“Cut the cords, boys!” Nicillian shouted. “They’re coming up.”
Duris’s disbelief overcame his discipline, and he looked over the edge. It was true. Down below, a Jasuru man hauled himself hand over hand up the line. You cannot win. All who defy the goddess are already doomed. Your only hope is surrender. Duris drew his sword and started hacking at the line as another stone flew overhead, another line wrapped itself over the wall. It wasn’t rope, but a braid of leather and wire that defied the blade. It wasn’t magic, though. Before the Jasuru made the wall’s top, they severed the cord. Only by then, there were two more cords drawing black lines across their segment.
Duris hacked as if his life depended on it. For the first time, real fear quickened his blood. The voices of the priests and the calling of his fellow soldiers were the only sounds. No enemy drums or trumpets sounded. When they cut through a cord, there was a scream or a shout or else silence. The stillness of it left him unnerved.
The speaking horn from the next segment over fell silent. When Duris looked over, a Timzinae man stood over the fallen priest, an axe in his black-chitined hand. Duris didn’t think, only ran. The barrier between segments was tall, but not so great he couldn’t clamber up the sun-hot iron and fall on the other side. The segment was overrun; Borjan soldiers were everywhere. Duris barreled into them. Those who stood with the goddess could never lose.
He swung his sword down, using the blade’s weight, and only hitting with the farthest tip, the way Old Matrin had taught him to use the big butcher’s knife. The Timzinae man’s back opened from shoulder to waist, and he fell screaming to the ground. Duris kicked him away, and stood straddling the fallen, bloody form of the spider priest, his sword at the ready. Something tickled his leg, then something else. Before he could look down to see what was happening or jump back, a Tralgu man stepped forward, a mace in his fist. He batted Duris’s sword out of his hand with an air of near boredom, shifted to follow and redirect the momentum of the swing, bringing it up and over and down.
The blow didn’t hurt, but it made a deep, solid sound, like stones being dropped onto dry ground. Everything grew quiet and distant and the world tilted oddly. The dead priest stood, or no. No, Duris fell at his side, but he had the clear sense that he was standing. Something danced across his hands, and then more. Spiders. Hundreds of them.
The Tralgu who’d hit him had stepped back now. He was waving a yellow banner over his head, and his teeth were bared in disgust. And fear. Duris tried to stand, but the pain finally found him. The wall tumbled in empty space, though his eyes told him nothing was moving. He rose to his knees. Something sharp happened in his ear, like a sting. Spiders swarmed his eyes, scratching at the lids like a dog trying to dig out a rabbit hole.
I can’t die, he thought. The goddess can’t be beaten. Nus won’t fall.
Two Timzinae men appeared carrying wooden buckets, and another came behind with a burning torch. Another signal, he thought, but of what he couldn’t guess.
“You bastards won’t stop me,” he shouted, or tried to. The words came out poorly. He tried to say I am dedicated to the goddess and the Severed Throne, but what he heard himself say was, “No one else knows those cuts!”
The liquid that splashed out from the barrels was thick and greasy and smelled weird and familiar. It was something he knew, though his mind was so addled he didn’t place it. Was it piss? Or butter? He spat out a mouthful of it, and a lump of oily spider came with it. His hand found the grip of his sword.
Lamp oil. They’d drenched him in lamp oil.
“No,” he shouted as the third Timzinae came closer with his torch in hand. “No, please wait!”
The torch flew toward him in a long, lazy arc, trailing smoke behind it.
Clara
War was made from individual lives, but that didn’t make it special. Any number of endeavors were just the same. The loaves of day-old bread she’d handed out at the Prisoner’s Span had been as much the product of disparate lives as any battle. The boy who gathered the eggs might have done so while in despair of ever winning his father’s love. Or in silent contemplation of the murder of his rivals. Or still flush from the revelation of a great secret. Or bored beyond measure by another day’s empty work with only chickens for companionship. And so for the farmer who’d brought in the wheat and separated the chaff. A carter had brought grain to the mill and taken flour from it, and done it as part of a full span of years punctuated by its own tragedies and moments of exultation. In Camnipol, a baker had worked the common magic of yeast and heat and time, transforming what individually would have been inedible into a moment of warmth and beauty that passed unappreciated, cooled, faded, staled. And then a noblewoman still deep in her grief had taken it, used the little bun as a way to create some connection with the lower classes of the city with whom she imagined she had nothing in common. And from her to a thief or robber or thug hanging in a cage over the gaping fall of the Division, who had had a childhood and a mother and friends and a moment of defiance before the magistrate or one of fear and sorrow. All that was in a bit of bread, and a city was immeasurably more.
Whenever Dawson had spoken of the nobility of war, or the honor and glory of the battlefield—or even, on rare occasions, obliquely of the atrocities it carried in its saddlebags—he had given the project a life of its own. A name, like a god’s name or a city’s. War became a person of a sort, and because it was a person, it became worthy of a kind of politeness. One didn’t speak ill of one’s family or one’s friends, however rude they might be. Even sowing derision toward one’s enemies was a process rich with rules and obstacles of form. As she became more familiar with the process of battle herself, Clara became less and less respectful of it.
Every soldier in an army had a life that had brought them there, that had tested them and remade them and put them through times of glory and of despair. And if they’d remained farmers and blacksmiths and huntsmen and bakers, then they would have done there as well. More would have died of illness and accident, and fewer on a stranger’s blade.
No, Clara had looked war in its face now, and she found herself unimpressed.
For the better part of a week, they skirted the edge of the Dry Wastes. She woke in the mornings to the stink of salt and rode through the day, Vincen at her side, as they ghosted along the road. Twice, Jorey’s scouts had sighted the scouts of the enemy. Both times, Jorey had drawn the enemy on as far as he could manage, charged to drive them back, and retreated again to lead them on. The other groups, she presumed, as did Jorey, were doing the same. Forcing the Timzinae to move slowly, to take few chances, to waste time and fodder in making moves and countermoves that by Antea’s aim came to nothing.
And now and then, people died for it. Some on Jorey’s side, some on Dannien’s. None for any reason Clara could respect. They played for time and waited for something unexpected to happen, unsure whether it would.
When it did, it came from the north and it wore Canl Daskellin’s face.
“Lady Kalliam,” the Baron of Watermarch said. “I… I didn’t expect to see you here.”
The meeting was a small one: Clara and Jorey and Canl. They’d long since given up both the convenience and burden of the Lord Marshal’s tent. The leather sides and metal frames lay in a gully somewhere to the south where they could rot and corrode in peace. Instead of sitting on the field stools behind the little writing table, they stood on a barren hilltop with their men standing at a little distance to give an approximation of privacy. To her right, the land sloped down to the east, growing slowly greener. To the left, yellow dirt and sand. Finding Daskellin here, on the border between springtime and the wastes, was the sort of thing that would have seemed a portent if she’d been dreaming. Awake, it was only what it was.
“Nor I you,” she said. “How is your family?”
“Quite well, m’lady,” he said, taking refuge in the forms and customs of etiquette. Clara smiled, not entirely kindly. Faced with a woman standing with
one foot in absurdity and the other in scandal, small talk was indeed a blessing from the good angels. “Yours?”
“They’re well,” she said, gesturing at the sere landscape, “given this present unpleasantness.”
“Yes,” Daskellin said, and then again more soberly. “Yes.”
“How many men do you have?” Jorey asked.
“Four hundred,” Daskellin replied. “Though none of them are the first cut. You?”
“Less than that, but I’m only one of seven. If your men are rested, armed, and well supplied, I think we can put them to good use.”
“I’m only pleased to find I’m not holding the road alone,” Daskellin said. “Last I’d heard you were still in Birancour. How did you come so quickly?”
“We weren’t quick. We started weeks ago,” Jorey said, “and came through the pass at Bellin before the thaw.”
Surprise and then respect flickered in Daskellin’s eyes. This, Clara thought, is how reputations are made. When they returned to Camnipol, the tale would be of the prescience and daring that had brought the Lord Marshal to the defense of the empire at the moment he was most needed. Assuming, of course, that they made it back at all and not in the chains of avenging Elassae.
“Good that you’re here,” Daskellin said.
“How is the situation at court?” Jorey asked.
Daskellin opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. Even here, far south of the Kingspire, he would not speak the truth aloud. Clara understood. Fear was a habit, and Geder’s fondness for pulling even the highest of nobles into his private court to be questioned by the priesthood had trained them all like dogs. Daskellin knew when not to bark, and that was ever. Not even now. His silence was enough to give an answer. Jorey understood as well.
Clara felt as if she were waking from a dream when she hadn’t known she was asleep. The court and Camnipol and her granddaughter were all quite near now. She’d left as a spy and returned as… as whatever it was she’d become. It felt like the end of something, though she wasn’t certain she could put a name to it.
“Good that you’re here, then,” Jorey said. “I have maps made of what we know about the enemy position and what we guess. Let me show you.”
“You’ll excuse me,” Clara said. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Canl. It’s been far too long.”
“Hopefully we can meet again soon in better accommodations,” he said. There was a melancholy in his voice that meant he did not expect that day to come.
“Hopefully,” she echoed, and turned away.
There had been a time not so long ago when the walk back over the rough, trackless ground to the tents would have seemed a long one. It was, after all, farther than the garden. At home, dignity alone would have meant calling for one of Lady Daskellin’s carriages. Now, it was nothing to her beyond a bit of an ache in her left hip, and that more the joint than the muscle.
Vincen sat at his tent with Captain Wester and the priest beside him. Kit and Vincen both rose when she approached. Marcus only nodded to her, as he would, she thought, to anyone, regardless of their station.
“What news, then?” Wester asked.
“Reinforcements have arrived. They’re building with straw in a windstorm, but they’re here.”
“Something’s better than nothing,” Wester said.
“I suppose it is,” Clara said, then turned to Vincen. “I believe it is time to gather our things.”
“Are you going somewhere, lady?” the priest asked. She knew that he was an ally, and that he had never done anything to undermine her efforts or Cithrin bel Sarcour’s. Still, the similarity of his face and skin and hair to those of the others who haunted Camnipol made it hard for her to keep from pulling away from him.
“Yes,” she said. “Back to court. I followed the army in hopes of bringing it to Antea’s true defense, and I’ve done it. There is no more I need do here.”
“And there is in Camnipol?” Marcus asked.
“One may at least wait for catastrophe on more comfortable beds,” she said smartly.
The captain laughed. “That may be the wisest thing I’ve heard said all week.”
“I find I shall miss your company, Lady Kalliam,” Master Kit said. “But I also hope we are not driven to meet again too terribly soon. When we come again to Camnipol, I pray that it is in peacetime.”
“That would be lovely, wouldn’t it?” Clara said, surprised to find a sudden grief rising in her. It seemed her hopes were as low as Daskellin’s. And like him, she would not say it.
One of the unexpected lessons she’d learned on the road concerned the speed of small groups and the slowness of great ones. The army of Elassae, even un-harassed, would have taken weeks to reach Camnipol. For her and Vincen on fast horses, the journey took four days. She arrived at Lord Skestinin’s manor having sent a runner ahead to give Lady Skestinin and Sabiha time to put anything in order that needed to be put. There might by an enemy army at her back, but that didn’t make an avoidable rudeness polite. When she arrived, the servants fought not to look shocked and Lady Skestinin’s usual reserve seemed deeper than Clara had become accustomed to. It wasn’t until she reached her rooms and for the first time since leaving Carse encountered a mirror that she understood.
“Vincen, I’ve gone brown as an egg.”
“You’ve been walking from dawn to dark for weeks, m’lady. Months.”
Clara sat at her private table and flapped her hands at the powders and kohl. “Everything I have is the wrong color. If I use any of this, I’ll look like someone dipped a cake in sugar! It all has to be replaced. You’ll have to find Sanna Daskellin or Kieran Shoat and ask what they have that I can borrow until—” She put her hand to her mouth, a sudden horror passing through her. “My dresses.”
“Your dresses?”
She rose from the table, marching to the dressing room. A simply cut yellow silk gown with pearl beads and complexly embroidered sleeves came first to hand. She stripped off her traveling cloak and leggings, at first by herself and then—distractingly—with Vincen’s wide hands to help her. For a moment, she considered dropping the yellow gown as well, but anxiety won out. She pulled the silk over her head and twisted. The cloth swirled around her. She didn’t sit down so much as fold.
“Clara?”
“They don’t fit,” she said. “None of them will fit. They’ll all have to be taken in. I have literally nothing I can wear to court. Nothing. Stop that, it isn’t funny.” She put a hand to her head. “The sun’s bleached my hair, hasn’t it?”
“Well, it’s a bit travel-worn at the moment,” Vincen said. “We can wash it, and then we’ll know better, but likely so.”
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and slapped the floor. She felt tears of frustration and embarrassment stinging her eyes.
“Fuck,” she said.
Vincen slid down to sit, his back against the wall. His eyes were alight. “You are the most amazing creature in the world.”
“I know I’m being silly, but knowing doesn’t help.”
“That’s what makes you amazing,” Vincen said. His voice was warm and soft, and there was laughter in it, but not at her. She balled the silk in her fists and tugged at it. And then she laughed too.
“This is trivial, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “How you look to them is important… and not even that. You could come before the court dressed as a swordsman or a beggar and not be ill at ease if you’d chosen it. It’s not being able to control what they see of you that leaves you feeling at sea. I understand it. I do.”
She felt her own smile growing to match his. “Then why are you laughing?”
“Because you will be more beautiful now than any of them, and more so by standing out proud. I’ll go fetch you new powders, and Sabiha will have gowns from before she had the baby that we can use until the tailors come.”
“I can’t wear those,” Clara said. “They’re cut for a girl half my age.”
 
; “Then you can go naked and be even prettier,” Vincen said.
“Oh,” Clara said. “Now you’re only trying to distract me.”
“I am alone with you for the first time since we left Porte Oliva,” Vincen said. “I’m surprised I can still use words.”
She shifted, pulling her legs out straight before her, sitting across from him like they were two children exhausted from too much play. Vincen’s skin was sun-darkened as well, his hair longer than he usually wore it and shaggy and light. With all the time they had traveled in company, it had become easy to gloss over him. To think Yes, Vincen is here and take comfort in his presence and move on. She had managed somehow to forget that he was beautiful. And if he was, then perhaps she might be as well, in her own way. She reached out, touching the sole of his left foot with the toes of her own.
For a long moment, she didn’t speak. And then she did. “I love you, Vincen. You make everything in this mutilated world a bit better.”
“Only when I’m with you,” he said. “When you’re gone, I sulk.”
“Come over here,” she said, and he did.
Later, she sent a Dartinae girl out to the perfumers for new powders and appealed to Sabiha for aid with gowns. Between the constraints of color and size, the options were few. Clara chose a pale-green ensemble with a fairly conservative cut, though it was more daring than she would have affected on her own. When the time came to go out for the evening and make her return to court known, Vincen was among the guards and footmen, standing a little apart. His hair was combed and freshly trimmed. His borrowed uniform had bright glass buttons down the sides for decoration. She didn’t stare, but she appreciated. When he saw that he’d caught her attention, he made the faintest bow and a smirk that matched it. The boy was taking entirely too much joy in teasing her. Someone would notice. She couldn’t find it in her to chide him.
The affair was only in the middle of the scale of court events. Lady Emming had opened her garden, which meant that Clara hadn’t needed a specific invitation. There was neither music nor a dance, which signaled what sort of guest was expected, and no one was so forward as to barge in where they were unwelcome. In her absence, the style of court had shifted to the positively macabre. Cerrina Mikillien was actually wearing a cloak decorated with rabbit skulls, but she was only the most extreme of a larger trend. Clara in her new-leaf-green gown and glowing skin became a fashion of one and as difficult to overlook as a rose on snow. When asked, Clara admitted she had spent some time in the company of the army. When the questioning grew too specific, she mentioned Dawson and got teary and her interrogators were forced to leave the issue aside.