The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin) (45 page)

“We’ll need to have this delivered to the Lord Regent in a way that can’t be followed back to us,” Clara said.

“Mmm. Any thoughts on how you’d like that done?”

“Well. Do you know any couriers that you particularly dislike?”

“I can find something,” Vincen said, laughing low in his throat. “Just let me find my clothes.”

“Don’t hurry,” she said, and then waved away his leer. “I only meant that I have some work still to do here. You may dress if you wish.”

She turned up the lamp and took out her paper, ink, and pen. She held the pen in her left hand, which muddied her letters and made the script look unlike her own, yet still, she thought, passably legible.

Lord Regent Palliako

For reasons I cannot at present reveal, I am passing on to you now two letters which have come into my possession. First is the copy of a message covertly sent by Ernst Mecilli to Lord Marshal Ternigan. The second is his reply. I trust you will take the actions needed to protect yourself and Prince Aster.

A friend

She waited for a long moment to let the ink dry. It wasn’t until she went to fold the letters together that she realized she’d used the same paper for her own letter and the alleged message from Mecilli, but after consideration, she let the matter pass. She’d said that the message was a copy, so one might expect it to have been copied on the same paper.

She sewed all three pages together with a blank sheet at the back on which she wrote,
Exclusively for the Eyes of Lord Regent Geder Palliako
with her left hand. By the time she was done, Vincen was dressed and his hair combed. Clara gave him the packet and three silver coins from her purse.

“Well, then,” she said. “Shall we bring down a tyrant?”

“Anything, my lady,” Vincen said, and his voice made the words only half a jest. “So long as it’s with you.”

W
ill you be going on the King’s Hunt again this winter?” Clara asked as she and her son walked through the house toward the winter garden. All around them, the servants were bustling through the halls and corridors. It made her realize again how small Lord Skestinin’s manor really was. Sufficient for a man who spent most of his summers with the fleet, but if he were ever to retire from the position, he’d need to expand. Or else find other rooms for his daughter and son-in-law.

“No, not this year,” Jorey said. “We talked about it, Sabiha and I. I think it would probably help my standing at court more to winter with her and her father.”

“Ah,” Clara said nodding. “So how far along is she, and when were you going to tell me?”

Jorey had the good sense to blush.

“Almost two months, and I was just working up to it,” he said. “If you’d given me until we actually reached the garden, we were going to tell you together.”

“That’s sensible,” Clara said. “I’ll pretend not to know a thing.”

“Mother, I love you, but you are the worst woman in the world at keeping a secret.”

“I suppose I am,” Clara said as they reached the doorway. “I’ll do my best.”

The winter garden made her miss her own solarium. The glass roof and walls had been designed to let in light and hold what little warmth the sun could offer. In the depths of winter, it was as unlivable as any room, but it gave a week or two in the winter and another in the early spring when she could have the illusion of sitting comfortably in the outdoors. It struck her for the first time how decadent it was to have an entire room made for such a small span of time. And still, she missed it.

Sabiha sat under a bench beneath a willow. The wall crowded the tree, but the effect was still lovely. For all her tarnished reputation, Sabiha Skestinin really had been a fortunate match for Jorey. When she stood, there was no mistaking her condition. Second children always did show earlier. Clara looked at the girl’s belly, then at her eyes, and then they were both grinning and weeping. Clara folded the girl into her arms and they stood there for a long moment while Jorey shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“Well done, my dear,” Clara said. “Oh, well done.”

“Thank you,” Sabiha said.

Clara drew her back down to the bench, but kept her hand. Jorey used a wide block of granite as a stool. He looked proud and content. The darkness wasn’t gone from his eyes, but it was lessened. Clara couldn’t help recalling Dawson strutting through the house when she’d first been sure that she was pregnant with Barriath. The memory held no sting.

“So Jorey tells me you’re going north for the winter,” Clara said. “I assume this is why.”

“Father will insist anyway,” Sabiha said. “This way he won’t have to come down and pry us away from the hunt.”

“Would he really do that? How wonderful of him.”

“So I’m afraid we’re going to come back next spring with considerably less court gossip,” Jorey said.

“I’m sure there will be more than enough of that. It never does seem to be in short supply.”

“I know,” Jorey said. “But I know you enjoy it. But we were wondering if you’d want to come with us? Estinport is, as I understand, a single block of ice and salt from now until sometime after the opening of the season, but I’m sure Lady Skestinin would find rooms for all of us. And you could …”

She could. She could be nearer to the sources of power. She could hear what there was to hear concerning the navy and its plans for the coming year. All of it the kind of thing that might be usefully put in an anonymous letter to Carse. And all she would have to leave was everything.

“That’s terribly kind of you, dear,” she said. “But it isn’t time.”

Geder

T
he mysterious letters found Geder halfway to the estate of Lord Annerin, four sheets, three of them written in different hands. The night after they’d come, Lord Regent Palliako had given the hunt to Prince Aster, taken his closest advisors—Flor, Emming, Daskellin, Mecilli, and Minister Basrahip—in the fastest carriages in the caravan, and sped for the south without word or explanation. It would be the scandal of the season. He’d shown no one what the letters said, he’d explained himself to no one, though for different reasons. He didn’t care. He didn’t care what they said about him.

Except that wasn’t true. It wasn’t the hard beds that kept him awake at night. It wasn’t the loss of comforts or the soft music he’d been able to command in the Kingspire. What kept Geder in motion was embarrassment that he had ever trusted these high and mighty lords, and rage. Well, soon enough, the truth would be revealed. Soon enough.

They left before dawn and rode until after nightfall. At each wayhouse and taproom, they traded their blown teams for fresh and began again as soon as the horses were in harness. Lord Emming complained, but Geder had pointed out that the sword-and-bows they’d brought were all his own personal guard, and if Lord Emming preferred not to travel, they could raise a cairn over him with relative ease. There hadn’t been any more complaints after that.

They rode through the free city of Orsen like a plague wind and made their way through the pass into Elassae despite snow and ice. The locals all told them that the danger was too great, but Geder ordered them on. They lost three men and two pack mules, but after five days of painfully slow progress, they reached the southern slopes. The dragon’s road cleared, and they began the last leg of their journey.

The fortress of Kiaria was cut deep into the living stone of the mountains. The brass gates to the first wall stood two hundred feet high and moved on gigantic mechanisms that had lain deep within the walls since the dragons. They stood broken now, the testament to almost a full season of Antean power. The only testament, because the second wall stood intact, and the third and fourth and fifth ones beyond that. At the base of the mountains on either side of the great gates was the Antean army. Geder’s army. The ground all around was a churn of ice, snow, mud, and shit. Hide tents fluttered in the wind that came down the mountain, and where there had been trees to break its power a year ago, there were only stumps now. Everything that would burn had been burned. Everything that could be eaten had been eaten. The army, according to the reports, needed three tons of food a day to stay alive, all of it coming overland from Suddapal and Inentai. Three tons of food every day for months turned to three tons of shit by the morning. The glory and power of Antea was living in its own latrine while the Timzinae sat in their caves and laughed.

And the man responsible for the war, the man whom Geder had already had to correct once, squatted in his tent scratching his balls and plotting treachery. The night before they reached the Lord Marshal’s encampment, Geder could hardly sleep.

When the sentries tried to stop them, Geder made them bow down until their noses touched their knees and stay in that position still as stones until he’d ridden past. Lord Ternigan’s tent looked much the worse for wear. Dark marks along the sides showed where the leather was starting to break down from the pressures of sun, rain, and wind. The Lord Marshal stood before the doorway in his dress armor, his own guards arrayed about him. The months had treated him no more gently than his tent. Ternigan’s beard was greyer than it had been in the summer, his cheeks thinner. He watched the carriages arrive one after the next until the open space before his tent was as cramped with the transportation of power as a revel at the height of the court season. Geder’s servants opened his carriage door and helped him down the steps and into the filth.

“My Lord Regent,” Ternigan said, then coughed wetly. “Once again, I am honored that you have chosen—”

“Shut up,” Geder said. “Get into the tent.”

Ternigan blinked and grew a shade paler. His gaze darted around, settling at last on Lord Mecilli and, Geder thought, relaxing a degree. Sighting an ally in dangerous times.
If you knew the names of the men who’ve agreed, it would astound you.
Geder had the sudden image of being in the tent only to find himself surrounded by his enemies. The guards themselves drawing knives to strike him down. Fear cut through the rage.

“Wait,” Geder said as Ternigan was about to enter the tent. “Stop. Minister Basrahip?”

The priest trundled slowly forward, making a jagged path between the still carriages. His expression was calm and serene. Behind him, two of his new initiates followed. When he reached Geder, he leaned close.

“Make sure my guards are still loyal to me. Can you do that?”

“Of course, Prince Geder,” the priest said, then turned to his initiates and motioned them close. They stood outside while Basrahip went to each of the guards, and then came back. Geder felt more and more self-conscious as the pause grew longer. Daskellin, Flor, Emming, and Mecilli all stood in a clump looking cold and uneasy. At last, Basrahip finished his round and came back to Geder’s side.

“They remain loyal to you,” Basrahip said.

“Good. Thank you,” Geder said quietly. Then, in his full voice, “Captain, disarm these men.”

Ternigan started, his mouth working quietly. Of the others, Daskellin and Flor seemed confused, but not alarmed. Emming appeared to hover on the margin between outrage and fear. And Mecilli … Geder couldn’t tell what was in Mecilli’s expression. Dispproval, perhaps. Or perhaps a kind of cold calculation. The great men of the empire had their swords and daggers taken from them. And then, Ternigan in the lead and the others behind him, they went into the tent. Then four of Geder’s guardsmen, and Geder, and Basrahip last.

When picturing the confrontation, he hadn’t really taken into account the size of Ternigan’s tent and how it related to the number of people who would actually be present. The camp tent was large for a man alone, or even a small group of advisors. With Geder and all of his council and the priests and the guards the proceedings had a vaguely comedic aspect that left him feeling even more ridiculous now than he had outside. Geder felt the rage that had fueled him all the way from Antea begin to falter in these last moments, and he hated it.

“Lord Ternigan? Lord Mecilli? Will you please stand here before me?”

Mecilli stepped forward, and then a heartbeat later, Ternigan followed his lead. Geder nodded and drew the letters from his wallet. Mecilli looked at the pages with curiosity, but Ternigan blanched.

“These little missives,” Geder said, “came into my possession. They purport to be correspondence between the two of you. Mecilli, take this.”

Mecilli accepted the page and read it slowly. After a few moments, his eyebrows rose and his face grew pale and waxen. Behind him, near the farther wall of the tent, Basrahip made his way through the press of men to take a position where Geder could see him.

“Lord Mecilli?” Geder said, letting the syllables roll gently through his mouth, willing himself back to the feelings of anger and righteousness that he’d let slip. “Do you recognize this letter?”

“No, Lord Regent. I have never seen this before.”

The tent was silent for a long moment, and then, to Geder’s surprise and horror, Basrahip nodded. Mecilli was speaking the truth.

“You didn’t write this?”

“No.”

Geder felt a lump growing in his throat. He’d pulled them halfway across the country for almost weeks for nothing. It had been a hoax. They would all go back to Antea with stories of how someone had made a joke of Geder Palliako.

“Did you write something similar to it?”

“No.”

“Are you part of a conspiracy against me?”

“I am not.”

With every reply, Mecilli’s voice grew calmer, firmer, and more certain. And at the tent’s rear wall, Basrahip certified each of them true. The goddess held her hand over Mecilli’s head and exonerated him. The press of bodies and the thickness of twice-breathed air called forth sweat and a lightheadedness that felt like being sick. He’d been tricked. He’d been made fun of. All of the signs and signals between the men had been figments of his fevered imagination. Somewhere, the true author of the letters was laughing.