The Tyrant's Law

Clara




Someone in the house was screaming. Clara found herself out of her bed before she had wholly woken, wrapping the thin summer blanket around her waist, alarm running through her blood. The sound was constant, barely pausing to draw breath. A woman, she thought, or a child. Her first thought was that one of the new maids had encountered Dawson’s hunting dogs again. Except that was wrong, because Dawson was dead, and the dogs sent back to Osterling Fells or set loose in the streets. Somewhere nearby, a door slammed open or perhaps closed. Footsteps pounded down the hall. Clara dropped her blanket and snatched up the pewter candlestick from beside her bed, holding it in a clenched fist like a tiny club. She willed away the last confusion of sleep and prepared herself for the onslaught, whatever it was.

A man’s voice came from just outside the door of her rooms. Vincen Coe.

“My lady?”

“Vincen? What’s happening?”

“Stay where you are. Bar the door. I will return for you.”

“Who’s hurt? What’s going on?”

The man didn’t answer. His footsteps went away down the corridor, then to the rough stair at its end before being lost under the shrieking. Clara hesitated in the darkness. Only the faintest moonlight shouldered its way through her window, and the room hadn’t lost the stale heat of the day. The air felt close as a coffin. She put down her candlestick and walked to the door. The rude plank that assured her privacy was already in its brackets, but she put her hands to it all the same, as if touching the wood might assure her safety. The screaming paused, and masculine shouts took their place. She winced at each new sound, then strained at the silences. Footsteps pounded across the floor below her, and a man shouted once, wordlessly, but in triumph. It wasn’t a voice she knew.

Her rage surprised her. The sane thing, the right and expected one, would be to stay where she was, cowering in the heat and gloom and hoping to be overlooked by violence. For most of her life, it was what she would have done. With both hands, she heaved the plank up, then dropped it to the floor, and then stepped back for her candlestick, making a short internal note to herself that provided she lived to see morning, she would want a weapon of some sort in her bedroom in the future. A cudgel, perhaps.

The woman’s voice was screaming again, but there were words in it now. Vulgarities and threats. Clara made her way down the hall, her chin forward and her head high. The sharp sound of metal against metal announced swordplay, but she didn’t pause. As she marched down the stairs, the screaming resolved itself. Abatha Coe, the keeper of the boarding house. Her voice came from the kitchen. Clara pushed her way in.

The ruddy light of the open stove showed two Firstblood men, young and thin, their ragged beards hardly enough to cover their naked throats, holding Abatha on her knees while she screamed. An older Kurtadam man, broad across the shoulders, his pelt shining red in the firelight, was loading haunches of meat into a rough canvas bag. Vincen lay on the floor, a fourth man—also a Firstblood—kneeling on his shoulder blades, pinning him in place. Vincen’s sword was in the kneeling man’s hands.

“What,” Clara said in the stentorian voice she kept for intimidating servants, “is the meaning of this?”

As if for punctuation, she swung the candlestick against the kneeling man’s head, just above the ear with as much power as the close quarters allowed. The pewter candlestick jarred her fingers, the kneeling man yelped and put a hand to his ear, and chaos erupted. One of the men restraining Abatha let go and turned toward Clara, drawing a cruelly curved dagger. Vincen surged forward, reaching for his sword, the kneeling man struggling to get back atop him before he could. Abatha screamed, wrenching herself around, trying to free her one trapped arm.

The young man with the dagger slid forward, knife at the fore, and Clara threw the candlestick at his head. It bounced off his temple without any clear effect, and Clara’s righteous anger drained from her in an instant. She stepped back into the corridor, her hands held before her. Because better he cut off my fingers before I die, she thought, ridiculously. The man feinted to the right, then the left. In the dim light, she could see his teeth as he grinned.

“Ossit! Behind you!” the Kurtadam man called, and the knifeman turned in time for Abatha Coe to come boiling out of the kitchen, her face a mask of supernatural rage. Clara reached forward and grabbed the knifeman’s wrist, pulling it toward her so that the blade might not find its home in Abatha’s belly. The man was stronger than he looked. Clara pulled at his wrist, drawing the blade closer to herself as Abatha shrieked and cursed and flailed at him.

Someone barreled into her side, breaking her grip and pushing her into the wall. She stumbled, and the bite of the knife caught her arm, the pain bright and intimate. She grabbed at her wound with the opposite hand and felt the slickness of blood. Men were surging around her, and she braced herself for the next blow. But it never came.

They ran past her, the Kurtadam man at the lead, his canvas bag hanging heavy against his back. The three Firstblood toughs followed him with blades drawn. Clara saw joy in their faces. Abatha, crouched on all fours in the frame of the kitchen door, called out threats and epithets, her voice raw and ragged. The door to the street flew open and then closed again behind them. One of them whooped in victory when he reached the street. One of the Firstbloods. One of the men of her own race. Her kind.

“The food,” Abatha said bitterly. “They took the food. That was everything for the next week. How’m I going to feed everybody now?”

“Are you hurt?” Clara asked, clasping at her arm. As long as she kept her palm pressed against the blood, she didn’t have to see how deep the cut had gone. Better to tend to Abatha before that.

“Hurt?” Abatha said, as if the word were one she’d heard before but never used. “They took the food.”

“Vincen?” Clara called. “Are you all right?”

There was no answer. Clara felt her heart go tight. The pain of her arm faded to nothing as she rose to her feet, floating, it seemed into the ruined kitchen. The bench by the little table lay on its side. The pale bodies of dried beans were scattered across the dark planks of the floor. Vincen sat with his back against a cabinet, his sword in his hand. As Clara watched, he heaved a breath, and then another. His gaze struggled its way into focus, and he frowned.

“You’re hurt,” he said.

“Vincen?” Clara said, kneeling at his side. Behind her, Abatha stood in the doorway. “Are you well? Can you walk?”

He lifted his left hand as if he meant to scratch his nose. The fingers were black with blood and gore. Clara heard herself gasp.

“Don’t believe so, m’lady,” he said, and then, more softly, “Oh dear.”

Abatha’s hand tugged at her shoulder, pulled Clara back and up. Vincen couldn’t die. It was unthinkable. He was young and healthy and he had no enemies. And he was in love with her, and she, God help her, was in love with him, and he couldn’t—could not—die stupidly in a fight over ham. Clara’s breath came in sips and gasps. The world seemed to narrow. Abatha was saying something, and shaking her while she spoke. Clara tried to bring her mind back, but it was slow, difficult work.

“It’s three streets to the east, two to the north,” Abatha said. It wasn’t the first time she’d said it.

“Three east,” Clara said. “Two north.”

“It’s a low house. Green with a red roof.”

“Three east, two north. Green with a red roof.”

“The cunning man’s named Hoban.”

Clara nodded. Of course. A cunning man. They needed a cunning man. She would go and get one.

“Three east, two north. Green with red. Ossit.”

“Not Ossit. Hoban.”

“Hoban,” Clara said. “I’ll be back. Don’t let him die while I’m gone.”

“Wait!” Abatha said, shrugging out of her house robe and holding it out. “Take this. Y’ain’t decent.”

Clara looked down at herself. The simple sleeping shift was torn and soaked down one side in blood. What a sight that would be. Lady Kalliam half naked and bloody running through the streets before dawn. She would have done it without a second thought.

The air in the streets felt cool against her skin, the rough cobbles scraped at her bare feet. The half moon dodged between rooftops, here and gone and back again, as she ran. Three streets to the east, then turning left into a thin passage hardly more than an alley that stank of shit and piss and old blood gone to rot. She’d feared that in the dim light she might not be able to make out the colors, but the green was the green of new grass and the red almost crimson. Even by moonlight, there could be no mistake. Clara hopped up the single step and hammered on the door until a huge First-blood man with a greying beard to his navel and strange tattoos up both of his arms answered her. His accent spoke of Stollbourne and perhaps cities even farther to the west. She had to assure him twice that she wasn’t the one in need of help, but once he understood, he came quickly.

Abatha had laid Vincen out on the kitchen table like a body being prepared for his funeral. His skin looked like wax, and webs of dark blood marred him. His eyes were closed and his mouth drawn back in a grimace of pain and determination. The greatest wound was in his side, just below his lowest rib, and the skin there hung loose and open. The cunning man crouched, placing his palm over the injury, closing his eyes and murmuring prayers and invocations that seemed to echo in a space larger than the kitchen.

With the violence done, other occupants of the boarding house began to creep out. The Southling girl who always ate by herself. Two Firstblood workmen who’d just come to Camnipol from the north and taken a room together. They haunted the shadows, drawn to the blood like flies. Abatha’s cold gaze kept them at bay, and Clara ignored them. The cut on her own arm had begun to hurt again, but she paid it little attention.

Without warning, Vincen howled. Light poured from his mouth and nose, from the cuts in his skin. His back arched until only his toes and the top of his head were touching the table. Clara cried out in alarm, but as quickly as it had come, it was over. The cunning man sat heavily on the bench. The terrible wound in Vincen’s side was still there, but instead of blood, a thin, milky fluid ran from it. The kitchen filled with the smell of onions.

“He will live,” the cunning man said. “He will be weak for a time, but this is not the wound that kills him.”

“Thank you,” Clara said. Her vision went wet and blurry. “Thank you so much.”

“Now. Will you let me see to that arm?”

Clara looked down. Fresh blood was still sheeting down to her wrist. When she moved, the living muscle shifted and twitched. She felt dizzy.

“If you would,” she said. “That would be very kind.”

The first light of dawn pressed at the windows as Abatha counted coins into the cunning man’s hand. The boarders who hadn’t made their way out already began to appear, and Abatha enlisted three of the strongest to carry Vincen to his room while she put together something edible from the ruins of her kitchen. Clara went with Vincen, and when the others left, she remained with him, watching him sleep. The reassuring rise and fall of his breast. The calm in his face. Her own skin itched where the cunning man’s words and herbs had knit it closed, and she scratched at it idly.

He was so young, and yet older than her youngest son. Older than she had been when she’d married Dawson and become the Baroness of Osterling Fells. There were scars on his body, testaments to the life of a huntsman. And new ones now. She remembered the half-kiss she’d given him, the roughness of his stubble against her lips. The softness of his mouth. She let herself weep quietly without any particular sense of grief. Exhaustion and the aftermath of violence were surely enough to justify a few tears.

She heard Abatha’s steps long before the woman appeared. She’d put on clothes and carried a carved wooden bowl of wheat mash that she held out to Clara. It tasted sweet and rich and comforting.

“How is he?” Abatha asked, nodding to her cousin unconscious on his bed.

“Well, I believe,” Clara said. “I don’t know.”

Abatha nodded and looked down at her feet. Her lips moved, practicing some words or thoughts. When she looked up again, her expression was hard.

“This is your fault, you know.”

Clara wouldn’t have been more surprised if the woman had spat out a snake.

“Excuse me?” she said. “If I’d stayed in my room, you would both have—”

“I told him we had to leave,” Abatha said. “I told him that food was coming short, and people were going to get desperate. Get mean. Get out of the city, I told him. Close up the house and good riddance to it. There’ll be more than enough work needs doing on the farm. And he’d have gone too, if it weren’t for you and your letters, whatever they are.”

Clara’s lips pressed thin. The sudden mixture of guilt for keeping Vincen in harm’s way, annoyance that he had spoken to Abatha about her work, and outrage that she should be asked to carry the responsibility for the actions of thugs she didn’t even know confused her into silence.

Abatha waited for a moment, then shrugged.

“He’s a man grown, and he makes his choices,” she said. “I do too. He’s family, and I’ll stand by him as long as he needs me. But the day he dies, you’re sleeping on the street, m’lady, because I am done with this shithole of a city.”

At the end, the woman’s voice wavered. Of course it did. The woman had been attacked in her own home by men with knives. She’d been held helpless while her food was stolen. She’d seen her own family nearly killed before her. This anguish grew from seeds that Geder Palliako had planted. This was what Clara had chosen, in her way, to stand against. It was uncharitable to forget that, and so she wouldn’t.

“I understand,” she said.

“I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing here anyway.”

“I understand,” Clara said again. “Thank you.”

That afternoon, the sun shone warm as a fire. Clara wore a grey dress with strong lines. It wasn’t her most attractive, but it gave a sense of authority without being overbearing, and even if no one agreed with her opinion of it, it helped her play the part she had chosen for the day. Vincen was still asleep when she stepped out into the street, and the smell of cooking lentils followed her. All the meat for seasoning it was gone, and meals were going to be a bit bland around the place for a time. Small price.

Clara walked to the south with a pleasant smile and a nod for every familiar face. She forced herself to own the road without commanding it. To take it for granted, and by doing so, make the city itself wonder if perhaps it was hers. She had four people to call upon, and no assurance that any would be able to help her. There was no option but to try.

She found the third house she’d sought in a cul-de-sac near the western wall. A dozen children raced through the dim, grimy space playing as children did everywhere. Even in the shadow of evil. I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing here anyway, Abatha said again in her memory.

Clara stepped up to the door. It was thin wood held by a leather hinge well on its way to rot. She rapped on it smartly with her knuckles and set her shoulders. Inside, someone stirred, grunted. A bar was pulled away and the door swung open. The man standing in the shadows blinked at her, as astounded by her presence as he would have been at a gryphon or a dragon. Baronesses were clearly well outside his experience. Even fallen ones.

“Good afternoon. I’m Clara. You must be Mihal,” Clara said.

“Yes,” he said, then bowed as if only then remembering to do so.

“I’m a friend of your mother’s,” Clara said. “I don’t think we’ve met formally.”

“She … ah … talks of you. On occasion. Ma’am.”

Clara smiled, nodding. It was always so difficult to put young men at ease. They all seemed to look at her as something out of a myth. All except Vincen.

“Your sister’s wedding. It went well, I hope?”

“Quite, ma’am,” Mihal said, scratching himself sincerely and indelicately. “It was a nice dress you gave her.”

“I’m glad it suited. May I come in?”

Mihal’s expression went uncomfortable and he glanced back over his shoulder in concern.

“I have three boys of my own,” Clara said. “I’ve seen worse.”

“Well, then. Certainly?”

The rooms were tiny, squalid, close, and repellent. Clara sat on a stool and crossed her ankles as if this were the finest drawing room in the Kingspire.

“I was wondering, Mihal, if I might put upon you for a favor.”

“Ah. Sure, I suppose,” he said as she drew out her pipe and packed it with tobacco. She lifted her eyebrows, and he brought her a burning candle to light it from. The smoke tasted wonderful and smelled much better than the room. Clara took the bowl in one hand, tapping her teeth with the stem.

“I am looking for a young man. A Firstblood. He probably thinks of himself as a tough, and he associates with a Kurtadam man of middle years,” she said, “and his friends call him Ossit.”





Marcus




After his season in Lyoneia, the plains of the Keshet in summer felt as strange and exotic to Marcus as walking into a dream. The wide horizons under the uncompromising bowl of sky felt too large, and the desert air strangely cool now that it wasn’t too humid for his sweat to dry. A few distant clouds scudded overhead with the dim quarter moon showing pale in the blue among them. The caravanserai, as near a thing to a permanent city in this part of the Keshet, centered on a stand of massive obelisks that rose in a circle toward the sky. The stones curved like the claws of some massive beast that could hold a hundred wagons and their teams in its palm, and in the center a spring of clear water trickled from a broken stone into a wide and shallow pool. Half of the travelers in the little oasis were Tralgu, the other half Yemmu, and so two Firstblood men on foot and without so much as their own tent stood out like blood on a wedding dress. Everything smelled of dust and horse shit, and the suspicious looks from the caravan guards promised violence if Marcus or Kit spoke the wrong words or laughed at the wrong jokes. Marcus suspected that it said something unpleasant about his choices in life that he felt so comfortable there.

He sat beside the water, his little pack at his side. He’d wrapped the sword in cloth and bound it with leather straps. No particular use if he wanted to draw the thing, but there was less chance he’d need its use if it wasn’t obvious he was hauling magical treasures from the Dragon Empire about with him. His own blade still hung from his hip, though in a new scabbard. The old one had rotted through with his clothes. The sand-colored cotton robes they’d bought on the Lyoneian coast weren’t so different a cut from the local. Kit made his way through the camps, listening and talking, being charming and using the power of the spider goddess to ingratiate himself to the carters and guards and nomadic hunters. Marcus only saw him when he came back with money or a bowl of boiled millet and roasted goat.

“What’re we looking at?” Marcus asked, biting into the meat.

“I think it could be worse,” Kit said softly enough that his words didn’t carry. “I haven’t found anyone heading in our direction, but I have been promised a mule for a reasonable price.”

“That’s the good news?

“That and no one seems to have decided to kill us and take our things.”

“Counts as a good day, then,” Marcus said. “Let’s go meet our new mule.”

It was a good mule, as mules go, sturdy across the shoulder and placid-eyed. Marcus and Kit had little to carry besides sleeping rolls, food, and waterskins. The Yemmu man who’d agreed to sell it lumbered along behind Marcus as he looked the animal over, his expression vaguely disgruntled as if he might be regretting the agreement.

“He limps sometimes,” the Yemmu said. “Have to rest him for a day or two so he don’t go lame.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” Kit said in a pleasant voice that meant the man was lying. The more Marcus saw the spider goddess’s power in action, the more useful it seemed to be. Not much in a battle, maybe, but in everything that came before and after. And in his experience, before and after were what determined who bled in the field.

“Marcus?” Kit said.

“She’ll do,” Marcus said, putting his hand on the beast’s shoulder. The mule didn’t respond even to look at him. “Get us where we’re headed, anyway.”

The Yemmu sighed and accepted a pouch of coins from Kit. They stood together as the huge man counted through the silver and copper, nodded to himself, and waved at the beast.

“She’s yours now,” he said. “Too damn small to be any use to me anyway. Where you poor bastards going anyhow?”

“Borja,” Marcus said.

“Trying to keep clear of the war, then,” the Yemmu said. “That’s wise. Uglier than a camel’s a*shole, that is.”

“There’s a charming image,” Marcus said.

“Have you had word from the west, then?” Kit said before the Yemmu could reply. “I have friends in Sarakal, and I’d be glad of any news.”

The man’s shrug was massive.

“Had word. Don’t know how much of it’s true. Say Nus fell and the f*cking empire stripped the damn place to the walls. Put half the city in chains for their crimes.”

Marcus lifted an eyebrow. A black fly as thick as his finger settled on the mule’s ear, and the mule twitched it away.

“That’s a fair load of crimes, if you’re depriving half a city of their freedom over it,” Marcus said.

“Timzinae were behind the coup last year,” the Yemmu man explained. “New Lord Regent took it personal. He’s a strange one. Stories are he’s some kind of cunning man, only more powerful than I’ve ever heard. Talks with the spirits of the dead’s what they say. Dead march with him. It’s why he can keep going. No one thought he’d win as far as he has. No one’s sure when he’ll stop.”

No one’s sure if he will hung in the air, unspoken.

“Inentai’s a hard city to take,” Marcus said. “Anteans will be getting harassed by the locals and river raiders from Borja. Supply lines’ll be vulnerable.”

“Oh, and you know all about war, do you?”

“Some,” Marcus said.

“Well. Probably you’re right. Can’t see it going over the winter. So long as the bugs can hold out until then, the empire’ll go home by first frost.” The Yemmu man nodded, agreeing with himself. Talking himself into believing what he only hoped was true.

The Keshet spread out before them, dry and vast. The shallow hills rose and fell, their sides green and grey from the thick-stemmed, tough brush. In the mornings, Marcus woke before dawn to the sound of birds. They made some simple meal, packed what there was on the mule’s back, and headed for the next oasis or creek. Twice they saw the great dust plume of a princely caravan, the moving cities of Jasuru and Tralgu who dominated the plains but didn’t settle them. Both times, the larger groups passed without bothering them. Two men and a mule were probably too small a group to care about, and Marcus was fine with that. As long as there were rabbits and lizards enough to eat, creeks and wells enough for water, and fodder for the mule, he’d walk from one end of the Keshet to the other without seeing an unfamiliar face, apart from the occasional stop at a caravanserai for food, and count himself pleased to do it. The days grew subtly longer, the midday sun more intense, but the nights were still bitterly cold.

Kit didn’t complain. Marcus assumed that his years wandering the world with his acting troupe had left him accustomed to long journeys in the empty places of the world. The old actor’s face was thinner, his body narrowed by months of living without steady food and too much work, but it didn’t make him look worn. If anything, he seemed younger, fuller, more vital. Even at the end of a punishing day’s walk, on rationed water because they hadn’t found fresh, Kit’s step seemed to bounce. Marcus tried to imagine what it would be like for him. They were walking back across decades toward the place where Kit had been a boy. He imagined the years and losses and adventures peeling away from Kit and being left behind on the open plain. The fear was there—Marcus could see it by the light of the fire at night, could hear it in the man’s voice when he spoke—but there was a joy that came with it.

The circle, Marcus thought, closing. Something was ending for Kit, and the sense of impending completion was pulling the man across the Keshet like the north calling a lodestone. Marcus didn’t have that, but he kept pace. One leg in front of the other, eyes sharp for snakes, mouth too dry for comfort. He wore the poisoned sword across his back; the mule had refused to carry it after the third day. So far as he could tell, he hadn’t suffered any particular bad effects except that his dreams seemed more vivid and confused than usual and his food all tasted bad.

Then one day, the horizon thickened. Dark hills marked the edge of the world, and beyond them, mountains. Marcus sat by the low, smoking fire as the setting sun turned the world the color of fire. His shadow stretched toward the hills, toward the temple and its goddess. Beside him, the mule sighed and closed its black eyes.

“How far do you think they’ve gotten?” Marcus asked.

Kit lay back on his bedroll, his hands behind his head and staring up at the stars.

“You mean the Anteans?”

“Them and the ones we’re here to stop. You think they’ve gotten to Inentai yet?”

“Probably,” Kit said. “But perhaps not. There might have been illness in the ranks. Or they might have run short of food or water. I’ve found armies to be large, unwieldy things, haven’t you? It seems they’re always finding some new way to break.”

“Nothing I’d care to bet on,” he said.

“Me either,” Kit said. “Still, I can hope.”

“You know they shouldn’t be winning.”

Kit’s sigh was hardly more than a breath and degree more hunch in his shoulders. Marcus sat forward, his palms toward the low flames. When the darkness came, the firelight would ruin his night vision, but for now he could still see his companion’s expression.

“What else can your goddess do?” Marcus said. “Raise the dead? Can you do that?”

“I don’t believe anyone can bring back what’s gone,” Kit said. “But I imagine there are other ways to win battles. Interrogate prisoners when they cannot lie, and how can they keep their secrets from you? Or frighten the enemy with stories of grand magics against which they couldn’t possibly stand. Or tell them that they have already lost until they think it true. I believe that the priests are making these victories possible.”

“Inentai?”

“I expect it will fall. If they are taking slaves, I expect they will do so there as well. And build a new temple. And begin taking converts to school in the holy secrets of the goddess. All of it. In the end, it won’t matter if Antea outstrips its own abilities. It won’t matter if the empire falls. The goddess will be back in the world, and men who can do what I do will be everywhere. Men with blood like mine. That is all she will need.”

“To do what? What is it she wants?”

Kit’s smile surprised him.

“Peace.”

“Peace?”

“On her terms. The death of those that oppose her. The creation of a narrow world that holds her word to be unquestioned and unquestionable. Only the world she believes and the world that I’ve experienced aren’t the same place, and so for there to be peace, the world as it is must die and be reformed into the one she dictates. They cannot both be, and so … and so she will eat the world.”

“This hairwash about the Timzinae plotting against Antea,” Marcus said.

“There were levels of initiation into the secrets of the temple,” Kit said. “Not all servants of the Righteous Servant were equal. I didn’t learn everything there was to know before I left. But the Timzinae … the story is that they aren’t entirely human. That the twelve true races are all related, and that they all rebelled against the dragons, but the Timzinae were fused with dragonets hatched early from their eggs and fashioned to resemble humanity. They were the one race that remained loyal to the dragons.”

“But that isn’t true.”

“I don’t believe it is, no,” Kit said. “But when I came out from the temple, I brought the stories with me. Timzinae sacrificing the young of other races to their ancestor dragons and so on. It was why I chose to travel to Suddapal. To live among them and see if what I had been told was … true’s a strong word. If it was plausible. It wasn’t.”

The massive disk of the sun dropped lower, touching the horizon like it was setting fire to the world. Kit glanced over at Marcus, his expression reluctant. Almost shy.

“I don’t believe this is a war, Marcus.”

“A culling, then?”

“A purification. The slaughter of a race because …” Kit shook his head, coughed, and tried again. “Because the men I used to know and love and to whom I dedicated my life for a time have a wrong idea.”

“Well, I don’t see talking sense to them about it and hoping for the best,” Marcus said.

“I can’t permit this destruction. Whatever the price, I can’t permit it.”

“Destruction’s inevitable,” Marcus said, and spat. “You do know we’re about to destroy Antea? If you’re right and their success is all based on your incarnated goddess, when we take her away, we’ll take their successes away with them, and they’re in the middle of a fight. Soldiers of Antea are just men. Some of them are bastards and some aren’t. Some have children and wives. It’s not their fault that your old pals came and made their homeland into a tool for a spider, but they’ll die because of it.”

“Or, I suppose, kill for it if we don’t.”

The angry disk of the sun slid away out of sight. For a moment no longer than two breaths together, the plain was in shadow and the mountains to the east still burned, and then the darkness took them too. The world faded to the grey of twilight and ashes.

“I don’t see there’s any choice, though,” Kit said.

“Isn’t. And since I’ve got business in Suddapal, I’d rather the place was still standing when I got there. Just didn’t want you to get your hopes up about this being clean.”

“I appreciate that. Should we keep watch tonight?”

“Always. I’ll take first, if you’re tired.”

Kit settled into his bedroll, the meat of his bent arm for his pillow. A breath of wind moved across the plain. Made visible by the shifting of the low scrub, it reminded Marcus of a vast banner. In the high darkness, stars were spilling out from behind the twilight. Already, the temperature was beginning to drop. There wouldn’t be frost by morning, but it would be cold enough that he’d be damned glad to see that same sun coming up over the mountains.

“Whatever the price, you said. You’ll lose the spiders too.”

“I expect to,” Kit agreed.

“Any idea what that will be like?”

Kit shifted to look up at the stars.

“I feel I have been astoundingly lucky,” he said. “Imagine living a life of constant eavesdropping. Of wherever you go, knowing more than the people around you intended you to. I have heard a million lies from a million lips, and I feel it’s taught me all I know of what it means to be a living part of humanity. It taught me to love.”

“Lies taught you to love?”

Kit lifted a hand, motioning Marcus to silence.

“There was a woman I saw once in a market of Sara-sur-Mar. Young Firstblood girl with a child in her arms. The child was asleep. I don’t know how they came to be there or why the child was sleeping in the marketplace. But this woman—this girl—was stroking the child’s back and saying over and over, I love you. Your mother loves you.”

“Only it was a lie, wasn’t it?” Marcus said. “She didn’t love the kid.”

“It seems she didn’t.”

“And that’s what made you love humanity? Because I don’t think I’d have taken that lesson.”

“You can’t choose who you love,” Kit said. “Or at least I’ve never been able to. A mother is supposed to love her child, but when that doesn’t come, what? That girl knew that something beautiful and profound and important had abandoned her, and so did what she could do. She lied. She told her sleeping babe that it was loved and cared for not because it was, but because she wanted it to be. Not because she cared, but because she wanted to care. And if I hadn’t carried the spiders in me, I would never have seen that. Almost every day, it seems, I’ve come across something like that. Some moment in a stranger’s life that’s unfolded before me, shown me what I wasn’t meant to see. And Marcus, there is a great nobility in ordinary people. The world disappoints us all, and the ways we change our own stories to survive that disappointment are beautiful and tragic and hilarious. On balance, I find much more to admire about humanity than to despise.”

“And if we win, you’re going to lose all that.”

“If we win, I’ll become human,” Kit allowed. “I think it isn’t so terrible a price to pay.”

They were silent for a moment. Marcus leaned forward and put a fresh twig on the fire. There weren’t enough trees in the Keshet to gather real wood, so the night was going to be spent feeding in small twigs and bits of scrub every few minutes. Kit laughed.

“And,” he said, “I’ll finally get to find out whether I’m any good as an actor.”

“Well, even if you’re terrible, I’ll tell you that you did well.”

Kit’s grin was brilliant in the gloom.

“Thank you. I would very much appreciate that.”

“Least I can do. Sleep now. We’ve got a long way still, and I want to be in those hills before nightfall tomorrow.”





Geder




I wish I could have gone too,” Aster said, pitching a stone into one of the garden pools. It struck with a dull plop and set ripples opening out across the water.

It was striking how changed the prince looked. Geder had been gone for only a few weeks on his trip to Nus and then back, but Aster seemed almost a different person—taller, thinner, more awkward in his movement. It wasn’t magic, just the normal progression of child to youth to man, but Geder had never had the chance to see that happen to someone else. And maybe there was a little magic in it, even if it was only the ordinary kind.

“I couldn’t take the crown prince into a war,” Geder said from his bench. “The Timzinae had raiders and assassins. Anything could have happened.”

“You went.”

“I’m just the Lord Regent,” Geder said. “If someone stuck an arrow in my neck, they could get you another protector. You’re the prince. You aren’t replaceable.”

Aster sat on the grass, disappointed and petulant.

“They’d find some cousin or other,” he said. “They always do. I just wanted to see a war. By the time I’m old enough to go, there won’t be any left.”

Geder had stayed in Sarakal to watch Nus fall and to witness the sack of the city. He’d even gotten up before dawn to walk down the line of troops, Basrahip at his side, and encourage the men. Then, as the still-unrisen sun lit the horizon, the army moved into position. If he thought about it, he could still feel the cool of dew soaking his boots and weighing down his cloak. He hadn’t been able to keep Vanai entirely out of his thoughts, even though he knew this was different. And then the great iron doors gave out a massive boom and cracked open a fraction.

The foothold was all his army needed. They roared like a single being with ten thousand throats and charged. Geder was almost sorry he wasn’t riding with them. In the moment, he’d wanted nothing more than to grab a horse and a sword and spill into the city streets.

By afternoon, the siege was over and the matched banners of Antea and the spider goddess hung from the walls as an announcement and a boast. Any lingering resentment he’d felt over Dar Cinlama and the other expeditions was gone. The Lord Regent had gone to Nus, and the city had fallen. Geder left the next day, but ten of Basrahip’s priests remained with Ternigan. Sarakal would fall before autumn, and the rest of the empire had gone without his attention for long enough.

Aster threw another stone into the pond as the ripples of the first reached the edge and either echoed back faintly or died.

“Lord Regent?”

Geder turned to look over his shoulder. The servant at the edge of the garden bowed until he was bent almost double.

“Yes?”

“Your advisors await you, my lord.”

Geder rose, but Aster only scowled at the surface of the pond.

“Are you … would you like to sit in?” Geder asked, then when Aster didn’t answer, “All this is going to be yours. Probably best that you see how it all works.”

“Not today,” Aster said, and threw another stone. This one skipped twice before it sank.

“Is something wrong?”

The prince didn’t respond, and Geder, for want of a better idea of what to do, let the servant lead him away. As they walked along the paths of crushed marble, he brooded. He’d been selfish, perhaps, to go to Sarakal and leave Aster behind. The prince was usually so mature and well contained, it was easy to forget he was still a child, and more than that, a child who’d lost his father. Who’d been the target of assassination. Geder was his protector, and he’d gone off to the war. And now he was making jokes about his own death and his replaceability. He reimagined the conversation that he’d just had, but from Aster’s point of view, and he cringed. He’d only meant to make Aster see that being prince made him special and important, and instead he’d brought up the idea of yet another person Aster relied on dying. Little wonder the boy hadn’t taken comfort in it.

“Stupid,” Geder muttered to himself. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“My lord?” the servant asked.

“Nothing. Keep going.”

The official meeting room was halfway up the vast Kingspire, so it wasn’t used except for great ceremonial occasions. The more common business of the empire took place at ground level. Today, the men Geder had set to help him manage the kingdom were seated at a low stone table not far from the dueling grounds. The Kingspire rose up to Geder’s left, the vast chasm of the Division away to his right, and the gorgeous sprawl of Camnipol before him.

Canl Daskellin sat to his right with Cyr Emming, Baron of Suderland Fells, at his side. Across from them were Noyel Flor, Earl of Greenhaven and Protector of Sevenpol and cousin to Namen Flor, and Sir Ernst Mecilli. Had Lord Ternigan and Lord Skestinin been in the city, they would have sat at a larger table. As Geder sat, it occurred to him that a year ago this same group would have included Lord Bannien and Dawson Kalliam, both of them dead now as traitors. And the year before that, King Simeon would have been in his own seat. Of them all, only Canl Daskellin and Noyel Flor had served as steadying hands on the rudder of state for more than three years. It was sobering to realize that so much had changed in so short a time.

“Well,” Geder said, “thank you, gentlemen, for keeping the city out of the flames while I went to help Lord Ternigan. And now that that’s done, where exactly do we stand?”

Noyel Flor stroked his beard and made a sound like a cough but with greater intent behind it. Mecilli nodded, took a breath, held it, and then spoke.

“The food, Lord Regent, that we had hoped to gain by attacking Sarakal is not in as great a quantity as we had expected. In specific, the grains we’ve recovered are half what we’d projected, and the livestock hardly better than a third.”

“On the one hand,” Daskellin said, “Ternigan’s not moving as quickly as we’d hoped, so more of it’s being eaten by the locals. And on the other, they’ve been slaughtering their own stock and leaving the grains to rot rather than let us put hands on it. We’re looking at a thin year. But I’ve been talking with my friends in Northcoast, and if we’re willing to pay a small premium, I think we can import enough of their wheat to see us through.”

“I don’t like it,” Lord Emming growled. Between his tone of voice and the bulldog flatness of his face, he seemed almost a caricature of himself. “We should be sustaining our own, not buying from Northcoast like we were servants at market.”

“It’s one season, Cyr,” Daskellin said. “Be reasonable. There’s more than enough precedent for—”

“Is it one season?” Emming snapped. “Is Ternigan going get the job done and get our men back here in time to prepare the farms this autumn? Because my people have had the most productive fields in Antea for three generations, and I’ll tell you sooner than anyone that what you do before first frost tells whether the spring’s hungry or full.”

“With the money we’ll have from Nus, we could import food for at least three years,” Daskellin said. “And as long as we’re buying from Northcoast, they aren’t likely to get nervous about us or start talking to dissident factions in Asterilhold about whether they should throw off the yoke of Antean rule.”

“They wouldn’t dare,” Emming said.

“Actually,” Geder said, “I think if we can make it through one year, the problem will go away. I have a plan that will give us full production from the farms and let us keep a standing army.” Noyel Flor coughed again, and this time it sounded almost like laughter. Geder waited for the cutting remark. Something like, And will it make all the cows shit gold too? But the men stayed silent, waiting. Geder felt a stab of nervousness, but he kept it hidden. “You’ve all seen the prisons I’ve built over the winter? Well, the time’s come to use them. I’m having all the children of Sarakal sent here to live as hostages. We can distribute the adults as workers on the farms to replace the men we’ve put in the army. If the farms produce as they were doing before the war, then the children are kept safe. If there’s trouble, we have a census of which slaves are at which places, and all their children will stand as communal hostage. So even if there’s one troublemaker in the group, all the other Timzinae will put them down to protect their own children.”

“And so if there’s a problem, you kill all the children?” Daskellin asked.

“All the ones that belong to the people on that farm. Or in that group. Yes,” Geder said. “I haven’t worked out all the details yet. I was basing it on an essay I read about how Varel Caot enforced peace after the Interregnum.”

The four men at the table were silent. Geder felt a flush of annoyance and embarrassment that he couldn’t entirely account for.

“It might be difficult to … maintain enthusiasm when the time comes to kill these children,” Mecilli asked.

“Enthusiasm or loyalty?” Geder asked.

“You could spell them the same,” Mecilli said.

“The point is we won’t have to,” Emming said. “I think the Lord Regent’s right. The threat alone will keep the roaches in line.”

“Thank you,” Geder said, and leaned back, his arms crossed before him. “It’s not like I want to kill children. I’m not a monster. But we have to get the farms producing again. And anyway, I’ve already had the census made and the children are being marched here now.”

“Well, then there’s nothing we need to argue about,” Daskellin said. “Let’s move on, shall we?”

The meeting continued for the better part of the morning, but Geder felt distracted. There were questions upon questions upon questions. The remaining high families of Asterilhold—the ones who had survived the purge that came after the death of King Lechan—were eager to cement relations with Antea, resulting in a swarm of proposals of marriage between the young men and women of the two courts. There were even suggestions that Aster and Geder make alliances with several young women, none of whom Geder recognized by name. Once that was all disposed of, they moved on to whether the spoils of Sarakal would support Ternigan’s army or if a tax should be called, and if it were whether to accept payment exclusively in coin, or if food and horses would suffice. Through it all Sir Ernst Mecilli’s expression was sour and he didn’t meet Geder’s eyes.

They ended before the midday meal, and Geder excused himself to his private rooms, feeling out of sorts and not at all in the mood to be fawned over by courtiers. He would much rather eat a simple meal of bread, cheese, apples, and chocolate by himself where no one else’s needs or judgments could intrude. When Basrahip lumbered into the room, Geder only nodded at him. For the briefest moment, he imagined dressing down the guard for letting him be disturbed, but the thought was gone as soon as it came. Of course the rules that bound the rest of the palace didn’t apply to Basrahip. Everyone knew that.

“How is the rededication going?” Geder asked.

“It will be time soon, Prince Geder. You are very kind to offer your servants such beautiful rooms in your home.”

Geder shrugged as Basrahip settled himself on a chair. The priest looked worried, which was a rare sight. Geder popped a sliver of tart apple into his mouth and spoke around it.

“Is there a problem?”

“You have taken a new city,” Basrahip said.

“And I’ll have at least one more by winter,” Geder said. “And the goddess is going to have a temple in both of them. At least one. More if you want.”

“She sees your generosity, Prince Geder. I know this to be true.”

“You’re not going to ask if you can bring more priests here, are you? You know you can. Just tell me how many we need to accommodate and I’ll make the room. It’s the least I can do.”

“It is not that,” Basrahip said. “You have always been kind to me. I have seen the truth of your heart, and you are the great man that was foretold. Your greatness has exceeded my small powers.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your new cities in the west. Now more to the east. The priests of the goddess march at your army’s side and stand in your court. We walk through the streets of your cities and hold the people’s will to the will of the goddess. But we are only a single temple. To do these new temples justice, they must have the faithful and the holy, and I have few more that I can bring forth.”

“Oh,” Geder said. It was an odd thought. Now that it was said aloud, of course there were only so many men at the temple in the Sinir mountains east of the Keshet. Somehow he’d always assumed there would be more if they were needed, as if they sprang full-grown from the earth out there. “Well. Can you initiate new priests? I mean, you must be able to … make more?”

“It will be necessary,” Basrahip said. “But the rites of the goddess are not simple things.”

“All right. I can write to the seminaries. We have temples and priests of our own, and with half the court coming to your sermons as it is, I’m sure there are plenty who’d be interested in learning from you. And really, the rededication’s a perfect time for it.”

Basrahip smiled and lowered his head to Geder in a half bow. “My thanks.”

“Basrahip? Can I ask you a question? Have you spoken with Aster at all lately? I just notice that he seems … unhappy. And I wondered whether you might have some idea why?”

“I do not,” Basrahip said. “But if you would like—”

“No. No, that’s all right. I was just wondering.”

“Have you asked him?”

Geder broke off a bit of cheese and chuckled ruefully.

“I suppose that would be the most direct way, wouldn’t it?” he said. “It’s just hard. I don’t want to make him feel like he’s on trial.”

“Ask gently, perhaps,” the priest said.

It was almost twilight when Geder found Aster again. The boy was at the dueling ground alone, walking the dry strip where questions of honor found their answers. He held his wooden practice sword carelessly, swinging it through the air more for the sensation of movement than against an imagined foe. The shadows of the coming night cut across the ground, leaving part of it bright as midday and the rest almost blue with darkness. Geder motioned his personal guard back and took another practice blade from the rack. When he stepped out, Aster took a guard position, but even then, it wasn’t serious. Geder lifted his own blade.

“How was the council?” Aster said, circling to Geder’s right.

“Frustrating,” Geder said. He feinted and pulled back. “Mecilli seems to dislike everything I do. I’m starting to wonder about him.”

“Take him before your private court?”

“Probably,” Geder said. Aster stepped in, swinging his blade low. Geder blocked it. “It may just be he had some bad fish and it made him disagreeable. But we can’t have another Dawson Kalliam.”

“Can’t we? Some days I think it’d be nice.”

Geder thrust, and Aster trapped the blade, the report of wood against wood resounding from the buildings.

“Why would you want that?” Geder asked, pressing in.

“I don’t know,” Aster said as made his release. He let the wooden blade’s tip sink until it was almost on the ground. “It’s just … I keep having this dream where we’re back in that hole with Cithrin’s actor friends sneaking us food and the cats that wouldn’t come close to us. I dream that I’m asleep, and that when I wake up, I’ll be there. Only I’m not. I’m here. And it’s always disappointing.”

Geder’s own blade sank. Across the wide gap of the Division, a flock of pigeons wheeled in the the air, grey bodies catching the light of the falling sun. It was coming close to summer, and the nights were short. Geder felt the weariness in his body that came from having been awake since first light. Kalliam’s insurrection had been terrible, violent, and uncertain. For weeks, Camnipol had been a battleground, and the scars were still there. Burned-out compounds that hadn’t yet been rebuilt or razed. Street barricades pulled aside or into alleys, but not dismantled. And it wasn’t only the city. Geder felt it in himself too, as much as he tried to deny it or find some joy. Dawson’s betrayal had changed him too.

But in those days and nights squatting in the darkness, hoarding the candles and eating whatever the actors had snuck to them, there had been a kind of distance from the world, a sense of time standing still. He’d spent more time talking to Aster in those few weeks than he had in the whole year since. No council meetings, no servants plucking at him, no duties or expectations or demands. It might have been terrible at the time, but looking back, it seemed benign. A kind of golden moment, barely recognized when it happened.

“It is disappointing, isn’t it?” he said. Aster sighed and looked up at the massive expanse of the Kingspire looming above them.

“I miss Cithrin.”

“I know,” Geder said, swinging his sword through the empty air just the way Aster had been doing not minutes before. “I do too.”