Clara took a deep breath and straightened her spine.
“Lead me to the battle lines, my dear,” she said.
As with any spring wedding where the wind allowed, the feast was held in the temple grounds. Clara’s count was five hundred invited guests, but the press made it seem closer to a thousand. By tradition, Skestinin decorative cloth was tied to the tree branches, and slaves of several races stood in ceremonial cages, singing anthems to Antea and God and the return of spring. Clara found Jorey standing guard over Geder Palliako at one such where a tiny Cinnae girl, so thin and pale she seemed spun from sugar, worked her ribs like a bellows, chanting out a proud, rousing song in a language Clara didn’t recognize.
The problem was obvious at a glance. Canl Daskellin’s daughter, Sanna, was smiling ice at the eldest of Bannien’s girls while Nesin Pyrellin looked on the edge of tears. A flicker of embarrassment pinched Clara’s heart, and she wondered if she had ever been so obvious and undignified herself. She truly hoped not.
It wasn’t entirely their fault, of course. The life of a woman in court was always bound and defined by marriage, and in a way it was a blessing. She’d taken her turn in the temple before her twentieth name day, and ever since then her place in court had been fixed. She was Lady Kalliam, Baroness of Osterling Fells, but she could as easily have been Baroness of Nurning or merely Lady Mivekilli, wife to the Earl of Lowport. In any case, her place and rank would be determined, and she would have been just as free to make what life she wished within those bounds. Without Dawson at her side, she would still have been Clara. But what that meant would have changed. These girls looked at Geder Palliako and saw the opportunity for stability and status and power. They did because they had been taught to, and because they were right.
Still, they couldn’t be permitted to ruin the day over it.
“Baron Ebbingbaugh!” Clara said, swooping down and hauling Geder’s arm around her own. “I have been looking everywhere for you. You don’t mind if I appropriate Lord Palliako, dear?”
“That would be fine, Mother,” Jorey said, his eyes offering the thanks he couldn’t say aloud.
Clara smiled and angled Geder away, guiding him carefully enough that it wasn’t obvious he was being led. There was an alcove at the side of the temple where she might plausibly have a moment’s conversation, though for the life of her, she didn’t know what it would be about. The odd thing about Geder Palliako—the thing that no one else commented upon—was how much and often he changed. She’d been vaguely aware of him the way you were of people at the periphery of the court before he and Jorey had gone off to the Free Cities. She’d seen him when he returned from there and danced with him at his revel. He’d seemed stunned and lost and amazed, like a child watching a cunning man turn water to sand for the first time. Then he’d disappeared for that long, terrible summer, and returned thinner and harder and confident. And knowing, it seemed, all there was to know about poor Phelia Maas and her husband. And now here he was after a winter in his new holdings with a bit more flesh under his chin and carrying a cloud of anxiety with him so thick it dampened the skin.
“Thank you, Lady Kalliam,” Geder said, craning his neck to look back toward the collected young women of the court. She wasn’t sure if he was hoping to see them following or fearing the prospect. Both, perhaps. “I’m not at my best at these things.”
“It can be awkward, can’t it?”
“A baron without a baroness,” Geder said with a tight little smile. “None of them liked me before, you know.”
“I’m certain that isn’t true,” she said, though really she was certain it was.
She watched him catch sight of someone or something, eyes narrowing in anticipation and pleasure. Clara turned to see Sir Alan Klin arrive.
The man looked so pale he was almost ghostly. Seeing his friend and conspirator executed for murder and treason had hit him like an illness, and he hadn’t remotely recovered. Geder had been under Klin’s command, and Clara knew there was some petty feud between them. The powerful memory came to Clara of Barriath, her eldest boy, just before his seventh name day lighting moths on fire. Innocence and cruelty defined young boys. They were what she saw now in Palliako, and it reminded her of how it had felt to be the mother of three young sons.
“Excuse me,” Geder said, extricating his arm from hers. “There’s someone here I’ve been wanting to see.”
“Of course,” she said.
Geder walked over toward Klin, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. Just a little spring in the step. Clara watched him go with a combination of affection and dread. God help the woman that catches him, she thought.
A shout came from the other end of the temple, and then a man’s voice in a roar. Clara hurried toward it, fearing some new crisis. A group had gathered and was beginning to cheer someone or something, and then Sabiha Skestinin appeared above them all, hoisted onto someone’s shoulders. Her gown was the green of new leaves, her hair braided back so that her face was visible. She was laughing and gripping something hard to keep her balance. The roar came again, and the girl’s eyes opened wider in alarm as she began to move. The crowd didn’t part so much as follow along behind. Barriath and Vicarian ran with their soon-to-be-sister lifted between them, each held one of the girl’s ankles to keep her from tipping backward, and she had her fingers wrapped tight in Barriath’s thick black hair. Barriath still wore his naval clothes with the emblem of House Skestinin on his shoulder to honor his commander. Vicarian had his white priest’s robes, but without the golden braid of final vows. All three laughed and howled as they tore through the gardens in the mock kidnapping of the bride.
Pride and satisfaction rose in Clara’s breast. Whether they were aware of it or only divined it by instinct, the message her boys were sending read clear. The girl is ours now, not only Jorey’s. She is a Kalliam, and if you cross her, you cross us. Clara caught a glimpse of scarlet and gold in the crowd: Prince Aster laughing along with the others, pulled by the gaiety and the young women. The only thing that could have made the day better would have been Simeon walking at Dawson’s side.
The ceremony itself began an hour before sunset. Dawson and Clara took their seats. Lord and Lady Skestinin took theirs as well. Then Geder Palliako and Prince Aster, whispering to each other like schoolboys, and slowly, with great pomp and care, the court of Antea filed into the room. Men and women Clara had known since she was a girl, friends and allies. The whole court, or near enough, had come to see her son and Skestinin’s daughter remake themselves and become something new.
As the priest led the chant, Clara closed her eyes. Dawson took her hand and she glanced over, wiping away the tears. He, of course, was dry-eyed and proper. To him, the ceremony was calming and reassuring because it was exactly as it was supposed to be. The form that kept the chaos of the world in check. When the time came for them to join the pair at the altar, Clara did it with more grace and certainty than she’d managed at her own.
After the last blessing, they streamed out into the night. There was still a chill in the air, winter reaching back toward them from its grave. Jorey and Sabiha rode away in a carriage, returning to the mansion. In the morning, the girl would be there at the breakfast table along with her sons. They would all begin the long, tentative dance of conversation and etiquette that would, in time, make her sons’ tacit claim true. The girl would become a Kalliam in fact as well as name. There was time.
For tonight, there would be long talks at the Great Bear and the other, lesser fraternities. Dawson and Lord Skestinin would bring celebratory gifts to their friends and allies, drink themselves silly, and sleep too late in the morning. Clara would guard the house and make sure the new couple weren’t interrupted or abused by revelry gone too far. She waited at the temple door as the carriages and palanquins clustered in the street and footmen from a hundred different houses shoved and cursed and fought to follow the dictates of their masters. Lady Skestinin came and stood with her for a time, the pair o
f them talking about nothing very much—the winter just gone by, the dresses worn by the women of the court, the inevitable cough Canl Daskellin’s fireshow had inspired in his audience. At no point was gratitude offered to Clara, nor did she make any move to suggest it should be. When Lord Skestinin gathered up his wife, both women felt comfortable that they knew where the other stood. So that was well.
The lanterns were all lit in the courtyard when she arrived home. The full staff of the house, servants and slaves alike, were turned out as if prepared for a massive gathering. On the one hand, the household was her mercenary company, doing her will and watching. No one would come or go from the house tonight except Clara would know of it. And by keeping them in the halls and passages, watching the gardens and windows, they’d be less likely to eavesdrop on Jorey and Sabiha. Her son and her new daughter.
She sat in her withdrawing room eating honeyed bread and drinking tea and thinking about grandchildren. Of course, there already was one, of sorts. Sabiha’s scandalous child would be old enough to call for his mother by now. Old enough to crawl. He wouldn’t know that his mother had begun a new life today. He might not even know who his mother was. Certainly Lord Skestinin hadn’t allowed Sabiha to be with the child, much less care for it.
Clara lit her pipe, picked up her embroidery, and promised herself to look into conditions for the boy in the morning. Now that Sabiha was part of her household, it would fall on Clara to be sure the boy was cared for honorably and otherwise never heard from again.
A gentle knock came at the door, and she called out her permission. The master of house had arranged the gifts and had the accounting ready for her. She held out her hand, and he laid the length of paper in it. Lord Bannien had gifted them with two geldings from his stables and a small carriage in the colors of House Kalliam. Lord Bastin had offered up a silver box with a half ounce of spice worth more than Bannien’s horses and carriage together, if it was truly what he claimed. Even Curtin Issandrian had offered up a hand mirror from the glassworks of Elassae, rimmed in silver and stamped with their two names together.
This was what weddings were for, after all. The opportunity for kindness and extravagance. The chance for last year’s rivals to become this season’s friends or, failing that, at least friendly acquaintances. It was the other side of the battles and intrigues, this creation of bonds and connections. They were weaving the fabric of civilization. What Dawson protected with common rites and tradition, Clara built for herself out of notes of gratitude and imported hand mirrors. Neither strategy was better than the other, and both were necessary.
She went to bed late, Dawson still not returned to the house, and slept almost at once. She was dreaming of mice and a spinning wheel when the familiar touch brought her partway to wakefulness. The dream receded and her own room swam into focus. Dawson sat at the edge of the bed, still in his festive black and gold. For a moment, she thought he had come to celebrate in his own way, and she smiled lazily at the prospect of their familiar physical intimacy.
The candlelight caught his face, the tear tracks shining on his cheeks, and all vestige of sleep in her died. Clara sat up.
“What’s happened?”
Dawson shook his head. He smelled of fortified wine and rich tobacco. Her mind went instantly to Jorey, to Sabiha. Too many tragic songs called forth the calamity of the bridal night. She took her husband by the shoulder and twisted him until his eyes met her.
“Love,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “You have to tell me what’s wrong.”
“I am old and growing older,” he said. “My youngest son has a wife and a family of his own, and the companions of my boyhood are leaving me. Pulled away into darkness.”
He was drunk, but the sorrow in his voice was unmistakable. He wasn’t sad because he’d drunk too much, rather he’d drunk too much from being sad.
“Simeon?” she asked, and he nodded. When he answered, his voice was melancholy.
“The king is dead.”
Cithrin
N
ortheast in Narinisle, the grey stone city of Stollbourne, center of the bluewater trade. Southeast in Herez, Daun the city of lamps and dogs and the great mines of the Dartinae. South in Elassae, the five cities of Suddapal commanding the trade of the Inner Sea. In Northcoast, Carse and the Grave of Dragons and Komme Medean and his holding company. Once, not very long ago in the Free Cities, Vanai, and now in the southern reaches of Birancour, Porte Oliva. The branches of the Medean bank spread across the continent like spokes on a wheel. Cithrin sat at her table and traced her fingertips across the map and dreamed of them.
Her life for as long as she remembered had been in Vanai. When it burned, her past burned with it. The streets and canals she’d played in when she was a child were gone now, as were almost all the people who remembered them. If she couldn’t quite recall whether a particular street sat north or south of the market square, the knowledge was simply lost to the world. There was no way to find out, and worse, no reason to.
Porte Oliva was her home because chance brought her there. The branch bank was hers—to the degree it wasn’t Pyk’s—because she’d gambled and won. And also because Magister Imaniel had taught her his trade. Suddapal was only stories to her. She had never been so far east, had never seen the great fivefold city standing out on the ocean. Never heard the cries of the black seagulls or watched the gatherings of the Drowned under the waves. But she knew quite a bit about how the gold and spice came up from Lyoneia through it. How the oxen of Pût would float on great flat barges along the coast and be sold at the markets on the shore below the city. Given a week to study the books at the counting house, she would understand the logic of the Suddapal and the forces that drove it better than the native-born. Coins had their own logic, their own structure, and that she knew. So in a sense, she knew everywhere, even if she’d never been.
She traced the western coastline. There was no branch in Princip C’Annaldé. But there was family. Her mother’s people, full-blooded Cinnae. She knew nothing of them except that when they’d been offered the half-breed orphan babe, they’d refused her. The rejection didn’t sting. It would be like a man full-grown missing a toe he’d been born without. It was a fact like the sky’s color and the sea’s rhythm. People of her blood lived here—she tapped the map—and they might as well have burned in Vanai for all it changed.
And north of them, Northcoast. To its west, the Thin Sea and Narinisle. To its east, Asterilhold and Imperial Antea. It was the center of the bank’s web, touching all the trade along the north. Its shadow fell all the way to the warm blue waters of the Inner Sea.
They might trust you once they know you better. The captain had said that, only they never would. The way they might have—they way she’d hoped they would—was through the reports she sent north. If they could have seen how she guided the bank, how the profits and losses balanced, how the contracts grew, they’d know her mind at work. Shackled by her notary, Cithrin was the servant of her servant, and there was no way to break free.
She wished she could send Pyk away. If there was some errand of the bank, something important enough that it had to have someone there, but not so much that it constrained the rest of the operating funds, maybe Pyk would have no choice but to leave things in Cithrin’s hands.
And while she was dreaming, maybe a dragon would come back to life, carry Pyk out to sea, and feed her to a gigantic crab. Why dream small?
The knock at the street door at the bottom of her stairs broke her reverie. She stood, tugging at her dress to pull it back into order. It was the first job of a banker to be able to appear one thing while doing something else. In her case, she would seem to matter.
The knock came again.
“A moment,” she snapped.
She pulled back her hair in the fashion Cary and Master Kit had said would make her seem older and fit pins through the back to hold it in place. She looked at the face paints. She never used much, and what she did was intended to age her. Well,
she hadn’t bothered, and if Magistra Cithrin happened to have a day where she looked a bit younger than usual, perhaps she was just feeling good about things. Even in the privacy of her own mind, the wit was acid.
The woman waiting for her wore the livery of the governor. Her pelt was a soft brown, and the pattern of beads woven into it were the green and gold of the city. The copper torc fitted around her neck marked her as a courier.
“Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour?”
“I am,” Cithrin said.
The woman bowed and presented an envelope of cream-colored paper sealed with wax and bearing the seal of the governor. The gravity with which she presented it was such that it might have been the head of an enemy king. Cithrin plucked it up between two fingers and popped the seal open with her thumb.
To Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour, voice and agent of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, I, Iderrigo Bellind Siden, Prime Governor of Porte Oliva of Her Royal Highness…
Cithrin skipped down the page, not reading so much as skimming meaning off the top of it like the skin off a soup. A formal dinner in a month’s time to celebrate the city’s formal creation three hundred years before. Of course there had been a city here before that, and before that and before that, back to the time of the dragons. There were ruins in the hills outside the city carved from stone and eroded almost back into it. But three hundred years ago someone had signed a bit of paper, someone had cut her thumb and pressed a bloody mark on the page, and now they were going to slaughter a few pigs, drink some recent wine, and make speeches.
And, of course, she would go. Even though her competitor and once-lover Qahuar Em would be there. Even though the night would bore and chafe. She would go and laugh and talk and behave as if she had power. If she didn’t someone might notice, and the illusion of influence once broken was hard to rebuild.
“Thank you,” Cithrin said. “That will be all.”
The courier bowed and trotted off, her beads clicking against each other. Cithrin considered going back up, maybe putting on the face paint after all, but decided against it. There was the empty form of a meeting at the café she might as well attend. She closed and locked the door.
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