The Widow's House

by Daniel Abraham

  And she would have taken the little slights and tight smiles a thousand times over rather than endure the women like Erryn Meer who had distanced herself from Clara and now greeted her like the previous year had never happened. Hypocrisy was the marrow of court life and always had been. In truth, very little had changed, except her. And she, more even than her peers, was aware at every turn that she no longer fit.

  The image that came to her time and again in the early days of the season was a pot-bound plant removed from its bindings and placed in a wider soil where roots could spread as they had not before. Only now she was being pushed back into that old, too-small container, and she would not fit. She was not any longer the woman she had been. She missed her husband with an ache that she thought would never entirely fade, but she would also have been hard-pressed to welcome him back, should God and angels lift him restored from the depths of the Division. Like the old stories of men taken to magical lands who could never entirely return, Clara had stepped into a wider, more violent, less certain world. She had the taste of it now, and she would never again be so tamed as she had been.

  And so it became an easy thing to plot her escape.

  To Enga Tilliaken, she said that she had an ailing friend in Osterling Fells and was thinking of retiring from the court for the season to oversee the cunning men as they tried to heal her. To Lady Daskellin she hinted broadly that her residence in the Skestinin manor was not entirely to Lady Skestinin’s liking. At the garden tea, she praised Geder for his kindness to her family. At the spring bowling competition, she confessed to missing Dawson and Barriath and her cousin Phelia who had been wife to Feldin Maas back when the conspiracy against the throne had been thought to spring from Asterilhold. She laid the ground for any number of stories to explain her retreat and a dozen false trails to suggest where she had gone and why. All except the truth. That, she told only to Sabiha, and even then, not all.

  Dawson had spoken of the art of war many times, and she had listened with half an ear. She had heard him speak of the people that follow the army to war: robbers of the dead, prostitutes, workmen too old, slow, or infirm to wield a sword but able to do small service for the soldiery at a small price. He had told her more than once that the well-being of an army could be judged by the character of its hangers-on like judging the health of a dog by the quality of its coat. Often, he’d said, the followers and small people knew things about the army that the generals did not.

  The army was once again on the march. She intended to follow it quietly, at distance, and in disguise. She would blend in with the followers and learn what there was to be learned. And if she could, frustrate the campaign without destroying the man who led it. When she had been trapped in the court like a fly in sap, the idea had seemed plausible. On the road with Vincen at her side, the rashness of the errand stood out, though not enough to make her turn back.

  The room was small, and the thatch above them ticked with the rain and a variety of black beetles she had previously been unfamiliar with. The smell of the mud and beer and weather almost forgave the reek of the night pot. Vincen lay in the bed beside her, snoring slightly. Both of them still wore all the day’s clothes as proof against the cold, but she could still feel the warmth of his body. She was weary beyond expectation. Her back ached and her legs as well. Sleep, however, eluded her. A thousand different worries assailed her: How would she find the army, and how would she avoid being recognized, and what would happen if she were? How could the wars of Geder Palliako and his spider priests be separated from those of Antea when the same men fought the same battles for each? How much longer could she keep the grief of seeing her middle boy consumed by the goddess at bay, and what was she going to do when that dam burst?

  But along with all of it was a sense of lightness that confused her at first. It wasn’t simply that court was oppressive and she was no longer there. The boarding house in Camnipol had been a hundred times more pleasant than traveling, and she hadn’t even joined the army yet. She had been outside court for the better part of a year, and had been miserable and frightened through most of it.

  The difference was that she had been cast out before, where now she had stepped away. After Dawson’s death, she had been hollowed out. Now if anything she felt too large for the world she’d lived in. The campaign would be dangerous, brutal, and exhausting, but it was what she had chosen. If she died on the road—and God knew there was enough chance of that in a war—she would die on her own terms, serving her kingdom better than Enga Tilliaken or a thousand more like her would ever conceive. She would not have expected the difference to matter greatly, and yet it did.

  Vincen grunted and curled his arm under his head like a pillow. She knew it more by feel than sight. The only illumination in the room was what leaked in around the poorly hung door and the occasional flash of lightning. Clara closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep, but to no avail. And so instead, she rolled to the edge of the little bed and stood. Vincen would want her to stay in the room. They were far from Camnipol, but there would be couriers running between the throne and the army. And even that aside, the fact that the keep had taken their money did not guarantee that everyone in the place was benign.

  Clara slipped the door open carefully. The hinge was a length of hard leather, and it creaked when it moved. Vincen did not wake. She pulled the door to behind her and went down the short hall to the common room. A Southling boy not more than ten years old was sweeping the floor with a rude little broom. A table of men, some Firstblood and others Kurtadam, played a card game in the corner. Clara went to sit by the fire grate.

  “Help you, dear?”

  The Jasuru woman loomed up out of the shadows. Clara had always heard it said that the Jasuru were bred by the dragons as soldiers. Black-mouthed, pointed teeth, scales across their bodies as a permanent light armor. But no race was ever only the thing it was intended for, not any more than a woman was only what she was told to be. Clara drew herself up and smiled.

  “Trouble sleeping,” she said.

  “Ah. Could bring you a cup of rum if you’d care for it.”

  “Trade down to wine, if you’ve got it,” Clara said, trying to speak the way she imagined Abitha Coe speaking. Vincen’s comment about sounding as though she belonged in a ballroom might only have been teasing, but there was some truth in it. If her aristocratic past showed in her words, the keep gave no sign.

  “Something to ease you down, but not so much you can’t wake come morning,” the Jasuru said with a broad wink. “You’re a wise woman, you.”

  “Wouldn’t go that far,” Clara said, but the keep was already stepping to the back room. The Southling boy glanced over to her, smiled shyly, and went back to his chore. The men at the table reached some critical point in their game, groaning and chortling together, and then one of them began reshuffling the cards. When the keep returned, with an earthenware cup of wine, Clara took it with a nod that she hoped was companionable. She didn’t want to treat this woman as a servant, and for more reasons than one. The wine had a bite at the front, but it finished well. Dawson would have called it cheap and common, and he would have been right. He would have meant that there was no solace or pleasure to be found in it, and that would have been wrong.

  The coals in the grate warmed her knuckles and the ticking of the rain seemed calming now that she was in a dry, comfortable room and not riding through it. They would find the army within the week, she hoped, and from there, she would have to improvise with her family, her country, her lover, and her life all at stake. She would find a way to save Jorey and the throne both. Or if not both, at least one of them. There was a fair chance that this would be one of the last pleasant evenings she had for a very long time.

  Clara drank her wine alone, and listened to the rain.

  Marcus

  The birds announced the dawn before the light came, trilling and calling to one another as if unaware that one of the fallen masters of the world had returned from legend to sleep in the rui
ned inn’s yard. Or if not unaware, unimpressed. Marcus had stayed up the full night, waiting. Prompted by Kit and his unpleasant power to convince, the innkeep and his people had fled toward the nearby hamlets and towns. Likely it had been the wiser choice.

  “When should we wake it up?” Sandr asked.

  The dragon lay on its side, wings folded in against its vast bulk. Its eyes—each as wide as a man’s body—were closed. Its breath was the deep, regular tide of sleep. Every now and then throughout his watch, its scaled brows had furrowed and its mouth curved in distress at whatever nightmares plagued it.

  “Be my guest,” Marcus said.

  “Maybe another hour,” Sandr said.

  Marcus was amazed at how easily he could read emotion in the vast, inhuman face, the angle of its wings, and the shape of its balled claws. It reminded him of stories he’d heard about shepherds whose dogs understood them so well that an untrained man would have thought they shared a mind. Really, it was only that over generations the dogs that followed a man’s expressions had been let breed while the others were killed or gelded. Only in this translation, Marcus was playing the part of the dog.

  And perhaps that was apt, because he knew—they all knew—that the beast was about to wake just before the great eyes opened. The dragon’s gaze swam for a moment, fixed on Marcus, lost him, and came back.

  “Morning,” Marcus said.

  The dragon said something like ummbru, shifted its feet under it, and half crawled down the sward to the little river. Marcus ran along beside it. At a pool, the dragon sank its head into the water, its throat working as it drank. Marcus waited. What seemed an impossibly long time later, it pulled its head back to land. Back at the inn, Kit and the other players stood in a line, watching. They were the audience for once.

  “So,” Marcus said. “Feeling any better?”

  “I want to die.”

  “Well, give it time.”

  “For what?”

  “Either you’ll stop wanting it, or you’ll die. One or the other.”

  The dragon managed a wan smile.

  “The world is emptied,” it said. With its head resting on the green earth, every word vibrated. “I have killed the world.”

  “Well, about that. I was hoping you knew what the spiders are. We’d been under the impression they were sent by a goddess as a sign of her favor, but that didn’t work out. And since they seemed to be searching for you… I’m sorry, this is a very strange morning for me.”

  “They are my fault. They are my brother’s vengeance.”

  “Your brother.”

  “Morade.”

  “Ah.”

  “He destroyed everything because of me.”

  “No goddess, then.”

  The dragon shifted its head to watch him with both of its eyes. “I angered him. It was cruel and it was small, and… Erex. My love is dead. She is dead. All are dead.”

  “Spiders aren’t dead.”

  “They are nothing.”

  “We aren’t dead.”

  “You are nothing.”

  “You aren’t dead.”

  The dragon took a great breath and let it out slowly. Marcus more than half expected it to be scalding hot, but it was no warmer than any large animal’s though it smelled of something like oil and distilled wine. The dragon rose to its haunches, spread its wings, and yawned massively. It raised its nose as if searching for some scent, then sneezed. Marcus waited.

  “I should have died with them,” it said. “Instead I am trapped in this graveyard world. Feral slaves like maggots in the corpse of the earth. Why did you wake me?”

  “Mostly, it seemed the thing to do at the time. The spider priests were looking for you, and we thought anything they wanted, it’d be best to keep from them.”

  “You keep company with the tainted.”

  “Just the one,” Marcus said. “And he’s very well behaved. Killing the spider goddess was his idea.”

  “There is none such.”

  “Picked up on that. So I don’t mean to pry or intrude on your mourning, but… ah…”

  “What?”

  “A fair part of the world I live in is in the process of grinding itself into blood and bone, and these priests look to be at the heart of it. No offense meant, but if this really is your fault, the least you can do is explain yourself.”

  “I do not answer to slaves.”

  “Make an exception. Just this once.”

  The vast claw moved more quickly than Marcus could react. He tried to reach back for the poisoned sword, but his arm was already pinned to his side by the tree-limb-thick claws. The dragon lifted him in the air until he was higher than the inn had been, back when it had had a roof. His ribs creaked, and he fought to draw breath. One of the players screamed. The dragon tilted its head. Anger flared in its eyes, and then died. It sagged and dropped Marcus on the riverbank. He lay back, his eyes on the blue dome of the sky, hissing between his teeth. The pain in his back subsided slowly. Probably nothing broken, but damn.

  “We were great,” the dragon said, as if it had made no violent move. “We were masters of time and space. The mysteries of all creation were bare before us. Before him. Morade, my brother. We were set to make marvels. To prove ourselves, and I was… jealous? Angry? I don’t know what I was. It is too long ago. I destroyed his work as a joke. I, in my folly, expected him to be… annoyed. Displeased. He was enraged. He swore vengeance.

  “We were complacent. I see that now. We relied on the slave races we had made,” the dragon said, waving its claw at Marcus. “Your kind. We created you, we set you to your tasks, and we forgot. And why remember? Does a body keep track of every drop of blood? Does a gardener count his worms? We had our eyes on greater things. To see the despised, the small, the insignificant, and to find a weakness there… ah, that was his genius. He forged a secret tool, and in doing so, he poisoned his own mind. They were his madness made flesh.”

  “The spiders?”

  “A corruption to drive our slaves to slaughter one another. To disrupt all the patterns that we had come to rely upon. It made their minds brittle and caught them in a dream that fractured them. We didn’t see. I didn’t see. The corruption spread unnoticed, and then it shattered. They killed each other over nothing. Over the colors of their shirts or their eyes, whether they drank before they ate or ate before they drank. Whether they ate beef or fowl. Anything became a pretext for murder.”

  “Wait,” Marcus said. “We haven’t seen that. The ones we’ve been fighting can smell out lies and convince people of things, but this other thing you’re talking about—”

  “There is no other thing. Your kind has small, fragile thoughts and you live in dreams by your nature. You make beliefs the way a dog sheds in spring.”

  “All right,” Marcus said. “Not following.”

  The dragon’s smile was pitying. “I will show you. If the words in the question fall in threes, I will answer no. Otherwise, yes. Do you understand?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “You will. Bring one of the others. Not the corrupted one.”

  “You want me to…”

  “Any of them will do.”

  “Wait here, then.”

  “There is nowhere I can go.”

  Marcus turned and walked back up the gentle slope. The players came forward to meet him. What’s it saying? Mikel asked at the same time Cary asked, Are you all right? The gabble of voices erupted. Only Kit stayed silent.

  “Sandr,” Marcus said. “Walk with me.”

  “Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry.”

  “No, just… come.”

  As they returned to the side of the creek, the dragon was staring at the sun, turning its claws in the light and watching the scales shine. It angled its head toward them, and Sandr froze.

  “It’s all right,” Marcus said. “If our friend here wanted us dead, we’d be dead.”

  “It’s true,” the dragon said.

  “Good to know,” Sandr sa
id in a small voice.

  “I know something of you,” the dragon said, its voice rich and deep. “I will answer you yes or else no, and nothing else.”

  “What’s this about?” Sandr squeaked, his gaze cutting to Marcus.

  “Just do it,” Marcus said.

  “Ah. All right. Um…” Sandr squared his shoulders. “Is this about me?”

  The dragon turned to Marcus and counted its claws. One, then two, then three. The fourth it wiggled in the air at Marcus. If the words in the question fall in threes, then no. Otherwise… “Yes.”

  “Me in particular?”

  One, then two, then three. “No.”

  “Something about the sort of person I am?”

  Three and then three. And one left. “Yes.”

  “Actors?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it a prophecy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it end with us dying?”

  Three and then three. Nothing left over.

  “No.”

  Marcus watched the dragon and the actor trade questions as the morning sun warmed them. Slowly, Sandr followed the arbitrary answers one after the other to a story about a band of actors that were going to defeat the forces of darkness by seducing an enemy queen on the evening before a great battle and then fathering a new dynastic line. Sandr’s eyes grew wider over time, and Marcus could almost see him trying to imagine which queen it was and judge his own chances of cuckolding some great king.