The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin) (12 page)

Cithrin read the full letter from beginning to end, and she felt some part of herself that she hadn’t known was knotted relax. Her mind became stiller than it had been in weeks, clear and cold. For a time, she was in Camnipol, walking the streets that the letter spoke of as best her memory would allow. Detail grew upon detail: prisons, food supplies, the manufacture of weapons, the rising tide of violence against the poor and the powerless, the resentment of the Timzinae conspiracy in which neither she not the letter’s author had the slightest belief. In the end, she folded the letter and looked into the dancing flame of the lantern. She didn’t see it. She was elsewhere. She was in the darkness and the dust, hiding with Aster and Geder, working puzzles about the ancient dragons and the wars long past. If the Geder Palliako she’d known was taking these steps, what would he mean by them? For a moment, she saw him again as he had been the last time they’d been together: in the street smelling of vomit and another man’s blood, trying awkwardly to invite her to stay for tea.

She shuddered.

“Was there a question Komme wanted to ask me about this?”

“Not specifically. Your impression of the author. Whether your experience matched what he says.”

“It does,” Cithrin said. “As to the writer … The details are all as I’d expect, or near enough. The conclusions seem sound. I’ve only been in Camnipol once, and that was under peculiar circumstances, but this description is more plausible for me than the one Paerin gave.”

“So you would trust the source?”

“Not without knowing who it is, no,” Cithrin said. “But I’d read the next letter carefully and treat it with respect. And I’d prepare for another Antean war, though I couldn’t say against whom.”

“Sarakal,” Isadau said, rising from her chair. “The report came in from friends of Komme in Asinport that Lord Skestinin’s fleet had sailed east and south. Komme expects Antea will march early in the spring if they haven’t already.”

Cithrin felt a deep dread welling up in her breast, but she only nodded.

“What is the bank’s position?”

Isadau nodded, her chitinous lips pressing together.

“We’ve taken contracts on supplies. Food, of course. And we bought out any insurance contracts for caravans heading north and invested in three roundships that will be ready to offer an alternate route.”

“And the local coin and spice? Will we be moving it?”

Isadau shook her head.

“Antea can’t win against Sarakal,” she said. “The traditional families pester each other and play out their vicious little intrigues, but nothing unites them like a common enemy. At the height of its power, the Antean Empire found it easier to respect the border than challenge it, and whether the new Lord Regent recognizes it or not, Antea
is
weakened. There may well be a long and bloody fight. The borders may shift. It’s unlikely that Nus will change hands, though I suppose it’s possible. There will doubtless be starvation and blood on both sides, but Sarakal won’t fall.”

“You don’t think he’ll come here, then?”

“Even the great rulers are constrained by the world,” Isadau said. “The empire’s ambitions may be vast and ill-considered, but there are still only so many men, so many horses, so many siege engines, and there’s a great deal of territory in Sarakal that will resist being passed through. If the armies of Antea come to Suddapal, it will be because the nature of the world has changed in a way that hasn’t happened since the dragons fell. So no, they won’t come here. Not in my lifetime, and not in yours.”

Clara

T
he end of the winter’s hunt had always been a difficult and pleasant time. The long, dark weeks drew near their end, and Dawson returned from whatever corner of the empire his friend and king had taken him. He would come back to the holdfast at Osterling Fells exhausted and moody and spend the better part of a week complaining that the journey back to Camnipol for the opening of the season was coming too soon, that there was too much work to be done on his lands. The progress of every improvement and renovation would be weighed and found wanting, the questions of justice that had waited for his word would be answered and justice meted out, and slowly, his shoulders would relax, his smile become easier. He claimed it was the comfort of being at home and with her, but it was also anticipation. She remembered lying in bed with him, their bodies pleasantly spent, and listening to the gossip from the hunt and the dripping of melting ice. Her husband was a prickly man, loyal as a dog and proud as a cat, and he found the guiding star of his life in preserving the world against change. The fears that haunted his worst nights had always been that his children might inherit a kingdom debased from the one he had been given and that his wife might be discontent. When the time came to leave the Fells for their compound in the city, he was champing at the bit to resume the battles and intrigues of court. It was the work he’d been born to.

And so every spring, Dawson would go through the holdings one last time, giving orders and coin, instructions to his vassals that would take them through another summer and guide the lands that he protected safely to autumn. Every spring, husband and wife would travel the dragon’s road back to Camnipol, the rhythm of the team’s hoofs creating martial music as the couple leaned against one another in the well-cushioned carriage. Every spring, she would take charge of the house and see it washed and cleaned and cared for while he snuck out, sheepish and delighted as a boy, to the Fraternity of the Great Bear to drink and smoke and debate with his friends and his enemies.

Every spring until this one.

Clara had seen the first arrivals. The grand carriages of Lord Flor clattering along the black cobbles inside the southern gate, ribbons trailing from it and a crier on horseback clearing its path. Lady Flor, who had more than once sat in Clara’s withdrawing room and shared the intimate details of her husband’s infidelities, had been looking out the window. Perhaps she hadn’t recognized the grey-cloaked woman walking through the street as her old friend. Perhaps she had. That had been three days ago. Winter’s grip loosened, and the court returned to Camnipol.

Clara listened to the familiar knock at her door. Her thin wooden door hardly robust enough to keep the wind out. Not Vincen’s tapping, but the proprietary rap of his cousin Abatha.

“M’lady, I know you’re in there.”

“I am indisposed,” Clara said.

“Second day running you said that,” Abatha said. “Vincen’s worrying you’ve got lady troubles.”

Clara laughed despite herself.

“How delicate of him,” she said.

The wooden flooring creaked as the keep shifted her weight.

“I don’t like to mention it,” Abatha said, and then didn’t go on. She didn’t need to. The rent was due, and Clara didn’t have the coin to pay.

“Yes, thank you,” Clara said, still not rising from her bed. “I will see it taken care of.”

The creaking footsteps went away toward the kitchen and left Clara alone. Pale, soiled sunlight shouldered its way through the oiled parchment of the window. Clara’s body felt heavy and it ached at the joints, but she hauled herself to sitting and rested her head in her hands. Her skin stuck to itself and her hair fell lank at her shoulders. She had to go to Lord Skestinin’s little estate and collect her allowance. She couldn’t say whether she hoped that Jorey and Sabiha, her natural son and more recent daughter, had come back yet or dreaded it.

Whatever the case, it had to be done.

“Enough,” she chided herself. “Just …
enough
.”

An hour later, she emerged from the rooms as if stepping into Camnipol fresh from Osterling Fells. A bit of ribbon held her hair in place. Her dress—one of the few to survive the insurrection—was a bit out of fashion, but the cut flattered and the hem was clean. Thankfully, Vincen had gone to the butcher’s for his cousin and Clara could make the walk alone without having to argue. Likely she wouldn’t have been able to explain why she wanted her two lives kept separate this way, apart from the fact that she did.

That her son had returned became obvious as soon as she approached the mansions. They were modest almost to the point of self-effacement, but fresh banners flew above the door and no moss or lichen marred the stone façade. The windows stood open to the breeze, yellow curtains billowing from one of the second-floor windows where a servant hadn’t made them fast. A Yemmu door slave she didn’t recognize stood in the entrance, fixed to the wall with a ceremonial silver chain. Black-inlaid designs decorated the tusks that rose from his lower jaw. Clara smiled at him as she approached.

“My lady,” the man rumbled. Bowed almost double, he still stood as high as her shoulder. “How may I serve?”

“I’ve come to see Jorey Kalliam, if he’s available,” she said.

“Yes, my lady. And who may I say is calling?”

It was an excellent question, and one with several answers.

“His mother,” she said.

Sunlight streamed through the sitting room’s windows, and a cheerful little fire popped and muttered in the grate. The clean smells of vinegar and soap felt almost like coming home after the months in Abatha’s boarding house, and Clara let herself relax for a moment. A Firstblood servant girl brought in a cup of coffee and a crust of sweetbread. Clara nodded her gratitude and tried not to consume it all too quickly.

The person who stepped through the doorway wasn’t her son. Sabiha Kalliam, once Skestinin, wore a simple gown of pale yellow that warmed the tone of her skin. Her hair draped about her shoulder, its softness at odds with the thinness of her lips and the solidity of her gaze. Clara stood, uncertain for a moment and afraid, before the girl stepped forward and embraced her. She smelled of mint and chamomile, and the warmth of her flesh felt like walking into summer. Clara felt an anxiety she hadn’t known she carried drop away.

“Oh, my dear,” she said, and then ran out of words.

The moment passed, and the two women stepped apart and sat. Clara found herself wanting to take Sabiha’s hand, to preserve the moment of contact a little longer, but the seating arrangements didn’t allow it.

“Jorey will be along soon,” Sabiha said. “How have you been?” The hardness in her voice sounded almost like regret. Clara gestured vaguely.

“Some days are better than others. Much as one might expect, I suppose. I have taken the liberty of stopping by and seeing my grandson. They’ve named him Pindan, which is apparently some sort of family name.”

“My uncle that died,” Sabiha said. “How is he? My … How is my son?”

“He’s a boy,” Clara said, chuckling. “He eats his own weight when he isn’t fasting, gets everywhere he ought not be, and thinks it hilarious to smear mud on people’s legs.”

Sabiha’s cheeks flushed and she nodded. For a man of the court, an illegitimate child might be an annoyance or even an opportunity to boast. Lords had been known to take their bastards as squires or put them into the more lucrative sorts of trade. It was one of many little asymmetries between the sexes.

“And you?” Clara asked. “I haven’t seen you since you left for the season.”

Sabiha lifted her eyebrows and looked down.

“Jorey thought it important that we attend the hunt,” she said. “My father agreed. It was … I don’t know. It was long, tiring, humiliating, and hard. Jorey does what he can to take the worst of it on himself, but it wore on him. He didn’t sleep well, and I don’t know whether the feasts we weren’t welcome to chafed more than the ones he attended.”

“Poor boy,” Clara said, fitting a river of melancholy into the two words. Jorey was her youngest son, and in some ways the one of her children the world had been cruelest with. Vicarian was safely in the church. Barriath, before he left, had been in battles, but only at sea and never particularly vicious ones at that. Jorey had helped to slaughter a city, and the ghosts of it walked behind him. The guilt had driven him to marry Sabiha in hopes of cleansing her name, and instead of raising her up, he had made her position in the court less tenable. Clara thought her son’s spine was made of pure enough metal to stand the strain. She hoped so.

“Some days were better,” Sabiha said.

“And you?” Clara asked, drawing her pipe from her pouch and filling the bowl with a pinch of cheap tobacco. “God alone knows this can’t have been easy for you either.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” Sabiha said, her smile thin and oddly cruel. She took a twig from the fire and offered Clara the ember for her pipe. “I’m used to people pointing at me and whispering down their sleeves. I suppose I’m glad it’s not my past their amusing themselves with. It hasn’t left me with a deeper love of the court in general, though.”

“I imagine not,” Clara said, and drew the smoke into her lungs.

The pause was not entirely comfortable. Sabiha moved her head in one direction and then the other, testing out words without speaking them. Clara waited, knowing well how such things took their own time. The young woman’s hands relaxed just before she spoke.

“I don’t know how to
help
him.”

“Mother!” Jorey said, pushing through the door. His smile looked almost genuine. Clara rose into his arms. Regret that he hadn’t waited just a few minutes more was washed away by the scent of his hair and the strength in his arms around her. Her little boy had grown to a man, but she would always see him as infant sitting up by himself for the first time, an expression of wordless triumph on his dough-soft face. Holding him, she was neither the widow of a traitor she had been nor the half-formed woman she was becoming, but only the mother of her child. It was enough.

The moment passed and he pulled away.

“It’s good to see you again,” he said.

“And also you, dear,” Clara said. “Sabiha’s been telling me that the hunt was as much a masculine bore as ever, and I was acting as though I missed it.”

“I didn’t think you ever went,” Jorey said, sitting at his wife’s side. Clara took her own seat, gesturing with her pipe.

“It seemed polite to pretend,” she said. Jorey laughed, and Sabiha looked for a moment surprised before she smiled herself. “I’m sorry to say that I’ve come begging.”