Daniel Abraham - The Tyrant's Law

“I see,” Cithrin said.

“I don’t,” Isadau said.

Marcus scratched his neck and accidentally set his cut to bleeding again. “Normal strategy is going to lose. As long as they have the priests, we’re Lady Tracian winning battles and losing the war. But they have a weakness. Something that scares them. I don’t know what it is. As drunk on their own stories as they are, I’m not sure they do either. But whatever they’re looking for, I’m betting it’s the little force in the background that actually matters.”

“When,” Cithrin said, then coughed. “When will you go?”

“Don’t see much advantage in waiting.”

She swallowed. He had known her so long, he could see the mask slipping into place, and it left him aching.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?” Cithrin bel Sarcour, voice of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, asked him. Her tone was a thing of ledgers and contracts. Hearing her pull away from him ached, but there was nothing to be done about it.

“Nothing,” he said. “Don’t mind me. Just … I’ll be back. When I can.”

“Of course,” Cithrin said, and the crispness and politeness of her voice meant, Unless you die or something keeps you or you change your mind . Or stop caring whether you come back.

I would never leave you , he wanted to say, except that it was what he was doing.

The last of the meeting dragged on like a dog with a broken spine. When it was done, Cithrin retreated to her room, chin high and eyebrows arched, her stride low in her hips the way Kit and Cary had taught her to look older than she was. Marcus leaned out the window and spat on the ground. He found Kit and Yardem out by the stables with two fresh horses. The green sword was wrapped in wool and strapped on behind the saddle with his bedroll. Marcus felt a small pang of regret that they wouldn’t have their little Kesheti mule.

“How did it go, sir?” Yardem asked.

“As well as could be expected.”

“Poorly, then.”

Kit made a small sound that lived halfway between a chuckle and a groan. Marcus pulled himself into the saddle.

“It’s a long way to Camnipol,” Marcus said. “Most of it through the leavings of a war, and autumn coming on besides. And at the end, a city full of spider priests. And someone writing letters, but we don’t know his name or what he looks like. So this should be just lovely.”

“But there is hope,” Kit intoned.

“Sure,” Marcus said. “As much as there ever is. Yardem?”

“Sir?”

“The day I take back the company?”

“It’s not today, sir.”

“No. It’s not. Watch after Cithrin for me.”

“I will.”

“And thank you for … Well. Just thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

“All right, then,” he said. “Kit? Let’s go find some trouble.”

Clara

She felt young. It was disturbing and strange and wonderful. Her body felt warmer, not as a metaphor for some spiritual truth, but actually warmer. Even as the days grew shorter, the dark pressing its advantage at dawn and dusk, even as the leaves traded their green for yellow and brown and red, she left her jacket and shawl at the boarding house. The cold winds with their promise of the coming snows felt soothing against her skin, like they were holding in check some painless and glorious burn.

She had never seriously imagined taking a lover. Like anyone, she’d admired men, been aware of them. Tempted by some in an unspoken and diffuse sort of way. But to move from that appreciation to action of any sort was impossible. She was a married woman. She loved her husband and been pleased with him. Dawson had been a thoughtful lover, and his delight in her matched hers in him. There had been neither call for another man nor the boredom or complacency that might give reason to hope for such a call. And now she had given way. If the court knew, she would be even more ruined than she had been before, though that was more because Vincen was a servant. If she’d found herself in the arms of some well-positioned widower with property, title, and slightly more years than her own, the only people to object would have been the ones who wanted to anyway. Vincen was young, beautiful, poor, and without standing or blood. He was too good for her and beneath her station. And when she lay in the darkness of his room, the sheet her only clothing, and thought of it all, it seemed not only to do with the animal joys but also with the act of rebellion. Taking Vincen Coe, huntsman and youth, to her bed meant that anything was possible. Anything could be done.

She was rougher with him than she had ever been with Dawson. More selfish. Because that was possible too.

The danger wasn’t that she would be discovered, though that would have been unfortunate. No. The greater peril was that her heart would take the wrong lessons from her experience. That she would become incautious and let the soaring sense of freedom and possibility sweep her to a place where possibilities vanished. A cell in Palliako’s gaols, for instance. Or a grave.

So as the days passed, and the closing of the season grew near, she tried to think. To keep her analysis of the world cool and detached and passionless, and she flattered herself that she succeeded more often than she failed. The siege at Kiaria, like the one at Nus, was taking longer than Palliako had hoped. After Suddapal and Inentai, the war had seemed to have a kind of momentum. Opinion was divided now, some feeling that Ternigan was at fault, others that perhaps even the great armies of Antea with the blessings of their newly adopted goddess were subject to the limits imposed by exhaustion, hunger, and the legendary defenses of the Timzinae stronghold.

It was, Clara thought, probably the opportunity she had been watching for. And because her heart and her flesh were in something of a riot, probably was good enough.

All that remained was putting the scheme in place. And for that, there were a few preparations that needed making, and specifically one item that she would require. Because Ernst Mecilli had not been close to Clara, she had no correspondence from him, and even if she had attempted the acquaintance, it would almost certainly have been his wife or daughter who returned the letter. For a sufficiently large sample of his hand, she needed letters. Asking for them seemed dangerously candid, and so she resolved to steal them instead.

Curtin Issandrian’s home had become shoddy since his fall from grace. The filigree and gilding that had brightened the façade seemed faded, chipped, and tawdry. The torches that marked his gate were old and burned out. The man himself wore the years hard, but his smile was genuine and his manner as gracious as it had ever been. Of all Dawson’s enemies, Clara felt most fond of him.

“A letter from your husband?”

“It would have been just at the end of the war with Asterilhold, when he was still Lord Marshal,” Clara said. “You and I had spoken about the role Alan Klin was playing in the effort, and I mentioned it to Dawson as you requested.”

“For which I am still grateful,” Issandrian said. “Though it seems I don’t have the knack for choosing allies whose stars are on the rise.”

Clara smiled and folded her hands together on her knee, pulling her shawl closer around her shoulders.

“None of us knew then what would come,” she said. Any more than we know now what may happen next , she didn’t say. “I thought he said he had written to you on the matter. And I hoped you were the sort of man who keeps his correspondence.”

Issandrian laughed, and the lines around his mouth seemed deeper than they had. How odd that they should both have suffered so much, and so differently.