Daniel Abraham - The Tyrant's Law

Dawson, my love , she thought, speaking each word without giving them voice. I would have stayed the same for you if I could. I loved being the woman you loved. I miss her. I miss you. Perhaps I should have been more careful of myself. Not done things that would change me.

Behind her, a man cursed and a horse snorted. Before her, crows spiraled down into the depths of the earth. The depths of the city. The rainclouds had cleared, and the morning sun drew steam from the streets. It poured over the sides of the Division like fog settling. She looked to her left. Vincen Coe stood at the edge. His face was pale, but his spine straight. He didn’t look at her. Hadn’t asked where she’d been or what she’d been doing. She knew already that she wouldn’t tell him and that this new woman she’d become was the kind who could keep secrets. Secrets made anything possible. They made her free, but alone. The price was small.

The Kingspire seemed almost to glow in the morning light. The vast new banner—the red of blood, the eightfold sigil—hung from its heights, marking the newly founded temple. On the far side of the Division, a troop of men herded another group of Timzinae children toward the prisons. The small, brown-scaled bodies moved slowly. Clara had seen the way exhausted children moved, the slackness of their joints and the dullness in their eyes, the same for every race. Even from halfway across the Division, she recognized it. These were the prisoners Geder had prepared for. She closed her eyes for a moment.

There was so much to mourn. And so much that could still be lost. One of the guards shouted out abuse. Another laughed. Servants of the Severed Throne every one of them.

She wanted to say it was Palliako who’d done it all. That Geder’s sins had infected the city, the kingdom, and the world. In a sense, she even believed it was true. Except that none of those men driving children from their homes and families had a knife to his throat. None of the women at court were forced into the black leather cloaks. They did it, all of them, because it was easier for them not to weigh their loyalty against their conscience. Palliako might be the occasion of it, but she herself was evidence that the choice belonged to each of them. She wondered how many other loyal traitors there might be out there, thinking private thoughts much like her own. She wondered how she might find them without too terrible a risk. She noticed that she wasn’t thinking about Dawson.

Clara gathered herself together, put a pleasant smile on her lips, and turned away from the bridge. It was the nearest thing she had to a tomb for her husband, and it left her heart feeling empty to know she wouldn’t feel the need to come back to it.

Vincen smiled and nodded when she stepped back onto the solid ground of the street. Apart from a paleness to his skin that the days hadn’t quite erased, the only sign he had been near death was a scar of living silver where the cunning man had called on angels or spirits or dragon’s art to fuse flesh that wouldn’t have mended. She had seen it when she sat by his side, nursing him back to strength. With his shirt on, it wasn’t visible. She took his arm and wrapped it around her own. It felt different than it had the times before. Likely it was only that he held himself more carefully, but she liked to imagine it was also that she had changed as well.

“Are you well, my lady?” he asked. The formality in his voice told her that he knew the answer, and that it was no .

“I have been thinking, Vincen,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Writing letters has been very useful in gathering my thoughts,” she said, “but I feel the time has come for something more.”

Cithrin

The trick to moving the wealth of the bank was not being seen to do so. If word went around that the Medean bank was leaving Suddapal, it would cause any number of problems. The people still under contract with the bank would stop paying their loans, because why give money to someone who wouldn’t be present to take the complaint to the magistrate? The scent of coin and cloth would call pirates and bandits, making it less likely that the goods would survive the trek to Porte Oliva. Tax assessors and agents of the city’s governor, seeing the wealth trickling away, would want to eke out as much as they could quickly, before the chance disappeared. Or the high council might send guards to take command of the gold and use it to hire mercenaries, if any mercenaries would accept the work.

So Cithrin and Isadau carved the wealth of the bank into smaller pieces. A private crate sent in a caravan through the Free Cities that purported to hold bolts of cotton actually contained silks. A message box sealed with lead and wax sent by courier carried gems and jewelry. An earthenware statue sent as a gift to Pyk Usterhall, notary of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, was hollow and filled with coin. Technically, it was smuggling, since they only paid the tax on what the goods appeared to be and not what they were. Cithrin’s conscience didn’t bother her on the point. If the governors of the five cities couldn’t assure the safety of her bank, they had already broken their end of the contract. Besides which, every other business and family with ties outside Elassae was doing the same.

Roach—Halvill, dammit—and Maha married in the private chapel at the compound amid great revelry. The priest was the same she had seen on her very first Tenthday, and he used his skills as a cunning man to make his voice sound grand and resonant. She caught Yardem rolling his eyes and shared his amusement. But when the guard and the pregnant girl sipped from the wide silver wedding cup and swore to make the journey of this life in company, Cithrin found herself inexplicably weeping.

They were slated to leave the next day on a ship bound for Cabral with enough of the bank’s capital that, if they stole it and ran, they’d be able to set up a very pleasant life together in Far Syramys. But they wouldn’t. Halvill would put it on a cart and trek back to Porte Oliva, just the way he’d promised. Halvill and Maha had forged a new family, it was true, but they both had other ties. Halvill to the bank, Maha to her family and, because of that, the bank.

Before that, Isadau had arranged a party that would fill the compound for a day and a night. It was a bit more extravagant a celebration than the union of a minor bank guard to a girl with an occupied belly warranted, but Suddapal was in need of reasons to celebrate. And so was Isadau.

Cithrin wore a dress of pale blue with highlights of cream and a ribbon in her hair. The colors went well with the paleness of her skin and hair inherited from her mother. For jewelry, she chose a thin silver chain necklace. More would have been ostentatious. She knew, looking into her mirror, that she looked too young. Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour was supposed to be almost a decade older than she actually was, and she knew what Master Kit and Cary would have said. Darken the lines under her eyes, deepen the folds that ran between nose and cheek. Stand with her weight lower in her hips. Tonight, though, she decided to let herself be younger. They all knew her already. Opinions were set. And it was a relief to step out of herself, if only for a moment.

It was also uncommon for the employees of the bank to take part in the celebrations as if they were equals, but Halvill’s family had insisted that Yardem and Enen sit among them, and so when Cithrin stepped out of her room, Yardem stood before her in the long formal robe of a Tralgu priest. Red tiles as big as her thumbnail marked the collar and ran down the left side. If he had still been an acting priest, they would have been on the right. She only knew that because he’d told her. The air was warm with high summer and the smell of fresh bread and basil mixed with the strumming of guitars. Cithrin doubted there would be much sleep in Isadau’s compound that night.