Marcus grinned.
“Merrisen Koke,” he said, standing and embracing the old mercenary captain. “God, but you’re looking old.”
“What I get for being the best,” Koke said. “No matter what contracts I take, I keep not dying, yeah? These are my boys. Terrin, Saut. That one’s Davian. You’ll have met him before at Orsen.”
“I remember,” Marcus said, taking the lieutenant’s hand in his own. “Good to see you again.”
“An honor, sir,” the young man said.
Kit stepped over from across the room, curiosity in his gaze. Marcus waved an open hand toward him.
“This is Kitap rol Keshmet. We’re traveling together.”
“A job?” Koke asked.
“Small size, high stakes,” Marcus said.
“Pay?”
“Miserable.”
“And that,” Koke said, slapping Marcus on the shoulder, “is the man I knew. You’re eating. You mind if we come join?”
“As long as I’m not paying for you.”
Between them, they took up the better part of one table. The keep’s initial surprise at his two actors falling in with fighting men washed away quickly as Koke and his men paid for sea bass in black sauce and good ale. For the better part of an hour, Koke retold the things that had happened since he and Marcus had last seen each other. Marcus traded stories of his own, many of them changed to omit details. The food was all eaten and the dishes cleared away when Koke leaned forward, his scaled fingers laced together.
“So Marcus, old friend,” he said, the softness of his tone meaning that the business discussions had now begun. Marcus felt a chill run down his back.
“Was too much to hope this was only a social call.”
“I’ve got a fair number of hired eyes in this town and one of them told me Marcus Wester had come ashore.”
“You were watching for me?”
“I was. Seems there’s people looking for you. Offering a bit of coin for information about where you are and what you’ve been up to.”
Kit’s gaze sharpened, his attention sudden and focused. The two Timzinae at the far table broke out into peals of laughter that no one at the table took up.
“Admirers or enemies?” Marcus said.
“You tell me,” Koke said. “It’s Yardem Hane.”
“Really? Imagine that,” Marcus said. He idly cracked a knuckle. “And what’s old Yardem doing these days that he wants to know about me?”
Koke’s eyes narrowed, and his gaze jumped across Marcus like he was a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out.
“Don’t know what he wants with you. We’d all assumed he was still padding around in your footsteps trying to get square with you saving his life. Now the story is he’s hooked up with a bank in Suddapal,” Koke said.
“Porte Oliva,” Marcus said. “The bank’s in Porte Oliva.”
“Not this one. Karol Dannien’s set up a gymnasium in Suddapal. Yardem found him there and offered a fair trade for anything anyone heard of you. Said it was an open offer, and Karol spread the word. The place to send to’s Komme Medean’s branch in Suddapal.”
Marcus drank a sip of his beer to hide the sudden stab of dread. He’d imagined Yardem back in Porte Oliva with Cithrin, but that was as much hopeful fantasy as anything. The last he’d heard of Cithrin, she’d been caught in a civil war in Antea. If she’d escaped it, surely she would have gone back to her branch in Birancour. That Yardem was still with the bank but in Elassae raised a thousand questions, and Marcus’s neck prickled with the fear of the answers. If Cithrin had died in Camnipol because he hadn’t been there to protect her …
He put down the beer and belched.
“So,” he said through his smile. “Dannien’s remade himself as a teacher, has he? God, we are getting old, aren’t we?”
“Not a permanent thing, I don’t think. A few of us found something else to be doing when Antea lost its mind. Until that war’s over and we see what shape the world’s taken, it’s hard to know what’s a safe contract.”
Until that war’s over. All the time he’d been gone, the Antean civil war had been burning. Every night he’d spent digging through the vines and trees was another one where Cithrin might have been captured or killed. Every day was one she’d been in dangerous territory.
“Camnipol’s still burning, is it?” he said, forcing his tone to be casual. From Koke’s reaction, he saw he’d failed.
“God damn, man. Where have you been? I’d thought this spending coin to track down Marcus Wester was a joke, but you’ve been outside the whole damned world, haven’t you? Camnipol’s fine. Palliako’s invaded Sarakal.”
Most men wouldn’t have noticed the change in Kit’s expression, but it was plain as daylight to Marcus. Not surprise. Maybe despair.
“How’s that going for him?”
“Better than it has a right to,” Koke said. “And you’re looking to change the subject.”
“Am I?”
The old Jasuru sighed and leaned forward. The first time Marcus had met him, his scales had been bright and burnished, his hair dark and pulled back in an oiled braid. Now he looked spent. Still the same man, but worn down by the years and the battles and unable to break free of the patterns and demands of a life spent fighting for pay.
“I can clear three hundred in Birancour silver for writing a letter about you, old friend,” Koke said. “And the truth is my company can use whatever falls off the trees. But I don’t have to if I don’t have to.”
The other fighters looked down, pretending not to be there. Kit turned toward the door as he he were expecting someone to barge through it at any moment. No one did.
“You’re asking if I want to better the price to keep you silent?” Marcus said.
“If it’s worth that to you,” Koke said. “Seeing how we’ve worked together, I wouldn’t ask more than matching. I’m not greedy.”
Marcus pretended a yawn and stretched his arms. His body felt as tight as a bowstring and his mind was cold and sharp.
“I appreciate the thought, but if I were you, I’d take all the coin Yardem’s got to hand out. In fact, if you’re sending to him, give him a message from me. Let him know as soon as I’m free, I’ll come see him.”
Koke chuckled, low and mirthless.
“More than one way to hear those words,” he said.
“Don’t jump at shadows,” Marcus said. “I’m guessing our mutual friend has a contract he’d throw my way or something of the sort. Nothing sinister in that.”
“For three hundred silver?”
“Maybe he needs my help badly,” Marcus said. “I am awfully damned good at what I do.”
“Which is what, in this instance?”
“Same as always. Whatever needs doing,” Marcus said, and rose to his feet. “Good seeing you again, Koke.”
“You’re going to bed already?” Koke said. “Night’s only just starting.”
“Not for me, it’s not. Kit, you’re on your own. But this bastard’s clever, and if he tries to get you drunk, he wants something.”
“My boyish affections, perhaps,” Kit said with a perfect timing that set Koke and his men laughing.
Koke stood and embraced Marcus again. “Take care of yourself, old friend. We’re in odd times.”
“Always have been,” Marcus said, then retreated to his room.
The bed that had been so comfortable not hours before seemed lumpy and awkward now. The rest his body had ached for couldn’t be coaxed back. Marcus lay in the darkness, hands behind his head, and listened to the murmur of distant voices like the rushing of a river. Yardem’s name had ripped off a scab he’d forgotten was there, and now he felt exposed and stung and less than halfway healed. He wanted to know why Yardem was in Suddapal, and what he meant by paying for information about Marcus. And he needed to know whether Cithrin was all right and what had happened to her in Camnipol, whether she’d lived, and if she had, at what price. The dread was like a weight on his breastbone. Hi
s mind flitted to all the sacked cities he’d been through, all the innocent victims of war he’d seen, and his imagination put Cithrin in their places.
The nightmares would come back tonight. The old ones of Alys and Merian. Women he’d failed to protect. If Cithrin was dead or hurt, someone would die for it. Yardem first, and then whoever had done it. Marcus knew from experience that the effort wouldn’t redeem anything, and that he would do it anyway.
He hadn’t fallen asleep when the door opened and Kit stepped in. At some point in the evening, something had spilled on him, and he smelled beery. The actor sat on the end of the bed and began unstrapping his boots.
“Asterilhold and Antea last year,” Marcus said. “Now Sarakal.”
“Apparently so,” Kit said. The first boot thumped against the floorboards.
“Your spider goddess eating the world. This is the beginning of that, isn’t it?”
The other boot thumped and Kit turned to lean his back against the wall. The light spilling in under the door flickered, barely more than darkness.
“I think this began long ago. Perhaps very long ago. But yes, this is what I feared would come. This and worse,” Kit said. And then, “I hear there is a ship leaving in five days for Suddapal.”
“Suddapal’s farther from the temple than Malarska.”
“It is. But if your unfinished business with Yardem Hane—”
“After,” Marcus said. “Job is we kill a goddess and save the world. Let’s not complicate it.”
Geder
You’re most kind, Lord Regent,” Ternigan said. “Your visit is an honor I hadn’t looked for.”
Geder smiled and shifted his weight, stretching his legs under the camp table. The tent was thick leather stretched on iron frames, almost as solid as a true building, but movable provided the work of enough servants. Lord Ternigan’s bed stood against one wall with a real mattress and wool blankets. An unlit brazier squatted in the room’s center, tinder and sticks already laid out in case the Lord Marshal should want to warm himself later. A decanter of cut crystal held wine, and Geder couldn’t help wondering whether it always did or if this was something special put together to impress him.
“I thought it was important to see the men in the field,” he said. “Raise their spirits. Let them know that the strength of the empire is with them.”
“Yes,” Ternigan said. “They were quite excited when they heard. I hope the journey wasn’t unpleasant?”
“Much more pleasant than the first time we were in the field together,” Geder said, and Lord Ternigan laughed. Geder’s first campaign—his only one, really—he had been under the command of Alan Klin, Klin under the direction of Lord Marshal Ternigan. Then, Geder had ridden with a single squire and a tired horse from Camnipol to Vanai. Now he rode in a wheelhouse almost wider than the road, slept when he wished to, ate where he chose. He lifted his eyebrows and glanced toward the decanter. Ternigan rose from his chair and poured a glass for him. Outside, the army of Antea waited in their own less elegant tents. The smoke from their cookfires tainted the air, reminding Geder of another night, another city, another fire.
The wine was decent, but a little acid. Too much, Geder suspected, would upset his stomach, but a glass wouldn’t do any harm.
“What is the situation?” he asked, and Ternigan sat back down, spreading his hands like a merchant in a stall.
“We knew this would be a siege,” Ternigan said. “They call Nus the Iron City for good reason. But we’ve cut off all approaches from land and Skestinin’s done a fair job keeping relief from coming by sea. No food is going in, and they have only the water they can draw from their wells inside the walls, much of which is brackish.”
“Why haven’t they surrendered, then?” Geder asked. “If they don’t have good water, they have to know they’re going to lose.”
“They don’t have good water, but they aren’t dying from thirst either, and we”—Ternigan paused to sigh—“don’t have a great deal of food. When the farmers retreated, they burned their crops and collapsed their wells. They took to the countryside. If we send out parties to forage, they’re harassed by the locals. There’s no one to buy food from, and if there were, there’s reason to expect it would be poisoned. It will take time and fortitude. The traditional families are wagering that we don’t have those. We will have Nus, my lord. Don’t mistake me, the city will fall. And when it does, we’ll be able to make whatever terms we want in the peace.”
“I don’t want Nus,” Geder said. “I want Sarakal. Nus and Inentai and every garrison and farm in between. It doesn’t do me any good to come here and half win.”
Ternigan’s face pinched in, and he pressed the backs of his fingers to his chin. When he spoke, his voice was measured and careful.
“There are constraints, my lord, that are outside our control. However much I want to break the city today, the enemy is in a strong position. Even the most noble causes sometimes have to compromise.”
“How long?” Geder asked.
“How long for what, precisely?”
“How long before Nus falls?”
“It will be ours by winter,” Ternigan said without hesitation.
Geder sat, letting the silence stretch. Over the course of a minute, Ternigan’s expression went from uncomfortable to embarrassed to angry to a kind of petulant confusion. Geder smiled without meaning it.
“You’ll tour the city’s fortifications with me and Minister Basrahip in the morning,” he said.
“If you like, Lord Regent.”
“Good to see you again, my lord,” Geder said, standing. “I think it’s good that I’ve come.”
The walls of Nus stood grey and seamless on three sides of the city. The iron gates that gave the city its name rose to the height of ten men one atop the other, and great bands of the metal reinforced the stone so that the whole city had the sense of being a single great mechanism devised by a huge, inhuman mind. Which might, after all, have been true. The dragon’s road came to the sea here, and had since before the dragons fell. There had likely been a city in this place since before history itself began.
Though, as Basrahip pointed out, not before the goddess.
They rode in a company of twenty. Geder wore his black leather cloak against the morning chill, but pulled it off almost at once when the sunlight warmed them. Ternigan wore bright steel armor like a boast, Basrahip and his two fellow priests the brown robes that they always wore. And Geder’s personal guard. If there were assassins in the brush, they didn’t trouble the group. All around the city, Ternigan explained the difficulties of an attack. The long wings of the wall hung over the water and forced any approach from the sea to suffer under the defenders’ bolts long before they could come to shore. Here, the walls were topped with spouts to pour down stones or flaming oil. Here, the shape of the land itself forbade the siege ladders. There, a team of engineers might be able to tunnel under the fortifications and collapse them, and Ternigan had in fact begun the project, but it would take time. Weeks at least, months more like. The seawall couldn’t be surveyed, but Ternigan brought diagrams and maps with him to fill any time that wasn’t already rich with discouragement.
As the hours passed, Ternigan’s tone shifted from defensive to conciliatory as Geder began to understand the scope of the problem. Geder had helped to take and even briefly ruled the Free City of Vanai, and he realized now that the experience had set his expectations poorly. When he thought of taking a city, he imagined Vanai. Nus was no Vanai. It was one of the great cities of humanity.
When near midday they returned to the army’s main camp, the arrayed forces of Antea that had seemed vast as an ocean only hours before had shrunk in his view. They were the same men, the same horses, the same engines of war. What they weren’t was plausible.
“You see my situation,” Ternigan said as they dismounted. Geder’s thighs and back ached, and a sense of growing embarrassment sat in his gut as uneasy as the first pangs of illness. He nodded to Ternigan
as he passed his reins to the groom, but didn’t say anything.
If Ternigan’s tent was near to a house, Geder’s was like a movable palace. It was still the same framed leather walls, but arranged into half a dozen different rooms, including a separate latrine for his own private use and a copper bathtub that they’d apparently hauled all the way from Camnipol in the event he might feel dusty. Rosemary and lilac had been scattered on the ground so that every footstep belched forth perfume. A plate of dried apples and flatbread waited for him, and he sucked at the fruit disconsolately. Ternigan was right, damn the man. Nus would have to be starved out or its walls undermined. It would take months. It would take longer than he could afford. This was his war, and he’d managed to lose it already. His ears were already burning with the whispers at court, the jokes told where he couldn’t hear them. He could already see the brave loyalty on Aster’s face as the boy tried to lift his spirits. He could see the pity in Cithrin bel Sarcour’s eyes, should he ever be lucky enough to see them again.
By the time Basrahip joined him, he had worked himself into a bleak and self-pitying despair. The priest stood across the desk, his expression a question.
“What?” Geder snapped.
“You seem troubled, Prince Geder,” Basrahip said.
“Of course I’m troubled. You saw it all just as well as I did. Those walls?”
“I saw walls,” Basrahip said.
“We can’t beat that.”
Basrahip grunted deep in his throat, his eyes narrowing as if in deep consideration. He turned, stepped to the leather wall. When he struck it, it sounded like a massive drum.
“What are you doing?” Geder demanded.
“I am trying to think why you would beat a wall.”
The rush of anger in Geder’s throat felt like a dam ready to burst.
The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin) Page 16
