The Tyrant's Law

Marcus




Looking back at it afterward, the journey from the heart of the Lyoniean rainforest to the rocks and crags of the northern coast took on the feeling of a dream. Marcus remembered bits and pieces—the bone-deep exhaustion, the day an annoying welt on his leg had opened and spilled out live maggots, the tension between taking time to search for food and pressing on to reach the end of the forest—but they formed no single coherent string. They had walked and hidden and been bitten and starved and tried to find water that wouldn’t fill their guts with worms when they drank it. When Marcus thought back to the morning he had stepped out from the trees and onto a paved road, his ribs showing through his skin and half naked where his clothes had rotted away, he saw the scene as if he had witnessed it, as if he had been outside of his own body watching it happen to someone else.

It was only on the ship back north that his mind returned to him enough that he understood. After months lost in the interior, he’d been starving and fevered and prey to insects that had been feasting on the blood of humanity since before the dragons. He told himself that the sword and its venomous magic likely didn’t have much to do with it. As weak as he’d been, he would likely have fallen just as ill, been just as confused. Still, as their little ship bobbed on the summer waves, Marcus left the green scabbard in with his things. He had no need of it on board, and less time carrying now meant more time later.

The only disturbing thing was coming back to his cabin to find a circle of tiny dark-carapaced bodies around his bags where the fleas and insects had come out to die. It wasn’t that Marcus had doubted Kit about the sword’s nature, but seeing it confirmed was unsettling.

Kit was looking skeletally thin as well. But as the days passed and the pair ate the sailor’s diet of fresh fish and old limes, salt pork and twice-baked bread, the flesh of the actor’s cheeks began to fill in, and Marcus felt his own strength returning. By the time the expanse of the Inner Sea began to break into islands and reefs, Marcus was near enough himself that he could keep pace with the sailors. Or at least with ones his own age.

Kort was an island city, and ancient. In the story it told of itself, Kort was the site of the last battle, where Drakkis Stormcrow arranged the death of Morade, the mad Dragon Emperor. Its bay, wide and shallow and protected by a massive chain of dragon’s jade, went by the name Firstwater on the strength of being the first saltwater claimed by humanity for humanity. The high, narrow houses that rose up the steep rise from the shore were, it was said, the first built by free men, or at least they stood where those houses had. It was not the largest of cities. Carse in Northcoast could have swallowed six like it. It didn’t claim the imperial beauty of Camnipol or the wealth of Stollbourne. Its streets were narrow, its trade restrained by the constant wars and turmoil of Pût and the Keshet, its people a rough-spirited crew. But even if the flowers of Kort bloomed tough and simple, their roots grew the deepest. Marcus might even have found himself moved by it, if he hadn’t known three other places that made the same claims.

They pulled into port near evening, the summer sun flinging gold and crimson across the clouds. At the chain towers great fires burned, a guide to ships at sea and a warning. The air smelled of brine and smoke and the subtle homecoming scent of land and stone. Marcus found himself standing at the bow and watching the city as it fell into twilight. Windows flickered with candlelight all up the side of the mountain like an army of fireflies.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen you look so content in weeks,” Kit said.

“I’m home,” Marcus said.

“I didn’t know you came from Kort.”

“Never been here before,” Marcus said. “But after that, it’s home.”

The inn sat at one end of a public square so small that only the thin cistern distinguished it from a widening of the road. Seven lanterns hung around the door, the ochre wall seeming to eat as much light as it reflected. The keeper was a Yemmu man with yellowed tusks and a friendly demeanor. Marcus stood in the street, letting Kit make the negotiations. The moon above was the blue white of snow. It was summer now, and Marcus had gone a full winter without seeing snow or feeling cold. It made time seem odd. He wouldn’t have thought that a rhythm so slow and deliberate would affect him from day to day, but looking up at the moon, he felt how much he missed cold.

The room was hardly wide enough for the straw ticking, and it had sawdust on the floor instead of rushes, but Marcus couldn’t help grinning as he lay down. Kit poured a cup of water from the earthenware jug and drank it, leaning against the wall.

“I’m not going to ask how we’re paying for this,” Marcus said, throwing an arm over his eyes. “I’m just going to be here enjoying it.”

Kit chuckled.

“I’ve proposed to the keeper that I perform in the common room. Songs. Stories. Nothing fancy, of course, since I don’t have props and the others aren’t here. But I would be surprised if I couldn’t raise enough to pay for the room and make good inroads toward a ship to the mainland.”

“Malarska?”

Kit made a disapproving sound in the back of his throat. “It’s farther south than I would like. I believe there are some fishing villages on the border of the Keshet that would serve better.”

“Borders of the Keshet,” Marcus said. “Didn’t know they had borders there.”

“I find the term has a more diffuse sense than they use in Northcoast,” Kit said, chuckling. “If you’d care to come down, it might not be a bad thing to have an ally in the crowd. Laugh in the right places. Quietly threaten the hecklers.”

“I’m in a real bed. I may never move again.” After a moment’s silence, Marcus moved his arm and squinted up. “No choice, then?”

“No choice,” Kit agreed.

After the cramped feeling that the rest of the city gave, the common room was a pleasant surprise. The wide wooden tables had benches enough for two dozen people, and a firepit—empty now except for a few blackened ends of logs—had enough for seven more. Kit sat by the empty fire, smiling and at ease as if he’d been there a thousand times before. Marcus took a place nearer the door, watching with admiration as Kit began speaking. There were sixteen people in the common room, men and women both, Firstblood and Tralgu for the most part, with two Timzinae huddling together in one corner. Their annoyance at the interruption lasted less than a dozen heartbeats, then, one by one, they turned, leaned elbows against the tables, and fell under Kit’s spell. The story was one Marcus had heard before about how Haris Clubhand had tamed the Haaverkin tribes and become the first Hallskari king. Kit’s retelling had more humor than most, and Marcus found himself enjoying the story for its own sake and joining in with the laughter more than leading it. There were no hecklers, and the keep dropped a plate of chicken legs and a mug of beer in front of him with a wink.

Marcus wondered, though, how much of Kit’s skill came from the taint in the man’s blood. When the actor lifted his hands, describing how Haris Clubhand walked up the mountain at Zanisstun with a mug full of Astin Look’s blood in his good hand and an axe strapped to his bad wrist, Marcus half believed it had happened. He knew he would shrug the feeling away once the tale was told, but in the moment it was hard to remember that it was only a story, and that sounded too much like the power the spiders held. Even after the performance ended, his rumination was so deep that he didn’t notice, when the door to the street swung open and four men in light armor stepped in, that he knew one.

“Well, Marcus Wester. As I live and breathe.”

The Jasuru man’s face had the lines of a map too detailed for its own legibility, the bronze scales falling into the folds of underlying skin. A white scruff of hair clung to the back of the man’s skull like frost hidden from the sun, and a black tongue lolled behind vicious pointed teeth. Scars from a life of violence seared the man’s thick arms and neck.

Marcus grinned.

“Merrisen Koke,” he said, standing and embracing the old mercenary captain. “God, but you’re looking old.”

“What I get for being the best,” Koke said. “No matter what contracts I take, I keep not dying, yeah? These are my boys. Terrin, Saut. That one’s Davian. You’ll have met him before at Orsen.”

“I remember,” Marcus said, taking the lieutenant’s hand in his own. “Good to see you again.”

“An honor, sir,” the young man said.

Kit stepped over from across the room, curiosity in his gaze. Marcus waved an open hand toward him.

“This is Kitap rol Keshmet. We’re traveling together.”

“A job?” Koke asked.

“Small size, high stakes,” Marcus said.

“Pay?”

“Miserable.”

“And that,” Koke said, slapping Marcus on the shoulder, “is the man I knew. You’re eating. You mind if we come join?”

“As long as I’m not paying for you.”

Between them, they took up the better part of one table. The keep’s initial surprise at his two actors falling in with fighting men washed away quickly as Koke and his men paid for sea bass in black sauce and good ale. For the better part of an hour, Koke retold the things that had happened since he and Marcus had last seen each other. Marcus traded stories of his own, many of them changed to omit details. The food was all eaten and the dishes cleared away when Koke leaned forward, his scaled fingers laced together.

“So Marcus, old friend,” he said, the softness of his tone meaning that the business discussions had now begun. Marcus felt a chill run down his back.

“Was too much to hope this was only a social call.”

“I’ve got a fair number of hired eyes in this town and one of them told me Marcus Wester had come ashore.”

“You were watching for me?”

“I was. Seems there’s people looking for you. Offering a bit of coin for information about where you are and what you’ve been up to.”

Kit’s gaze sharpened, his attention sudden and focused. The two Timzinae at the far table broke out into peals of laughter that no one at the table took up.

“Admirers or enemies?” Marcus said.

“You tell me,” Koke said. “It’s Yardem Hane.”

“Really? Imagine that,” Marcus said. He idly cracked a knuckle. “And what’s old Yardem doing these days that he wants to know about me?”

Koke’s eyes narrowed, and his gaze jumped across Marcus like he was a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out.

“Don’t know what he wants with you. We’d all assumed he was still padding around in your footsteps trying to get square with you saving his life. Now the story is he’s hooked up with a bank in Suddapal,” Koke said.

“Porte Oliva,” Marcus said. “The bank’s in Porte Oliva.”

“Not this one. Karol Dannien’s set up a gymnasium in Suddapal. Yardem found him there and offered a fair trade for anything anyone heard of you. Said it was an open offer, and Karol spread the word. The place to send to’s Komme Medean’s branch in Suddapal.”

Marcus drank a sip of his beer to hide the sudden stab of dread. He’d imagined Yardem back in Porte Oliva with Cithrin, but that was as much hopeful fantasy as anything. The last he’d heard of Cithrin, she’d been caught in a civil war in Antea. If she’d escaped it, surely she would have gone back to her branch in Birancour. That Yardem was still with the bank but in Elassae raised a thousand questions, and Marcus’s neck prickled with the fear of the answers. If Cithrin had died in Camnipol because he hadn’t been there to protect her …

He put down the beer and belched.

“So,” he said through his smile. “Dannien’s remade himself as a teacher, has he? God, we are getting old, aren’t we?”

“Not a permanent thing, I don’t think. A few of us found something else to be doing when Antea lost its mind. Until that war’s over and we see what shape the world’s taken, it’s hard to know what’s a safe contract.”

Until that war’s over. All the time he’d been gone, the Antean civil war had been burning. Every night he’d spent digging through the vines and trees was another one where Cithrin might have been captured or killed. Every day was one she’d been in dangerous territory.

“Camnipol’s still burning, is it?” he said, forcing his tone to be casual. From Koke’s reaction, he saw he’d failed.

“God damn, man. Where have you been? I’d thought this spending coin to track down Marcus Wester was a joke, but you’ve been outside the whole damned world, haven’t you? Camnipol’s fine. Palliako’s invaded Sarakal.”

Most men wouldn’t have noticed the change in Kit’s expression, but it was plain as daylight to Marcus. Not surprise. Maybe despair.

“How’s that going for him?”

“Better than it has a right to,” Koke said. “And you’re looking to change the subject.”

“Am I?”

The old Jasuru sighed and leaned forward. The first time Marcus had met him, his scales had been bright and burnished, his hair dark and pulled back in an oiled braid. Now he looked spent. Still the same man, but worn down by the years and the battles and unable to break free of the patterns and demands of a life spent fighting for pay.

“I can clear three hundred in Birancour silver for writing a letter about you, old friend,” Koke said. “And the truth is my company can use whatever falls off the trees. But I don’t have to if I don’t have to.”

The other fighters looked down, pretending not to be there. Kit turned toward the door as he he were expecting someone to barge through it at any moment. No one did.

“You’re asking if I want to better the price to keep you silent?” Marcus said.

“If it’s worth that to you,” Koke said. “Seeing how we’ve worked together, I wouldn’t ask more than matching. I’m not greedy.”

Marcus pretended a yawn and stretched his arms. His body felt as tight as a bowstring and his mind was cold and sharp.

“I appreciate the thought, but if I were you, I’d take all the coin Yardem’s got to hand out. In fact, if you’re sending to him, give him a message from me. Let him know as soon as I’m free, I’ll come see him.”

Koke chuckled, low and mirthless.

“More than one way to hear those words,” he said.

“Don’t jump at shadows,” Marcus said. “I’m guessing our mutual friend has a contract he’d throw my way or something of the sort. Nothing sinister in that.”

“For three hundred silver?”

“Maybe he needs my help badly,” Marcus said. “I am awfully damned good at what I do.”

“Which is what, in this instance?”

“Same as always. Whatever needs doing,” Marcus said, and rose to his feet. “Good seeing you again, Koke.”

“You’re going to bed already?” Koke said. “Night’s only just starting.”

“Not for me, it’s not. Kit, you’re on your own. But this bastard’s clever, and if he tries to get you drunk, he wants something.”

“My boyish affections, perhaps,” Kit said with a perfect timing that set Koke and his men laughing.

Koke stood and embraced Marcus again. “Take care of yourself, old friend. We’re in odd times.”

“Always have been,” Marcus said, then retreated to his room.

The bed that had been so comfortable not hours before seemed lumpy and awkward now. The rest his body had ached for couldn’t be coaxed back. Marcus lay in the darkness, hands behind his head, and listened to the murmur of distant voices like the rushing of a river. Yardem’s name had ripped off a scab he’d forgotten was there, and now he felt exposed and stung and less than halfway healed. He wanted to know why Yardem was in Suddapal, and what he meant by paying for information about Marcus. And he needed to know whether Cithrin was all right and what had happened to her in Camnipol, whether she’d lived, and if she had, at what price. The dread was like a weight on his breastbone. His mind flitted to all the sacked cities he’d been through, all the innocent victims of war he’d seen, and his imagination put Cithrin in their places.

The nightmares would come back tonight. The old ones of Alys and Merian. Women he’d failed to protect. If Cithrin was dead or hurt, someone would die for it. Yardem first, and then whoever had done it. Marcus knew from experience that the effort wouldn’t redeem anything, and that he would do it anyway.

He hadn’t fallen asleep when the door opened and Kit stepped in. At some point in the evening, something had spilled on him, and he smelled beery. The actor sat on the end of the bed and began unstrapping his boots.

“Asterilhold and Antea last year,” Marcus said. “Now Sarakal.”

“Apparently so,” Kit said. The first boot thumped against the floorboards.

“Your spider goddess eating the world. This is the beginning of that, isn’t it?”

The other boot thumped and Kit turned to lean his back against the wall. The light spilling in under the door flickered, barely more than darkness.

“I think this began long ago. Perhaps very long ago. But yes, this is what I feared would come. This and worse,” Kit said. And then, “I hear there is a ship leaving in five days for Suddapal.”

“Suddapal’s farther from the temple than Malarska.”

“It is. But if your unfinished business with Yardem Hane—”

“After,” Marcus said. “Job is we kill a goddess and save the world. Let’s not complicate it.”





Geder




You’re most kind, Lord Regent,” Ternigan said. “Your visit is an honor I hadn’t looked for.”

Geder smiled and shifted his weight, stretching his legs under the camp table. The tent was thick leather stretched on iron frames, almost as solid as a true building, but movable provided the work of enough servants. Lord Ternigan’s bed stood against one wall with a real mattress and wool blankets. An unlit brazier squatted in the room’s center, tinder and sticks already laid out in case the Lord Marshal should want to warm himself later. A decanter of cut crystal held wine, and Geder couldn’t help wondering whether it always did or if this was something special put together to impress him.

“I thought it was important to see the men in the field,” he said. “Raise their spirits. Let them know that the strength of the empire is with them.”

“Yes,” Ternigan said. “They were quite excited when they heard. I hope the journey wasn’t unpleasant?”

“Much more pleasant than the first time we were in the field together,” Geder said, and Lord Ternigan laughed. Geder’s first campaign—his only one, really—he had been under the command of Alan Klin, Klin under the direction of Lord Marshal Ternigan. Then, Geder had ridden with a single squire and a tired horse from Camnipol to Vanai. Now he rode in a wheelhouse almost wider than the road, slept when he wished to, ate where he chose. He lifted his eyebrows and glanced toward the decanter. Ternigan rose from his chair and poured a glass for him. Outside, the army of Antea waited in their own less elegant tents. The smoke from their cookfires tainted the air, reminding Geder of another night, another city, another fire.

The wine was decent, but a little acid. Too much, Geder suspected, would upset his stomach, but a glass wouldn’t do any harm.

“What is the situation?” he asked, and Ternigan sat back down, spreading his hands like a merchant in a stall.

“We knew this would be a siege,” Ternigan said. “They call Nus the Iron City for good reason. But we’ve cut off all approaches from land and Skestinin’s done a fair job keeping relief from coming by sea. No food is going in, and they have only the water they can draw from their wells inside the walls, much of which is brackish.”

“Why haven’t they surrendered, then?” Geder asked. “If they don’t have good water, they have to know they’re going to lose.”

“They don’t have good water, but they aren’t dying from thirst either, and we”—Ternigan paused to sigh—“don’t have a great deal of food. When the farmers retreated, they burned their crops and collapsed their wells. They took to the countryside. If we send out parties to forage, they’re harassed by the locals. There’s no one to buy food from, and if there were, there’s reason to expect it would be poisoned. It will take time and fortitude. The traditional families are wagering that we don’t have those. We will have Nus, my lord. Don’t mistake me, the city will fall. And when it does, we’ll be able to make whatever terms we want in the peace.”

“I don’t want Nus,” Geder said. “I want Sarakal. Nus and Inentai and every garrison and farm in between. It doesn’t do me any good to come here and half win.”

Ternigan’s face pinched in, and he pressed the backs of his fingers to his chin. When he spoke, his voice was measured and careful.

“There are constraints, my lord, that are outside our control. However much I want to break the city today, the enemy is in a strong position. Even the most noble causes sometimes have to compromise.”

“How long?” Geder asked.

“How long for what, precisely?”

“How long before Nus falls?”

“It will be ours by winter,” Ternigan said without hesitation.

Geder sat, letting the silence stretch. Over the course of a minute, Ternigan’s expression went from uncomfortable to embarrassed to angry to a kind of petulant confusion. Geder smiled without meaning it.

“You’ll tour the city’s fortifications with me and Minister Basrahip in the morning,” he said.

“If you like, Lord Regent.”

“Good to see you again, my lord,” Geder said, standing. “I think it’s good that I’ve come.”

The walls of Nus stood grey and seamless on three sides of the city. The iron gates that gave the city its name rose to the height of ten men one atop the other, and great bands of the metal reinforced the stone so that the whole city had the sense of being a single great mechanism devised by a huge, inhuman mind. Which might, after all, have been true. The dragon’s road came to the sea here, and had since before the dragons fell. There had likely been a city in this place since before history itself began.

Though, as Basrahip pointed out, not before the goddess.

They rode in a company of twenty. Geder wore his black leather cloak against the morning chill, but pulled it off almost at once when the sunlight warmed them. Ternigan wore bright steel armor like a boast, Basrahip and his two fellow priests the brown robes that they always wore. And Geder’s personal guard. If there were assassins in the brush, they didn’t trouble the group. All around the city, Ternigan explained the difficulties of an attack. The long wings of the wall hung over the water and forced any approach from the sea to suffer under the defenders’ bolts long before they could come to shore. Here, the walls were topped with spouts to pour down stones or flaming oil. Here, the shape of the land itself forbade the siege ladders. There, a team of engineers might be able to tunnel under the fortifications and collapse them, and Ternigan had in fact begun the project, but it would take time. Weeks at least, months more like. The seawall couldn’t be surveyed, but Ternigan brought diagrams and maps with him to fill any time that wasn’t already rich with discouragement.

As the hours passed, Ternigan’s tone shifted from defensive to conciliatory as Geder began to understand the scope of the problem. Geder had helped to take and even briefly ruled the Free City of Vanai, and he realized now that the experience had set his expectations poorly. When he thought of taking a city, he imagined Vanai. Nus was no Vanai. It was one of the great cities of humanity.

When near midday they returned to the army’s main camp, the arrayed forces of Antea that had seemed vast as an ocean only hours before had shrunk in his view. They were the same men, the same horses, the same engines of war. What they weren’t was plausible.

“You see my situation,” Ternigan said as they dismounted. Geder’s thighs and back ached, and a sense of growing embarrassment sat in his gut as uneasy as the first pangs of illness. He nodded to Ternigan as he passed his reins to the groom, but didn’t say anything.

If Ternigan’s tent was near to a house, Geder’s was like a movable palace. It was still the same framed leather walls, but arranged into half a dozen different rooms, including a separate latrine for his own private use and a copper bathtub that they’d apparently hauled all the way from Camnipol in the event he might feel dusty. Rosemary and lilac had been scattered on the ground so that every footstep belched forth perfume. A plate of dried apples and flatbread waited for him, and he sucked at the fruit disconsolately. Ternigan was right, damn the man. Nus would have to be starved out or its walls undermined. It would take months. It would take longer than he could afford. This was his war, and he’d managed to lose it already. His ears were already burning with the whispers at court, the jokes told where he couldn’t hear them. He could already see the brave loyalty on Aster’s face as the boy tried to lift his spirits. He could see the pity in Cithrin bel Sarcour’s eyes, should he ever be lucky enough to see them again.

By the time Basrahip joined him, he had worked himself into a bleak and self-pitying despair. The priest stood across the desk, his expression a question.

“What?” Geder snapped.

“You seem troubled, Prince Geder,” Basrahip said.

“Of course I’m troubled. You saw it all just as well as I did. Those walls?”

“I saw walls,” Basrahip said.

“We can’t beat that.”

Basrahip grunted deep in his throat, his eyes narrowing as if in deep consideration. He turned, stepped to the leather wall. When he struck it, it sounded like a massive drum.

“What are you doing?” Geder demanded.

“I am trying to think why you would beat a wall.”

The rush of anger in Geder’s throat felt like a dam ready to burst.

“Are you laughing at me?”

“A wall is a thing, Prince Geder. A gate is a thing. A well, a granary, a ship. Things. You don’t defeat things. You defeat people, yes? So we see all these beautiful, strong things and think that the ones behind them must be beautiful, strong people. But they are Timzinae and the puppets of Timzinae. They are the slaves of dead masters. There is nothing in this place to stop us.”

“They could be toys made of sticks and tree sap, but we still can’t get to them,” Geder said, but he felt the darkness and anger slipping in him. Losing its hold. Basrahip sat at the desk. In his fingers, the apple seemed tiny. When he bit it, the white of the flesh seemed vaguely obscene.

“Have faith in the goddess,” Basrahip said. “You have kept your promise to her. She will keep faith with you. These walls will bow to you, if you wish them to.”

“How?”

Basrahip smiled.

“Speak to the enemy. Do this.”

“Call the parley, you mean?”

“This,” Basrahip said. “Let us hear our enemy’s voice.”

It took the better part of three days, but on the fourth, a lesser gate swung open and a small group came out carrying the banners of parley. The man who led them was old, his broad scales greying and cracked, but he held himself with a haughtiness and pride so profound they radiated. Mesach Sau, patriarch of his family and war leader of Nus sat across the table from Geder and folded his arms. The nictitating membranes under his eyelids slid slowly closed and open again, blinking without breaking off his stare.

“You wanted to talk,” Sau said.

“Open the gates of the city,” Geder said.

“Kiss my ass.”

Geder looked over. Ternigan and Basrahip both sat on camp stools like matched statues, Ternigan the image of dour seriousness, Basrahip serene and smiling. Geder cleared his throat, and Basrahip’s smile grew a degree wider.

“You cannot win,” the priest said. “Everything you care for is already lost.”

“He can kiss my ass too,” Sau said.

“You should listen to him,” Geder replied.

“You have no hope but surrender. The armies of Antea are powerful beyond measure. Their mercy is your only hope.”

“Is that what I’ve come here for?” the old Timzinae asked, then turned his head and spat on the grass. “We have the food and water to sit on our thumbs and grin until this time next year. Your boys will be starving in a month. We know all about your engineers and their mining, and that’s not going to do you any damned good either.”

“Listen to my voice,” Basrahip said, and it seemed as though his words took on a wild music. Geder felt himself almost lifted by them. “Prince Geder cannot be defeated. He cannot be stopped. It is not in your power to defeat him. If you stand against him, your children will die before your eyes. And their children as well. It is inevitable.”

“This is shit,” Sau said, standing. Geder lifted his hand and ten men approached, bare blades in their hands. Sau turned, his mouth a gape of rage. “We’re under parley! You kill me and you’ll never get another chance, boy.”

“Don’t call me boy,” Geder said. “I’m trying to save your life.”

“You cannot win,” Basrahip said again, as old Sau retook his seat, his hands in fists at his sides. “The dead will rise and march with the soldiers. Any you cut down will stand again, stronger and without fear. You cannot win against the power facing you. Everything you love is already lost.”

The hours of the parley passed slowly, but with every one, Geder felt his fear lose hold. Nothing had changed. The walls of Nus were just as tall, the defenses just as vicious, but what had seemed doomed before began to take on the mantle of possibility, and then credibility, and before sunset, it was certain. Old Sau sat just as proudly in his seat, his head just as high, but tears leaked out of his eyes, the scales of his cheeks black and bright as a fountain.

“I won’t do it,” Sau said, but his voice broke when he said it. “I’ll die before I’ll do it.”

“Another will come,” Basrahip said. His voice had taken on a dry rasp from the hours he’d spent talking. “If you will not, the next one will, and then his family will be the one to take Prince Geder’s mercy and your grandchildren will die bleeding in your streets.”

“I won’t do it. Won’t do it. Better we die than give in to bastards like you.” Sau broke off, sobbing. Geder didn’t clap his hands in delight—it would have been rude—but the impulse was there.

“Go,” Geder said. “We can continue the negotiation tomorrow.”

Sau stood up and turned without a word. He stumbled as he left the camp. The red of the setting sun made the walls of Nus glow like iron in a forge. Geder watched the old man make his journey back to the city, watched him disappear within it.

“I’m damned,” Ternigan said, and his voice was soft with wonder. “He’s going to, isn’t he? We’re going to take this bastard of a city after all.”

“It may take time,” Basrahip said. “Perhaps as long as two full weeks together. But yes, Prince Ternigan. The gates will open to you. The city will fall. Your victory is certain.”

Ternigan shook his head again, pressing a palm to his temple.

“I don’t understand all that I saw here today, my lord,” he said. “But …”

“You don’t have to understand,” Geder said. “Just have faith in it.”

They walked back toward camp slowly. In the broad arch of sky, a handful of stars appeared in the twilight. Then a scattering. Then countless millions.

“We will have to make arrangements for a protectorate,” Ternigan said. “That may be a trick. I thought I’d have much more time. Did you have someone in mind to take control?”

Jorey Kalliam, Geder almost said, but stopped himself. Now that it was asked, he realized it was a question he should have been considering from before he’d left Camnipol. Jorey was still reestablishing himself in court, and while having a few visible honors like the protection of a conquered city would help in that, it would also mean being away from Camnipol. He wished he’d thought to ask. But there would be other cities. Other chances.

That night, they all dined on fresh chicken and a sweet mash made from sugar beets and rice. Ternigan had the captains he commanded compete in extemporaneous poetry praising Antea, the Severed Throne, Geder, and Prince Aster. The night was like something from the histories Geder had read of the great generations of the empire, a bit of the past with new life breathed into its nostrils. It was as if he’d taken all the romances of campaign life and made them real. The comradery, the joy, the bluff masculine competition. All of the things he’d hoped for and never found were his now. All evening, Basrahip and the other priests walked through the camps, speaking with the soldiers, laughing with them, cheering them, and near midnight the whole camp broke into song at once, literally singing Geder’s praises.

He went to bed drunk as much on the affection and loyalty of his men as on any sort of wine, and lay in the darkness grinning and satisfied. He let his mind wander, remembering the darkness of his mood the day he’d seen the city’s defenses. The thought was almost pleasant now, and he turned it in his mind like a glass marble held to the sun, watching it glitter and flash. He’d been so sure that he’d have to return humiliated. He imagined Aster looked up at him again, solid and encouraging even in defeat, and Geder was filled with a kind of love. Aster was such a good child. Geder felt the depth of his own good fortune in getting to deliver the prince a vastly expanded empire when the time finally came for his coronation. A world at peace. It would be a beautiful thing.

And then, after. When Geder was only the Baron of Ebbingbaugh again, he could return to his own life. His books, his holding. Perhaps a wife, or since Cithrin bel Sarcour wasn’t of noble blood, at least a consort. If she’d have him. Or he could travel. Aster could name him as a special ambassador to Birancour, and he’d have reason to visit her in Porte Oliva. He closed his eyes and conjured up the feeling of her body against him, the sound of her breath. He didn’t know he was falling asleep until a servant’s apologetic voice woke him.

Mesach Sau hadn’t slept. Fatigue showed in his clouded eyes and the droop of his shoulders. He hadn’t bothered with the formalities of parley, but walked directly to the camp, to the sentry. It was as if the old man didn’t particularly care whether he was brought before Geder or killed on the spot. As Geder arrived, Ternigan came trotting from his tent as well. Basrahip, serene and pleasant, was already there.

“I’ll do it,” Sau said, his voice breaking on the words. “Swear that you’ll spare my family, and I’ll open the f*cking gates for you.”

Geder turned to Ternigan and swept a hand to indicate the weeping man, defeated even before the sack began.

“And that, Lord Marshal, is how it’s done,” Geder said. “Now. Bring me Inentai.”





Cithrin




Living in the midst of a family changed many of the small details of life. Privacy was often a matter of politeness and etiquette in a way that it wasn’t when she’d had rooms of her own. Bits and pieces of other lives seemed scattered through the halls like fresh rushes, and had Magistra Isadau and Maha, her cousin’s daughter, been speaking of matters of family or politics, even questions of finance and the running of the bank, Cithrin would not, she told herself, have eavesdropped. But instead, she walked down the wide polished granite hall bright with the light of morning, heard the voices of the older Timzinae woman and the girl, and picked out the words love and sex. Her journey to the kitchens suddenly became less immediate. Curiosity sharpened her ears and softened her footsteps and she edged closer to the office chambers.

“That too,” the magistra said. “But not only that.”

“But if you really love him, doesn’t that make it all right? Even if there is a baby from it?”

Maha’s voice was strong, but not confrontational. This wasn’t an argument, but a deposition. A discovery of the facts. Magistra Isadau’s laughter was low and rueful.

“I have loved many, many people,” she said, “and I’ve never meant the same thing by the word twice. Love is wonderful, but it doesn’t justify anything or make a bad choice wise. Everyone loves. Idiots love. Murderers love. Pick any atrocity you want, and someone will be able to justify it out of something they call love. Anything can wear love like a cloak.”

There was a pause, and then the girl’s voice again.

“I don’t understand. What does that mean?” Maha said. Cithrin felt a warm glow of gratitude for the child and the question. She didn’t understand it either.

“Love isn’t a word that means one thing,” the magistra said. Her voice was gentle. Almost coaxing. It was the voice of a woman trying to gentle an animal or call it out from under a table. “You love your father, but not the way you love this hypothetical boy. You love your brothers. You love that girl you spend all your nights with. Mian? You love Mian. Don’t you?”

“I do,” the girl said as if she were conceding a point to a magistrate.

“Someone may love their country or their gods. An idea or a vision of the world. Or because it can mean so many things, it’s possible to call something love that’s nothing to do with it. If the edict comes to march north into Sarakal, chances are it will say it is for the love of our brothers and cousins in the north. But it will be really be fear. Fear that the war will come here otherwise. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

“Love is noble,” the magistra said. “And so we wrap it around all the things we think perhaps aren’t so noble in hopes no one will see what they really are. Fear. Anger. Shame.”

“I’m not ashamed,” the girl said.

“You want this hypothetical boy. Don’t. Lie to your mother about it if you’d like, but not to me. He opens your body in ways you can’t control. He fills your mind in ways that disturb you and wash your best self away. You’re drunk with him. And so you want it to be love, just the way the generals want their fear of Antea to be love.”

“But …”

“I’m not telling you what decision you should make. God knows you have enough people to do that for you. But I am reminding you that you love a great many people you don’t want to take your dress off for. Longing isn’t love. Not any more than fear is.”

A discreet scratch interrupted, and then the sound of the office door sliding open.

“Courier come for you, Magistra,” a man’s voice said.

“Bring the reports here, then.”

“Can’t, ma’am. Courier says he can’t give ’em to anyone besides you or Miss Cithrin.”

In an instant, Cithrin was powerfully aware that she was standing in the bright corridor, bent like a child trying to overhear her parents. She turned, back the way she’d come, took a half dozen near-silent steps, and then turned again, collecting herself as if she were only now beginning her interrupted errand.

Maha came into the corridor. The brown, insectile scales that covered her face and neck, her hands and arms, were darker than Cithrin remembered. Perhaps it was how Timzinae blushed. She didn’t know.

Cithrin smiled, and the girl nodded back but didn’t speak. Cithrin strolled down the corridor, wondering what to do. On the one hand, she wanted to go back and see what the courier had brought; on the other, doing so without it being mentioned to her might lead the magistra to suspect she’d been spying. With a sigh, she went on to the kitchens as if she didn’t know anything that she wasn’t expected to.

In truth, Maha wasn’t much younger than Cithrin herself. She wondered what it would have been like to be first coming into herself with older women there to speak with. Her own mother was little more than a few fleeting impressions and entries in an old, yellowing ledger, but had she lived, she might have given Cithrin advice on questions of love and sex, men and hearts. In the kitchen, Cithrin exchanged banter with the cooking servants as they made her a bowl of stewed barley with butter and honey, but her mind was elsewhere. Even the rich sweetness of the first bite hardly registered.

Whom did she love? Did she love anyone? Did anyone love her? Now that she asked the questions straight on, she realized she’d been thinking at the edges of them for some time.

Since, in fact, the day she’d heard that Captain Wester had gone. Now that was interesting.

She considered whether she loved Wester the way she might have a proposal of business. Dispassionately, and from a careful distance. Yes, she thought, maybe she did. She didn’t feel any particular desire toward him, but that was the point Magistra Isadau had been making. Desire and love weren’t the same thing.

Cithrin sat at one of the low stone tables, looking south over the wide sprawl of Suddapal’s third city. Where the land ended in a spray of small islands, she could just see the traffic of tiny boats, black against the throbbing morning blue. Desire wasn’t the same as love. Love, she decided, was when something went away and left you emptier. By that definition, certainly—

“Magistra?”

Cithrin looked up. Yardem Hane towered in the doorway. He looked older than she imagined him, but perhaps it was only the light.

“Yes?”

“A report’s come. Magistra Isadau wanted to consult with you on it.”

“Something from Porte Oliva?”

“Carse,” Yardem said. “I think it’s about the war.”

The pages themselves were fine linen, made without a watermark. Paerin Clark’s hand was, as always, neat and precise.

“More information from the mysterious source?” Cithrin said.

“Or a forgery,” Magistra Isadau said. The cheerfulness in her voice was as false as paint. “Komme wanted you to look it over. See whether you had any insights to add.”

The information was clear and succinct. The first section was a rough accounting of the armies in the field. How many sword-and-bows, how many mounted knights. The supplies of food and fodder. Cithrin found a map of Sarakal and plotted each of the groups against the small nation on the desk before her. With each new mark, her belly grew heavier. Nus, the Iron City, had capitulated, but the garrisons on the path to Inentai hadn’t fallen. Not yet.

“I thought Antea was losing,” Cithrin said.

“They were. They should be,” Magistra Isadau said. Her expression was unreadable. “They go into battle with fewer men and barely enough to supply them. And then they win. They reach a town that should be ready to hold back a siege for months, and it falls in weeks.” The older woman spread her hands.

“They can’t come as far as Elassae, though,” Cithrin said. “They don’t have the men or food. And we’re seeing the refugees from Inentai starting to come through.”

“They don’t have the men or food to take Sarakal either,” the Timzinae woman said. “But they’re doing it.”

Cithrin turned back to the report. The unknown writer went on to list a half dozen other forces outside of the churn of war and violence in Sarakal. These were smaller groups with less than a dozen soldiers, but better supplied. The names of individual captains leading these smaller forces were listed with them. Emmun Siu and fifteen men, the report said, moving into the northern reaches of Borja. Dar Cinlama and twelve men traveling over water to Hallskar. Two groups totaling fifty men answering to Korl Essian bound for Lyoneiea. Another group, the smallest, with only seven people, two horses, and a cart, led by someone named Bulger Shoal requesting diplomatic passage into Herez.

“What are these?” Cithrin asked. “Scouting missions for new invasions?”

“We don’t know,” Magistra Isadau said. “I think Komme was hoping you might have some insight.”

Cithrin cast her mind back through the long months into the darkness under Camnipol. Hallskar, Borja, Lyonaiea, and Herez. She tried to recall whether in the long hours of darkness, Geder or Aster had said anything to connect those places. The office with its gentle arches and brilliant sunlight seemed to defy the memories of darkness and dust.

Magistra Isadau’s nictitating membranes clicked closed and open. Cithrin felt the pressure of the older woman’s attention and frowned, willing herself to think of something—anything—that would justify it.

Nothing came.

“There’s no hurry,” Magistra Isadau said, folding the papers and putting them back into her private strongbox. “I don’t need to send a reply for a day or two. If anything does come to you, I can add it.”

“How old is the information?” Cithrin asked.

“Weeks, at the least. But Inentai isn’t under siege yet. So perhaps it still counts for something.”

The Timzinae woman shrugged and smiled. Cithrin thought that she saw unease in her dark eyes and the angle of her mouth. It was hard to be sure.

“Do you still think that the war won’t come here?” Cithrin asked, and the physical memory of making the same query assailed her. She’d said almost identical words once to a man now dead, in a city now ashes.

Magistra Isadau lifted her hands in a gesture of confusion and despair.

“I don’t know any longer. The truth now is that your opinion carries more weight than my own,” she said. “All I have is the numbers and reports. You know the people.”

“The person,” Cithrin said.

“The person. So. Knowing what you do of Geder Palliako, will the war come here?”

Cithrin sat forward, her hands clasped. Memories of the Lord Regent of Antea rose before her mind like fumes from a fire. His laughter. The roundness that fear gave his eyes. The rage as he slaughtered the traitor from within his own court. The taste of his mouth and the feel of his body. A cold shudder passed through her. Magistra Isadau made a small clicking sound at the back of her throat and nodded as if Cithrin had answered.

Perhaps she had.

A thin fog rose just after nightfall, the first Cithrin had seen in weeks. The summer in Suddapal rarely grew cool enough to allow it, but now wisps and patches littered the streets as if a cloud had shattered and fallen to earth. Cithrin sat in an open garden with a lantern behind her, sluggish moths beating at the glass with thick, furry bodies. She had contracts and ledgers spread before her in the buttery light. The wide carved timbers above her gathered the shadows in close, cradling them. The history of the Medean bank in Suddapal seemed less important now than its future.

The trade of Elassae relied on the traffic of metalwork from the north, textiles and cloth from the Free Cities, and spice and gold from Lyoneia. The mines and forges of Sarakal might fall under the control of the Severed Throne, but the trade would remain. Or she thought it would.

Or the armies of Antea might burn them all, as they had Vanai. Surely Magistra Isadau was selling letters of credit to the nervous and wealthy, transferring the gold and jewels of Elassae into paper that could go west, to the safer ports, father from Antean blades. There would be a way to move that wealth away from Suddapal before the end came. Before the armies. Before it burned.

She shook herself, turned back to her books, and found she’d lost the thread of them. Her fingers were on a payment entry, and she could no more say what deposit it came from than she could will the sun to dance on the seashore. She said something vulgar and closed the books. She could sit here enjoying the moment of cool in the midsummer’s heat with her mind scattered and lost or go back to her rooms and stare sleepless at the walls. The knot in her belly didn’t permit anything else.

She snuffed out the lanterns and stacked the wax trays with her notes in a corner with a strip of red cloth that would tell the servants to leave them undisturbed. The sensual music of reed flute and sanded drum that made their hymns murmured even in the darkness of midnight. More than any other race she knew, the old men and women of the Timzinae turned away from sleep. The compound—indeed the five cities of Suddapal—only rested. They never slept. She found herself drawn toward the music and the promise of company and warmth, but it was an illusion. She didn’t know the songs. The snapping of her pale, soft fingers wouldn’t give the sharp percussion of Timzinae hands.

She wondered if Yardem was on guard duty. Or any of her little retinue from Porte Oliva. She wondered where Cary and Sandr and Hornet were tonight. She wondered what Captain Wester was doing and what would make him think that Yardem Hane would ever betray him. She wondered where Geder Palliako slept that night and if he ever thought of her. She hoped he didn’t.

In her own room, the servants had left a lamp burning low. Her window let in a spray of moonlight, the cool blue mixing with the gold of the flame. She changed into her night clothes and slipped her legs beneath the thin summer sheets, sitting with her back against the wall.

Sleep wouldn’t come. She already knew it. She could lie in the darkness and stew in her own thoughts or turn up the lamp and read through the essays and histories Magistra Isadau had assigned her along with the books of the bank. Both options sounded equally unpleasant. For an hour she only sat, listening to the fire mutter in its stove, the distant whisper of drums.

She rose sometime in the darkness well after midnight, turning up the lamp’s wick more for variety’s sake than from any real desire. The floor cooled her feet. The papers waited on her bedside table, held down against the breeze by the old dragon’s tooth. Cithrin lifted it now, running her finger idly along its serrated edge, as she considered the writing beneath without really caring what it said.

The war was coming. It was all happening again, just the way it had in Vanai. She could feel it like a storm. The blades of Antea wouldn’t be stopped. As much as she wished otherwise, she knew the violence would spill past Sarakal. Perhaps to Elassae. Or into Borja. Or turn west toward Northcoast and Birancour. It was like a fire. She might not know where the flames would jump, but wherever it landed it would burn. And Magistra Isadau knew it too, as much as she pretended doubt. Cithrin understood the impulse to pretend the danger away. She’d done it herself in Vanai, and she’d had so much less to lose. Isadau had family—sister, brother, nieces, nephews, cousins. Cithrin had only had Magister Imaniel, Besel, Cam. Or perhaps it was the same. Losing everything was still losing everything, however little someone began with.

But Herez? Hallskar? Lyoneiea? None of them shared a border with Imperial Antea. Perhaps Geder and his counselors were looking farther ahead, to a wider, greater conquest. She tapped the dragon’s tooth against her palm. The thought didn’t sit comfortably. There was something else. Something about the dragon’s roads and the places they didn’t pass through.

Understanding came to her with an almost audible click. She stood up, her heart racing and a grin pressing her lips. She didn’t even pause to throw a cloak over the night clothes. The dragon’s tooth firmly in her hand, she strode out into corridors darker than mere night. Her footsteps didn’t falter. She knew the path.

Magistra Isadau was in her office chamber, reclined on a divan with a book open on her knees. She looked up without any sense of surprise as Cithrin entered the room.

“May I see the new report again?” Cithrin asked.

The Timzinae woman marked her place and closed her book. Opening the strongbox was the work of a minute. Cithrin took up the pages, turning them silently until she found the passages she sought.

A small group to Borja, led by someone named Emmun Siu. Two groups to Lyoneia under Korl Essian. And one to Hallskar, led by Dar Cinlama.

Dar Cinlama, the Dartinae adventurer who had once given her a dragon’s tooth. Cithrin tapped the page.

“Something?” Magistra Isadau asked.

“These aren’t scouting groups for the armies,” Cithrin said. “They’re looking for something.”