Daniel Abraham - The Tyrant's Law

“I have something Geder Palliako has decided he wants. In exchange for it, I can help more people. If I can just play the role, the rewards in information alone will be beyond any normal price.”

“If,” he said.

“You think I can’t maintain the subterfuge?” Cithrin said with a grin as she stepped into the dress and pulled the sleeves onto her arms.

“I don’t,” Yardem said. “A year ago, I think you could have. But not now.”

“You don’t give me credit,” she said. “Button this for me, would you?”

Yardem rose with something like a sigh and began fastening the stays and buttons up her back. It was possible that the green wasn’t elegant enough for the occasion. Cithrin wasn’t certain of the etiquette of giving herself over to the role of Geder’s lover. Maybe a dress wasn’t called for at all. Maybe she should greet him in a little rouge and a smile. She scowled at the thought and pulled the sleeves a bit straighter.

“Well, I think you’re mistaken,” she said. “And considering the good we can do, it’s the obvious risk to take.”

“It’s only a risk if you don’t know the outcome, ma’am,” Yardem said, fixing the last and highest of the buttons. His knuckle brushed the nape of her neck as he finished. “I’d like you to take a moment to pray with me.”

“What?” Cithrin asked, turning toward him. Yardem held out his hands to her, palms up. She hesitated for a moment, then took them. Yardem closed his eyes and lowered his head, and she followed his example. As soon as her eyes were closed, the chaos of her mind whipped at her. She tried to gather herself enough to pray or think kind thoughts or whatever it was she was intended to do, but it was as much as she could manage just to keep from opening her eyes, pulling away, and finding some other small task to distract her. She felt a brief but intense resentment of Yardem for imposing on her this way. She had enough to carry without the additional burden of thinking too closely about it.

Yardem let out a calm breath, and she opened her eyes as he looked up.

“Change your mind, ma’am?”

Sorrow bloomed in her and she moved in, hugging the Tralgu close for a moment before letting him go. “Thank you for trying. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it that you care. But this is what I have to do. I don’t like it and I don’t want it, but this war is what we have. You were the one who told me sex is a woman’s natural weapon.”

Yardem’s ears shot forward.

“I never said that,” he said.

“You did. You’ve just forgotten. It was when we were first going from Vanai to Porte Oliva. We were training, and I kept asking what was a woman’s natural weapon. You said sex was.”

“No, ma’am, I didn’t. We were talking about fighting, and I made the point that on the average, men have longer reach and stronger arms, and weapons are based on reach and strength. A woman who wants to fight has to train harder to come even. I can’t recommend using sex in a melee.”

They were silent for a moment. Something was shifting in Cithrin’s chest. Unwinding like tie rope on a spool losing its tension.

“But,” she began and then wasn’t sure where to go.

Yardem scratched his chin reflectively. “Sling, maybe. Or a short sword. Not sex.”

“But you said—”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Then who did?” Cithrin asked.

“Believe that was Sandr.”

“Oh,” Cithrin said. Then a moment later, “Sandr’s kind of a pig.”

“I’ve always thought so.”

Cithrin looked down. The unwinding sensation in her chest intensified. Something in her was releasing, opening. It felt nauseating and it felt like relief. She pressed her lips together and looked up into Yardem’s face. His expression was as placid and calm as ever.

“Yardem?” she said. “I can’t do this.”

“No, ma’am. You can’t. There’s a ship waiting. I’ve given word to everyone that we’re leaving, so they won’t be caught unprepared. Enen’s packed up all the books and ledgers from the office. We can get whatever else you’d like, but we should hurry. The tide’s going out in two hours.”

Cithrin looked around her room. Her heart was beating fast and strong and true. She plucked the little plant from off her windowsill.

“I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s go.”

The ship was small with a shallow draft and wide sails. It slipped away from the dock seeming to go faster than the wind that carried it. Cithrin stood on the deck. She still had the green dress, but Enen had given her a thick cloak of leather lined with wool that she’d wrapped around her shoulders. The sea was choppy with a million tiny waves jittering and seagulls wheeling in the high air. They didn’t have the weight to smooth the swell and drop of the sea, and one of the house guards that Yardem had brought with them was being noisily sick over the side. Cithrin’s stomach, on the other hand, felt more solid and calm than it ever had. She was even hungry.

Suddapal receded. The great dark buildings greyed with distance. The great piers that pressed so far out into the water shrank to twigs and the tall ships became small enough to cover with her outstretched thumb. When she looked down into the water, she was surprised to see dark eyes looking up at hers. A pod of the Drowned had grabbed on to the ship, coasting with it like an underwater tail. Cithrin smiled at them and waved. One waved back, and before long, they had let go and fallen back into the depths of the water. By the time the sun fell into the sea, the city was gone.

And if she ever went back there, it would still be gone.

She felt Yardem come up behind her more than heard him. When she glanced back and up, he was standing there placidly, looking out at the pale white wake drawn out behind them and the darkening water.

“Well,” she said, “I’m afraid I’m about to disappoint the Lord Regent. I don’t imagine he’ll take it well.”

“To judge from his past, likely not,” Yardem said.

“Perhaps I should have left him a letter.”

“Saying what, ma’am?”

“I don’t know. That I’m sorry. That I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“Not sure that matters, ma’am.”

“It does to me. He’s a terrible person, you know. But he’s also not. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who managed to make himself so alone.”

Yardem grunted, then cleared his throat. “I’ve known hermits, ma’am. Very few of them burned down cities.”

“Fair point,” Cithrin said. “Still, I wish there was some way to talk just with the best parts of him.”

“Could wish that of anyone,” Yardem said.

The boat rose and fell gently. Rose and fell. It would be weeks yet before she reached Porte Oliva and home. She wondered what it would be like, hearing Pyk Usterhall’s rough, angry voice and sitting with Maestro Asanpur with his single blind eye and his perfect coffee and all the familiar faces again. She wanted to believe that she would fit back into the same place she had before, that she would find them as they had been, but she doubted it would happen.

She saw now that she had changed, though she still didn’t quite understand what she’d become. There was a contradiction in it, because Yardem was right. A year before, she would have been able to go through with it, and now she couldn’t. She had become capable of fewer things, and yet she felt freed. She wondered if Magistra Isadau was waiting in Porte Oliva. It was the sort of question that she could answer if anyone could.

“If I’d stayed,” she said. “If I’d been his lover, do you think he might have changed?”

Yardem stood silently for a long moment, his arms crossed and his ears canted forward.