The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

by Daniel Abraham

  “That was likely me,” he said.

  “And who are you?” the priest said. There were four more Antean blades behind him, and God knew how many waiting in the street.

  “Marcus Wester. I work for the Medean bank.”

  The priest’s eyes narrowed as he consulted the spiders in his blood. Marcus’s flesh crawled a little, just thinking about it. Behind him two of the Firstblood men exchanged a glance. Nice to have the name recognized.

  “What are you doing?” the blade man said.

  “Telling the truth,” Marcus said, and stopped himself before he went on with, We have nothing to hide. Because of course they did.

  “Why are you here?” the priest asked.

  “Business. The magistra had a note this afternoon about a loan for a new millstone. She wanted me to follow up on it since she can’t. Curfew and all.”

  “A millstone? Was there nothing else?”

  No would be a lie. Marcus smiled and shrugged, his brain casting about wildly.

  “I can get you the note, if you’d like,” he said. And then, “You won’t find anything else in it.”

  “And yet when you heard us, you hid in a closet? Why was that?”

  “I’ve been in occupied cities before, and they can be intimidating. I got scared, and I didn’t think it through.”

  The priest cocked his head, nodded. “Thank you. It seems there’s no violation here.”

  “You shouldn’t be doing business with bugs,” one of the swordsmen said. “What kind of merchant works with these?”

  “Bankers can be surprisingly flexible where there’s money involved,” Marcus said. “But I’ll tell them what you said.”

  It was over, but there was still a chance it could go the other way. If the Anteans still thought of themselves as coming to enforce the curfew, they’d go now. If not, there was still plenty of chance for a bloodbath. But with him and the five Timzinae, the odds were good that at least one of the Anteans wouldn’t walk out. Apparently the swordsmen came to the same conclusion.

  “Next time, you open the door faster,” he said, pointing his blade at one of the Timzinae who hadn’t actually opened the door at all, “or there’ll be trouble. You understand me?”

  “I do,” the Timzinae man said, and the Anteans withdrew, scowling as they went.

  When the door was shut, Marcus sagged down onto a bench. The sense of narrowly avoiding death left him slightly nauseated. There was a time when things like that had felt exciting, but he’d been a younger man.

  “You all right?” the blademan said.

  “I am,” Marcus said. “Or anyway I will be. Listen, those priests? You can’t ever lie to them. Or listen to them if you can help it. They’ve got spiders in their blood that give them power over truth and lies.”

  The blade man’s nictitating membranes closed, and he nodded slowly.

  “All right,” he said. “You say so.”

  Marcus chuckled mirthlessly. “Well, I have a friend. If he told you, you’d think it was true.”

  This, Marcus thought, isn’t going to work.

  They’re good people,” Magistra Isadau said. “Reliable. They won’t say what they know.”

  “And in another situation, that would matter,” Marcus said. “But you built all this thinking you’d have to deal with swords and magistrates. Cunning men, maybe. Torturers. But this? These things change everything. The network you built didn’t take the spiders into account.”

  The Timzinae woman gazed out the window, her face hard as stone. The meeting room looked out over the street, the city. The wind was coming in from the north, pulling low clouds with it. It wouldn’t rain, or not much; the mountains north of Kiaria would have wrung the clouds dry. All of Suddapal’s rain came from the south. What these brought was the first bite of the coming winter. Marcus looked at Cithrin. She had the distant, calm look that came when she was thinking. That was good. One of the magistras of the Medean bank needed to be able to look at things coldly, and Isadau’s grief was going to make that hard.

  “What would you recommend?” Cithrin asked.

  “First off, tell everyone what we’re working against. The biggest advantage they have is that people don’t know what they are. But be quiet about it. It’s a hard thing to believe unless you’ve seen it, and if they start marching the priests through the streets with speaking trumpets talking about how they can’t tell when you’re lying, people will believe them and we’ll be right back where we are now.”

  Cithrin nodded. “And we can’t work together. Not safely. It has to be individual, uncoordinated efforts. We’ll need a way to support them without anybody knowing who’s giving the support or who’s receiving it.”

  “Don’t see how that’s practical,” Marcus said.

  “Really?” Cithrin said. She seemed genuinely surprised. “It isn’t difficult. We put a bounty on safe children. Anyone who brings a child from Elassae to Carse or Porte Oliva is paid out of a fund that’s administered by … oh, I don’t know. A mysterious figure in black, only of course it’s really the bank. Anyone who cares to add to the fund can send gold to some particular address and we won’t know who they are. Anyone who arrives with a child gets the payment without questions being asked. How they get there is their own problem. They solve it however they solve it, and they can’t be betrayed, because we won’t know.”

  “They’ll send assassins,” Isadau said. “The Anteans will send men to kill whoever does it. They’ll send their filthy priests.”

  “So we have guards and make them cut thumbs, just like on any contract,” Cithrin said. Then, to Marcus, “I can draw up a full plan in a day or so. If Komme approves it, we can have it in place before the first frost.”

  “And how would we tell people?” Isadau snapped.

  “Piece of chalk, and a dark night, and as many walls as you can reach,” Marcus said. “Best not to get caught, but that’s going to be true of any of this.”

  “And it doesn’t have to be only the children,” Cithrin said, her voice a mix of contemplation and pleasure. “We can put bounties on anything we want done. Bring proof that you’ve killed an Antean soldier or stolen their food or interfered with the flow of orders. The same coins can pay for any number of things. That’s what makes them dangerous. Of course, it’ll be messy. We’ll have to expect a certain amount of fraud. Unless … If we had Master Kit—”

  “It’s a good thought,” Marcus said, “but we’ve only got one of him, and I’ll need him worse.”

  Cithrin’s expression fell. He’d guessed it might. He tried to ignore the knot of guilt under his ribs. He ran his fingertips against the grain of the tabletop and waited for her to speak.

  “Need him,” Cithrin said, trying to keep her tone light. Merely curious. “What for?”

  “Job hasn’t changed,” Marcus said. “We have to kill the goddess. I’m taking Kit to Camnipol. We’ll see if we can’t find that mysterious source of yours and learn what we can about the expeditions they sent out. What they’re looking for. Whether they’ve found anything.”

  Isadau’s voice was harsh. “You’d take the one man we have who can match their power and run after shadows?”

  “I’d take the sword too.”

  “Why?” Cithrin asked.

  “May want to kill some priests.”

  “No, I mean why would you go to Camnipol? Why that?”

  Marcus took a deep breath. In the street, a mule brayed.

  “Did Yardem ever tell you about Gradis?”

  “No,” Cithrin said. “I’ve only heard the name when they called you the hero of Wodford and Gradis.”

  “All right, so this was the second year of the war between Lady Tracian and Lord Springmere. I was still dancing Springmere’s tune, idiot that I was. Gradis is a keep in the middle of a mountain pass. Dragon’s road runs right through it. Lady Tracian had it, and if she’d kept it, her supply lines would have been solid as stone. The thing was, she had about as many men as I did, and she had posi
tion. So I sent out a force just outside arrow’s range. Not a big one, but with all the banners. Springmere rode with it. I was there. Our three greatest allies, and not just their men, but them in person. Well, Lady Tracian saw us all out there like something out of a poem, and she knew she could take us. Sent her men out after us. So we fought for bit, and I sounded the retreat. We pulled back about half a league and reformed. Her men reformed, and we did it again. Better part of a day, she beat us back and back and back. And when she was pulled far enough back, all the sword-and-bows we’d left behind poured in and took the keep. No banners. No great men. Hardly any cavalry. Just the right force in the right place at the right time to win the fight that mattered.”

  “I see,” Cithrin said.

  “I don’t,” Isadau said.

  Marcus scratched his neck and accidentally set his cut to bleeding again. “Normal strategy is going to lose. As long as they have the priests, we’re Lady Tracian winning battles and losing the war. But they have a weakness. Something that scares them. I don’t know what it is. As drunk on their own stories as they are, I’m not sure they do either. But whatever they’re looking for, I’m betting it’s the little force in the background that actually matters.”

  “When,” Cithrin said, then coughed. “When will you go?”

  “Don’t see much advantage in waiting.”

  She swallowed. He had known her so long, he could see the mask slipping into place, and it left him aching.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “For what?” Cithrin bel Sarcour, voice of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, asked him. Her tone was a thing of ledgers and contracts. Hearing her pull away from him ached, but there was nothing to be done about it.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Don’t mind me. Just … I’ll be back. When I can.”

  “Of course,” Cithrin said, and the crispness and politeness of her voice meant, Unless you die or something keeps you or you change your mind. Or stop caring whether you come back.

  I would never leave you, he wanted to say, except that it was what he was doing.

  The last of the meeting dragged on like a dog with a broken spine. When it was done, Cithrin retreated to her room, chin high and eyebrows arched, her stride low in her hips the way Kit and Cary had taught her to look older than she was. Marcus leaned out the window and spat on the ground. He found Kit and Yardem out by the stables with two fresh horses. The green sword was wrapped in wool and strapped on behind the saddle with his bedroll. Marcus felt a small pang of regret that they wouldn’t have their little Kesheti mule.

  “How did it go, sir?” Yardem asked.

  “As well as could be expected.”

  “Poorly, then.”

  Kit made a small sound that lived halfway between a chuckle and a groan. Marcus pulled himself into the saddle.

  “It’s a long way to Camnipol,” Marcus said. “Most of it through the leavings of a war, and autumn coming on besides. And at the end, a city full of spider priests. And someone writing letters, but we don’t know his name or what he looks like. So this should be just lovely.”

  “But there is hope,” Kit intoned.

  “Sure,” Marcus said. “As much as there ever is. Yardem?”

  “Sir?”

  “The day I take back the company?”

  “It’s not today, sir.”

  “No. It’s not. Watch after Cithrin for me.”

  “I will.”

  “And thank you for … Well. Just thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.”

  “All right, then,” he said. “Kit? Let’s go find some trouble.”

  Clara

  She felt young. It was disturbing and strange and wonderful. Her body felt warmer, not as a metaphor for some spiritual truth, but actually warmer. Even as the days grew shorter, the dark pressing its advantage at dawn and dusk, even as the leaves traded their green for yellow and brown and red, she left her jacket and shawl at the boarding house. The cold winds with their promise of the coming snows felt soothing against her skin, like they were holding in check some painless and glorious burn.

  She had never seriously imagined taking a lover. Like anyone, she’d admired men, been aware of them. Tempted by some in an unspoken and diffuse sort of way. But to move from that appreciation to action of any sort was impossible. She was a married woman. She loved her husband and been pleased with him. Dawson had been a thoughtful lover, and his delight in her matched hers in him. There had been neither call for another man nor the boredom or complacency that might give reason to hope for such a call. And now she had given way. If the court knew, she would be even more ruined than she had been before, though that was more because Vincen was a servant. If she’d found herself in the arms of some well-positioned widower with property, title, and slightly more years than her own, the only people to object would have been the ones who wanted to anyway. Vincen was young, beautiful, poor, and without standing or blood. He was too good for her and beneath her station. And when she lay in the darkness of his room, the sheet her only clothing, and thought of it all, it seemed not only to do with the animal joys but also with the act of rebellion. Taking Vincen Coe, huntsman and youth, to her bed meant that anything was possible. Anything could be done.

  She was rougher with him than she had ever been with Dawson. More selfish. Because that was possible too.

  The danger wasn’t that she would be discovered, though that would have been unfortunate. No. The greater peril was that her heart would take the wrong lessons from her experience. That she would become incautious and let the soaring sense of freedom and possibility sweep her to a place where possibilities vanished. A cell in Palliako’s gaols, for instance. Or a grave.

  So as the days passed, and the closing of the season grew near, she tried to think. To keep her analysis of the world cool and detached and passionless, and she flattered herself that she succeeded more often than she failed. The siege at Kiaria, like the one at Nus, was taking longer than Palliako had hoped. After Suddapal and Inentai, the war had seemed to have a kind of momentum. Opinion was divided now, some feeling that Ternigan was at fault, others that perhaps even the great armies of Antea with the blessings of their newly adopted goddess were subject to the limits imposed by exhaustion, hunger, and the legendary defenses of the Timzinae stronghold.

  It was, Clara thought, probably the opportunity she had been watching for. And because her heart and her flesh were in something of a riot, probably was good enough.

  All that remained was putting the scheme in place. And for that, there were a few preparations that needed making, and specifically one item that she would require. Because Ernst Mecilli had not been close to Clara, she had no correspondence from him, and even if she had attempted the acquaintance, it would almost certainly have been his wife or daughter who returned the letter. For a sufficiently large sample of his hand, she needed letters. Asking for them seemed dangerously candid, and so she resolved to steal them instead.

  Curtin Issandrian’s home had become shoddy since his fall from grace. The filigree and gilding that had brightened the façade seemed faded, chipped, and tawdry. The torches that marked his gate were old and burned out. The man himself wore the years hard, but his smile was genuine and his manner as gracious as it had ever been. Of all Dawson’s enemies, Clara felt most fond of him.

  “A letter from your husband?”

  “It would have been just at the end of the war with Asterilhold, when he was still Lord Marshal,” Clara said. “You and I had spoken about the role Alan Klin was playing in the effort, and I mentioned it to Dawson as you requested.”

  “For which I am still grateful,” Issandrian said. “Though it seems I don’t have the knack for choosing allies whose stars are on the rise.”

  Clara smiled and folded her hands together on her knee, pulling her shawl closer around her shoulders.

  “None of us knew then what would come,” she said. Any more than we know now what may happen next, she didn’t say. “I thought
he said he had written to you on the matter. And I hoped you were the sort of man who keeps his correspondence.”

  Issandrian laughed, and the lines around his mouth seemed deeper than they had. How odd that they should both have suffered so much, and so differently.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am that man. But a letter from Lord Kalliam would have been something to remark on. I can’t think I’d have forgotten it.”

  “Would it be forward of me to ask that you check? Just to be sure.”

  “If you’d like,” he said.

  “Excellent. Thank you so much,” Clara said, rising to her feet as if he had invited her to his private study and she were only accepting. To his credit, he saved her the embarrassment of being corrected and went along with the pretense. The corridors of the manor were wider than her own had been, and the red carpet that marked their center seemed faded and dusty. Through the great windows, she caught glimpses of the estate across the courtyard where Feldin Maas had lived when he lived. Where Clara and Vincen had faced the traitor’s blade with Geder Palliako and Minister Basrahip at their side. Somewhere in that garden, Vincen had tried his best to bleed to death in her arms. He had kissed her for the first time there. It was Geder Palliako’s now, since he’d been named Baron of Ebbingbaugh. It was where he would retire to when Aster claimed the throne.

  Without knowing what would come or what shape the world might take, it struck Clara as quite unlikely that Geder would ever live in that house again.

  “I hear that Ernst Mecilli is doing quite well for himself these days,” Clara said. “You and he were close, weren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Issandrian said. “A few philosophical debates one time and another, and an unfortunate attempt to negotiate sugar rights in Pût that we both came to regret. But I wouldn’t say we know each other particularly well.”

  “It’s just I was thinking of letters, I suppose. Dawson always said Mecilli’s were awful pieces of work. Impossible to tell what the man meant.”

  “Really?” Issandrian said as he opened a wide oaken door. “He always seemed cogent enough to me.”