Daniel Abraham: The King's Blood

“No,” Dawson said. “Absolutely not. I won’t have my boy wearing secondhand clothes.”

“She isn’t a coat, dear.”

“You know what I mean,” Dawson said, rising to his feet. He should have known. He should have guessed by the shame in Jorey’s body that the girl was a slut. And now Dawson had said that getting the letter was a good thing. “I’ll find him now and put a stop to this.”

“Don’t.”

Dawson turned back at the doorway. Clara hadn’t risen. Her face was soft and round, her eyes on his. Her perfect rosebud lips curled in a tiny smile, and with the light spilling across her, she looked… no, not young again. Better than young again. She looked like herself.

“But, love, if Jorey—”

“There are weeks between now and the first chance he could have to see her. There isn’t a rush.”

He took a step back into the room before he knew he’d done it. Clara put the pipe stem back in her mouth, drawing gently. Smoke seeped out of her nostrils like she was some ancient dragon hidden in a woman’s flesh. When she spoke, her voice was light, conversational, but her eyes were locked on his.

“As I recall, I wasn’t the first girl you ever took to bed,” she said. “I believe you knew exactly what you were about when my bride’s night came.”

“She’s a woman,” he said. “It’s not the same.”

“I suppose it isn’t,” Clara said, a note of melancholy stealing into her voice. “Still, we’re all round-heeled sometimes. I would have fallen back for you months before you made me honest, and we both remember that.”

Dawson’s body began to stir without his will.

“You’re trying to distract me.”

“It’s working,” Clara said. “Indiscreet and unlucky doesn’t make her a bad person. Or a bad wife. Give it time, and let me see what I can learn of her when we’re back in Camnipol. Lord Skestinin might make a very fine ally if Jorey were to lift up his fallen daughter. And really, dear, they may be in love.”

She held out her hand, guiding him down to sit beside her. Her skin wasn’t as smooth as it had been two decades and four children before, but it was still as soft. The amusement in her eyes called forth a softness in his own heart. He could feel his outrage fading. He plucked the pipe from her mouth, leaned forward, and kissed her gently, his mouth filling with her smoke. When he drew back, she was smiling.

“As long as she’s not unfaithful,” Dawson said with a sigh. “I won’t have someone in the family being unfaithful.”

A cloud seemed to pass over Clara’s eyes, a moment’s darkness but nothing more.

“When the time comes,” she said. “We can worry when the time comes.”

It was a week past his thirty-ninth name day, and Marcus squatted at the alley’s mouth, waiting. A soft rain fell on the nightdark streets, beading on the waxed wool of his cloak. Yardem stood in the shadows behind him, unseen but present. In the house across the narrow square, a shape passed in front of the window—a man peering out into the darkness. A less experienced man might have stepped back, but Wester knew how to keep from being seen. The man in the window retreated. The tapping of raindrops against stone was the only sound.

“It’s not as if I can tell her what to do,” Marcus said.

“No, sir.”

“She’s a grown woman. Well, she’s almost a grown woman. She’s not a child, certainly.”

“It’s an awkward age, sir,” Yardem agreed.

“She wants control over her life. Autonomy. The problem is that she didn’t have any her whole life, and then had all of it at once. She had free rein with this bank for months. Long enough to see that she could do it well. After getting a taste for it, I don’t see how she turns her back.”

“Yes, sir.”

Marcus sighed. His breath barely misted. It was a warm spring. He tapped his fingertips against his sword’s pommel. Annoyance and concern gnawed at him like rats in the grain house walls.

“I could talk to her,” he said at last. “I could tell her that she’s got to be patient. Give the situation time to change on its own. Could she hear that, d’you think?”

For a moment, the rain was the only reply.

“Did you want me to answer that?” the Tralgu asked.

“I asked it, didn’t I?”

“Could have been a rhetorical point.”

Across the square, a thin line of light marked an opening door. Marcus went still for a few seconds, but the door closed again without opening fully. He eased his grip on his sword.

“No, I really meant it,” he said. “She’s my employer, but she’s also… Cithrin. If you’ve got a suggestion here, I’m open to hearing it.”

“Well, sir, I believe that every soul has its own shape—”

“Ah, God. Not this again.”

“You asked, sir. You might let me answer.”

“Right, sorry. Go ahead. I’ll tell myself it’s all a metaphor for something.”

Yardem’s sigh was eloquent, but he continued.

“Every soul has its own shape, and it determines the person’s path through the world. Your soul is a circle standing on its edge. At your lowest point, you will only rise, and your highest is when you are most likely to fall. Someone else’s soul might be shaped like a blade or a brick or a branching river. Each of them would live the same life differently.”

“Which would make it the same life how?”

“I can explain that if you’d like, sir. It’s theological.”

“No, forget I said anything.”

“If the magistra’s soul leads her in one way, it will seem the simplest path, whether it is or not. If she’s left within herself, she’ll turn in that direction just like Old Imbert drifted to the left after he took that hammer to his head. To make another choice would require the action of a different soul—”

Marcus raised his hand, and Yardem fell silent. The door that had opened before shifted. The light behind it was gone, and the movement was only a deeper bit of darkness. Yardem shifted. Marcus squinted into the dim.

“He’s going north, sir.”

Marcus took to his feet and shrugged back his cloak, the rain dampening his newly freed sword arm. Around them, Porte Oliva slept, or if it didn’t sleep, at least huddled close to its fires. If there had been moonlight, the pale walls and blue-painted lintels of the merchant quarter would have glowed. Instead, Marcus navigated by shadows and memory. Here and there, a lantern hung from an iron hook beside a door, spilling thin light, but there was more than enough gloom to cling to for a man who didn’t want to be seen. The bricks under his feet were slick with grime and rain. Marcus walked quickly, not quite trotting, and straining his ears for his quarry’s footsteps. Yardem could have been his shadow.

The man’s mistake was a small one, and inevitable. A small splash of a heel coming down in an unexpected puddle and an involuntary grunt. It was enough. They were close enough. It was time.

“Canin!” Marcus said with a friendliness that might almost have been genuine. “Canin Mise, as I live and breathe. Imagine meeting you out on a night like this.”

For a moment, it could have gone either way. The man could have greeted him, pretended some legitimate business, and had their conversation. Instead, there was the soft hiss of steel clearing its sheath. Marcus was disappointed, but he wasn’t surprised. He stepped back slowly, putting another foot or two between himself and the man.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Marcus said, easing his own blade free with a finger pressed against it to keep it from singing. “No one has to die here.”

“You cheated me,” the little merchant said. “You and that half-breed bitch you dance for.”