Daniel Abraham - The Tyrant's Law

Marcus

Winter came to Camnipol. There was little snow, but the winds that blew across from the northern plains and highlands were bitter. The birds in the city departed until all that seemed to be left were crows and sparrows. The citizens of the city wrapped themselves in coats and cloaks, scarves and mittens, until they all seemed part of a single unified race of the chilled.

For weeks, Marcus and Kit had wandered the streets, striking up conversations with whomever they could. A rag seller’s daughter sitting on the stoop of her mother’s shop. A guardsman at the Prisoner’s Span. Footmen of the wealthy spending their wages at the taproom. Anyone. Everyone. They might begin anywhere—a scar on the back of someone’s hand, the weather, what kind of horses pulled best on a team—and edge the conversation around until they could ask, for whatever reason, Do you know anyone sending messages to Carse?

Most often the answer had been no, and the people had been telling the truth. A few times every week they found someone who said yes. Then they would use some pretext to talk about the bank in Carse, and the trail would run to stone. Three times they’d found someone who said that no, they didn’t know anyone doing that, and lied. Each time that happened, Marcus felt a rush of excitement and the sense that they were about to discover Cithrin’s mysterious informant.

The first had taken five days to run to ground, a man whose wife hated his brother. He had been sending messages to his brother in Carse and hiding the fact to avoid fighting about it at home. The second was a courier who had a lover in Northcoast and would send messages to him to arrange assignations. The third and most promising had been a minor nobleman trading correspondence with a counterpart in the court of King Tracian. For that one, Marcus and Kit had been forced to corner the man’s personal servant in the street and pepper him with questions like children throwing pebbles. They discovered that the man had been trying to buy a particularly impressive carriage without his social rival finding out and offering a higher price for it.

In the evenings, they retired to the stables by the Yellow House and slept in the company of the players. Marcus had the poisoned sword in among the props and costumes, and Kit made all the others understand the peril it represented. Even Sandr seemed wary of it. Marcus’s dreams became less disturbing and vivid and his shoulders hurt less when he wasn’t carrying it. And the days had taken on a kind of rhythm and the grim taste that consistent disappointment brought.

The hunt went on, striking blind and hoping, but the contact had been so discreet that no one seemed to know of him. And eventually, winter came to Camnipol, and the game changed again.

“Cary’s been approached by Lord Daskellin to be part of a revel,” Kit said, hunched over his cup of coffee. “Many of the most powerful men in the court will be there. And their servants.”

“Sounds like a thing we should do, then,” Marcus said. In the yard, half a dozen children were playing a complex game that involved kicking stones off the Division’s edge. Marcus watched them, envying the energy they had and the freedom of their play. The stables were full of horses and the grooms and the farrier had pushed the players to the edge of the space, where they sat together in a clump, like sheep in a rainstorm.

“What do you think she’ll put on?” Hornet asked from behind them.

“Something darker this time,” Charlit Soon said. Of all the players, Marcus knew her least, but her fair hair and round face made her seem more open and naïve than she’d turned out to be. “We’ve been playing the farces until you can see all the threads.”

“I believe farces are good in wartime,” Master Kit said. “There seems to be a hunger for laughter when times are bleak.”

“What we need to do is find what plays best in a famine,” Smit said thoughtfully. “You think The Tailor’s Boy and the Sun?”

“Why would that be good?” Mikel asked. “It’s got nothing to do with a famine.”

“That’s my point,” Smit said.

“When she and Sandr get back from the market, we can ask her,” Master Kit said. “But it poses a more immediate problem for our project, Captain.”

“I know,” Marcus said.

The court season ran from spring to the start of winter. Within days, the migration would begin. The men and women of the court would pack up their households and retreat from the city to their various holdings throughout Antea, and now Asterilhold, Sarakal, and Elassae besides as the conquered lands were divided up among the powerful and favored. Whoever they were looking for might be going anywhere. And then the King’s Hunt would begin, and a collection of the higher noblemen would track around the face of the world with the Lord Regent and Prince Aster killing deer. The court wouldn’t reconvene until spring, and by then the world might be a very different place.

Charlit Soon cursed mildly and flicked a beetle off her arm. One of the boys in the yard kicked a stone that sailed past his friends and companions out into the empty air of the Division, then lifted his arms in triumph. Kit sipped his coffee.

“If we can’t find him in Camnipol with everyone living in each other’s laps,” Marcus said, “we won’t find him in winter.”

“It seemed to me that it might be more of a challenge,” Kit agreed. “That leaves us, I think, with a question.”

“Several.”

All around them, the other players went quiet. Marcus could feel the glances and gestures being exchanged behind him and had the courtesy not to look back, but the tension was in the air all the same. Cary and Sandr appeared from around the corner of the house, each with a sack over their shoulder. Food, already expensive, was growing scarcer in the city, though from what Marcus could see, the higher classes still looked well fed. Kit rose to his feet, and Marcus followed him. The time had come to have the hard conversation.

Marcus saw Cary notice them waiting for her. Her steps didn’t falter so much as change the authority with which they struck the ground. Sandr was in the middle of some anecdote or argument, talking and gesturing with his free hand. Cary took the sack from around her own shoulder and handed it to him. Sandr took it, looking confused, then saw Marcus and Kit approaching. Cary stopped, and Sandr walked on.

“Cup of cider?” Marcus asked.

“Why not.”

The interior of Yellow House was comfortable and familiar. Cary lifted her hand to the keeper and pointed toward the back. He lifted his chin. The gestures were a full conversation in themselves. Cary led the way to a small room where casks of wine and tuns of beer lined the walls. A lamp hung from the ceiling with smoke-darkened tin plate above it reflecting the light down onto a thin wooden table. Cary sat first, then Master Kit. Marcus got stuck in the chair with its back to the door. A moment later the keep poked his head in.

“Cider all around,” Cary said. “Captain’s paying.”

“Pleased someone is,” the keep said, and a minute later three earthenware cups of cider sat on the table before them, steaming and filling the air with the scent of apples. Marcus took a sip and was a little surprised by both the sweetness and the bite.

“Good,” he said.

“They get it from an orchard in Asterilhold,” Cary said. “The stuff they had before wasn’t as good. So. Leaving Camnipol, then?”

“Seems that way,” Marcus said. “But the shape of it’s not clear. We were hoping to find someone who could give us information about some expeditions that the Lord Regent sent out into the world. What they were looking for, say. And where they were looking. Only that hasn’t worked. I think we’ve put in as much time as we can.”