Daniel Abraham - The Tyrant's Law

“Do you know who I am?”

The captain blinked. He’d expected to be the one controlling the conversation. His eyes narrowed and a hand fell toward his axe. Cithrin didn’t see Yardem shift in his seat so much as feel him.

“What are you hauling?” the guard growled.

“Don’t change the subject,” Cithrin snapped. “I asked you a question, and I expect an answer. Do you know who I am?”

A nervous pause followed. Cithrin raised her eyebrows.

“Why should I?” the captain asked at last, but his voice had lost some of its power. She’d put him on the defensive, which was either a good thing or the beginning of a terrible cascade.

“Because I am Cithrin bel Sarcour, voice of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva and Suddapal, and you are under specific orders from the Lord Regent that neither I nor anyone in my employ are to be bothered. And yet you are bothering me. Why is that?”

“We had word there were rebels,” the captain said. “Man said they were hiding in a house near here. We’re to check anyone going in or out.”

“You aren’t to check me,” Cithrin said.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the guard said. “But I got orders. It’s just a look in them crates and under your cart to see—”

“Where’s Broot?”

“Ma’am?”

“Where is Broot? The protector Ternigan named. Where is he?”

“At his house?” the captain said, his discomfort making it a question.

“Yardem, drive us to the protector’s manor,” Cithrin said. “You. What’s your name?”

“Amis, ma’am?”

“You can follow us.”

“I … I can’t,” he said. His hand wasn’t by his axe anymore. “I’ve got to stay and check carts.”

“Well, you have a choice, then. You can come with us to the protector and we can clarify that you, Amis, have gone against the express orders of the Lord Regent, or you can let us by and stop wasting my time and interfering with my business. And then, when you and your men go back, you can ask what would have happened to you if you had chosen to take me before the protector.”

He knew he was being toyed with. Even in torchlight, it showed in his eyes. But he wasn’t certain. Cithrin sighed the way the woman she was pretending to be would have. Her belly was so tight it hurt.

“Wait here,” he said. “You and yours don’t move. I’m sending a runner.”

“That was a mistake,” Cithrin said, and leaned back to wait. The captain rode back to his men, and a moment later one of the torches detached from the group and sped off into the city.

Despite the snow and the wind, the cold wasn’t as bitter as she’d expected. The autumn hadn’t given up its hold. Yardem’s breath and hers ghosted, and the horses on the team grew bored and uncomfortable. In the back, Enen paced, her footsteps making the cart sway slightly. All along the street and out along the spread of the city, the falling snow gave buildings and water a sense of half-reality. Sound was muffled and distant, but she still caught the drone of strings for a moment from somewhere not so far away.

“It’s a prettier city than I thought when we came here,” Cithrin said.

“Has its charms,” Yardem agreed.

“Are we going to live through this, do you think?”

Yardem shrugged.

“Couldn’t say.”

“I’ll wager a fifty-weight of silver that we do,” she said.

Yardem looked over at her. His face was damp from the snow and his expression the mild incredulity of not knowing whether she was joking. Cithrin laughed, and Yardem smiled. It seemed to take half the night, and was hardly more than half an hour, before the torches came back. Ten of them. Cithrin leaned forward. Her toes and fingers were numb and her earlobes ached.

The new torches mingled with the old, and she heard the bark of voices. A moment more, and five men were galloping toward her. The one who didn’t carry a torch was the impressively mustached Fallon Broot, Protector of Suddapal, wearing a dining shirt and no jacket.

“Magistra Cithrin,” Broot said, “I am so terribly sorry this has happened. I told my man to spread the word, but some half-wit bastard wasn’t listening. I swear on everything holy this will not happen again.”

He bowed deeply in his saddle, as if he were speaking to a queen. Cithrin wondered what Geder had said in his orders that would bend a baron of the Antean Empire double before a half-Cinnae merchant woman. She felt a brief tug of sympathy for the man and his terror.

“Anyone can make a mistake,” she said. “Once is a mistake.”

“Thank you, Magistra. Thank you for understanding.”

“Twice isn’t a mistake. This was once.”

“And never again. You have my word. I’ll have Amis whipped raw as an example to the others.”

Cithrin looked down the street at the fluttering flames. Any of them—all of them—would have pulled the children out of the crates behind her. Would, at best, have driven them through the streets. At worst, the Timzinae would have died here on the snow-damp street of their home. She thought of Isadau and, for a moment, smelled her perfume.

“Do that,” she said, with a smile. “Yardem? I think we’ve lost enough time already.”

“Yes, Magistra,” the Tralgu said and made a deep clicking in his throat. The cart lurched forward, and the line of torches parted to let them through. Cithrin caught a glimpse of Amis as she passed, his face a tragic mask. She smiled.

At the dock, a small ship stood at anchor. The captain was a Yemmu, the bulk of his body making do instead of a jacket. He trundled forward to meet the cart, his eyes narrow.

“You’re late,” he said. “Another hour, we’d have missed the tide entirely.”

“There was some business that needed to be done,” Cithrin said.

“Doing what?”

“Establishing precedent,” she said. “We have the cargo here now. Are you still taking the contract?”

“You’re still paying it?” he said, and his tusks made his grin into a leer.

“I am.”

Yardem, Enen, and half a dozen sailors carried the crates across to the gently rocking deck. Cithrin watched as they disappeared. Each crate was a life or two that wouldn’t end here. A child who wouldn’t sleep in an Antean prison, a mother or father, brother or sister who wouldn’t be parted. And one less hold that the empire would have over its newly conquered lands.

Yardem and Enen walked back down, and with the calls of the sailors, the planks rose up. The anchor line rose and the ropes holding the ship to the land cast free. Slowly, the ship moved away into the grey of the snow. It was dangerous weather for sailing and worse for staying on land. Cithrin waited until the ship vanished entirely. The melted snow had turned all her clothes wet as if she’d jumped in the sea, but she couldn’t leave until she saw it gone.

Yardem laid a blanket across her shoulders. She didn’t know where he’d gotten it from, but it smelled of wet animal and it was warm.

“Seems that worked,” he said.

“It did,” she said. “And it will work better next time. And they’ve seen you and Enen, so they’ll know to be careful of you as well. It isn’t a promise that things will go well, but it makes our chances a thousand times better.”

“Suppose that’s true,” he said. “So a hundred this week?”

“I think so,” she said. “This can’t last long, and we’ll regret missing the chances we don’t take.”

“Fair point,” Yardem said. He put his hand on her shoulder for a moment, a silent approbation, then turned back to the cart. Cithrin waited another moment, then followed him with dread thickening in her throat. When she got back to the office, she would have to write back to Geder.