The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

by Daniel Abraham

  “Well, there may have been madness to overcome. Just maybe it wasn’t a goddess. Plenty of crazy to go around if all you have are priests.”

  The fires in the braziers fluttered in the breeze. Marcus thought he saw, high up along the walls, where the air shafts were hidden by curves in the stone. Whoever had built the chamber, however many centuries ago, they’d been brilliant. Controlling the air flow alone would have been impressive.

  “It’s what I feared, isn’t it?” Kit said. “All of it. All the tales and histories. All the sermons. I think they were all just children whispering to each other down through generations, each believing and repeating what the one before had said, all the misunderstandings building on each other, until anything became plausible. Not a mad goddess, but human dreams and fears given the reins.”

  “We should probably have this conversation someplace else, Kit. If your old friends come and find us here, they’re not likely to thank us for pointing all this out.”

  “Why?” Kit said, and Marcus recognized the despair in his voice.

  “Why won’t they thank us, or why should we leave?”

  “We came to kill a goddess and break her power, but there’s nothing here to break. Nothing here to die. She can’t be stopped if she doesn’t exist. What’s happening out there is only men lost in a terrible sort of dream. I don’t know how to stop that. What sword kills a bad idea, Marcus? How can we win against a mistaken belief?”

  “I don’t know,” Marcus said. He rubbed his hands together, the soft hissing of his palms a counterpoint to the deep rumble of the false breath. “But someone did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Marcus spoke slowly, the thoughts forming as he spoke them.

  “This temple is a hiding place. The men like you have been out of the world for centuries at least. Maybe all of history. Something put you in here. Something scared your however-many-generations-back predecessors so badly that they crawled off to the ass end of nowhere and pulled the desert up over their heads. Something drove them here.”

  “Can you think what?”

  “No. And I can’t think how we’d find out. And if we did, I don’t have any reason to think it’s the sort of thing we could manage. I’m only saying it’s been done before, so it can be done. And we should find out how.”

  Kit pushed his fingers back through his wiry hair. His tears had dried, but the salt tracks still marked his cheeks.

  “Where do we start?” he asked.

  Marcus rose to his feet and put a hand on the spider goddess. The stone was warm and hard and dead. There was a vast world outside. Nations and races tearing themselves apart, blood and war and tragedy. He didn’t have any idea where to start looking for the way to stop it. And then he did.

  “Suddapal,” he said.

  Clara

  Flor and Daskellin, I understand, but I can’t imagine him getting on with Mecilli at all. And of course Emming will fit right in,” Clara said. “The man is full of argument and bluster, but only so no one will notice he never has an opinion of his own. Could you pass the butter, dear?”

  Sabiha handed across the jar. The butter was white and fresh, without the waxy cap or echo of the rancid that Abatha Coe’s had. The bread was soft and pale, the eggs and pickles served in a fashion that reminded her of mornings in her own solarium, back in some previous lifetime. At these occasional and treasured breakfasts with her family, her first impulse was to wolf everything down and eat enough that she wouldn’t have to put another bite past her lips for a day. Her second was to pull back, to take only what she would have taken and leave what she would have left. The first would have been rude to Jorey, and the second would have been untrue to herself, so she usually managed a middle path.

  “Well, the line to the Lord Regent’s council chamber got a bit shorter after last year. It would have been Father and Lord Bannien at the table,” Jorey said, and then, changing the subject, “I heard from Vicarian. I have letter for you from him as well.”

  “Oh good. How is he, poor thing?”

  “There was a call for men to study under Minister Basrahip,” Jorey said, his voice intentionally casual the way it always was when he was trying not to have an opinion. “He’s thinking of volunteering.”

  “I’m surprised,” Clara said.

  “He thought it might help show that his allegiance is to the throne,” Jorey said. “And it would bring him back to the city. They’re rededicating Minister Basrahip’s temple. They’re actually going to put it inside the Kingspire. He’d be able to come for lunch whenever he had an open day.”

  “Besides,” Sabiha said, “it’s Palliako’s pet cult, and anything to do with the Lord Regent is astoundingly fashionable.”

  “Even that dreadful leather cloak of his,” Clara said, hoisting an eyebrow. “I’ve seen it everywhere, and really, it doesn’t suit anyone well. Jorey, dear. I was meaning to ask. Whatever became of Alston?

  “The guardsman? He’s here. Lord Skestinin took him on when the household …”

  “I thought I remembered that,” Clara said, smiling to herself. “I must look in on him and pay my respects. It takes so little, you know, to maintain those relationships, and good servants are so rare. Now, Sabiha, dear, tell me all about that dinner at Lady Ternigan’s. I haven’t seen any of the new dresses, so you must describe everything.”

  The danger for her was that it was so easy here. So comfortable and calm and welcoming. Some of that drew, she was certain, from Jorey and Sabiha’s guilt at turning her out. Some was the decades of practice she’d put into being Lady Kalliam, Baroness of Osterling Fells. But some was deeper. There was a genuine love between her son and his wife, and unaffected kindness was a pleasure to be near, even if only for a moment. Clara wanted to gossip and laugh and tell stories from when Jorey had still been in his small pants and watch Sabiha’s delight and Jorey’s blush. She wanted to be that woman still.

  But already they had said things that she knew, despite her best intentions, would be in the next letter to Carse, and she didn’t want that. Jorey might say something that only he knew, and if then if the letter was intercepted, suspicion would fall on him. The fact restrained her, but it didn’t stop her.

  And after breakfast, and after Jorey had discreetly given her a week’s allowance and kissed her cheek, she stopped at the servants’ quarters, found a private corner, and had a serious conversation with Alston the guardsman.

  Four days later, she woke early, left her rooms, and met her old servants. Rain soaked the predawn streets, and the birds sang the songs that came before the light. The tiny, cool drops tapped against Clara’s cheeks and ran in an invisible runnel down past her collar and into the space between her breasts. Alston walked behind her, a looming darkness inside the darkness. His cloak was oilskin the deep brown of freshly turned soil. The other men with him were likewise dressed. The proper clothes, she thought, for the proper occasion. It was good to know the basic rules applied everywhere.

  The taproom near the Silver Bridge hardly deserved the name. It wasn’t a business so much as an excuse for one—beer went in and and piss came out—but it was also the sort of place where men with no name slept during the daylight and stolen coins and food appeared without questions. The lantern by its door was filled with oil and lit only because Clara had snuck it away and put it back herself. And that only because she needed to see the faces of the men who stepped out to the street. Clara had been waiting for less than an hour when the rude little door swung open and four men tumbled out, their arms around each other’s shoulders. The only good thing she’d discovered about Ossit and his friends was the regularity of their habit. Three Firstblood men and a Kurtadam. The middle of the three Firstbloods was unmistakably Ossit, the man with the knife who would, she was certain, have split her from heel to throat if Abatha Coe hadn’t distracted him.

  Alston must have seen the reaction in her stance, because he didn’t ask whether these were the men they were waiting for. He stepped for
ward, and the two men with him followed. Clara came behind. After all the time she’d spent and work she’d done to arrange this, it wasn’t something she could look away from.

  From the way their conversation stopped and they closed ranks, it was clear that Ossit and his toughs sensed the danger even before the first of her old guardsmen stepped out of the shadows. Three of her men loomed up in the street before Ossit. Clara, Alston, and two more took station behind the enemy, blocking their retreat. The bared blades on both sides caught the light like tiny flecks of lightning.

  The Kurtadam was the first to stop. His grin was wide enough to show teeth. The blade in his hand was long for a knife, short for a sword. Ossit, to his left, had the same curved blade he’d brandished at her in the boarding house. The other two had clubs of wood with their ends dipped in lead.

  “Looking for trouble, are you, then?” the Kurtadam growled.

  “Only delivering what was ordered,” Clara said, and the men started at her voice.

  “Who in fuck are you?” the Kurtadam asked.

  “Put down your weapons and come to the magistrates,” Clara said. “I’ll see you’re not hurt.”

  “We’ve got numbers and experience on you,” Alston said. “No reason to do something you’d regret.”

  “Well, then,” the Kurtadam said. “I guess there’s nothing to be done, then.” The words were calm, but the tone still spoke of violence.

  “Put the weapons down,” Clara said again. The Kurtadam glanced at the three men around him and shrugged. With a shout, the four of them dashed toward the three men farthest from Clara, knives and clubs swinging. Alston said something obscene under his breath, and he and the other two dashed after them. She hesitated, and then followed. She had heard swordplay before. She knew the sound of blades. There was none of that here, only the thick masculine grunting, dull sounds of impact, and a cry of pain. She couldn’t tell whose voice it had been. Street fighting was mean and it was ruthless. Honor had no place here. One of Alston’s men—her men—lay in the gutter, his fingers holding in a long loop of intestine. The Kurtadam put his back to the wall, his long knife dancing in the pale and growing light. With a shout, one of the bandits leaped past Alton’s wide form and came pelting toward her, his club gripped hard in his fist.

  “Lady!” Alston shouted, but too late. The attacker was too close for Clara to flee from, too close for anyone to intervene. Clara tasted the coppery flush of fear, but held her ground. She had never trained to fight—it wasn’t something ladies did—but Dawson had spoken to her many times on the strategies and tactics of a duel. The first rule was not to do what the enemy expected. A young man with a lead-tipped cudgel running at an unarmed woman in her middle years. He’d assume she would shy away, turn from the blow. Clara’s eyes narrowed.

  The club rose in the air, ready to splatter her brain on the cobbles. Clara stepped in toward the man and brought the point of her toe up into his sex with a force she hadn’t used since she’d been a girl with rough cousins. The man’s yelp was as much surprise as pain, and he hunched forward, barreling into her. His shoulder struck her just under her ribs, and she felt the breath blow out of her. His club fell to the ground, bounced along the cobbles, then rolled. She sat down hard on the pavement, her hands to her belly, fighting the urge to vomit. The man scrambled to his knees, tried to stand, but Alston was on him.

  “Are you well, my lady?”

  “Fine, thank you,” Clara said, hauling herself to her feet.

  The men had been subdued. One of her guards had Ossit’s face pressed in the gutter and his arm bent cruelly back. The clubman who hadn’t assaulted her lay on the walk, his hands held to his face and black with blood. Only the Kurtadam remained on his feet, his hands lifted in a surrender that managed to speak defiance.

  “Well done,” Clara said. “We’ll take him to the magistrates.”

  “You,” the Kurtadam said. “I remember you now. You’re the high-class bitch from Coe’s rooming house. I knew I’d heard your voice before.”

  “I am,” she said. “And you made a mistake when you chose to steal from my household.”

  “You made a mistake when you stepped in the street,” the Kurtadam man said and spat. “Go ahead, then. Take me to the magistrate. Hang me in a cage. It won’t be the first week I’ve spent pissing down the Division. But ask yourself what you’ll do when they pull me back up, eh? So how about instead you let my boys go and we call it truce. You made your point. I got it. The house is yours, we won’t be back that way again.”

  Alston knelt beside his fallen man. The guard’s face was pale and the bright pink loops between his fingers meant he needed a cunning man quickly or a grave digger slow. Dawson would have tied them all to the wall outside the compound and whipped them until the bones showed. But that had been when he was a baron and meting out justice was his right. If he had been here now, if he had seen her with the muck of the street on her skirts and the thugs threatening her in the still-falling rain, he would have been outraged. She thought of Vincen lying in his own blood. Of Dawson, slaughtered before the full court. Outrage was yet another luxury she could not afford.

  “I don’t think I can trust you,” Clara said, surprised by the coolness of her voice. The resolve in it.

  “Madam, I need to get Steen to help,” Alston said. “He’s falling into shock.”

  “I understand.”

  “Well,” the Kurtadam said, “what’s it to be, then? March us off to the magistrate and have an enemy for life, or you go your way, take care of your boy with the open gut, and I’ll go mine.”

  “Will you give me your word of honor that you will exact no revenge?” Clara asked.

  “You have my word,” the Kurtadam purred.

  Clara hesitated for a moment, caught between two versions of herself, and unsure which was the true one. Her inclination was to let the man go, and farther down the road have him appear in the night with his knives and laughter again. She knew in her bones that was how the story would go, and still the power of compromise was so ingrained in her soul that it was hard to turn away from. For so many years, the rules of court and etiquette said that a man was to be taken at his word, and if he should break it, the humiliation was his. Old rules for old times. Ruthlessness was called for now. And so, ruthless she would be.

  “Your word,” she said, “isn’t worth shit. Alston?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Will you please kill these men and throw the bodies in the Division?”

  The Kurtadam’s eyes went wide as Alston sank his blade in the man’s belly. Ossit cried out in despair, but it cut off quickly. Clara watched them die, and a part of her died with them. She had seen pigs at the slaughter. She had seen bodies hanging from the gallows. The two together gave the proceedings some context, but they did not make them easy.

  I’m sorry, she thought.

  The morning traffic across the Silver Bridge took no particular notice of her or of the grime on her hems. The blood on them. Mules and carts moved behind her, crossing from one side of the city to the other while she stood in the center with the memory of her husband. I’m sorry, she thought, and then knew the word was wrong. Not sorrow. She was horrified, of course, but that wasn’t what had brought her here either. Regret had and the sense of something ending, but nothing so apologetic as sorrow.

  Dawson, my love, she thought, speaking each word without giving them voice. I would have stayed the same for you if I could. I loved being the woman you loved. I miss her. I miss you. Perhaps I should have been more careful of myself. Not done things that would change me.

  Behind her, a man cursed and a horse snorted. Before her, crows spiraled down into the depths of the earth. The depths of the city. The rainclouds had cleared, and the morning sun drew steam from the streets. It poured over the sides of the Division like fog settling. She looked to her left. Vincen Coe stood at the edge. His face was pale, but his spine straight. He didn’t look at her. Hadn’t asked where she’d been or what
she’d been doing. She knew already that she wouldn’t tell him and that this new woman she’d become was the kind who could keep secrets. Secrets made anything possible. They made her free, but alone. The price was small.

  The Kingspire seemed almost to glow in the morning light. The vast new banner—the red of blood, the eightfold sigil—hung from its heights, marking the newly founded temple. On the far side of the Division, a troop of men herded another group of Timzinae children toward the prisons. The small, brown-scaled bodies moved slowly. Clara had seen the way exhausted children moved, the slackness of their joints and the dullness in their eyes, the same for every race. Even from halfway across the Division, she recognized it. These were the prisoners Geder had prepared for. She closed her eyes for a moment.

  There was so much to mourn. And so much that could still be lost. One of the guards shouted out abuse. Another laughed. Servants of the Severed Throne every one of them.

  She wanted to say it was Palliako who’d done it all. That Geder’s sins had infected the city, the kingdom, and the world. In a sense, she even believed it was true. Except that none of those men driving children from their homes and families had a knife to his throat. None of the women at court were forced into the black leather cloaks. They did it, all of them, because it was easier for them not to weigh their loyalty against their conscience. Palliako might be the occasion of it, but she herself was evidence that the choice belonged to each of them. She wondered how many other loyal traitors there might be out there, thinking private thoughts much like her own. She wondered how she might find them without too terrible a risk. She noticed that she wasn’t thinking about Dawson.

  Clara gathered herself together, put a pleasant smile on her lips, and turned away from the bridge. It was the nearest thing she had to a tomb for her husband, and it left her heart feeling empty to know she wouldn’t feel the need to come back to it.

  Vincen smiled and nodded when she stepped back onto the solid ground of the street. Apart from a paleness to his skin that the days hadn’t quite erased, the only sign he had been near death was a scar of living silver where the cunning man had called on angels or spirits or dragon’s art to fuse flesh that wouldn’t have mended. She had seen it when she sat by his side, nursing him back to strength. With his shirt on, it wasn’t visible. She took his arm and wrapped it around her own. It felt different than it had the times before. Likely it was only that he held himself more carefully, but she liked to imagine it was also that she had changed as well.