Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path

“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.”

Wind 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?”

“Seems I am,” she said, fishing the silver coins back out of her pocket. “I’ll take what this buys.”

The keeper took the coins, lifting and dropping his hand as he estimated their weight.

“Your boys know how to go through wine,” he said.

“They don’t drink it,” she said, grinning. “It’s all for me.”

The man laughed. It was a new kind of lie she’d only just discovered, telling the bleak truth lightly and letting everyone around her mistake it for a joke. They don’t drink it; it’s all for me. Come winter, I’m as likely to be in the stocks as free. Nothing I do matters.

He came back with two dark bottles of wine and a small tun of beer. Cithrin tucked the tun under her arm, took a bottle in either hand, and waited as he opened he door for her. Now the wind was at her back, pushing her on like it wanted her to get back home. The sky was blue above her with a skin of white clouds high in the air, but it smelled like rain. Porte Oliva autumns had a reputation for rough weather, and summer was in its last days now. A little cloudburst now and again hardly seemed worth complaining about.

She didn’t go back into the main rooms, heading for her own door instead. Maneuvering up the stairs was hard with the tun still under her arm. She hit the corner of the wall at the top with her elbow. The impact was enough to leave her fingers tingling, but she didn’t drop the bottle.