The Tyrant's Law

Marcus




No one knew how long the dragons had ruled the world, only that they had. The greatest empire that could be imagined had spanned the seas and lands of mankind and for all anyone knew more besides. The skill and rigor of the dragons had bent the nature of the world to their desires. The thirteen races of humanity and the dragon’s roads were two of their great works that had survived, but many others had passed away. Great cities had floated in the distant air, competing with the clouds for space in the sky. Poems and chants had been composed by inhuman minds with such complexity and beauty that a lifetime’s study still might not do them justice. Devices had been built that set the stars themselves in order and laid plain the books of fate.

Or perhaps they hadn’t. A lot of history could be lost in a generation. One of Marcus’s grandfathers had been a minor noble of Northcoast who’d kept his grandmother as mistress. The other had been a sailor who’d made his money fishing cod and avoiding port taxes. All he knew of them was a dozen or so stories he’d heard as a boy and likely misremembered.

The ages since the fall of the Dragon Empire had swallowed that a thousand thousand times over and left only legends and stories, roads and ruins.

What little there was, though, still had the power to awe.

Larger than the palaces of Northcoast or Birancour, the vast stronghold spread out before them, sinking down into the flesh of the earth level upon terraced level. Ivy clung to the spiral towers and magnificent stone arches. A few brave trees had forced their way through seams in the great blocks of dragon’s jade, their bark bellying over the pavement and their roots spidering out in the vain search for deeper soil. Black water pooled in the low places, thick with slime. Bright-plumed parrots fluttered and complained from the trees and the towers, and tiny scarlet frogs leapt from leaf to broad leaf with a ticking sound like dry twigs breaking. Stepping out from the jungle canopy for the first time in days, Marcus stared up at an open sky the color of sapphires.

“My God,” Kit said.

“Wouldn’t think it’d be so easy to hide something that big,” Marcus said. “Any thoughts as to what we do from here?”

“I expect that reliquary itself will be in the deepest part of the ruins, guarded and barred.”

“The intent being to keep out people like us.”

“Yes.”

“Wish I’d brought a pry bar,” Marcus said. “We should find shelter for the night. This isn’t our territory, and those very hospitable Southlings who told us none of this existed won’t be pleased we proved them wrong.”

“Can you imagine it, Captain?” Master Kit asked. “This was a citadel of the dragons. These walls have stood here since before the war. Humanity might well have been feral when these stones were set.”

“Or they might have caught us all as slaves to set them. Careful. Snake.”

“What?” Kit said. Then, “Oh.” He moved to the side, and the black-and-silver serpent slid away down the steps toward the dark pools below.

By the time they found a chamber that met Marcus’s approval, the sapphire sky had darkened to indigo, the parrots had all vanished, and the evening’s swarm of midges filled the air. An early bat, its wings fluttering wildly, spun through the air above the ruins, eating its fill of the insects. The smells of decay and still water filled the air. Marcus sat with his back against a cool stone wall while Kit measured out the evening meal of nuts and the last strips of dried meat from a foxlike animal Marcus had trapped three days before. His clothes were little more than rags, and he’d had to put another hole in his belt to keep it from slipping off his hips.

The journey had thinned Kit as well. The actor’s handsome face was craggy now, and his beard looked brittle and dull. Marcus took the food with a nod of thanks and Kit lowered himself to sit across the narrow chamber. Likely it had been storage, back when it had been anything. The door had stood a bit ajar for centuries before Marcus was born, its hinges rusted away to black streaks. The ceiling was low enough that any attackers would have to come in hunched and vulnerable, and whatever animal had left its spoor in the corners hadn’t been back recently. It was as good as home.

“Start searching at first light?” Kit asked.

“That suits. And we’ll need to find something to eat. Freshwater. Ancient hoard of the dragons won’t do us much good if we starve to death.”

“I suppose not,” Kit said.

“I’ll take first watch.”

Kit nodded in the growing gloom. Even if they’d found something dry enough to burn, they couldn’t afford the luxury of a fire. Any Southling patrol would see the light of it from seven miles off, jungle or no. Kit yawned and settled down against the far wall. Marcus took his sword in its rotting sheath and laid it across his knees, preparing for the long hours of darkness. Outside their little shelter, something ticked, ticked again, and began a whirring insectile song. Another joined in, and soon the ruins were alive with the sound of inhuman life. The walls and terraces that the dragons had designed were a vast city for beetles and midges, frogs and snakes. And two men whose minds and comprehension of the world was likely nearer to the midges than the dragons. Marcus let himself wonder what the builders of his little shelter would have thought if they’d known, however many centuries ago, that in the vast span of time their work would fall this far. Despair, maybe, that all their efforts were doomed. Or pride that what they did would leave a mark on the world that, though it might change its shape and meaning, would not be erased.

And nothing could ever really boast permanence. Every castle fell in time. Every empire. Every man. Even these walls would eventually be buried by the jungle, though the slow accretion of fallen leaves and grit might take ten times longer than had already passed. There was a kind of consolation in the thought that nothing lasts forever.

“Do you think they’re all right?” Kit asked. His voice was gentle, already half asleep. “Cary and Sandr and the rest?”

“Probably,” he said, and Kit chuckled.

“I keep thinking of things I want to say to them. Two days ago, I thought of a simple, clear explanation for Charlit Soon about why the king’s role in The Song of Love and Salt has to be played as a Haaverkin or Jasuru. When I realized I couldn’t tell her, it was disappointing.”

Marcus grunted.

“And Cithrin. I assume your own thoughts are with her.”

“And Yardem,” Marcus said.

“What are you going to do, when it’s over? Will you go back to them?”

The last time he’d seen Cithrin bel Sarcour, she’d been leaving for Carse with two of his guardsmen and not him. The last word he’d had of her, she’d been lost in the chaos of a political coup in Camnipol. He knew all too well what happened to rich, unarmed women during political uprisings. He tapped a thumb on the body of his blade.

“Once we’re done, I’ll find them,” Marcus said, “and if Cithrin’s hurt or dead and I could have stopped it, I’ll kill Yardem.”

Kit shifted in the gloom.

“You would do that?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Well, I might. Yardem’s good, though, and he’s got reach on me, but one of us will be leaving on a plank.”

“And if Cithrin’s well?”

“Likely the same.”

The chirring song of insect wings was the only sound for a moment. When Kit spoke again, he sounded more awake.

“You’re not having the nightmares any longer, are you? About your wife and daughter. What happened before doesn’t seem to be troubling you.”

“They’ll come back,” he said, meaning the dreams of burning. “They always do. Right now, I’ve got more than enough nightmare just getting up in the morning.”

“I think Yardem was right about you and the shape of your soul.”

“Then he knew the consequences of locking me in that dovecote,” Marcus said. “You should sleep, Kit. We have a lot of ground to cover and no particular idea what we’re looking for. Tomorrow is going to be long.”

For five days, they searched the ruins, waking with the first light and stopping when the darkness forced them to. Even in the torrential rains that came with midday, Marcus pressed on, pulling back growth of vines and scraping through layers of moss and lichen that had grown hard and thick as armor. Twice they found nests of broad gold-and-red beetles that defended against his intrustion by rising in the air, thick as smoke, forcing their bodies into their noses and mouths as if to choke them. Once, something paced them for a long hour, though Marcus never saw more of it than a massive shadow, low against the ground.

The ruins were vast and complex, not a palace buried in green. Halls led into the body of the earth. Doorways lurked, hidden by the grown of the jungle. Towers stood, their windows empty and open as the eye sockets of sun-bleached skulls.

They knew they were coming close when they found the bodies.

The first bones had been a massive beast once, its jaw as long as Marcus’s arm. Three rows of teeth, serrated edges still as sharp as knives, littered the paving stones, a scattering of pale bone on lichen black. Marcus knelt. Thin bits of gristle still clung in the depths of the joints, but the time that had cleaned away the flesh had replaced it with moss. He brushed it off with his fingers.

“What was it, do you think?” Kit asked.

“Big. You see the notches in the bone here and right there? That’s where spears took it.”

“A guardian, perhaps,” Kit said. “A sentry set to watch over the reliquary for the ages.”

Marcus rubbed the back of his hand against his chin.

“Would have been on the old side,” he said.

“Assian Bey was said to be an engineer for the dragon Asteril,” Kit said. “There are tales of the dragons setting guards who could sleep away years until they were disturbed.”

“A trap with teeth, then,” Marcus said. “Well, the good news is that someone’s killed it for us.”

“And the bad?”

Marcus didn’t answer.

The chambers beneath the ruins were dim as night, and the improvised torches of tree branch and moss smoked badly. They walked carefully through a hall larger than the grandest ballroom in Northcoast. The walls were complex with carved designs, and high above them, almost obscured by the shadows, the ceiling seemed to have claws and teeth. It might have been carved stone or stalactites built from the soft fungus of the invading jungle, but it gave Marcus the sense of stepping into the maw of a vast animal. He walked slowly, watching for traps and dangers, and so it was almost an hour before they found the next bones.

The ten men had died quickly and lay where they had fallen. If there had been survivors, they hadn’t buried their dead or raised cairns. A vast bronze door stood before them, its seals broken. Marcus and Kit stepped carefully among the dead.

“Dartinae,” Marcus said. “One over here that might have been a Cinnae or a very young Firstblood, but most of these were Dartinae.”

“I suspect we’ve found where Akad Silas died. I think I would feel better if I knew what had killed him.”

“Poison’s my bet,” Marcus said, poking his head through the opening of the great bronze door and peering into the inky darkness beyond. “Fill the chamber here with bad air, and when someone opens it, all the swordsmanship in the world won’t help you.”

“I am beginning to think Assian Bey might perhaps have been a bit overfond of his own cleverness,” Kit said sourly.

“It is a vice. Come on. This is as far as they got. Whatever comes next is our problem.”

Despite everything they had seen, despite the warnings of bone and flesh, Marcus very nearly didn’t see the third guardian of the reliquary before it was too late.

The corridor had narrowed, the ceiling dropping down so low that Marcus could touch it with his fingertips. The statues of dragons clung to the walls, shifting evilly in the dim torchlight. Kit walked beside him, humming tunelessly under his breath. Ahead of them, something glittered in the darkness. And then it moved. Marcus froze, and half a heartbeat later, Kit did as well. Something like massive eyes blinked in the gloom ahead and a low, reedy sound like the breath of a vast animal filled the narrow space. Another beast, Marcus thought, only that seemed wrong. Repeating the same sort of trap didn’t seem the thing an overly clever engineer in the last days of the Dragon Empire would do. And anyone who’d come this far would be expecting another trap, would be watching for it. Marcus’s blood went cold.

It was a distraction.

He whirled, drawing his sword by instinct, as the massive toothed blade descended from above. He pushed Kit forward and down with the back of his arm, and swung in a desperate parry. The ancient steel met the new and snapped. The evil blades drove in toward Marcus’s belly, rusted spikes scraping his sides. The impact knocked the breath out of him but the mechanism would not let him fall. For a moment, Marcus stood in the darkness, uncertain whether he’d just been impaled, waiting for the shock to fade and the pain to come in. He looked down at his belly.

The spike that would have ended him, weakened by centuries of rust, had been broken by his parry. The stump had cut into his skin, but not badly. If he hadn’t seen it, if he hadn’t turned in the breath that he had, the rusted teeth would have punched into the small of his back deep enough to kill.

“Are you all right?” Kit asked. He sounded awed.

Marcus considered his answers, and settled on, “Yeah.” He pulled himself out from between the spikes and walked toward the false beast with a confidence born of relief and fear. The eyes were half spheres of gold, the reedy breath a vast bellows.

Beyond it, a long hallway stretched, thick with webs and the scent of rot. They moved through it slowly, alert for the next trap. At the end stood two vast bronze doors with a massive complex of locks, fitted with dozens of crystal vials that still had thick, noxious-looking fluids in them. Turn the wrong wheel, it seemed to say, and release the poison. It took several hours to see that it was a trick, and that the doors could be opened by lifting the bar.

And beyond them, like the boasting display of a king, lay the treasures of the Dragon Empire. A huge tome with letters in worked bronze on its side that Marcus couldn’t read. A silver case, the metal tarnished to black, filled with stoppered vials fashioned from dragon’s jade. A roll of copper hung like a tapestry with a fine lines etched into it showing what appeared to be a massive ship floating in the sky and doing battle with a vast dragon. An urn of orange-and-gold enamel with the image of a weeping Jasuru woman painted in its side. There was no gold, no gems or jewelry, but it hardly mattered. Anything there would have called forth wealth enough that Marcus need never work again for any king of any nation. If they didn’t just kill him and take it.

Marcus walked slowly through the reliquary’s deepest chamber, his torch held high above him. A mirror in the back caught the light, but its reflection was some other room in a sunlit tower. A wide throne of black wood and yellow silk sat in a corner, and Marcus’s skin crawled just being near it.

“Here,” Kit said. “It’s here.”

Kit stood before a simple wooden stand that held a single blade. It was longer than Marcus preferred, designed perhaps for a Tralgu or Yemmu. It would have been unworkable for a Cinnae. The scabbard was green, but deeper and more complex than enameling would explain, like the emerald carapace of a vast beetle.

“Strike a man with it, and he will die,” Kit said. “Strike a man like me with it, and all the spiders within him will die as well. We had blades like it at the temple to purify the unclean.”

“Meaning kill people like you.”

“Meaning that, yes.”

“And stick it in a goddess’s belly, and we save the world,” Marcus said, reaching for it.

Kit stopped him, the old actor’s hand on his wrist.

“What’s the matter?”

“This is an evil thing. An evil object.”

“Come a long way for second thoughts now,” Marcus said.

“I know that. I agree with you. But I brought you here, and I feel wrong letting you take this without being certain that you know what you are sacrificing. What I am asking of you … I think I am asking a great deal of you, Marcus. And I consider you my friend.”

Marcus tilted his head. Kit’s face was somber. The grit and dirt of weeks had ground itself into the man’s pores and the greasy wires of his beard and hair. Kit swallowed.

“This weapon is poison,” Kit said. “I believe that the cause we carry it in is just, but that will not protect you. It is not only death to those whose skin it cuts; it holds a deeper violence within it. If you carry it—just that, carry it and nothing more—the poison will still affect you. In time, you will grow ill from it, and eventually, inevitably, it will kill you.”

“It’s a sword, Kit,” Marcus said, lifting the green scabbard from its place. “They’re all like that.”





Cithrin




The market houses of Suddapal sat at the edges of the wide, grassy commons. Pillars of black wood carved with delicate whorls and spirals marked the corners of every room, and wall hangings of rich green felt hung where Cithrin would have expected tapestries to be. Where the Grand Market of Porte Oliva assigned stalls to merchants and let the buyers move between them, everything here was in flux. Halfway through a negotiation, some third party might intrude with a better price or an accusation of poor quality, and this was true whether the issue hinged on the price of a single apple or a shipping contract worth half the value of the city. Nor was that the only aspect of the market that left Cithrin feeling at sea.

Her youth had been spent in the Free Cities where Firstblood and Timzinae had lived and worked in very nearly equal proportion. If asked, she would have said that she was perfectly comfortable with the race, with any of the thirteen races of humanity. The market houses of Suddapal showed her that that was not perfectly true. Walking through rooms and corridors filled almost exclusively with the dark-scaled bodies and twice-lidded eyes, she felt conspicuous. She was aware of her slight frame and unscaled, pale skin in a way she had never been before, and she disliked the feeling. And while no one was cruel to her, she could not help noticing that she was watched, considered, and commented upon. By stepping on a boat in Porte Oliva and stepping out in Suddapal she had become an oddity, and she didn’t know how to play the role.

Adding to that was the depth of family connection and history that seemed to inform every negotiation. In her first hour, Cithrin heard reference made to the marriages of cousins three generations dead, to favors done by one man’s uncle for another’s niece, to shelter given by one family to another during the flood of a river whose course had shifted twice in the century since the kindness was offered. The same care and analysis that concerned the noble houses of Birancour or Herez applied to everyone here, and Cithrin despaired of ever mastering it.

Though Cithrin didn’t complain, Magistra Isadau seemed to recognize her discomfort. The older woman introduced Cithrin as the voice of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, gave Cithrin what context she expected her to need before they entered a negotiation, and explained any obscurities that came in once the discussions were over. Isadau never spoke harshly, never condescended, never reminded Cithrin through word or act that one of them was the master here and the other an apprentice in all but name. She didn’t need to. The resentment that Cithrin felt came from being aware of her failings already.

“Oh no,” Magistra Isadau said, smiling as if she were sad and shaking her head. “We can’t accept last year’s terms again.”

The man across the table from them chuckled. Even seated, he was half a head taller than Isadau. The chitinous scales on his neck and face had begun to grey and crack with age. Cithrin sipped at her tea and smiled politely.

“You don’t do yourself any favors gouging us when we’re low, Isadau,” he said.

“You aren’t low. You’re at war.”

The man’s name was Kilik rol Keston, and Cithrin knew from her review of the books that he traded spice and olives from Elassae north to Borja, returning with worked leather and medicines. The bank had insured his caravans every year for the past decade and paid out the contract only once. It was the sort of information she would have used to make her determination in Porte Oliva or that Magister Imaniel would have considered in Vanai. It appeared to be only a part of Magistra Isadau’s calculations.

“This isn’t a war,” Kilik said, “it’s the world teaching Antea a lesson about the price of overreach. If anything, it makes my work safer. The traditional families aren’t going to be arguing over who gets to levy taxes every half mile of the eastern passage.”

“You’re hauling food and medicine past refugees,” Isadau said. “Next you’ll be storing your seed corn in a sparrow’s nest.”

A thick man passing by their table clapped a wide hand on Kilik’s shoulder.

“Why do you even talk to this woman?” the new man asked. “She’s only going to rob you.”

“Misplaced loyalty,” Kilik said sourly.

“Oh, did you want the contract, Samish?” Isadau asked, smiling brightly. Then to Kilik, “You know Samish has been offering very good terms on his insurance contracts.”

“Better than yours, that’s truth,” Samish said, sitting down at Kilik’s side. Cithrin felt her gut go tight. Anywhere she had ever been, the intrusion would have been unforgivable. Here, it meant nothing. “What’s this hag offering?”

“Half recompense for six on the hundred,” Kilik said, and Samish’s eyebrows rose like birds taking wing.

“You’re joking,” he said, and Cithrin thought he sounded genuinely surprised.

“Half recompense on expected sale,” Isadau said, “not on cost.”

Samish’s expression changed to a sly smile and he wagged a scolding finger at Kilik. “You’re being tricky with me, brother. But because our fathers fought together, I’ll give you five and a half on the hundred.”

Kilik looked at Isadau and pointed toward Samish as if to say, You see how much better I can do? Cithrin felt a rush of anger, but Isadau laughed.

“My terms don’t change,” she said, rising from the table. Cithrin sipped down the last of her tea too quickly and got a mouthful of soaked leaf for her trouble. When she stood Isadau took her elbow like they were close confidants and steered her back through the overwhelming din and chatter of the trading house. As they reached the door to the yard, she squeezed Cithrin’s arm once and tilted her head in query. Cithrin shrugged.

“I wish we could make our negotiations at the house,” Cithrin said. “I hate losing a contract because we were where we could be overheard.”

“We didn’t lose the contract. Kilik’s an old hand at this. He’ll spend the rest of the day wandering about talking, and he’ll find that Samish is overcommitted. The caravan will take insurance with us because he wants to be the gambler and have the insurance be his safety. He won’t risk his trade on someone who might be destitute when the time arrived to make a claim. Not for one-half on the hundred,” Isadau said, then paused. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. Her easy joy was gone from it. “I do worry about this war, though.”

In the yard, Enen and Yardem Hane leaned against a low stone wall, talking with a Timzinae girl old enough to have a woman’s figure but still with the light brown scales of youth. Yardem’s ears shifted toward them as they approached and Enen lifted her soft-pelted chin. The girl turned, caught sight of Isadau, and trotted up to meet them.

“Magistra,” the girl said.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific, dear,” Isadau said. “Maha, this is Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour from the new Porte Oliva branch. Cithrin, this is my cousin Merid’s daughter Maha.”

Cithrin nodded her head and the girl matched her before turning back to Isadau.

“Papa said you should come when you can,” she said, then leaned closer and shifted to a whisper. “He’s got information about the lemon crop.”

Isadau nodded and let Cithrin’s arm go free.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to meet you back at the house,” she said.

“That’s fine,” Cithrin said. The girl took Magistra Isadau’s hand, and the pair of them walked briskly off through the gate and out to the uncurbed stone-paved road. Yardem and Enen came forward.

“Is all well, ma’am?” Yardem asked in his soft low voice.

“Apparently,” Cithrin said. “But I couldn’t start to tell you why.”

Enen scratched her collarbone, setting the beads woven into her pelt clicking. “I had that experience of them too. Timzinae are the worst. Haaverkin or Jasuru—even Tralgu, if you don’t mind my saying it, Yardem—you deal with them and you at least know you’re in for something odd. Timzinae seem just like anyone right up until they don’t, and then who the hell knows what they’re thinking?”

The city was low all around them, the wide streets with stretches of grass and low scrub between them and the houses making it seem less a city than a village grown vast. Horses and mules drew large carts, men small ones. The air smelled of the sea but also of turned earth and damp. Above them, the sky was a blue so intense it was hard to look at and the sun glowed like a great burning coin. Cithrin crossed her arms as she walked, realizing only after she’d done it that she missed Magistra Isadau’s touch and was trying to make up for its loss. She dropped her arms to her sides.

“Where’s Roach?” she asked. “Wasn’t he on duty today?”

“Took his shift for him, gave him a day’s liberty,” Yardem said. “He has a nephew getting wed.”

“Really?” Cithrin said. “I didn’t know he had family in Suddapal.”

“Some,” Yardem said.

“He never mentioned them to me.”

“Don’t know that he felt it was his place to, ma’am,” Yardem said. Enen cleared her throat in a way that sounded more for preparation than for comfort. Cithrin turned to look at her. The Kurtadam woman’s face was masked by the oily seal-like fur of her pelt, but the discomfort showed through in her eyes.

“I was just thinking, Magistra,” Enen said. “You might not want to call him that while we’re here.”

“Who? Roach?” Cithrin said. “Isn’t that his name?”

“His name’s Halvill,” Yardem said. “Halvill rol Kausol. Roach was just what people called him in Porte Oliva. Sort of the way people might call a Southling ‘Eyehole’ or a Kurtadam ‘Clicker.’”

“Oh,” Cithrin said. “I didn’t know it bothered him.”

Yardem shrugged. “He’s never said it does. He’s not the sort that makes trouble.”

“Only if other people hear you saying it, they might take it wrong is all,” Enen said.

“I understand,” Cithrin said, trying to recall how many times she’d called the little Timzinae guard by name and who had been present when she had. “Thank you.”

Cithrin had spent most of her life being alone. As a girl, she had been the odd one of her cohort, fitting as poorly with the children of nobility as the urchins who ran in the streets. When she left Vanai, she had adopted false identities, from boy carter to agent of the Medean bank, which had required a certain distance from the world to remain plausible. The work of banking itself was isolated. Simply being known as the woman who could lift a poor man to wealth so long as he was wise, prudent, and lucky—or destroy the highborn if they were prodigal and weak—made her a race of one. She was a banker, and so of course she was alone.

Still, the isolation she felt in the compound at Suddapal was unlike the cultivated distances she’d experienced before. Here, she could retreat to her room, close the door behind her, and feel like a prisoner waiting for the magistrate’s justice, or else she could go out into the compound and be greeted and welcomed to half a dozen conversations and endeavors from quilting to shoeing horses to sitting with the children of the family and improvising poetry, and never once feel she was truly at home. Being alone in her room, trapped by the walls, was unpleasant. Being alone in the midst of a group that seemed to go out of its way to make her welcome was worse. The only solace she could take was the branch’s books and kitchen’s wine cellar, and so over weeks, she had become a citizen of both.

The evening meals came late, the wide hall with Magistra Isadau and her siblings and their families and friends often making room for twenty people. Afterward, the diners would withdraw to the yard or to private rooms. The sound of lutes and drums and living voices lifted in harmony were as much a part of the after-meal as sweet wines and cups of chocolate. Cithrin, though, excused herself from the merriment, took a bottle or two of the rich red wine the house imported from Pût, and took some ledger or company book from Magistra Isadau’s office to her room to read like a girl lulling herself to sleep with a volume of poetry. The wine calmed the tightness in her body, the play of numbers and agreements occupied her mind until the music of the house didn’t bother her and the cold of the night drove her under her blankets and, at last, to sleep.

Except that some nights, sleep would not come. On those, she would rise, dress in her dark wools, and walk the halls of the compound. There were always a few men and women still awake or else woken early for the next day. The capacity of the Timzinae to go without sleep was remarkable to her. On one such night, she found Yardem sitting at the watch fire alone, staring at the stars scattered above them and listening to the first crickets of spring.

She looked up, tracing the new constellations she knew. Stars were not her passion.

“Evening, ma’am,” he said. “You’re up late.”

“I suppose,” she said, her words careful and deliberately unslurred. “You are too.”

“Am,” Yardem said and flicked one jingling ear. It might have been only her imagination, but the Tralgu’s wide, canine face seemed wistful. “Seems we’re settling in well.”

“Yes,” Cithrin said. “Magistra Isadau is a very intelligent woman. From everything I saw at the market house, I’d have thought the bank would be barely turning a profit, but she manages to do quite well.”

“I was thinking more of the household,” Yardem said.

“They’re very kind,” Cithrin said. “I’ve never been around a real family before. To see the way they treat each other … the way they treat us, for that. They’re all so open and loving and accepting. It’s like we’ve always belonged here and just never knew it.”

In the trees at the compound’s edge, an owl launched itself up against the stars, a shadow moving on darkness. Yardem traced its arc with eyes and ears, and Cithrin followed it by following him. The silence between them was calm, companionable. Cithrin put her small hand over the back of his.

“I hate it here,” she said. “I have never hated anyplace as much as here.”

“I know.”

“It is obvious? I try not to let it show.”

“I’ve known you a while,” Yardem said.

“They’re all so kind, and all I can feel is how little I belong with them. Magistra Isadau? She’s like a good witch from a children’s story. She’s sweet and she’s wise and she wants the best from me, and it makes my skin crawl. I keep thinking that I wouldn’t know it if she hated me. God knows she’d treat me just as well.”

A falling star streaked overhead, there and then gone.

“I knew a man once,” Yardem said. “Good fighter, pleasant to keep watch with. The sort of man who’d have done well in a company. Might have gotten as far as running one if he’d kept at it. Only he’d spent his whole youth as a slave. He’d do well enough when we were on campaign, but when we were done and he had time and money of his own and no one telling him what to do? He didn’t know how to act.”

“How did he deal with it?”

“At first, the captain tried keeping him back, giving him duties even while the other men went out and drank themselves poor. Treated the boy like he was still enslaved. That worked for a time, but in the end it wasn’t enough. It took the boy a season to manage it, but the magistrates stripped his freedom and sold him to a farmer.”

“That’s sad.”

“Is it?”

An insect landed on Cithrin, its legs struggling against the fine, pale hair of her forearm. She flicked it away.

“We say our souls want joy, but they don’t,” she said. “They want what they already know, joyful or not.”

Yardem grunted as if he’d taken a blow to the gut and pulled his hand away from her to scratch an itch she doubted was really there.

“What about you?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“Should.”

“But you can’t.”

“Apparently not.”

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“The war, partly. The word in the trade has it that Antea is stretched tight as a drumskin. Wore themselves thin last year, and on the edge of falling apart. Except there’s other stories too.”

“You can’t say that and not tell,” Cithrin said. “I’d fire you.”

“They’re saying that the spirits of the dead march with the Antean army. And that the birds and dogs all start running away before their army comes the way they do from a fire. Makes it sound as if there’s something uncanny about the Lord Regent, like he’s some sort of cunning man.”

“Geder’s not a cunning man,” Cithrin said. “He’s … he’s just a man of too little wisdom and too much power.”

“You sound sad for him.”

“No,” she said. “He burned my city. Killed the people who raised and looked after me. I lived with him for weeks. Took comfort in him. I don’t think there’s a word for what he and I are to each other.”

“Do you love him?”

“Are you drunk?”

“You took comfort in him,” Yardem said. “For some people—”

“He got anxious, I didn’t say no. What’s love got to do with that?”

“Nothing,” Yardem agreed. “Only there are people who don’t see it that way.”

“They’re fools,” Cithrin said, without rancor. And then, “You said partly. What’s the other part?”

“I don’t know where the captain is. What he’s doing. There’s no word of him anywhere. It … bothers me.”

“I wish he was still here too.”

“Not sure I said that, ma’am,” Yardem said ruefully. “I’d hoped to know where he went and what he did. The captain and I didn’t part on the best terms. People who betray him don’t tend to end well, and there’s a good chance he feels I betrayed him.”

“Then he’s a fool too,” Cithrin said.

Yardem didn’t answer.