The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin) (47 page)

The sky was pale and strangely opalescent, and the wind carried the threat of storm without the promise of release. Yardem walked off to speak with Enen and the other house guards, leaving Cithrin to make her way out to the gate and the street. Suddapal was not her city. However long she stayed, the roads would always feel a bit too wide, the land a bit too open. She missed glazed windows and negotiations conducted in private. And still, she would have paved the seafront in silver if it would protect the people there.

She saw the protector’s men coming along the street, dark uniforms marching in a square. Not quite a threat of violence, but ready for it at any moment. And in the center of the square, the brown robes of the priest. She felt the dread in her gut, but only waited for them patiently. They might not be coming for her.

They were coming for her.

“Magistra bel Sarcour,” the priest said, bowing slightly. “I hope the day is treating you kindly.”

“It will do, I suppose,” Cithrin said through her smile. “Unless you have another one on offer?”

The priest smiled back uneasily. She’d spoken with him three or four times now. Less than she’d expected, since she’d made herself one of the more important people in the city. She couldn’t help wondering if Fallon Broot was keeping them apart out of his own unease with the priesthood. She had noticed that the friendly nonsense of banter seemed to bother the priest, so she employed it liberally.

“There was a fire last night,” the priest said.

“I didn’t know that,” Cithrin said, telling the truth.

“It was near the prison. While the protector’s men were dealing with it, someone threw a rope ladder over the back wall and almost seventy prisoners escaped.”

“Really?” Cithrin said.

“Several were the children of people in the employ of your bank.”

“And I’d imagine several weren’t,” Cithrin said. “Any in any case, it wasn’t anything the bank had a hand in, so I don’t believe I can help you with that.”

The priest tilted his head and bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet in a way that made him look like a sparrow.

“You don’t want to know which of your employees’ children were part of the attack?”

“I don’t,” Cithrin said. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask about, or shall I return to my business?”

The priest held out a letter.

“A message came for you by military courier,” the priest said. “From the Lord Regent.”

“Oh,” Cithrin said. “Perhaps I mistook small talk for interrogation.”

She took the letter as if it were a normal thing, and not the chance that Geder had changed his mind about her and was about to have her thrown into prison. She kept her smile pleasant and her gaze locked on the priest’s. Making him look away first was a petty thing, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t be a politician in everything, and the man frightened her. She turned back to the compound. Later, she would need to go to the trading house and at least make some pretense at the normal business of the bank, but correspondence from Geder was her first priority. She went to her office and closed the doors. She put the letter down on the desk. The address on the outer fold was written in his hand. Twice, she reached toward it and pulled back. She put a book over it to keep it from blowing under a desk, went to the kitchen, and came back with a bottle of wine and no cup. The alcohol soothed the anxiety knotting her gut, and when she was a little over halfway through, she was ready to open the letter.

… I need the company of someone who cares for me … I will begin on my way south to Suddapal and, my dear, to you.

Remembering the peace that I took from your touch, from your body, has been the only thing that—

It was like a letter written between people she’d never met. It was love and sex and a kind of raw vulnerability. If she’d only happened upon it, she would have thought it was sweet and touching. She would have imagined the woman to whom it had been written and the man who’d put pen to paper, and she would have envied them. Only she was the woman, and the man was Geder Palliako. And worse than that, she could see where this unreal version of her had grown from. She remembered feeling fond of Geder, the frightened little man who was trying to protect the boy put in his charge. She remembered watching them working puzzles with complex stories about Drakkis Stormcrow and sleeping dragons. She remembered kissing him, and more than that, wanting to kiss him.

Only now he was coming here thinking that he was still the man he’d been that summer, and she was the woman he imagined her to be.

“Well,” she said, softly and to herself. “Fuck.”

The scratching at the door startled her back to herself. The last of the wine had gone, though she didn’t remember drinking it. There was more in the kitchens, and she badly wanted another bottle. The scratch came again.

“Come in,” she said, her words perfectly sharp. One bottle wasn’t enough to leave her drunk. Tonight, three might not suffice.

Enen opened the door. A Timzinae man she didn’t know was at the woman’s side. He wore the rough cotton of a dockworker.

“Someone asking to see you,” Enen said, her voice soft and gentle in a way that told Cithrin of the fear that had brought this man, whoever he was, to her. Cithrin willed herself to sit up a little straighter. There was room enough in the chair for her and Geder’s lover; there would be enough for Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour too.

“Come in,” she said.

The man stepped in. His nictitating membranes were clicking open and closed and he held his hands in fists tight against his sides.

“I’m sorry for bothering you,” he said. “Only I heard about you from Kitap, and I thought … I thought …”

“Kitap?” Cithrin said, and the man’s face fell. Then, “You mean Master Kit?”

“Yes. You might have called him that. He used to live with my family, back before he was anything in particular. My name’s Epetchi. Maybe he talked about me? Or Ela?”

“He may have,” Cithrin said. “Now that I think of it, he may have.” She didn’t remember him saying a thing, but she knew from someone that there had been a café run by friends of his down near the docks.

“He said you might be able to help people. That you were a good person. A friend.”

Cithrin smiled the way she did in any negotiation and nodded toward the divan.

“Tell me what’s going on, Epetchi,” she said.

His niece had been one of the children taken from the prison, only she’d been hurt in the flight. He was hiding her in his storeroom, but she had a fever and it was getting worse. He didn’t dare go for a cunning man for fear that they’d be turned in to the Anteans. As he explained himself, the high whine of anxiety faded from his voice and a deeper, lower kind of fear came in. One more like despair.

Cithirin listened carefully. The fumes of the wine faded quickly, and her mind danced over the problem. Epetchi was right, of course. The protector’s guard would be watching the cunning men. The priest would be questioning them and anyone else whose work it was to give aid to the desperate and in need. When he shrugged and went silent, she pressed her fingertips to her lips and thought.

“Come with me,” she said. He followed her out to the guard room. Yardem and Enen were both there.

“Yardem, do you know of any cunning men willing to die because I put them on a list?”

“Know one I could ask.”

“Do that,” Cithrin said. “Then get him to this man’s café. He’s a friend of Kit’s.”

“My sympathies,” Yardem said seriously, and then broke into a grin. Epetchi laughed.

“You know him too, then?”

Cithrin stepped back. Yardem would see to it now. She walked through the corridors, back to the kitchen for two more bottles, and then to her room. She’d done enough of her business for the day, and if she went there, she would only read the letter again. She didn’t want to do that.

The plant that Isadau had given her that first day still sat on her sill. Its small, thick needles hadn’t gone brown with the autumn. Cithrin sat on her bed and watched it quiver in the breeze. Another good night, then. Maybe another life saved. She wondered who had engineered the escape of the prisoners. It was reassuring to know that there were others in the city who were taking action, but it was not surprising. This was their home. These were their children. If the whip ever came to their hand, Geder’s soldiers would suffer and die, she didn’t have any doubt.

She wondered how much was enough. She had already managed an order of magnitude more than Isadau could have. She had immunity for the bank that no one else in the world could have acquired, and she’d used it as best she could. But she couldn’t say it was enough. Her own argument circled back. One more day would save another few people, and how could she tell herself that the ones she would have saved were less important than the ones she already had? And one more day after that, and after that, and after that until Geder came to her door expecting a lover to fall into his arms.

And then? What were the lives worth that she could still save after that? If she fell as she was expected to, if she became the woman the letters were for, how many more refugees could she spirit out of Suddapal?

It was an exchange, just as anything was. She could maintain her branch and its immunity. She could get information about the Antean army and the spider cult. And all it would mean was becoming Geder Palliako’s lover. She tried to imagine what it would be like, standing naked before him now that she knew he’d ordered the death of Vanai, now that she’d watched him slaughter a man, now that she’d lived in a city that had been broken by his will and the will of his priests. Unpleasant, yes, but her body was only a body. Access to it was something he wanted and that she was in a position to give. And what she would gain from it couldn’t be had for any other price. This wasn’t a new equation. She’d had the same essential decision with Sandr and with Qahuar Em. Once, it hadn’t been a good trade. Once, she’d thought it was and had been wrong. Neither of those had killed her heart.

The plant shivered. Cithrin pulled the cork from her bottle and sat with her back to the cool, rough wall. The taste of grapes and the bite of the alcohol were like old friends come to commiserate. Isadau would have died for her city, and Cithrin had bought her absence with a promise. A promise to save as much of Suddapal as she could. So in a sense, if she took up with Geder Palliako again, if she sat at his table and laughed at his jokes and permitted herself to be used by him in his bed, it would still be from love. Her love for Isadau. She drank from her bottle. She knew from long experience it would take at least one more for her to sleep tonight.

“Fine,” she said.

Marcus

T
he north coast of Hallskar in the depths of winter was a cold kind of hell. Marcus had known from stories he’d heard told by other mercenaries and wanderers that the storms could be vicious and sudden, that the land was harsh and unforgiving. He’d lived in Northcoast most of his boyhood, and the little cruelties of winter were nothing new to him.

He had underestimated.

“We’re all going to die!” Sandr wailed.

“Die walking, then,” Marcus shouted and leaned harder into the storm. Before them, the cart swayed in the wind. A layer of ice was forming on the left side, and Hornet had given up trying to break it off. The horses’ heads were low, their manes glazed as they pushed on. Marcus was more worried about them than about Sandr. If the actor collapsed, they could load him in with the costumes and the props. If the horses fell, they would have to stop. And if they stopped, the chances were good they wouldn’t start again.

The morning had been clear and cold enough to freeze piss when it hit the ground. The sky had given no particular sign of trouble until trouble descended. In the space of an hour, the day went from calm to blustery and from blustery to a howling gale. Dar Cinlama and the Antean expedition had been rumored to be just ahead of them somewhere along this road, but Marcus didn’t care about them any longer. Or about the spider goddess or anything other than the thought that freezing to death on a icy track in Hallskar wasn’t the way he’d hoped to die, but it also wasn’t the worst.

“Your turn,” someone said, but Marcus wasn’t sure who. He tried to blink but his eyes felt raw. Cary tugged at his shoulder again, pushing him toward the cart. “It’s your turn. Get in.”

“Right,” Marcus said. With numb blocks for arms and legs, he clambered up the back of the cart. The wind wasn’t so bad here, though the cold was cutting. There was frost on the costumes. He inched forward until he was nearly at the front. Kit sat on the bench, his body made nearly round by the cloaks, jackets, and blankets that wrapped him. Snow and ice were sticking to him like he was a stone.

“We have to find shelter,” Marcus shouted over the voice of the weather.

“Yes,” the snowball-lump that was Kit shouted back.

“Are you sure we’re still on the road?”

“No.”

Marcus paused for a moment, trying to think what he could do about that.

“All right,” he said. “I’m going to rest.”

“You should.”

Marcus turned back. A gust of wind shook the cart, and he felt the jarring when the wheel fell back to the ground. The tiny glass lamp that hung from the top of the folded stage didn’t go out, and he cupped it in his hands, letting the warmth of the little flame thaw his fingers. They were all taking turns resting in the cart except for Kit with the team and Smit who wouldn’t stop leading the two riding horses. It was only their second week out of Rukkyupal, and the fantasy Marcus had built of going from town to town putting plays on for the Haaverkin and uncovering hints about the whereabouts of Dar Cinlama was dead.

Someone shouted. Charlit Soon, Marcus thought, but it could have been Cary. He had the image of someone fallen in the snow and unable to rise. He fought the weariness, focusing his eyes, then went out to help them back up.

Only no one had fallen.

Charlit Soon was standing off to the side of the road, pointing out into the grey-white gloom of the world. Marcus fought his way toward her, slipped on the ice, and rose again. When he came close enough to hear individual words, she was shouting, “Light! There’s a light.”