The Widow's House

by Daniel Abraham

  It would wait. It would have to.

  She had stayed too long in Sara-sur-Mar. Her intention had been to go, deliver her warning, and retreat again at once. Instead, she’d stayed with Barriath, each of them talking too fast, trying to fit all they had to say into a few minutes. Barriath had been building a rough fleet to stand against Palliako, had worked with the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, had taken Lord Skestinin prisoner and saved a wounded dragon with his ships. Clara had sent reports and letters to the Medean bank in Carse, followed the army in disguise, and engineered the death of Lord Ternigan. Barriath’s laughter had been a roar, and the strength of it had lifted her. And here I thought it was Father I took after.

  Jorey’s tent glowed at the seams. Clara’s steps felt awkward after the long ride. Or perhaps it was the exhaustion of so long a day. She was not so young as she’d once been, after all. Or the prospect of what she was about to do to herself and to her son and to her kingdom. She wished there had been some way to deliver that letter. To have let Jorey be the man to his wife that Dawson had been to her. There was so very much to regret.

  The guard at the door nodded to her, the movement almost a bow, though not quite. There was, she supposed, no set etiquette for how to greet a Lord Marshal’s mother in the field.

  “Is he awake still?” Clara asked loudly enough that her voice carried.

  “I am,” Jorey called from within, his voice muffled. The guard nodded again, and Clara passed inside.

  He was at his small field desk, as if he had been there for hours. The map before him was marked in red and black. He smiled when she sat across from him, but it was the sort of expression a boy used when he was pretending to his mother that all was well and he had not been crying.

  “I don’t suppose I can convince you to return to Camnipol before your huntsman’s well?” Jorey asked. “I know he’s a favorite of yours, but I do have an army full of soldiers that can keep you safe.”

  “I very much doubt that,” Clara said, drawing out her pipe and her little pouch of tobacco. “Jorey, the time has come that we need to have a talk, you and I. A serious one. As adults.”

  “We don’t need to do that, Mother. It’s all right.”

  “It isn’t all right. A very great deal of it is wrong. And we’re both aware of the fact, yes? Tell me, Jorey. How do you feel about what happened to your father?”

  The boy’s face paled. He swallowed and looked down at the map before him without seeing it. “He conspired with the Timzinae against Prince Aster,” Jorey said.

  “That isn’t true,” she said, and confusion passed through Jorey’s eyes. “It isn’t, and you know it isn’t. Your father was many things, but a servant to foreign powers was never one. What he did was in service to the throne, as he saw it. We are all in service to the crown. As we see it.”

  “I…” Jorey began and then stopped. For a long moment, silence reigned. When he found his voice again, it was low. “I did what you asked, Mother. I renounced him. I made my peace with Geder, and accepted his forgiveness.”

  “You did. You made yourself a place in the court. You were not cast out as I was.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be,” Clara said. “Don’t ever be. We did what needed to be done to survive, and for the most part we have, haven’t we? You’re Lord Marshal, favored of the crown. I’m… Well, if I had stayed, I’m sure I’d have been welcome at some of the feasts and balls, wouldn’t I? Only I didn’t. You have a child now, my dear. A baby of your own. There are so many things that you will learn with her. There are risks that you would take yourself without thought that you’d run over glass to keep her from chancing. It’s love, and it’s right when the baby is small, but then you’ve all grown up, haven’t you? And still to keep you safe… even when the price of the safety is…”

  “Mother?” Jorey said carefully. “Are you well?”

  Clara dabbed her eyes with her cuff and shook her head. “This war you’re leading. How will you end it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I try not to think about that.”

  “Your father never conspired with Timzinae. Or the bank that this Cithrin creature held. Dawson was raised a certain way, and he did not change. Even when the world did. How would he have ended this war?”

  “In my place?” Jorey said. “I don’t know. I don’t know that he could have. I know that we’re chasing shadows, Mother. I can’t say it, but I know it’s truth. All I can look at is the next step, and then the next, and then the next. Trying to keep my men safe and alive, trying to reach the next goal in hopes that something may happen that I haven’t anticipated. It was easier when Vicarian was here. Ever since he took these new vows, he’s been sure that everything will end well somehow. When I’m around him, I can convince myself it’s… not true even. Possible.”

  “It isn’t,” Clara said.

  “I know,” Jorey said. “But this war is a raft I climbed on to keep my family safe, and the river’s going wherever it goes. The best I can go is hold on. For Sabiha’s sake. And Annalise’s. And yours.”

  “And your own sake, Jorey? What would your sake look like?”

  “There is no my sake. I watched my father slaughtered before my eyes and I renounced him. Instead of bringing my wife respectability, I dirtied her name more. I am leading an army of half-starved men on an endless campaign because…”

  Jorey stopped. His hands were in fists.

  “Because Geder’s priests want you to,” Clara whispered. “And everyone knows, but no one dares object.”

  “Father did.”

  Clara plucked a bit of leaf from her pouch and pressed it in the narrow bowl of her pipe. “He was not the only one.” She lit the pipe from the lantern flame and sucked the sweet smoke into her lungs. Jorey’s eyes were fixed on her. It felt like standing on the edge of a cliff over deep water. She dreaded the leap, but there was no stepping back. She went to the tent’s door and sent the guard for her servant. It wouldn’t take long. She knelt at Jorey’s side, took his hand in her own. “I have been conspiring against Geder Pallaiko and his priests.”

  “Mother. No.”

  “Yes. Very much so.”

  “You have to stop it. You have to stop now, and forever.”

  “You know that isn’t true.”

  Jorey was weeping now, and his tears called forth her own. A deep regret shook her. Her advice had brought him here. She had been the one who insisted that he make himself a place in court, that he renounce his father, that he compromise and compromise and compromise until he was this. The commander of a campaign he had no faith in, driven by fear and by guilt.

  And still, it was better than being dead at Dawson’s side. And that had been an alternative.

  Barriath stepped into the room behind her, and Jorey snarled without looking up, “Go away. You’re not wanted.”

  “No?” Barriath asked, and Jorey started like the word was a wasp sting.

  For an endless moment, they were silent. Two brothers divided by a rift as deep and profound as the one that split Camnipol. Jorey rose to his feet, his fingers trailing from her own hand.

  “What are you doing here?” he breathed.

  “Anything I can to pull Palliako down,” Barriath said. “You?”

  “Anything I can to keep him propped up.”

  “Ah,” Barriath said. “And you’re doing that why, now?”

  “I’m fucked if I know,” Jorey said and threw his arms around his brother’s chest.

  Clara closed her eyes. The blooming, opening sensation in her heart was joyful, but it was not joy. It was relief. It was the feeling of setting down a mask worn too long and finding that the world did not end with the role. When at length her two boys released each other, she motioned for them to sit and to speak quietly. For the second time that day, she and Barriath recounted all that had happened, all that they knew. Or almost all. That she had taken Vincen Coe as a lover seemed a bit more than the situation called for, even now. Whe
n Jorey found that she had engineered the fall of Lord Ternigan that had inspired his own promotion, he shook his head at the cruel irony. When Barriath revealed that Lord Skestinin was his own prisoner—alive, well, and still only half convinced that Barriath meant Aster and the throne no harm—his eyes went wide. And Barriath’s report of the true origins of the spider priests as the weapon of the insane Dragon Emperor was like a child’s bedtime tale come to life, except that it recast everything that had happened in Antea since before the death of King Simeon. The night went on and on, and sleep not even a thought. When she smoked the last of her tobacco, it was the first sign of how long their conversation had run. The birdsong that announced the coming dawn was the second.

  Their time together was almost over, and she could see the grief of it in her sons’ eyes. Everything had changed for them all, but their situation was the same.

  “We cannot allow the priests to know what we’ve done or what we’re doing,” Clara said. “The Severed Throne is in terrible danger, and our family—we three—are in the best position to save it.”

  “Yes,” Jorey said, and it was the most beautiful word she had ever heard spoken. She took his hand in her own.

  “You are Lord Marshal,” she said. “The army is yours. Keep it safe, and stop it from fighting.”

  “I’ve already written half my report in my mind while we we’ve been talking,” Jorey said. “I’ll tell Geder that the men need to winter over someplace safe where they can rest. Porte Oliva. Bellin. Someplace that doesn’t have the local forces harassing us. It’s an easy argument to make, because it’s true. Come spring, I’ll be cautious. Slow. As much time as I can keep us out of the field, I’ll take.”

  “Good,” Clara said. “These poor men didn’t ask for this. If we can keep them from killing anyone more or being killed themselves, all the better.”

  “What are we going to use that time for?” Barriath asked.

  Clara nodded. “Dawson saw the priests for the danger that they are. We are going to have to do well what he did poorly.”

  “There are a lot of priests out there, Mother,” Barriath said. And one of them is Vicarian, he did not quite add. Because he didn’t have to.

  “I know,” Clara said. “I didn’t mean to suggest it would be simple.”

  “How do we start?” Jorey asked.

  “With allies,” Clara said. “And with the work we’ve already done. I’m going to have to leave you. Jorey, be careful with yourself while I’m gone, and I will write as often and as fully as I dare. And I’m leaving Vincen Coe with you. See to him. Promise me that.”

  “Of course,” Jorey said. “But where are you going?”

  “With your brother,” Clara said. “I think it’s time I spoke with this bel Sarcour woman, don’t you?”

  Marcus

  The taproom was in the north of the city where the architecture changed, streets narrowing to a merely human size, the great stone towers replaced by wooden structures no more than three stories high. The yard didn’t open to the dragon’s road itself, but the jade ribbon was less than a minute’s walk to the south. Close enough that random travelers in need of a meal might find their way there by chance. The walls were dark and hung with shields of what seemed a hundred different houses. Low benches lined scarred wooden tables and three-legged stools crowded a fire grate longer than two men lying head to foot. The scents of roasting chicken and a spiced bean soup made the air feel warmer than it was. The players liked it for the keep’s open invitation to performers and cheap beer. Marcus liked it because he’d never been there before.

  A thin Jasuru woman in a flowing gown of braided cotton stood at the center of the room, her hands contorted in claws, her eyes narrow. Her black tongue passed over sharp teeth, and her scales shone the color of brass. With a shout, she lifted her right hand, a sphere of bright air forming around her fist. She gritted her teeth, shouted again, and the globe burst into a bright violet flame. There was a scattering of polite applause.

  Cary leaned in against the table, her eyes narrow, as the cunning woman called forth a second ball of flame, this one orange.

  “Maybe you can tell me,” she said. “Why is it so many cunning men go in for performance?”

  “You’d have to ask them,” Marcus said. “Can’t see why they wouldn’t, though. Impressive to look at, some of it.”

  At the far end of the table, Hornet said something that made Charlit Soon roll her eyes and Sandr laugh hard enough to slop beer out of his cup. Yardem, sitting beside Hornet, smiled patiently, his ears drooping to the side in a way that made the old soldier look like a patient rabbit. Outside, the night wind had a chill to it that was the first real hint of winter. There would be plenty of warm days still to come. But Carse was almost as far north as Rukkyupal, and if the currents of the ocean warmed Northcoast and chilled Hallskar, it didn’t change the fact that it was late to start a long march for anywhere.

  No one had said the words yet, but Marcus was fairly sure they’d be wintering in Carse. Long, dark nights in the cold he’d borne once with Alys and Merian. Walking south to Porte Silena was starting to sound like the better option, even if it meant facing the armies of Antea alone and on foot.

  “I just would have thought… you know. Calling fire from the air?” Cary said, moving her hands in tight but dramatic gestures. “That has to be good for something more than copperweights at a taproom.”

  “You mean fighting?” Marcus said.

  “For instance,” Cary said.

  “Not really,” Marcus said. “I mean, it’s impressive to look at, but if it’s not faster than a bow or a blade, it’s not a trick you’d be likely to do twice.”

  The actor bit her thumb, considering, and nodded. “That’s a fair point.”

  “It’s the difference between what you do and what I do,” Marcus said. “No offense, but what matters to you and Kit and the others is what looks best to an audience. What matters to people like me or Yardem? What kills the other person fastest. The two aren’t the same.”

  “No,” Cary said, a distant look coming to her eyes. “I suppose they aren’t.”

  Marcus was silent for a moment. Mikel came in from the darkness. His thin frame made him seem younger than he likely was. He grinned and came to the table, where Halvill made room for him. It was odd the way the players and the guards had become a single group after the flight from Porte Oliva. But sea travel had a reputation for changing people in ways that they did not change back. They sat together now in groups that mixed one with the other and made no distinction. Enen and Hornet and Yardem and Charlit Soon all shoulder to shoulder on the bench. Even Magistra Isadau was there, with her niece Maha. The only ones missing were Master Kit and Cithrin.

  No. That wasn’t right. They weren’t the only ones.

  Marcus looked over at Cary. Her hair was pulled back in a thick braid. Her eyes were dark, seeing something that wasn’t in the room. Of all the players, he felt he knew least which of her feelings were truly hers and which the artifice of her trade. He’d seen her pretend everything from heartbreak to joy, lust to horror, cold rage to naïve trust. He didn’t know that he’d ever seen the actual woman. It was part of why he liked her.

  “I’m sorry about Smit,” he said.

  “I am too,” she said, and didn’t speak more. Marcus didn’t press.

  “Captain!” Sandr called from the foot of the table. “Where’s the magistra? She should come with us. Like the old days!”

  “Thing about the old days,” Marcus said. “They’re old.”

  In truth, Cithrin was still at the holding company’s compound, and Marcus wasn’t sure anymore whether it was captivity or choice. With the ships in port, the wealth of Porte Oliva had been taken by the king and the proclamation put out that, as an act of loyalty to the sovereign of Northcoast, letters of transfer from the Medean bank were to be treated as the gold they represented. The bank had begun making trades using the papers where real money had been. Marcus had even escorted
the first of them at Cithrin’s request, walking through the streets of Carse from the branch run by Magister Nison to a fletcher’s hall partnered with the bank. The journey had been planned in advance, as clearly a show as anything Cary and the players ever did. Marcus, Yardem, Enen, and half a dozen of Magister Nison’s people making a great show of protecting a thin sheaf of papers. It had felt like manning the walls of a fort built from sticks and pillows, but he’d understood the bank’s reasons. If they wanted people to think of their bits of scribble as being the same as gold, then they needed to be protected as gold would be protected. That it was ridiculous didn’t seem to matter, and so he had scowled at the passersby and kept his hand on the hilt of his sword. Unsurprisingly, no one had leapt to the attack and stolen the papers. Marcus wondered whether anyone ever would.

  “We’re thinking of putting on The Pardoner’s Wife,” Cary said.

  “Really?” Marcus said, trying to recall which play that was.

  “Mikel knows all Smit’s lines. It’s a short solve, though. We need more people if we’re going to have the full selection to pull from. And there’s the problem of not having a cart. Or costumes. Or props.”

  “Mmm,” Marcus agreed, drinking from his cup. The beer was better than he gave it credit for.

  “I was wondering if you thought… Cithrin is in a strange position here, isn’t she? I mean, she’s not precisely locked away and she’s not precisely not, if you see what I mean.”

  “You’re wondering if she’s in a position to underwrite the company?”