“Hey! Stop, you!”
Clara turned, surprised to be addressed in so curt a fashion, only to see that the comment had been directed at Vincen Coe. The Jasuru man was on his feet, his palm against Vincen’s chest. The huntsman had gone unnaturally still.
“He’s with me,” Clara said.
“No one goes in armed,” the door slave growled.
“You can wait here, Vincen.”
“All respect, my lady,” the huntsman said, his gaze still fastened to the Jasuru, “but no.”
Clara put a hand to her cheek. Phelia had gone pale, her hands flitting one way and another like birds.
“Leave your blades, then,” Clara said. And then to her cousin, “I assume we can rely on the rules of hospitality?”
“Of course,” Phelia said. “Yes, of course. Of course you can.”
Vincen Coe stood silent for a moment. Clara had to agree that Phelia would have been more convincing if she hadn’t said it three times over. Vincen’s hands went to his belt, undid the clasp, and handed it with sword and dagger still sheathed to the door slave. The Jasuru took it and nodded him through.
“I believe you’ve lost weight since I saw you last,” Clara said, walking at Phelia’s side. “Are you feeling well?”
Her answering smile was so brittle it cracked at the sides.
“It’s been so hard. Ever since the king sent away Curtin and Alan—and you, of course. Ever since then, it’s all been so hard. Feldin hardly sleeps anymore. I wish all this had never happened.”
“Men,” Clara said, patting Phelia’s arm. The woman shied away, and then, as if realizing she ought not, permitted the touch with a nod. “Dawson’s been beside himself.
Really, you’d think the world was ending from the way he chews at every scrap of gossip.”
“I love the king and God knows I’m loyal to the throne,” Phelia said, “but Simeon’s handled this all so badly, hasn’t he? A brawl goes out of hand, and he sends people into exile? It only makes everyone feel there’s something terrible happening. There doesn’t have to be.”
She turned up a wide flight of well-polished black stairs. Clara followed her. From the end of the hall they were leaving, Clara heard men’s voices raised in argument but couldn’t make out the words. One of the voices was Feldin Maas, but while the other seemed familiar, she couldn’t put a name to it. She caught Vincen Coe’s eye and nodded him down the hall.
Go find what you can.
He shook his head once.
No.
Clara lifted her eyebrows, but by then they’d reached the landing. Phelia ushered them into the wide sitting room.
“You can wait here,” Clara said at the doorway.
“If you wish, my lady,” Vincen Coe said, and turned to stand with his back to the wall like a guard at his duty and didn’t show the vaguest hint of going back down the stairs to investigate. It was all quite vexing.
The sitting room had been redone in shades of red and gold since the last time Clara had seen it, but it still had the low divan by the window that she preferred. And, like a good hostess, Phelia had a pipe prepared for her. Clara plucked up the bone and hardwood bowl and tamped a bit of tobacco into it.
“I don’t know what to do any longer,” Phelia said, sitting on the divan. She was leaning forward with her hands clasped between her knees like a child. “I tell myself things aren’t so terribly bad, but then I wake up in the dark of the
night and I can’t get back to sleep. Feldin’s never there. He comes to bed with me, but as soon as I’m asleep he goes back to his letters and his meetings.”
“These are hard times,” Clara said. She lit the pipe from a thin silver candle set there for the purpose and drew in the smoke.
“Curtin was going to take the prince on as his ward, you know. But now that he’s gone, everyone’s been scrambling. I think… I think Feldin may be named. I may be helping to raise a prince.” Phelia giggled. “Can you imagine me raising a prince?”
“Aster’s a boy,” Clara said. “I’ve had three of them. One doesn’t raise boys so much as try to keep fragile things out of their reach.”
“Men aren’t any different,” Phelia said. “They never think about what might break.”
Clara sucked on the stem of the pipe and blew out a cloud of sweet grey smoke before she spoke.
“That is the issue, isn’t it? We have a problem, and it’s spilled over from our court into Northcoast and Asterilhold. Sarakal and Hallskar are likely taking notice as well.”
“I know it.”
“Well then, dear,” Clara said, keeping her voice light, “how shall we solve it?”
“I don’t know why it’s all such a concern. There were ages when Asterilhold, Antea, and Northcoast all answered to the High Kings. Everyone’s intermarried with everyone else. We’re practically a single kingdom already. When you think about it.”
“That is so utterly true,” Clara said, sitting beside her cousin. Phelia was plucking at her dress with her fingertips now, picking away threads and lint that weren’t there.
“I just don’t see why there should be any fuss about swords
and bows and such. Nobody can possibly want that, can they? What would fighting gain anyone? It isn’t as if we aren’t already practically one kingdom.”
“Yes, but as long as there’s one throne in Camnipol and another in Kaltfel, they’ll rattle their swords at one another,” Clara said. “It’s what they do, isn’t it?”
Phelia started. Her eyes were wider than they should have been, and her hands gripped her knees until the blood was all gone from her knuckles. Now
that
was interesting. Clara cleared her throat and went on, pretending not to notice.
“The problem is how to give everyone a way to keep their honor intact without asking very much of them. I know Dawson won’t bring himself to see reason unless we can find a path to it that doesn’t involve stooping under something. I assume your Feldin’s very much the same.”
“But he’s won. Feldin feels he’s won, and if the prince does come to live with us…”
Clara waited.
“You know I admire Dawson,” Phelia said. “He’s always been so staunch. Even when he was being rude to Feldin, it was more from the way Dawson lives in the world as he would like it to be. I never thought it was out of anger or spite.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call my darling husband a man without spite, but I take your meaning, yes.”
Phelia giggled nervously. Her shoulders were hunched like someone braced against a blow.
“Did you hear that Rania Hiren’s pregnant?” Phelia asked. Clara debated for less than a heartbeat, and decided to let her cousin change the subject.
“Not again. How many times is this?”
“Eight, if you count the live births. There were three stillborn.”
“I’m amazed she has the stamina,” Clara said. “And her husband must be a man of some quality. Rania’s the dearest soul under the sky, but after the twins, she did start to look a bit like a mop’s head. It isn’t her fault, of course. It’s just her skin.”
“I have the same sort, though,” Phelia said. “I dread to think what I’ll look like after my first child.”
“You’re young, dear. I’m sure you’ll be able to get your figure back. I suppose it’s rude for me to ask how work has been on that particular project?”
Phelia blushed, but she also relaxed. Bed gossip and the intricacies of the female flesh might be indelicate, but they were safer than politics and the rumors of war. Throughout the hour, Clara let them talk of nothing in particular, always leaving opportunities for Phelia to return them to the topic of their husbands and the threat hanging over the city like smoke from a fire. At no point did Phelia take the opportunities offered her. That said quite a bit in itself.
When the time came to take her leave, Clara found Vincen Coe precisely where he had been, scowling at the empty air. As they walked down the stairs, Phelia took Clara’s arm, leaning into her with each step; the visit seemed to have calmed her as much as it had uneased Clara herself. At the door, Vincen reclaimed his blades from the Jasuru as Clara embraced Phelia in farewell. Her bearers brought the sedan chair to the ready, and Clara took her shawl back from the footman. It wasn’t until she was out of the private square that the last of the tobacco ran out and Clara realized she’d accidentally stolen Phelia’s pipe. She knocked the bowl clean on the side opposite from Vincen so as to keep the ashes from falling on him.
“You were eavesdropping, I assume?” she said, loudly enough to carry over the noise of the street.
“Not at all, my lady.”
“Oh please, Vincen,” she said. “I’m not dim. How much did you hear?”
A few moments later, the huntsman shrugged.
“Almost all, my lady. She spoke a bit softly when she was discussing her fertility problems, and you were laughing at the comments about Lord Sonnen’s mistress.”
“You heard the first part, then. About my husband and hers?”
“I did.”
“Why do you suppose she would be concerned about Asterilhold and Antea sharing a common history? Being ‘practically one kingdom’?”
“At a guess, my lady, because she expects they may be again.”
He glanced at her, and his expression—guarded, calm, grim—told her that they were in agreement. Whatever the intricacies of blood and marriage, precedent and politics, Antea and Asterilhold could never be united while Simeon and Aster lived. And Phelia, never meaning to say it, thought unification possible. Even likely. And Aster was quite likely going to be living under her roof.
It seemed to follow that Feldin Maas and his foreign backers intended to kill Prince Aster.
“Well,” Clara said with a sigh. “So much for making peace.”
W
ind rattled the shutters and hissed at the windows. The morning sun was too bright to bear. By simply existing, the world made Cithrin want to vomit. She rolled over on her bed, pressing her hand to her throat. She didn’t want to stand up, and she certainly wasn’t walking to the Grand Market. The attempt alone would kill her.
There was a vague uneasiness muttering at the back of her mind, a reason that staying here would be a problem. She was supposed to go to the café because…
Because…
Cithrin said something obscene, then, without opening her eyes, repeated it slowly, drawing out the sounds. She was supposed to meet with a representative of the tanner’s guild to talk about insuring their trade when the ships went back out. It wouldn’t be long now. Days, perhaps. Not more than two weeks. Then the thrice-damned ships would go out, traveling up the coast while the season still held. They’d make their stops in the north, make what trades they could, and then hunker down for the winter, waiting for the ships from Far Syramys to reach the great island of Narinisle and begin the whole blighted thing over again. And so it would go, on and on and on until the end of all things, whether Cithrin got out of bed or not.
She sat up. Her rooms were in disarray around her. Bottles
and empty wineskins crowded the floor. Another gust pushed against the windows, and she felt the air around her press in and then out. It was nauseating. She stood up slowly and walked across to look for a dress to put on that didn’t stink of sweat. Sometime during the night, it appeared she’d knocked against the night pot, because a puddle of cold piss was well on its way to staining the floorboards. The only clothes that didn’t look filthy were the trousers and rough shirt she’d worn as Tag the Carter. For what she had to do, they’d suffice. There were still half a dozen silver coins in her purse, and she shoved them into Tag’s pocket.
By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she felt more nearly human. She stepped out into the street for a moment, then back in through the bank’s front door.
“Roach,” she said, and the little Timzinae jumped to attention.
“Magistra Cithrin,” he said. “Captain Wester and Yardem just left to collect payment from the brewer just north of the wall and the two butchers in the salt quarter. Barth and Corisen Mout went with them. Enen’s asleep in the back because she drew night watch, and Ahariel is going to get some sausages and come back.”
“I need you to run an errand for me,” Cithrin said. “Go to the café and let the man from the tanner’s guild know I won’t be there. Tell him I’m unwell.”
The boy’s nictatating membranes clicked over his eyes nervously.
“Captain Wester said I should stay here,” Roach said. “Enen’s asleep, and he wanted someone awake in case—”
“I’ll stay down here until someone gets back,” Cithrin said. “I may feel like slow death, but I can still raise a shout if it’s called for.”
Roach still looked uncertain. Cithrin felt a stab of annoyance.
“I pay Wester,” she said. “I pay you too, for that. Now
go.
”
“Y-yes, Magistra.”
The boy darted out to the street. Cithrin stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching the dark legs scissor and stretch as he ran. Far down the street, he dodged a cart loaded with fresh-caught fish, turned the corner, and vanished. Cithrin counted slowly to twelve, giving him time to reappear. When he didn’t, she walked out into the street and pulled the door shut behind her. The wind was against her and kicking up bits of dust and straw, but she squinted her way to the taproom.
“Good morning, Magistra,” the keeper said as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. “Back already?”