The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

by Daniel Abraham

  “Now. Will you let me see to that arm?”

  Clara looked down. Fresh blood was still sheeting down to her wrist. When she moved, the living muscle shifted and twitched. She felt dizzy.

  “If you would,” she said. “That would be very kind.”

  The first light of dawn pressed at the windows as Abatha counted coins into the cunning man’s hand. The boarders who hadn’t made their way out already began to appear, and Abatha enlisted three of the strongest to carry Vincen to his room while she put together something edible from the ruins of her kitchen. Clara went with Vincen, and when the others left, she remained with him, watching him sleep. The reassuring rise and fall of his breast. The calm in his face. Her own skin itched where the cunning man’s words and herbs had knit it closed, and she scratched at it idly.

  He was so young, and yet older than her youngest son. Older than she had been when she’d married Dawson and become the Baroness of Osterling Fells. There were scars on his body, testaments to the life of a huntsman. And new ones now. She remembered the half-kiss she’d given him, the roughness of his stubble against her lips. The softness of his mouth. She let herself weep quietly without any particular sense of grief. Exhaustion and the aftermath of violence were surely enough to justify a few tears.

  She heard Abatha’s steps long before the woman appeared. She’d put on clothes and carried a carved wooden bowl of wheat mash that she held out to Clara. It tasted sweet and rich and comforting.

  “How is he?” Abatha asked, nodding to her cousin unconscious on his bed.

  “Well, I believe,” Clara said. “I don’t know.”

  Abatha nodded and looked down at her feet. Her lips moved, practicing some words or thoughts. When she looked up again, her expression was hard.

  “This is your fault, you know.”

  Clara wouldn’t have been more surprised if the woman had spat out a snake.

  “Excuse me?” she said. “If I’d stayed in my room, you would both have—”

  “I told him we had to leave,” Abatha said. “I told him that food was coming short, and people were going to get desperate. Get mean. Get out of the city, I told him. Close up the house and good riddance to it. There’ll be more than enough work needs doing on the farm. And he’d have gone too, if it weren’t for you and your letters, whatever they are.”

  Clara’s lips pressed thin. The sudden mixture of guilt for keeping Vincen in harm’s way, annoyance that he had spoken to Abatha about her work, and outrage that she should be asked to carry the responsibility for the actions of thugs she didn’t even know confused her into silence.

  Abatha waited for a moment, then shrugged.

  “He’s a man grown, and he makes his choices,” she said. “I do too. He’s family, and I’ll stand by him as long as he needs me. But the day he dies, you’re sleeping on the street, m’lady, because I am done with this shithole of a city.”

  At the end, the woman’s voice wavered. Of course it did. The woman had been attacked in her own home by men with knives. She’d been held helpless while her food was stolen. She’d seen her own family nearly killed before her. This anguish grew from seeds that Geder Palliako had planted. This was what Clara had chosen, in her way, to stand against. It was uncharitable to forget that, and so she wouldn’t.

  “I understand,” she said.

  “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing here anyway.”

  “I understand,” Clara said again. “Thank you.”

  That afternoon, the sun shone warm as a fire. Clara wore a grey dress with strong lines. It wasn’t her most attractive, but it gave a sense of authority without being overbearing, and even if no one agreed with her opinion of it, it helped her play the part she had chosen for the day. Vincen was still asleep when she stepped out into the street, and the smell of cooking lentils followed her. All the meat for seasoning it was gone, and meals were going to be a bit bland around the place for a time. Small price.

  Clara walked to the south with a pleasant smile and a nod for every familiar face. She forced herself to own the road without commanding it. To take it for granted, and by doing so, make the city itself wonder if perhaps it was hers. She had four people to call upon, and no assurance that any would be able to help her. There was no option but to try.

  She found the third house she’d sought in a cul-de-sac near the western wall. A dozen children raced through the dim, grimy space playing as children did everywhere. Even in the shadow of evil. I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing here anyway, Abatha said again in her memory.

  Clara stepped up to the door. It was thin wood held by a leather hinge well on its way to rot. She rapped on it smartly with her knuckles and set her shoulders. Inside, someone stirred, grunted. A bar was pulled away and the door swung open. The man standing in the shadows blinked at her, as astounded by her presence as he would have been at a gryphon or a dragon. Baronesses were clearly well outside his experience. Even fallen ones.

  “Good afternoon. I’m Clara. You must be Mihal,” Clara said.

  “Yes,” he said, then bowed as if only then remembering to do so.

  “I’m a friend of your mother’s,” Clara said. “I don’t think we’ve met formally.”

  “She … ah … talks of you. On occasion. Ma’am.”

  Clara smiled, nodding. It was always so difficult to put young men at ease. They all seemed to look at her as something out of a myth. All except Vincen.

  “Your sister’s wedding. It went well, I hope?”

  “Quite, ma’am,” Mihal said, scratching himself sincerely and indelicately. “It was a nice dress you gave her.”

  “I’m glad it suited. May I come in?”

  Mihal’s expression went uncomfortable and he glanced back over his shoulder in concern.

  “I have three boys of my own,” Clara said. “I’ve seen worse.”

  “Well, then. Certainly?”

  The rooms were tiny, squalid, close, and repellent. Clara sat on a stool and crossed her ankles as if this were the finest drawing room in the Kingspire.

  “I was wondering, Mihal, if I might put upon you for a favor.”

  “Ah. Sure, I suppose,” he said as she drew out her pipe and packed it with tobacco. She lifted her eyebrows, and he brought her a burning candle to light it from. The smoke tasted wonderful and smelled much better than the room. Clara took the bowl in one hand, tapping her teeth with the stem.

  “I am looking for a young man. A Firstblood. He probably thinks of himself as a tough, and he associates with a Kurtadam man of middle years,” she said, “and his friends call him Ossit.”

  Marcus

  After his season in Lyoneia, the plains of the Keshet in summer felt as strange and exotic to Marcus as walking into a dream. The wide horizons under the uncompromising bowl of sky felt too large, and the desert air strangely cool now that it wasn’t too humid for his sweat to dry. A few distant clouds scudded overhead with the dim quarter moon showing pale in the blue among them. The caravanserai, as near a thing to a permanent city in this part of the Keshet, centered on a stand of massive obelisks that rose in a circle toward the sky. The stones curved like the claws of some massive beast that could hold a hundred wagons and their teams in its palm, and in the center a spring of clear water trickled from a broken stone into a wide and shallow pool. Half of the travelers in the little oasis were Tralgu, the other half Yemmu, and so two Firstblood men on foot and without so much as their own tent stood out like blood on a wedding dress. Everything smelled of dust and horse shit, and the suspicious looks from the caravan guards promised violence if Marcus or Kit spoke the wrong words or laughed at the wrong jokes. Marcus suspected that it said something unpleasant about his choices in life that he felt so comfortable there.

  He sat beside the water, his little pack at his side. He’d wrapped the sword in cloth and bound it with leather straps. No particular use if he wanted to draw the thing, but there was less chance he’d need its use if it wasn’t obvious
he was hauling magical treasures from the Dragon Empire about with him. His own blade still hung from his hip, though in a new scabbard. The old one had rotted through with his clothes. The sand-colored cotton robes they’d bought on the Lyoneian coast weren’t so different a cut from the local. Kit made his way through the camps, listening and talking, being charming and using the power of the spider goddess to ingratiate himself to the carters and guards and nomadic hunters. Marcus only saw him when he came back with money or a bowl of boiled millet and roasted goat.

  “What’re we looking at?” Marcus asked, biting into the meat.

  “I think it could be worse,” Kit said softly enough that his words didn’t carry. “I haven’t found anyone heading in our direction, but I have been promised a mule for a reasonable price.”

  “That’s the good news?

  “That and no one seems to have decided to kill us and take our things.”

  “Counts as a good day, then,” Marcus said. “Let’s go meet our new mule.”

  It was a good mule, as mules go, sturdy across the shoulder and placid-eyed. Marcus and Kit had little to carry besides sleeping rolls, food, and waterskins. The Yemmu man who’d agreed to sell it lumbered along behind Marcus as he looked the animal over, his expression vaguely disgruntled as if he might be regretting the agreement.

  “He limps sometimes,” the Yemmu said. “Have to rest him for a day or two so he don’t go lame.”

  “I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” Kit said in a pleasant voice that meant the man was lying. The more Marcus saw the spider goddess’s power in action, the more useful it seemed to be. Not much in a battle, maybe, but in everything that came before and after. And in his experience, before and after were what determined who bled in the field.

  “Marcus?” Kit said.

  “She’ll do,” Marcus said, putting his hand on the beast’s shoulder. The mule didn’t respond even to look at him. “Get us where we’re headed, anyway.”

  The Yemmu sighed and accepted a pouch of coins from Kit. They stood together as the huge man counted through the silver and copper, nodded to himself, and waved at the beast.

  “She’s yours now,” he said. “Too damn small to be any use to me anyway. Where you poor bastards going anyhow?”

  “Borja,” Marcus said.

  “Trying to keep clear of the war, then,” the Yemmu said. “That’s wise. Uglier than a camel’s asshole, that is.”

  “There’s a charming image,” Marcus said.

  “Have you had word from the west, then?” Kit said before the Yemmu could reply. “I have friends in Sarakal, and I’d be glad of any news.”

  The man’s shrug was massive.

  “Had word. Don’t know how much of it’s true. Say Nus fell and the fucking empire stripped the damn place to the walls. Put half the city in chains for their crimes.”

  Marcus lifted an eyebrow. A black fly as thick as his finger settled on the mule’s ear, and the mule twitched it away.

  “That’s a fair load of crimes, if you’re depriving half a city of their freedom over it,” Marcus said.

  “Timzinae were behind the coup last year,” the Yemmu man explained. “New Lord Regent took it personal. He’s a strange one. Stories are he’s some kind of cunning man, only more powerful than I’ve ever heard. Talks with the spirits of the dead’s what they say. Dead march with him. It’s why he can keep going. No one thought he’d win as far as he has. No one’s sure when he’ll stop.”

  No one’s sure if he will hung in the air, unspoken.

  “Inentai’s a hard city to take,” Marcus said. “Anteans will be getting harassed by the locals and river raiders from Borja. Supply lines’ll be vulnerable.”

  “Oh, and you know all about war, do you?”

  “Some,” Marcus said.

  “Well. Probably you’re right. Can’t see it going over the winter. So long as the bugs can hold out until then, the empire’ll go home by first frost.” The Yemmu man nodded, agreeing with himself. Talking himself into believing what he only hoped was true.

  The Keshet spread out before them, dry and vast. The shallow hills rose and fell, their sides green and grey from the thick-stemmed, tough brush. In the mornings, Marcus woke before dawn to the sound of birds. They made some simple meal, packed what there was on the mule’s back, and headed for the next oasis or creek. Twice they saw the great dust plume of a princely caravan, the moving cities of Jasuru and Tralgu who dominated the plains but didn’t settle them. Both times, the larger groups passed without bothering them. Two men and a mule were probably too small a group to care about, and Marcus was fine with that. As long as there were rabbits and lizards enough to eat, creeks and wells enough for water, and fodder for the mule, he’d walk from one end of the Keshet to the other without seeing an unfamiliar face, apart from the occasional stop at a caravanserai for food, and count himself pleased to do it. The days grew subtly longer, the midday sun more intense, but the nights were still bitterly cold.

  Kit didn’t complain. Marcus assumed that his years wandering the world with his acting troupe had left him accustomed to long journeys in the empty places of the world. The old actor’s face was thinner, his body narrowed by months of living without steady food and too much work, but it didn’t make him look worn. If anything, he seemed younger, fuller, more vital. Even at the end of a punishing day’s walk, on rationed water because they hadn’t found fresh, Kit’s step seemed to bounce. Marcus tried to imagine what it would be like for him. They were walking back across decades toward the place where Kit had been a boy. He imagined the years and losses and adventures peeling away from Kit and being left behind on the open plain. The fear was there—Marcus could see it by the light of the fire at night, could hear it in the man’s voice when he spoke—but there was a joy that came with it.

  The circle, Marcus thought, closing. Something was ending for Kit, and the sense of impending completion was pulling the man across the Keshet like the north calling a lodestone. Marcus didn’t have that, but he kept pace. One leg in front of the other, eyes sharp for snakes, mouth too dry for comfort. He wore the poisoned sword across his back; the mule had refused to carry it after the third day. So far as he could tell, he hadn’t suffered any particular bad effects except that his dreams seemed more vivid and confused than usual and his food all tasted bad.

  Then one day, the horizon thickened. Dark hills marked the edge of the world, and beyond them, mountains. Marcus sat by the low, smoking fire as the setting sun turned the world the color of fire. His shadow stretched toward the hills, toward the temple and its goddess. Beside him, the mule sighed and closed its black eyes.

  “How far do you think they’ve gotten?” Marcus asked.

  Kit lay back on his bedroll, his hands behind his head and staring up at the stars.

  “You mean the Anteans?”

  “Them and the ones we’re here to stop. You think they’ve gotten to Inentai yet?”

  “Probably,” Kit said. “But perhaps not. There might have been illness in the ranks. Or they might have run short of food or water. I’ve found armies to be large, unwieldy things, haven’t you? It seems they’re always finding some new way to break.”

  “Nothing I’d care to bet on,” he said.

  “Me either,” Kit said. “Still, I can hope.”

  “You know they shouldn’t be winning.”

  Kit’s sigh was hardly more than a breath and degree more hunch in his shoulders. Marcus sat forward, his palms toward the low flames. When the darkness came, the firelight would ruin his night vision, but for now he could still see his companion’s expression.

  “What else can your goddess do?” Marcus said. “Raise the dead? Can you do that?”

  “I don’t believe anyone can bring back what’s gone,” Kit said. “But I imagine there are other ways to win battles. Interrogate prisoners when they cannot lie, and how can they keep their secrets from you? Or frighten the enemy with stories of grand magics against which they couldn’t possibly sta
nd. Or tell them that they have already lost until they think it true. I believe that the priests are making these victories possible.”

  “Inentai?”

  “I expect it will fall. If they are taking slaves, I expect they will do so there as well. And build a new temple. And begin taking converts to school in the holy secrets of the goddess. All of it. In the end, it won’t matter if Antea outstrips its own abilities. It won’t matter if the empire falls. The goddess will be back in the world, and men who can do what I do will be everywhere. Men with blood like mine. That is all she will need.”

  “To do what? What is it she wants?”

  Kit’s smile surprised him.

  “Peace.”

  “Peace?”

  “On her terms. The death of those that oppose her. The creation of a narrow world that holds her word to be unquestioned and unquestionable. Only the world she believes and the world that I’ve experienced aren’t the same place, and so for there to be peace, the world as it is must die and be reformed into the one she dictates. They cannot both be, and so … and so she will eat the world.”

  “This hairwash about the Timzinae plotting against Antea,” Marcus said.

  “There were levels of initiation into the secrets of the temple,” Kit said. “Not all servants of the Righteous Servant were equal. I didn’t learn everything there was to know before I left. But the Timzinae … the story is that they aren’t entirely human. That the twelve true races are all related, and that they all rebelled against the dragons, but the Timzinae were fused with dragonets hatched early from their eggs and fashioned to resemble humanity. They were the one race that remained loyal to the dragons.”

  “But that isn’t true.”

  “I don’t believe it is, no,” Kit said. “But when I came out from the temple, I brought the stories with me. Timzinae sacrificing the young of other races to their ancestor dragons and so on. It was why I chose to travel to Suddapal. To live among them and see if what I had been told was … true’s a strong word. If it was plausible. It wasn’t.”