The compound of the Medean bank was also far from the only place in the city preparing itself for the arrival of its master. The protector’s guards were driving teams of enslaved Timzinae through the streets, cleaning away the winter-killed plants and paving roads that had never known stone. The houses and temples that had burned in the sack were finally being torn down or rebuilt. The few times that Cithrin went out into the city, she felt a sense of dislocation seeing the changes and improvements. It was as if the real city had been spirited away in the night and replaced with the Antean image of what Suddapal should be. It would have been comic if it hadn’t meant that the city as it had been was gone. That a thing once changed could only change again, and not live backward.
That afternoon she was in her room wearing a silk shift and trying on dresses in which she could meet Geder Palliako. A long-sleeved green velvet was her favorite at present, but there was a butter-yellow one with a more Antean cut that displayed her figure better, even though the color was fairly hideous. The scratch came at the doorway as she held the yellow to her chest and tried to decide whether there was a scarf she could add that forgave its failings.
“Come in,” she said, half aware that she wasn’t, strictly speaking, dressed and she didn’t know whom she’d just invited in. It wasn’t something she cared about.
Yardem entered. He was wearing leathers much like his training armor, only with touches of green at the throat and shoulders. Cithrin wondered what Geder would make of it if he arrived to find her encased in armor. The idea was almost funny.
“Magistra,” Yardem said. “How are you?”
“Debased and horrified,” she said lightly, making a joke of it. “And you?”
“Well enough. I needed to speak with you for a moment about the Lord Regent.”
“Speak away. But first, look at these. Which do you think would be the better one to wear when he comes?”
Yardem flicked a jingling ear and sat on the bed.
“Green,” he said. “It’s warmer. The Lord Regent’s forces will be here in the morning.”
“They will,” Cithrin said.
“The plan is you make yourself into Palliako’s bed slave.”
“I prefer the term consort,” Cithrin said, putting down the yellow and picking up the green. The color really was much better. Green it was, then.
“I’m going to ask you to reconsider.”
“What? You mean about Geder?”
“Yes.”
The Tralgu looked up at her. His dark eyes were unreadable. Cithrin felt a knot in her throat and coughed to clear it.
“I can’t,” she said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Yardem nodded, but his frown undercut the motion. “Walk through that with me?”
Cithrin started undoing the pearl buttons that ran down the green dress’s back, her fingernail clicking against the hard little spheres. The third one was a degree larger than the others, and she had to force it through its hole.
“I have something Geder Palliako has decided he wants. In exchange for it, I can help more people. If I can just play the role, the rewards in information alone will be beyond any normal price.”
“If,” he said.
“You think I can’t maintain the subterfuge?” Cithrin said with a grin as she stepped into the dress and pulled the sleeves onto her arms.
“I don’t,” Yardem said. “A year ago, I think you could have. But not now.”
“You don’t give me credit,” she said. “Button this for me, would you?”
Yardem rose with something like a sigh and began fastening the stays and buttons up her back. It was possible that the green wasn’t elegant enough for the occasion. Cithrin wasn’t certain of the etiquette of giving herself over to the role of Geder’s lover. Maybe a dress wasn’t called for at all. Maybe she should greet him in a little rouge and a smile. She scowled at the thought and pulled the sleeves a bit straighter.
“Well, I think you’re mistaken,” she said. “And considering the good we can do, it’s the obvious risk to take.”
“It’s only a risk if you don’t know the outcome, ma’am,” Yardem said, fixing the last and highest of the buttons. His knuckle brushed the nape of her neck as he finished. “I’d like you to take a moment to pray with me.”
“What?” Cithrin asked, turning toward him. Yardem held out his hands to her, palms up. She hesitated for a moment, then took them. Yardem closed his eyes and lowered his head, and she followed his example. As soon as her eyes were closed, the chaos of her mind whipped at her. She tried to gather herself enough to pray or think kind thoughts or whatever it was she was intended to do, but it was as much as she could manage just to keep from opening her eyes, pulling away, and finding some other small task to distract her. She felt a brief but intense resentment of Yardem for imposing on her this way. She had enough to carry without the additional burden of thinking too closely about it.
Yardem let out a calm breath, and she opened her eyes as he looked up.
“Change your mind, ma’am?”
Sorrow bloomed in her and she moved in, hugging the Tralgu close for a moment before letting him go. “Thank you for trying. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it that you care. But this is what I have to do. I don’t like it and I don’t want it, but this war is what we have. You were the one who told me sex is a woman’s natural weapon.”
Yardem’s ears shot forward.
“I never said that,” he said.
“You did. You’ve just forgotten. It was when we were first going from Vanai to Porte Oliva. We were training, and I kept asking what was a woman’s natural weapon. You said sex was.”
“No, ma’am, I didn’t. We were talking about fighting, and I made the point that on the average, men have longer reach and stronger arms, and weapons are based on reach and strength. A woman who wants to fight has to train harder to come even. I can’t recommend using sex in a melee.”
They were silent for a moment. Something was shifting in Cithrin’s chest. Unwinding like tie rope on a spool losing its tension.
“But,” she began and then wasn’t sure where to go.
Yardem scratched his chin reflectively. “Sling, maybe. Or a short sword. Not sex.”
“But you said—”
“No. I didn’t.”
“Then who did?” Cithrin asked.
“Believe that was Sandr.”
“Oh,” Cithrin said. Then a moment later, “Sandr’s kind of a pig.”
“I’ve always thought so.”
Cithrin looked down. The unwinding sensation in her chest intensified. Something in her was releasing, opening. It felt nauseating and it felt like relief. She pressed her lips together and looked up into Yardem’s face. His expression was as placid and calm as ever.
“Yardem?” she said. “I can’t do this.”
“No, ma’am. You can’t. There’s a ship waiting. I’ve given word to everyone that we’re leaving, so they won’t be caught unprepared. Enen’s packed up all the books and ledgers from the office. We can get whatever else you’d like, but we should hurry. The tide’s going out in two hours.”
Cithrin looked around her room. Her heart was beating fast and strong and true. She plucked the little plant from off her windowsill.
“I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s go.”
The ship was small with a shallow draft and wide sails. It slipped away from the dock seeming to go faster than the wind that carried it. Cithrin stood on the deck. She still had the green dress, but Enen had given her a thick cloak of leather lined with wool that she’d wrapped around her shoulders. The sea was choppy with a million tiny waves jittering and seagulls wheeling in the high air. They didn’t have the weight to smooth the swell and drop of the sea, and one of the house guards that Yardem had brought with them was being noisily sick over the side. Cithrin’s stomach, on the other hand, felt more solid and calm than it ever had. She was even hungry.
Suddapal receded. The great dark buildings
greyed with distance. The great piers that pressed so far out into the water shrank to twigs and the tall ships became small enough to cover with her outstretched thumb. When she looked down into the water, she was surprised to see dark eyes looking up at hers. A pod of the Drowned had grabbed on to the ship, coasting with it like an underwater tail. Cithrin smiled at them and waved. One waved back, and before long, they had let go and fallen back into the depths of the water. By the time the sun fell into the sea, the city was gone.
And if she ever went back there, it would still be gone.
She felt Yardem come up behind her more than heard him. When she glanced back and up, he was standing there placidly, looking out at the pale white wake drawn out behind them and the darkening water.
“Well,” she said, “I’m afraid I’m about to disappoint the Lord Regent. I don’t imagine he’ll take it well.”
“To judge from his past, likely not,” Yardem said.
“Perhaps I should have left him a letter.”
“Saying what, ma’am?”
“I don’t know. That I’m sorry. That I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
“Not sure that matters, ma’am.”
“It does to me. He’s a terrible person, you know. But he’s also not. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who managed to make himself so alone.”
Yardem grunted, then cleared his throat. “I’ve known hermits, ma’am. Very few of them burned down cities.”
“Fair point,” Cithrin said. “Still, I wish there was some way to talk just with the best parts of him.”
“Could wish that of anyone,” Yardem said.
The boat rose and fell gently. Rose and fell. It would be weeks yet before she reached Porte Oliva and home. She wondered what it would be like, hearing Pyk Usterhall’s rough, angry voice and sitting with Maestro Asanpur with his single blind eye and his perfect coffee and all the familiar faces again. She wanted to believe that she would fit back into the same place she had before, that she would find them as they had been, but she doubted it would happen.
She saw now that she had changed, though she still didn’t quite understand what she’d become. There was a contradiction in it, because Yardem was right. A year before, she would have been able to go through with it, and now she couldn’t. She had become capable of fewer things, and yet she felt freed. She wondered if Magistra Isadau was waiting in Porte Oliva. It was the sort of question that she could answer if anyone could.
“If I’d stayed,” she said. “If I’d been his lover, do you think he might have changed?”
Yardem stood silently for a long moment, his arms crossed and his ears canted forward.
“No,” he said.
Clara
Well, it’s mostly the bits the butcher usually throws away, but there’s enough salt in it, anyway,” Aly said, putting the soup bowl in front of Clara.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Clara said, picking up her spoon.
“I’m sure it’s not,” the other woman said, laughing. “But the company makes it better, eh?”
Aly lived in a small apartment on the fifth story of a narrow building. Her table was small enough that it was cramped even just with the two of them. The weak winter sunlight pressed in through dingy curtains and made the place seem warm and cozy, even though it was in fact almost as cold as the street.
With the court gone from Camnipol and the winter turning the black-cobbled streets to grey, Clara had given more time to the friends she’d made at the Prisoner’s Span. Ostin Soukar, the odd little man who kept forcing his way into homes that weren’t his, and being caught by the magistrates’ men because he’d fallen asleep there. Ishia Man, who was sweet as honey sober but fought like a bull when he got drunk. Aly Koutinen and her son Mihal. They were criminals, and some of them violent. There were many, many people she had met and spoken with whom she’d not choose to be in a room alone with, but taken as a whole, they were not particularly better or worse than the noblemen who debated at the Great Bear and fought in the dueling yards.
“Did you hear about Sasin?” Aly said.
“No,” Clara said, sipping at the weak, watery soup. “And I don’t dare to ask what’s happened this time.”
“Tried to take the begging cup from that one-legged Tralgu sets up by the northern gate. You know the one? Well, the one-legged bastard hopped up on his one foot and beat poor Sasin blue with his cane. Now they’re both in the pens with all those roach babies.”
“Well, warmer than the cages, at least,” Clara said.
“Don’t know,” Aly said. “I’d rather take my chances with the wind than live around Timzinae. I think it’s wrong to put them in gaols with real people. Animals live in a menagerie, and they’re all just a kind of dragon that got made short and stupid. I say put ’em where they belong. Bread?”
“Please,” Clara said. “And … wait, where’s my bag? Ah, here. I’ve brought my own contribution to the meal.”
Aly’s eyes brightened as Clara pulled the little jar from her bag.
“No. Really? You’ve got butter?”
“Just a little bit,” Clara said. “But enough to share. Here you go.”
Aly grinned and began spreading the soft cream on the dark crust of bread.
“You know,” Clara said, “the Timzinae weren’t any part of what Dawson did.”
“Yeah?” Aly said. “Well, not what I’ve heard, but I suppose you’d be in a better place to know. Still, there’s no question that they’ve been conspiring against the throne. If not your man, then the others. And really, dear, you might not have known it. They had their little hooks into Lord Ternigan, after all, and who would have thought that?”
“I suppose,” Clara said, taking back the butter jar.
After their little meal, Aly walked down the street with her and east, toward the Division. Vincen was huddled by a smithy along with a dozen other people, watching the smith hammering away at his anvil, drawn by the warmth of the forge. Aly took her leave with a half-mocking curtsey, and Clara kissed her cheek. When she put her hand on Vincen’s elbow, he turned and smiled.
“Anything interesting?” he asked.
“Not today,” she said. “It’s astonishing how little palace intrigue changes when one takes away the palace.”
The news of Lord Ternigan’s death had come first from a cunning man in Camnipol who shared dreams with one on campaign in Kiaria. At first, of course, no one believed it. The dreams of cunning men were swift, but they weren’t particularly reliable. Then the birds came with little notes that confirmed it. Lord Ternigan had been plotting against the Lord Regent and Prince Aster, and only Geder Palliako’s brilliance and uncanny ability to root out corruption and purify the court had saved the kingdom from another battle on its own soil.
Within hours of the birds’ arrival, guardsmen were closing Ternigan’s mansion in the city. Granted, there was less to do with the season over and Ternigan off on campaign before that, but what there was—tables, beds, silver—was hauled in carts to the Kingspire. Before the night was through, vandals had broken into the abandoned house and put it to the torch. By morning, Lord Ternigan had gone from the hero of the nation to a loathed traitor and puppet of the Timzinae.
Seeing it play out that way fascinated Clara. She had seen the story of Geder Palliako take form. From his unmasking of Feldin Maas and King Lechan, to Dawson’s rebellion, and now to a second Lord Marshal’s betrayal. That the facts in each case were utterly dissimilar didn’t matter; it was the story that remained the same. A dark conspiracy threatened the kingdom, and Geder Palliako, blessed by the goddess, brought it to light. And while she had expected that there would be a growing sense of fear in the city when Lords Ternigan and Mecilli fell, she’d been wrong on several counts.
First, Mecilli’s name hadn’t been mentioned, and his house and honor remained intact. But beyond that, and more interesting, was the sense of comfort that the news seemed to bring. As if by repeating the form of last year’s betrayals, they had be
come familiar, and the story’s end always left the throne safer and more secure, the dangers lessened. There was even, she thought, a sense of anticipation. A looking ahead to the next traitor, the next betrayal, and the next act of redeeming violence. In one way, she thought the general willingness to embrace stories with that shape and pattern might ease her work of driving Geder’s best advisors away from him. But in another, she found herself complicit in the growing legend of Geder Palliako.
“Clara?” Vincen said.
“I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “My mind wandering.”
“Shall I take you home?”
Clara smiled and tugged on his arm. They walked together through the streets arm in arm. It was a small indiscretion. Even the last stragglers of the court were gone by now, and any who were there on winter business would likely be as pleased not to be seen as she would. Among her new acquaintances, an older woman with a younger lover was hardly cause for comment. Crows called from the eaves and sparrows darted down into the depths of the Division. She had the sudden memory of Dawson looking at Geder in his black leather cloak and the priest in his brown robes. Crows and sparrows, he’d called them.
As they walked, Clara began planning her next letter to Carse. She could, of course, give a great deal of information about what had happened to Lord Ternigan, but she wasn’t certain that would serve her well. Perhaps it would suffice if she could simply repeat what she’d heard on the streets along with an additional fact or two that was private to her. She could also report on the levels of food in Camnipol, and the miserable state of things in Palliako’s prisons.
She felt Vincen’s steps falter before she knew what was wrong. He drew his arm free from hers and stepped to her side. She followed his gaze. There before the boarding house, a grand carriage sat with footmen and drivers at the ready. The device on the side announced House Skestinin. Clara felt the air leave her body. Something had happened to Jorey. Or Sabiha and the new babe. She walked faster, not running. Not quite.
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