The last rays of the falling sun painted them both in red, and the bone-strewn battlefield of the world as well.
Cithrin
Marcus Wester was gone. Master Kit was gone. Isadau was gone. Carse was the greatest city of Northcoast, and it still felt empty. Lonely. As many bodies packed the taprooms, as many dogs loped yapping through the streets, as many meetings with suppliers, debtors, mercenaries, and officials of the crown filled the day, and still she felt alone. It didn’t help that Cary worked the troupe from the late, sluggish sunrise to the early twilight. Or that Yardem, love him though she did, seemed folded in his own thoughts. Or that Inys had fallen into a sulk that hadn’t proven murderous again as yet, but might at any time. Cithrin woke in the morning feeling anxious and unmoored, worked through the day at whatever there was to be done, inventing tasks when there were none, and settled in at night with her fears and her ambitions and her wine.
Winter was passing. Every hour brought spring closer, and with it the fighting season. She felt it in her gut. The growing certainty that this was the last year, that if next winter found the banner of the spider goddess still flying in the temples of Porte Oliva and Camnipol and Nus, it would be too late. Like a glass grabbed for the instant it passed her reach, the world would shatter into war within war within war, forever. And for all she had done, for all she was doing, she still dreamed at night of trying to stop a river by pushing the water back with her hands.
There had been no word from Marcus or from Kit, which was either a blessing or a sign that their plan had gone wrong or both. Or neither. The companion to the pirate ship that had spirited Isadau to the south had turned back with word that the magistra had made it as far as the smugglers’ coves at the edge of Herez. The treacherous passage around Birancour’s southern coast had still been before her, and the long, swift run past the Free Cities—free now only in name, since fear of Antea left their ports too dangerous for landing.
The most recent word had been good, so Cithrin clung to it, but still she went to the taproom near Inys’s field, and listened to the chatter of the people, the gossip, the lies and fabrications and half-formed hopes of a city as frightened and unsure as she was herself. And the singers—Mikel and Charlit Soon among them. And the fortune-tellers and jugglers—Cary and Sandr and Hornet as well as a different, less-practiced local bunch.
And she drank. More often than not, in the days of emptiness and absence, she found she drank with Barriath Kalliam.
“One time the freeze lasted so long we found a pod of the Drowned washed up on the beach,” he said. “If you’ve never sailed the north in winter, you’ve never been cold.”
“You seem to have a great many opinions on what I have and haven’t felt,” Cithrin said.
Their table wasn’t theirs, except that they were sitting at it. It was long enough for a dozen, and six besides them shared the benches. The cook’s boy brought low wooden devices more trough than platter filled with flatbread and pepper jam and cheeses that smelled like grass and summer. The others dropped coins on the table or in the boy’s open hand and took out food to eat straight from the table. Cithrin lifted her cup, and the boy nodded. More cider would come when he had a moment.
Across the common room, Yardem Hane and Enen sat across a square board, both scowling at the low wooden markers. The fire in the grate popped now and then, scattering embers and the smell of cut wood. The wind that blew through the streets promised snow, and clouds hid moon and stars alike, and the bitterness of it made the taproom’s warmth sweeter. When Cithrin said as much, Barriath laughed.
“I think you’re talking about more than weather,” he said.
“Oh do you?”
“Sure,” the man said, leaning his elbows on the table and hunching toward her. “It’s the same for everything, isn’t it? Everything’s more itself with a bit of contrast. All this?” He nodded at the room around them. “None of it would feel quite the same if the world weren’t tearing at the seams. It’d just be a taproom in winter, and we’d all be here for the food and the drink and a way to kill a bit of the boredom until the sun came back. Instead, it’s…”
The sentence stopped without ending. Cithrin followed his gaze, trying to see the room as he did. Men and women of half a dozen races, sharing warmth and bread and air. Outside, a dragon slept in the darkness, and beyond it, a city waited to find out whether it would be the next to face an invader’s blades, and then war and the threat of war spilling out to the edges of all maps. Seen that way, it was hard not to imagine the spill of firelight as the last breath of clean air in a world of smoke and fire. Barriath sighed and brushed the back of his hand wearily across his eyes.
He had changed since Lady Kalliam had arrived. Or, no. That wasn’t quite true. He had changed when she came, but he had also changed again when she left. He’d come to them, his navy at his back, a warrior and an unexpected ally. And he was that still, but also a man whose family faced danger without him. A man who’d seen his father killed before him. An exile from his home, wounded but unbroken. His gaze shifted to hers. A moment of confusion flickered in his eyes. A question.
“I was wondering who you would have been if none of this had happened,” Cithrin said.
“Just another sailor hoping for Lord Skestinin’s approval,” Barriath said. “What about you?”
“I’d have been… I don’t know. A girl in Vanai with a bit of money her parents left her and no clear work, I suppose. I could have managed a launderer’s yard or some such.”
“You’d have made a good yard manager,” Barriath said. “In a better world.”
Across the room, Yardem’s ears perked up and he moved one of his tokens. Enen growled, the silver-grey pelt of her arms rippling as she shrugged her annoyance. The cook’s boy brought Cithrin’s cup of fresh cider, then hurried over to tend the fire. A Firstblood woman at the end of the table laughed and coughed and laughed again. The knot in Cithrin’s belly—her constant companion—was looser now. The cider had a bite to it, and this was her fifth. Her mind was clear, though.
Barriath shifted on his bench. His fingers brushed against her arm as if by accident, but not by accident. Cithrin felt her blood go suddenly bright, her heart triple its pace, and for a moment she thought she was afraid. Then she turned to look at his wide, callused hand, again into the darkness of his eyes, and her body made it clear to her that it was not fear.
Oh, she thought. And then How did I not see this coming?
Barriath’s smile was soft, neither apologetic nor gloating, but again with a question at its back. Cithrin’s mind went suddenly blank. There was, she was certain, something she was supposed to do now, some way she was supposed to act. She tried to imagine that she was Cary or Isadau or anyone other than herself. Anyone who knew what to do at moments like these. The best she could manage was the polite regard of the negotiating table. Barriath nodded as if she’d spoken, regret in his eyes but humor as well, and shifted his hand away. Her skin felt warm where he’d touched her, and she immediately wanted his fingers back where they’d been.
Oh by all gods ever, this is undignified work.
“I find I’ve grown a bit fatigued,” she said, her voice crisp as frost. “It may be time that I retire for the evening.”
“Of course, Magistra,” he said. “Your company’s been a pleasure. As always.”
She looked to Yardem and then back to Barriath. Every movement she made seemed like the first performance of an amateur actor. Secret queen of the world, Komme called her, and she was awkward as a colt. “It seems my guard is busy. Would you be so kind as to walk me back to the holding company?”
She watched him understand, doubt his understanding, and then match her fragile formality. A particularly vivid and pleasant image intruded on her imagination and she pushed it away. “I would be happy to,” he said. “Just give me a moment to… finish my cider?”
“Of course,” she said, folding her arms.
Barriath took his cup and sipped from i
t twice, his gaze focused on the middle distance, his attention intense. Enen growled again, and Cithrin felt a sudden stab of fear. Don’t let their game be over. Please God, don’t let them be done. Barriath seemed to share her thought. He put down the cup and stood, offering her his arm.
“Shall we?” he said.
“Apparently,” she replied, suddenly giddy. Barriath pressed his lips together and pretended not to know what she’d said.
As they walked to the door, she looked back at Yardem. The Tralgu’s head was raised, his ears forward. His broad, canine face took her in and saw more than her. For a moment she was at the side of a frozen millpond south of Bellin, shouting down Marcus Wester for interrupting her moment with Sandr. Sandr who stood now not fifteen feet from her with the other players, and a world and a half away. But Yardem only shifted his soft brown eyes from her to Barriath and back to her before nodding and going back to his game.
Near dawn, Barriath finally slept. They’d made it as far as her rooms before their reserve entirely dissolved, and so it was her blankets and pillows that lay in ruins around him rather than his own. True to all he’d said of being proof against cold, he lay with his bare skin in the air, exposed and unashamed and at rest. Naked, he was lovely. No, not lovely. That wasn’t the word. He was fascinating. Strong and vulnerable, a masculine animal at rest. Beautiful for a hard, curiously melancholy definition of beauty. If she’d known better how to draw, she’d have made a picture of him there.
For herself, she could no more sleep than shout down the moon. She sat by the fire grate, feeding in wood for the light more than the heat. Wrapped in a wool robe with a lining of raw silk, her body felt like it had been carved from warm butter. Nothing about her felt tense or tight or weighed down with fear. Not that anything had changed. Her fear was still there, but at a distance for the moment. It was like she’d taken a rib from her body and could consider it in the air, turning it one way and then the other without any discomfort or pain.
The aftermath of sex insulated her from herself, and it felt glorious. Better than wine even, although wine alone never risked getting a girl pregnant. Trade-offs. All the world was made from trade-offs.
The wind outside was picking up. Even through the shutters, she heard it hissing against the stones. There would be snow before midday. Or hail. Or freezing rain. It might give her a reason to cancel her meetings. Once Barriath had gone, she expected she would be able to sleep. And would need to. She pressed her fingertips to her lips idly, feeling the pleasant bruise.
She’d lain with men before now. Not Sandr, thankfully. But Qahuar Em, her rival in Porte Oliva. He’d been a kind lover in his fashion, but half the thrill of it had been that she was betraying him. She’d thought she was using her sex to distract him, and any lingering pleasure that had come from their time together was tainted by the humiliation that he’d known her plan all along. She’d played with bed and intrigue and been beaten.
And then, of course, Geder Palliako while Dawson Kalliam’s insurrection had burned through the streets of Camnipol. He’d seemed so lost then, so much in need of comfort and care. During the days they’d spent in the darkness, hiding from the violence, he’d been powerless even over her. Granted, he’d still been a man of great power in the court, and there were risks in refusing gifts to kings. Had he insisted, she’d have been an idiot to refuse. Not that he was precisely a king, but a Lord Regent was near enough.
Neither adventure in the mysteries of physical love had left her longing to repeat the experience. Not shamed, though. She knew that girls did feel that way sometimes. Often, even. She felt stupid at having been outplayed by Qahuar and permanently unclean from having seen Geder for what he was afterward, but sex itself seemed… foolish? Messy? Undignified and pleasant and playful in roughly equal measures? Except she wasn’t sure she had felt that way about it. Not before tonight.
She thought Isadau would be proud of her. Or if not proud outright, at least subterranianly pleased that she’d made a connection with a man without thinking of it in terms of a marketplace exchange. Barriath was the first man she’d taken for pleasure, without hope of profit or fear of loss.
Someday, she might even take a lover out of actual love. Stranger things had happened. In the grate, the ashes settled, glowing gold and red. She placed another log in among the coals and watched as it smoked and burst into flame.
Barriath’s breath changed as he rose up from the depths of sleep, growing shallow and soft. He moved, his skin hushing across the cloth. She turned to watch him, and she enjoyed the sight. His slow smile graced her.
“What are you thinking, m’lady?” he asked.
About every man I’ve bedded that wasn’t you seemed the wrong thing. She turned to the fire, the tongues of flame blackening the wood. “I’m wondering how you un-sow a field,” she said.
Barriath shifted again, rose to sitting. The wind rattled the shutters, and he pulled a blanket across his shoulders. “I’m not a man of great fortune. But if… if there were to be a child, know that I would—”
Cithrin laughed without considering whether her laughter might be cruel. “No, not that field. Though thank you for the reassurance. No, I was thinking of the world. And the priests. Everything they’ve done with Antea has spread them across the kingdoms and cities like wheat in springtime. And if we don’t gather them all up…”
“Well, you could take out the scarecrows.”
“That was what I reached for. What I did. Sent out letters and bounties. Turned everyone I could reach into crows and sparrows in hopes they’d eat the seeds, but it turns out people aren’t birds after all. Too many of them are going to look at the power the spiders have and see an opportunity for themselves. And we can’t afford to let events teach them they’re wrong. I want some way to call all the seeds back into the sowing sack, but I haven’t got one.”
“No one’s going to try taking control of the priests,” Barriath said. “It’d be like putting a harness on a wildfire.”
“I know. You know. But when a king sees power, that’s all he sees. And there’s nothing a king wants more than power.”
Something shifted at the back of her mind. Something attached to the words. There’s nothing a king wants more than power. She went still, waiting for it like a cat on a riverbank watching for fish. It was there. It was there, just under the surface.
Barriath spoke. “I can’t believe that—”
She lifted her hand. What had she just been thinking? Something about sex? No. Wait, yes. She’d been thinking of Geder. She put the two thoughts side by side like entries in a ledger. There’s nothing a king wants more than power. Geder Palliako, hiding in the dust and dark with Prince Aster. Playing games, telling stories, making ill-considered and tentative love while the boy prince slept. Geder Palliako, the Lord Regent of Antea. Chosen of the goddess, who brought the priests from nowhere. The spiders’ great leader and tool. If anyone alive still held power or influence over the priests, it was him.
But he was not a king. He would never be a king…
“He won’t hurt Aster.”
“What?” Barriath said.
She wasn’t ready to say it, but if she didn’t he’d just keep talking, so she tried. “Geder. He won’t take power from Aster. He won’t… kill him and claim the Severed Throne for himself. Even though he could.”
“I don’t know that’s true.”
“You don’t need to. I know it. That’s enough. There are things Geder wants more than power.”
“Are there?”
Jorey says I should be honest and gentle, and I want to be. Cithrin, I love you. I love you more than anyone I’ve ever known. That’s what the letter said. He’d been telling her. All along he’d been telling her and she’d been so busy showing how unembarrassed and mature she was, how their physical liaison didn’t define her, that she hadn’t seen it until now.
“Love,” Cithrin said. “He craves love.”
“He can have it at the end of a sword,” Ba
rriath said, hotly. Shut up, Cithrin thought. You’re so much better when you’re not interrupting me.
Aloud, though: “You knew him from court. From before he was Lord Regent. Your brother served with him at Vanai. There must be people Geder loves?”
“You mean besides you?” Barriath said, laughter in his voice.
He reached out and touched her arm. He was a strong man. A Firstblood, with years of hard labor on the sea to thicken his shoulders and roughen his hands. He could have lifted her and tossed her out the window without opening the shutters first. She didn’t know what he saw in her face, but whatever it was, he flinched back.
“Tell me who Geder Palliako loves,” she said.
“I don’t know,” Barriath said, his voice diminished. “His only near family is a father.”
“And how can I take control of him?”
Entr’acte: Porte Oliva
Vicarian Kalliam, priest of the goddess, sat on the seawall and looked out to the south. The winter sea below him was a deceptive blue that promised the warmth of midsummer. Kurrik sat at his side, legs folded under him, and looked out over the water as well. The paper cone of sugared almonds, they passed between them. At their backs, the salt quarter of Porte Oliva bustled and chattered to itself. A grey cat with notched ears slunk along the wall, caught sight of them, and dashed away. Vicarian watched it vanish among the shadows.
“It is beautiful, this sea,” Kurrik said. His almost-but-not-quite-Kesheti accent clipped the words in strange places, like a familiar animal butchered into unfamiliar cuts. Vicarian understood the sense of them always, but found something new there as well.
“It’s a gentler sea here than in the north,” he said. “Clearer water too. If you go south from here along the coast of Lyoneia, there are islands in water so clear you can see down to the seabed. The Drowned call them Dead Islands. Nothing lives in the water there but seaweed. Not even oysters and clams.”