Daniel Abraham - The Tyrant's Law

The fires in the braziers fluttered in the breeze. Marcus thought he saw, high up along the walls, where the air shafts were hidden by curves in the stone. Whoever had built the chamber, however many centuries ago, they’d been brilliant. Controlling the air flow alone would have been impressive.

“It’s what I feared, isn’t it?” Kit said. “All of it. All the tales and histories. All the sermons. I think they were all just children whispering to each other down through generations, each believing and repeating what the one before had said, all the misunderstandings building on each other, until anything became plausible. Not a mad goddess, but human dreams and fears given the reins.”

“We should probably have this conversation someplace else, Kit. If your old friends come and find us here, they’re not likely to thank us for pointing all this out.”

“Why?” Kit said, and Marcus recognized the despair in his voice.

“Why won’t they thank us, or why should we leave?”

“We came to kill a goddess and break her power, but there’s nothing here to break. Nothing here to die. She can’t be stopped if she doesn’t exist. What’s happening out there is only men lost in a terrible sort of dream. I don’t know how to stop that. What sword kills a bad idea, Marcus? How can we win against a mistaken belief?”

“I don’t know,” Marcus said. He rubbed his hands together, the soft hissing of his palms a counterpoint to the deep rumble of the false breath. “But someone did.”

“What do you mean?”

Marcus spoke slowly, the thoughts forming as he spoke them.

“This temple is a hiding place. The men like you have been out of the world for centuries at least. Maybe all of history. Something put you in here. Something scared your however-many-generations-back predecessors so badly that they crawled off to the ass end of nowhere and pulled the desert up over their heads. Something drove them here.”

“Can you think what?”

“No. And I can’t think how we’d find out. And if we did, I don’t have any reason to think it’s the sort of thing we could manage. I’m only saying it’s been done before, so it can be done. And we should find out how.”

Kit pushed his fingers back through his wiry hair. His tears had dried, but the salt tracks still marked his cheeks.

“Where do we start?” he asked.

Marcus rose to his feet and put a hand on the spider goddess. The stone was warm and hard and dead. There was a vast world outside. Nations and races tearing themselves apart, blood and war and tragedy. He didn’t have any idea where to start looking for the way to stop it. And then he did.

“Suddapal,” he said.

Clara

Flor and Daskellin, I understand, but I can’t imagine him getting on with Mecilli at all. And of course Emming will fit right in,” Clara said. “The man is full of argument and bluster, but only so no one will notice he never has an opinion of his own. Could you pass the butter, dear?”

Sabiha handed across the jar. The butter was white and fresh, without the waxy cap or echo of the rancid that Abatha Coe’s had. The bread was soft and pale, the eggs and pickles served in a fashion that reminded her of mornings in her own solarium, back in some previous lifetime. At these occasional and treasured breakfasts with her family, her first impulse was to wolf everything down and eat enough that she wouldn’t have to put another bite past her lips for a day. Her second was to pull back, to take only what she would have taken and leave what she would have left. The first would have been rude to Jorey, and the second would have been untrue to herself, so she usually managed a middle path.

“Well, the line to the Lord Regent’s council chamber got a bit shorter after last year. It would have been Father and Lord Bannien at the table,” Jorey said, and then, changing the subject, “I heard from Vicarian. I have letter for you from him as well.”

“Oh good. How is he, poor thing?”

“There was a call for men to study under Minister Basrahip,” Jorey said, his voice intentionally casual the way it always was when he was trying not to have an opinion. “He’s thinking of volunteering.”

“I’m surprised,” Clara said.

“He thought it might help show that his allegiance is to the throne,” Jorey said. “And it would bring him back to the city. They’re rededicating Minister Basrahip’s temple. They’re actually going to put it inside the Kingspire. He’d be able to come for lunch whenever he had an open day.”

“Besides,” Sabiha said, “it’s Palliako’s pet cult, and anything to do with the Lord Regent is astoundingly fashionable.”

“Even that dreadful leather cloak of his,” Clara said, hoisting an eyebrow. “I’ve seen it everywhere, and really, it doesn’t suit anyone well. Jorey, dear. I was meaning to ask. Whatever became of Alston?

“The guardsman? He’s here. Lord Skestinin took him on when the household …”

“I thought I remembered that,” Clara said, smiling to herself. “I must look in on him and pay my respects. It takes so little, you know, to maintain those relationships, and good servants are so rare. Now, Sabiha, dear, tell me all about that dinner at Lady Ternigan’s. I haven’t seen any of the new dresses, so you must describe everything.”

The danger for her was that it was so easy here. So comfortable and calm and welcoming. Some of that drew, she was certain, from Jorey and Sabiha’s guilt at turning her out. Some was the decades of practice she’d put into being Lady Kalliam, Baroness of Osterling Fells. But some was deeper. There was a genuine love between her son and his wife, and unaffected kindness was a pleasure to be near, even if only for a moment. Clara wanted to gossip and laugh and tell stories from when Jorey had still been in his small pants and watch Sabiha’s delight and Jorey’s blush. She wanted to be that woman still.

But already they had said things that she knew, despite her best intentions, would be in the next letter to Carse, and she didn’t want that. Jorey might say something that only he knew, and if then if the letter was intercepted, suspicion would fall on him. The fact restrained her, but it didn’t stop her.

And after breakfast, and after Jorey had discreetly given her a week’s allowance and kissed her cheek, she stopped at the servants’ quarters, found a private corner, and had a serious conversation with Alston the guardsman.

Four days later, she woke early, left her rooms, and met her old servants. Rain soaked the predawn streets, and the birds sang the songs that came before the light. The tiny, cool drops tapped against Clara’s cheeks and ran in an invisible runnel down past her collar and into the space between her breasts. Alston walked behind her, a looming darkness inside the darkness. His cloak was oilskin the deep brown of freshly turned soil. The other men with him were likewise dressed. The proper clothes, she thought, for the proper occasion. It was good to know the basic rules applied everywhere.

The taproom near the Silver Bridge hardly deserved the name. It wasn’t a business so much as an excuse for one—beer went in and and piss came out—but it was also the sort of place where men with no name slept during the daylight and stolen coins and food appeared without questions. The lantern by its door was filled with oil and lit only because Clara had snuck it away and put it back herself. And that only because she needed to see the faces of the men who stepped out to the street. Clara had been waiting for less than an hour when the rude little door swung open and four men tumbled out, their arms around each other’s shoulders. The only good thing she’d discovered about Ossit and his friends was the regularity of their habit. Three Firstblood men and a Kurtadam. The middle of the three Firstbloods was unmistakably Ossit, the man with the knife who would, she was certain, have split her from heel to throat if Abatha Coe hadn’t distracted him.