afford a little informality, don’t you think?”

Broot’s smile was sickly. “Good of you, my lord.”

“I don’t want any feasts,” Geder said, setting off deeper into the city at a walk. Broot followed, and Geder’s personal guard behind them. “I’m not here to take control of anything. It’s more private business. You understand.”

“Of course, Lord Regent,” Broot said.

“All going well in the city, I hope?”

“Some troubles,” Broot said. “Nothing desperate so far. We’ve … ah. Well, we’ve found some evidence of a group that was spiriting Timzinae away.”

“What do you mean away?”

“Hide them on ships. Sneak them into caravans. Away.”

That wasn’t good. It was almost certain that any of the people central to the conspiracy against him would have been the first to escape. They were, after all, the ones with the most power. The most connections. They’d been able to corrupt Lord Ternigan and Dawson Kalliam. These were a dangerous people.

They reached a corner, and Geder paused, letting Broot show him the way, only instead the man stopped, laced his hands behind his back, and faced Geder like he was sizing up his executioner. Between the gravity of his demeanor and his lush mustache, Geder couldn’t help thinking he looked vaguely comedic.

“Have you broken the conspiracy?” Geder asked.

“In a manner of speaking. We’ve reason to believe it’s not operating any longer.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We’ve had several people confess to the minister you sent us that they were brought into a group for this purpose by Isadau rol Ennanamet, voice of the Medean bank in Suddapal. And a Timzinae.”

“Hmm,” Geder said. “What does Cithrin say about it?”

“Cithrin bel Sarcour, you mean? She doesn’t say much, my lord. She fled the city last night along with all her people.”

Geder smiled and shook his head. Broot had spoken, but something must have distracted Geder. He hadn’t heard the words.

“Well, where’s the bank? We can go there now.”

“She’s not there, my lord. She and her guards and what was left of her staff got on a boat last night. They’re gone.”

Something cold was happening in Geder’s chest. Some kind of thickening. He hoped he wasn’t getting sick.

“No,” he said. “That didn’t happen. She knew I was coming. I wrote to her.”

“That’s as may be. But what I’m telling you is the woman left the city. She and the old magistra before her were shuffling Timzinae out of the city right under our noses. And with your grant of immunity,” Broot said, an angry buzz coming into his voice, “there wasn’t anything we could do to stop her.”

The meaning sank in, and the coldness in Geder’s chest detonated. For a moment, he couldn’t hear. Then he was standing in the street, his fist hurting badly, and Fallon Broot was on the ground with blood flowing down his mustache and shocked expression.

“Take me to her house,” Geder said. “Do it now.”

The compound of the Medean bank stood deserted. The doors swung open and closed in the wind. Straw from the stable littered the yard, caught up in tiny whirlwinds. Geder walked through the abandoned halls and corridors, tears running down his cheeks. He’d ordered Broot and his guards to wait in the street. He didn’t want anyone to see him.

She was gone. He’d come all this way for her, and she was gone. He’d told her how he felt for her, and she was gone. He loved her, and when he came to her to feed that love, to make it something that would have lived for the ages, she’d betrayed him and left. She hadn’t even had the kindness to tell him to his face.

He found a small bedroom with a mattress and pillow still in place. He lay down and curled up into himself the way an animal might to guard a wound. He didn’t feel sad or angry. He didn’t feel anything. He was empty in a way he’d never felt before. Cithrin had emptied him. When he began to sob, it was a distant sensation, but with every breath it grew closer and harder. When the grief finally came, it was like nothing he’d felt before except once. When he’d been a boy and his mother had died, it had felt just like this. His body shuddered and tensed. His breastbone ached like someone had punched him, and tears flowed down his cheeks like a rainstorm. He was sure they could hear him in the street, sure that they knew, and he wanted to stop, but he couldn’t. He’d started, and now he was too far gone to stop. He raged and he wept and he kicked the bed to pieces and ripped the pillow apart with his teeth and then collapsed on the floor, beaten and humiliated.

It was almost night when he drew the shell of his body up, blew his nose on a scrap of the ruined mattress, and did what he could to clean his face. His eyes felt like someone had rubbed sand in them, and his chest ached to the touch. His limbs felt heavy, like he was waking from too deep a sleep.

Broot and his men were still where he’d left them, standing in the street. Basrahip had joined them as well. Geder walked out to them and shrugged.

“You were right,” he said. “She’s gone.”

Broot’s nose was swollen and bruised. When he spoke, he sounded congested. “I’m sorry, my lord.”

“Not your fault,” Geder said. “This was my mistake. I … misunderstood.”

Basrahip put his arm around Geder’s shoulder, and Geder leaned into the priest.

“I’ll call your carriage,” Broot said, and a few minutes later Geder was rattling down the rough, wide roads past squares and marketplaces, all of them blighted and emptied by the winter cold. He thought he would never feel warm again, and he didn’t care. Suddapal spun past his eyes without being seen. When the carriage stopped, he was mildly surprised to find himself at the protector’s mansion. A footman helped him down. Basrahip helped him up the stairs.

“Jorey,” Geder said. “I need to get a message to Jorey.”

“Yes, Prince Geder.”

“We have to take the army back from Kiaria. Just leave enough to keep them from getting out, take back the rest.”

“As you say,” Basrahip agreed.

“I need them. I need all of them. And the priests. I need them too. I need everyone.”

“They are yours,” Basrahip said. “You are blessed of the goddess, and her will can bring you all that you wish.”

“Good,” Geder said.

Basrahip paused in the doorway.

“Tell me,” he said. “What do you want?”

When Geder spoke, his voice was rough and sharp as a serrated blade.

“I want to find Cithrin.”





Marcus




In the aftermath of the storm, the sky was as wide, calm, and clear as a highwayman’s smile, and Marcus put as much faith in it. With every step along the rocky shore, he was aware of the capricious power of the world around him. The clouds in the sky might be nothing or they might be the vanguard of another storm bent on wiping them all from the face of the world. And while they might be able to find their way back to the lodge house of Order Murro, they also might not. Or the Haaverkin might decide not to extend hospitality. Or, for that matter, the earth might open up and swallow them all.

Truth was, Marcus was feeling more than a little jumpy.

The stone shore stretched out before and behind them. Frozen waves cracked and shattered. Spears of ice lay white and silver in the sunlight. The air was thick with the scents of salt and cold. Even wrapped in half a dozen layers, he started shivering if they stopped for too long. It was the third day of their search along this stretch of shore, and the tide was beginning to turn already. If they didn’t come across something soon, it would mean another day’s waiting. Another chance for bad weather or angry Haaverkin or any of a thousand complications and dangers Marcus hadn’t thought of yet. The poisoned sword was slung across his back. It wasn’t useful against all threats, but it might help with some.

“Hey!” Sandr called. “Look at this!”

Marcus turned, his senses sharpening and ready for danger. Sandr stood near the high-water mark where the stones became land. He held what looked like a long, crooked stick, bent once in the middle and once at the end.

“What is it?” Cary called.

“I think it’s a crab’s leg,” Sandr replied. “Big, isn’t it? Catch one of these, it would be a good meal.”

“It would or you,” Cary said.

Sandr shrugged and dropped it back where it had been. Marcus walked forward. The stones grated against each other under his feet. He swept his gaze back and forth across the ground in front of him, moving slowly, his eyes a little unfocused, waiting for some detail to draw his attention. So far, Sandr was winning the prize for most interesting discovery.

“You’re sure about this, Kit?”

“No,” Kit said. “I’m sure that old Kirot thought there was something out here, but he may have been wrong.”

Marcus stepped across a gap between two larger stones, wary of the thin coating of ice that made them slick and treacherous.

“Would have been nice if we had a damn clue what we were looking for,” he said.

“Not a giant, not a sword,” Kit said. “Not a weapon, not a medicine, and no sort of armor.”

“How about a rock?” Marcus said. “You think any of these might be a magic rock?”

“Possibly,” Kit said. “But probably not.”

The storm had lasted three days, and so for three days and nights they’d sat in the great, smoky lodge house, trading stories with the Haaverkin and playing songs. Cary and Smit had danced a number in way that caught the attention of the Antean force and left Marcus wondering whether there was something more going on between them than he’d guessed, but the Haaverkin didn’t seem impressed by it. People who weren’t thick with insulating fat and heavily tattooed didn’t have much erotic charge for this crowd.

When at last the weather broke, Dar Cinlama and his men packed their things, offered to travel with them one last time, and then headed south for Borja before they froze in place. Marcus had to admit that their plan had an appeal. Dar Cinlama was powerfully impressed with himself, but he told a good tale and he didn’t drink more than his share of the beer. It was enough to win him some respect as far as Marcus was concerned, even with who he was working for.

“How do you think it’s going out there?” Marcus asked.

“Out there?”

“In the world. Where there are people.”

“I don’t know,” Kit said. “At a guess, poorly.”

“That was my thought too.” He stepped forward. A flash of yellow in one of the small tidepools caught his attention, and he leaned close. A tiny starfish clung to a stone. Probably not the source of earth-shattering magic. “Do you think Cithrin and Yardem are all right?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s why they call it a guess.”

Kit smiled. “Well, then, since I know that they are both clever and competent, I would guess that they are fine, whatever’s happened.”

“But you don’t know that.”

“No.”

They moved on, Marcus sweeping his eyes over the ground, then moving forward. Sweeping, and moving forward. Almost half an hour later, he spoke again.

“I keep thinking about the war. About how it’s just like all the other wars I’ve seen, only it isn’t.”

“I’m not certain what you mean,” Kit said, and squatted down.

“Find something?”

The actor reached into one of the salt puddles. When he drew out his hand, he had a thin stem of hollow bone.

“Pipe stem,” Kit said. “It might been carried in by the waves.”

“Or it might have been dropped by someone walking this same path. I’m going to call that a good sign.”

“But you’d been talking about war.”

“Right. I’ve seen a lot of wars fought for a lot of reasons. Pride. Fear. Power. The right to use land. Trying to keep someone else from using land. Even just the bull-blind love of winning. And I look at what Antea’s been doing, and I see all of that. But the other thing—and I’ve always seen this no matter who’s fighting and whatever they’re fighting for—is once you’re in a war, you want out of it. You want to win or you want to sue for peace or you want to get away from the mad bastards who are stabbing at you. Even the ones that love winning don’t love the war. And that’s not something I see.”

“Ah. I understand. You’re thinking of this as if Antea were at war.”

The stone under Marcus’s foot shifted and he danced back. “There’s some evidence that it is.”

“Consider that Antea is waging war the way that a horse leads a cavalry charge. It seems to me it is being ridden by men like myself. Perhaps Antea will rise and spread across the world with the goddess at the reins. Or it may founder and be abandoned for another champion or some number of others. When you look at Antea, you see the enemy. I see the first among victims.”

“Odd kind of victim when you get all the power from it.”

“I don’t fear this high priest as much as I do his first enemy within the temple,” Kit said.

“How do you figure that?”

“We were pure when we were in one village in the depth of the Keshet. Every day, we heard the high priest’s voice. Now there are temples that are weeks to travel between. New temples being built. New initiates, I would assume. If not yet, then certainly soon. And the new initiates will bring their own experiences. Their own prejudices.”

“I thought your goddess ate their minds.”

Kit laughed. “Think of who you’re talking with, Marcus. I am not the only apostate in history. I see no reason to think I’m the last. But the next one perhaps will understand some piece of doctrine differently. Instead of finding doubt, he may honestly and sincerely believe something that other priests in other places don’t, and none of them will have a single voice to keep them from drifting apart. What the spiders do—let’s not call it the goddess—is erase the ability of good men to question. They eat doubt. And when there are enough temples far enough flung from each other, and their understandings drift apart, it seems to me there will be a war of zealots and fanatics that will churn the world in blood. And I don’t see how Antea or anyplace else will be immune.”

“I’m not having a great upwelling of optimism about this, Kit.”

“I think we are living in dark times,” Kit said. “As dangerous, I would guess, as any since the fall of the dragons. But the world is unpredictable, and I take a great deal of comfort from that.”

“Glad someone does,” Marcus said.

The other actors—Mikel and Cary, Hornet and Smit, Sandr and Cary and Charlit Soon—were all spread along the shore from the ice-choked waterline to the edge of the land. All of them walked slowly and carefully. And by and large, they found nothing. The waves pressed slowly closer, driving them together in a smaller and smaller space. If whatever it was they were looking for was out near the low-water mark, they would walk by it and never know better. If it was lost among the stones or the caves and outcroppings near the shore, they had a better chance, and ignorance made one strategy as good as the next.

“I thought it was interesting that Dar Cinlama didn’t know what he was looking for,” Marcus said. “Do you think your old friends do?”

“I don’t know, but I would suspect that they have some idea, even if one that’s warped by time and misunderstanding.”

“You don’t think they just made it all up?”

Kit looked pained.

“Sorry,” Marcus said. “Didn’t mean to step on a sore toe twice.”

“I believe that you’re right that something drove them back to the temple, and that fear of it became a prison of sorts, until something happened that gave them a kind of permission to return. A story that made coming back into the world a better thing than hiding.”

“But what that was?”

“I can’t guess.”

Near the shoreline, Smit stepped out from a small cave and put his hands to his mouth, shouting to be heard over the roar and crackle of the surf. “Think I found something.”

Marcus turned and started making his way over, Kit following close behind. If it was another false find, it was still getting close enough to sundown that they’d need to decide whether to end the day’s search or press on. The other players gathered around as well, until all of them were in a semicircle by a cliff face at the shore. Marcus had the feeling of a group meeting being called, which wasn’t quite what he’d been hoping for.

“What am I looking at, Smit?” Marcus said. “Apart from another hole in the ground, I mean.”

“I went down a bit. The stone changes down there. Gets smooth. Like someone worked it.”

Marcus eyed the darkness and sighed.

“Well, it’s not as though we had a better plan,” he said.

It took the better part of an hour to send Mikel and Hornet back to the cart and have them return with lanterns. Marcus went first. The first thing that surprised him was how deep they had to go in the cave before the walls changed. Either Smit had night vision like a Southling or he was braver than Marcus had given him credit for. And the second thing that surprised him was when they did. The roughness of the tunnel was smoothed, and distinct walls appeared. A slightly vaulted ceiling. A floor that would have been smooth and even if it hadn’t been for generations of debris building up on it.

“Kit?” Marcus said, scraping the wall with his thumbnail. “Does that look like dragon’s jade to you?”

“It does, a bit, yes,” Kit said.

“Don’t suppose you’re at all curious what’s at the end of this.”

“In point of fact, I am a bit,” Kit said.

They moved forward slowly. Cautiously. Marcus kept his torch high and behind him to keep the flames from spoiling his vision. After almost a hundred yards, the passage began to open and widen, and Marcus and Kit stepped out together into a great chamber. A massive black shape lay curled before them. Its snout was tucked under a massive wing like a bird in cold weather. A profound awe made Marcus drop to one knee. Awe and soul-pressing fear.

The animal was magnificent. Even covered by dust and lichen, the scales seemed almost to radiate darkness. Their torchlight fell into it the way it did into the great bowl of the night sky.

“Kit?” Marcus said in a whisper.

“Yes?”

“That’s not a statue, is it.”

“I don’t believe it is.”

The chamber the dragon slept in was massive. Images and writing covered the walls. None of it was anything Marcus could make sense of, but it was familiar all the same. The way a child knew to back away from a precipice, Marcus knew those images. They had been burned into instinct that had lasted for all of human history, and he felt himself responding to them now. Red-black streaks showed where iron sconces had been in the walls, the metal rotting away over time until there was nothing of them left but a stain.

“Follow me,” Marcus said, and moved off slowly, walking the perimeter of the chamber. On the farther side, there was a small alcove with a cistern in it that looked as though it had been collecting mold and mist for centuries at the least. When they had completed their circuit of the room, Marcus sat as still as he could manage, watching the great ribcage until he was certain that the slow rise and fall wasn’t the product of his imagination. It was breathing. Marcus felt himself trembling.

“Well,” Marcus said, his voice low.

“Yes.”

“If you have any thoughts you’d like to share about this, I’d be open to hearing them.”

“When I was at the temple,” Kit said, “we were taught that the dragons were an abomination. That the goddess preceded everything, including time and the world, and that the dragons, in their pride, had tried to claim the world for themselves, taking it from her. The fall of the dragons was supposed to have been the last great struggle between the goddess and the dragons.”

“So the one thing we can be sure of is that whatever happened, it wasn’t that.”

“Yes,” Kit said, “and still, there may be some grain of truth to it. The dragons, at least, were real.”

“Some evidence for that, yes.”

“And there was a fall. And the priests of the spider goddess disliked the dragons. Possibly they even feared them.”

“So maybe that glorious bastard over there is the natural enemy of the spiders.”

“Probably.”

“Or maybe it’s more dangerous than they are, and our best plan would be to back quietly out the way we came in and never come back here.”

“That’s also possible,” Kit said. “But whatever we do, it would be best to do it before the tide comes in. I think the water will block our way out.”

“I’d rather that didn’t happen,” Marcus agreed. “All right, then. So the choice is we try to wake that thing up or we leave now and never come back.’

“Yes.”

“And do you see us walking away from this?”

Kit was silent for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice was thick with regret and dread.

“Honestly? No. I don’t.”

“Me neither,” Marcus said, and rose to his feet. The dragon shifted in its sleep, a slight rocking back and forth that made the whole chamber tremble a little bit. “Stay here, Kit. This is about to get interesting.”

Slowly, Marcus approached the dragon. Drawing closer made the scale of the thing clear. It was as tall as three men standing on each other’s shoulders, and when it uncurled, it might be as long at ten laid end to end. Marcus doubted it would be able to open its wings in the chamber. And now that he thought of it, he wasn’t entirely sure how the great bastard had gotten in here in the first place. Or how it would get out.

The light of his torch glowed back at him from the dusty scales as he walked to where the massive head was tucked under its wing. Once, the books said, the dragons had been the masters of the world, and all of humanity had been their slaves. And he was about to try to wake one up.

“I hope this is a good idea,” he muttered, then cleared his throat. “Um. Excuse me.”

The dragon didn’t stir. Marcus went closer, put his hand on the thing’s head. Its skull was the size of a horse, and there was a strange beauty to it that Marcus felt himself drawn to by instinct. When he touched the scales, they flexed under his fingers.

“Excuse me. You need to wake up now.”

He looked over his shoulder at Kit. The old actor held up his hands. It was fair enough. Kit hadn’t woken dragons before either. Marcus sighed, then took a deep breath and shouted.

“Hey! Nap time’s over! Wake the hell up!” He turned back toward Kit. “I don’t think this is going to be that simple. Do you think maybe there’s some sort of ritual or … I don’t know. A magic drum or something?”

Kit’s eyes went wide and he took an involuntary step back. Marcus felt his own blood turn cold. Slowly, he turned back to the dragon. It hadn’t moved, but the one vast eye was open. Marcus saw himself reflected in the vast amber depths of it. He wanted nothing more than to run. There was no sense of threat from the vast eye. No malice. Only a danger as deep and profound as religion.

The worst it can do is kill me, Marcus told himself, and there was more comfort in the thought than he’d expected.

“It’s time to wake up,” he said again.

The dragon’s expression shifted from annoyance to confusion with a powerful eloquence. It was as if Marcus had known dragons all his life and become intimate with the small cues of their emotions. The intimacy of it was unearned, and it disturbed Marcus to his bones.

“You need to wake up now.”

The noise was low, like the rumbling of distant thunder. The dragon’s vast body began to shift, and Marcus danced back, his hand reaching reflexively for his sword.

The dragon drew its head from under its vast wing and turned the near-physical weight of its attention on them both. When it spoke, its voice was perfectly clear and deeper than mountains. It was like hearing a great king’s orchestra strike a single complex chord, only the sound had a meaning besides its terrible beauty.

“Drakkis?” it said.