There was, after all, gossip enough to go around. Geder Palliako, it seemed, had all but retired from courtly life. He’d gone off on some little campaign to Asterilhold at the beginning of the winter. Another apostate, another splinter cult, another small slaughter of the sort the spiders engendered. Some ascribed his withdrawal after returning from it to the rise of the Timzinae in Elassae. Others to the slaughter of the hostage children. The general wisdom was that he was in council with Basrahip, planning the brilliant endgame for the nations-wide war he’d begun.
Clara left not quite as early as form permitted, but nearly so. The other women of the court—and with as many armies as still were in the field, it was a court overwhelmingly of women—would spread word of her arrival and outlandish appearance before morning, she was sure. Well, it was awkward, but it would give her a new opportunity to find which members of the court were her allies now. And she was mother of the brilliant Lord Marshal who’d swooped in from the west to parry Elassae’s blow. That was some protection. At worst, she expected to be called eccentric. If Jorey hadn’t enjoyed his current grace, the word would have been cracked. A bit of drama, a few uncomfortable probings by women of equal dignity, a few people laughing down their sleeves at her. A minor scandal at worst. A small loss, and easily born.
She was mistaken.
Hornet, the actor friend of Cithrin bel Sarcour and Master Kit, arrived in the morning dressed as a courier. She met him in the withdrawing room that overlooked the garden. Sabiha was resting in the shade, nursing her daughter, while Lady Skestinin chided the gardeners. Vincen stood discreet guard in the hall to keep them from being overheard. Hornet stood at attention, playing his role to the hilt. He seemed to be enjoying himself in it.
“Cithrin bel Sarcour is in Camnipol?” Clara said. “With Lehrer Palliako?
“Yes, Lady Kalliam.”
“Has she lost her mind?”
“No, m’lady. I’ve traveled with her a fair bit, and she’s always like this,” Hornet said. “Yardem Hane’s come as well, though he rode off south to fetch Master Kit and the captain when he heard you’d made it close.”
Clara sat on the divan, waiting for panic or outrage to overwhelm her, but they didn’t. She felt the same anxiety and bright, breathless excitement that she remembered from when she was a child steeling herself to jump into a cousin’s swimming hole from too great a height. “Has she a plan, then?”
“Yes, ma’am, and she was hoping for your help. It’s a little gathering of friends and family that needs arranging. Only it’s going to decide the fate of the world, so we’d like to get it right.”
Marcus
Karol Dannien’s army was on the road, stretched out north to south, braced for their attack. Marcus made something like fifty sword-and-bows protecting the supply wagons. Jorey sounded the approach, and their little force moved forward, approaching the vastly larger enemy’s vulnerable flank.
“Watch for it,” Marcus said under his breath. “Careful. Don’t over-commit.”
But the young Kalliam had been through the exercise enough now. The ripple in the Timzinae ranks as the order went out, the soldiers shifting to the counterattack. Jorey lifted his hand, and Marcus and the others slowed, inching toward a battle they couldn’t win.
The reinforcements from the north had been telling. Old men, sickly boys. Half a dozen women with shoulders as broad as a man’s and expressions that dared you to question their presence. These were the defenders Camnipol had to offer. The story of the vast dark empire with unstoppable armies defeating city after city, sweeping across the world like a dark tide, had been a sheet over a more prosaic story: an inexperienced war leader had overreached and left himself as vulnerable as a naked man in a dogfight. If the armies of Elassae reached Camnipol, Marcus didn’t give the city good chances. The best scenario was a sack as vicious as any he’d ever seen. The worst was Antea’s capital set on fire as an example to the next petty tyrant who thought to invade Timzinae cities.
Except that wasn’t the worst case. The worst case was more like this, all the time, forever.
The Timzinae counterattack came. The column parted, and riders poured out, streaming toward Jorey’s force. The boy barely had to sound the retreat that they’d all known was coming. Marcus and the Anteans spun their horses and rode away, loosing arrows back over their horses’ rumps as they fled. The Timzinae followed them almost half a mile this time before turning back to their own column, careful not to be drawn so far out that they left a vulnerable flank.
Jorey and his force regrouped. It would take the Timzinae something like an hour to put themselves in order and be ready for the march north. So in something just more than half that, another group of riders would appear on the top of another hillside, renew their threat on the supply wagons, and they’d do the same dance again, over and over and over until one side or the other went so mad with impatience that it made a mistake—waited too long to retreat or pursued too far and exposed a weakness. If it was Dannien’s mistake, Jorey would pick off a few supply wagons. If it was Jorey’s, Dannien would slaughter as many of the Antean men as he could and leave fewer to slow his progress toward the butchery to come.
The previous day the army hadn’t made it farther than a mile and a half from breaking camp in the morning to building its cookfires at night. That had been a very good day for Jorey. The chances were thin that they’d manage to slow the army that badly for long.
“We can’t win,” Jorey said.
Marcus swung down from the saddle and gave the poor, exhausted nag he’d been burdening a cup of water. “We’re not trying to.”
“I don’t know if I can stand this.” He almost made it a joke.
“Well, I think of it this way. Every hour they spend moving their defenses around or chasing us through the grass or playing stare-down on us is one more that the people north of here get to watch their kids grow older. Every day is another morning they have the privilege of waking up next to their husbands and wives. Feeding their dogs. Living in the houses they were born in. The ones their parents died in. Because when Dannien’s men get to them, all that ends.”
“But there’s no victory for us. There’s no ending to it. It just goes on.”
“There will be an end,” Marcus said. “Chances are it won’t be one we like, but this doesn’t last forever.”
Jorey let that sink in. When he looked out toward the horizon, it was like he was seeing all the way back to Kiaria, Suddapal, Inentai. All the way back to the beginning of the war, whenever that had been. “This is what we did to them, isn’t it?”
“And what you’ll do to them again, if you get the upper hand,” Marcus said.
“Never again. Not if I can help it.”
“No? Well, good luck with that, but we’ll have to visit the question when we’re not down a well and drowning. Everyone loves peace when they’re losing the battle.”
Canl Daskellin’s scout arrived an hour later, just as Jorey was preparing to lead his men back out to harass the Timzinae column again. The scout didn’t come alone. Marcus would have recognized the Tralgu riding high in the saddle beside him if there’d been a blanket thrown over him. He spat, turned his mount out of the formation, and trotted over.
“Captain,” Yardem said when they drew alongside.
“Can’t help noticing you’re here, Yardem.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This isn’t Carse.”
“Isn’t.”
“I left you in Carse with Cithrin.”
“Did.”
“This won’t make me happy, will it?”
“No, sir.”
“All right. Report?”
“Magistra’s put together a scheme against the priests. She’s in Camnipol, and she needs Master Kit to make her argument.”
“You let her do that?”
“Stopping her wouldn’t have worked,” Yardem said. “And the situation’s desperate.”
Marcus twisted to look over his shoulder.
Cithrin was in Camnipol working another of her mad plots. Of course she was. And when the city fell, she’d be in it. “How is it we’ve managed to be on both losing sides of this war?”
“It’s a talent, sir.”
“You might as well take Kit. Karol Dannien knows the trick of him, and Kit’s all but confessed to the men that it’s all hairwash anyway.”
“Be good if you came as well, sir.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Marcus said. “The Kalliam boy’s good enough, but he’s still green as grass. I’ll hold these bastards off as long as I can, but when it fails, get Cithrin away safe. If she’ll let you.”
Yardem flicked his ear, the rings jingling. “If you say so, sir.”
“It’s how it has to be,” Marcus said.
The poisoned sword across his back felt heavier. Or as heavy as always, only he was more aware of it. The sun slanted down from the afternoon sky, baking his skin and narrowing his eyes. The world all around him had a sense of being only half-real that came from having been too long on campaign. Depending on how he counted it, it was either since the march from Birancour or the caravan contract out of Vanai. Or since Merian and Alys died. It was hard to say when exactly one fight stopped and the next one began. That wasn’t just him, either. It stretched from the nursery to the history books.
“Should I ask who she’s trying to convince that they’re better off standing against the Lord Regent?” Marcus asked. “Or will it only make me anxious?”
“She’s approaching the Lord Regent.”
A hot breeze snaked off the wastes, carrying a breath of dust and salt. Far above, a hawk circled, hardly more than a dot against the pale-blue sky.
“Geder Palliako?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She’s talking Geder Palliako into fighting on our side? Against the priests?”
Yardem didn’t answer.
Marcus cleared his throat. “All right,” he said. “You get Kit, then. I’ll need a minute to tell Kalliam he’s on his own.”
The promontory on the south of Camnipol made it seem like the bones of the earth itself had lifted up the city wall. The land sloping out to the east and west almost glowed with springtime green, and an orchard they passed at sunset caught the orange light on millions of pale petals—the promise of a good harvest in autumn if the people tending them still lived. If the orchard hadn’t burned. Oxen worked the fields, digging furrows in rich valleys. They passed a slave master driving a line of Timzinae men linked neck to neck to neck with a dull iron chain. The slaver was Firstblood with a wide, friendly smile, bright, shallow eyes, and red cheeks. He looked confused when Yardem drew his blade and held the man down as Marcus and Kit undid the chain. Likely, they’d all run off to Dannien and join the march, so Marcus made certain they all remembered the names of the men who’d freed them. At least he could give Dannien a moment’s confusion.
Apart from that distraction, they rode hard enough that there wasn’t much opportunity to talk during the day, and at the simple camp they put up at night, Marcus fell into a torpid sleep, like a man recovering from a fever or else still in its grip. He slept to the sound of Kit and Yardem talking at their little fire about love and war and the spiritual consequences of violence, so probably it was better. Kit’s worn, gaunt look softened a little on the journey. The role of army priest hadn’t suited him anyway. Hearing his genuine laugh again was like seeing a friend who had been traveling a long time and only just returned.
They reached the base of the promontory in the late afternoon of the second day’s travel and began moving up the weird, looping path of dragon’s jade as it made its way up the cliff face. If there was any hope of keeping Camnipol whole, it was likely this. A company of slingers and archers could hold the dragon’s road and force Dannien’s army to go around to the east or west and find some other path up. Camnipol might be taken, but not from the south.
The southern gate was preparing to close when they reached it, but Kit talked their way through. Likely his appearance was enough. As they passed through the slit of a gate and along the passage through the stone, Marcus had the sense that the guards shied away from the priest.
The twilit streets of Camnipol bustled with men and women of half a dozen races hurrying home before the final darkness of night. Yardem took the lead, moving through the alleys and squares with an air of passive boredom that Marcus recognized as deceptive. He matched it, and Kit—better practiced than either of them—practically blended into the stonework. At every corner, Marcus was ready to see the robes of the priesthood waiting for them. For him to come this far and die in a street brawl would be just the sort of humor the world seemed to enjoy.
The compound they reached was small. A grey stone wall surrounded it. A lantern hung from a black iron sconce by the gate. Yardem paused there.
“Should I know where this is?” Marcus asked.
Yardem pounded on the gate, three times, then two, then two again. “No, sir. It’s the compound of the Baron of Ebbingbaugh.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Geder’s estate,” Yardem said as the gate opened. “Took it from a man named Feldin Maas back before he was Lord Regent. Supposed to retire here when the prince takes the throne. Meantime he lets his father use it.”
An ancient-looking Jasuru woman ushered them in with an air of anxious confusion that suggested she hadn’t welcomed guests to the house often enough to be quite sure how it was done. The gardens were large, but from what Marcus could make out in the dying light, poorly tended. A small paved area flickered with light, and night air carried the scent of flowers and the sound of voices. Marcus recognized them.
Cary caught sight of them first, and she walked from the light into the shadows, falling into Kit’s arms as he fell into hers. Then Mikel, then Hornet and Sandr and Charlit Soon, and Lak, still uncertain of his place in the company. They stood together, heads pressed to each other’s shoulders, their eyes wet with tears, and Kit in the center, beatific joy on his face. Marcus had seen it before. After so many partings and reunions, some part of him expected it to become rote or common or insincere, but it never was.
However often they came together, the troupe always felt it deeply. Even when the players themselves had changed. It was, Marcus thought, part of walking a stage and calling forth the emotions of the crowd. To do what they did, they had to feel deeply and authentically and without reserve, just the way that doing what he did—overseeing the death of men both under his command and on the enemy line—meant falling back into step with Yardem despite months or years apart as if they’d only walked into adjacent rooms for a moment.
A thick-bodied man with white hair and a smile that looked as if it didn’t get used much came out of the house and spread his hands to them.
“Welcome to my son’s house. Come in, please. Come in. I broke out the good wine. It’s a celebration,” the older man said, but his voice had the high drone of anxiety and fear beneath it.
Marcus followed him down a hall to a well-lit drawing room with panels of thin mesh fit into frames instead of one wall. It let the breeze through, but discouraged the insects. And there, sitting side by side on a silk divan, were Clara Kalliam and Cithrin bel Sarcour. Cithrin’s smile was part rueful and part defiant. She rose to her feet and walked to him.
A traitor lump knotted Marcus’s throat. Something that felt like sorrow and pride and fear.
“Magistra,” he said.
“Captain Wester,” she said fondly, but casually. As if they had only walked for a moment into adjacent rooms. Yardem coughed once, in a way that meant I see it too. Cithrin wasn’t his daughter. Had never been his daughter. And still, a hell of a woman they’d raised, he and Yardem and the players. A long way she’d come. “I assume you’d like a private word?”
“Several,” he said.
She turned and nodded to Clara, who returned the gesture. Cithrin led the way into the garden. Nightfall had called up a fountain of moon lilies. Th
e gentle scent soothed like the murmur of a river. Moonlight refashioned the leaves in silver and black. Cithrin sat on a low stone bench, and glowed in the moonlight herself. He lowered himself beside her, fighting the urge to take her hand. For a moment, he envied Kit.
“Didn’t expect to find you here,” Marcus said. “Last I’d heard you were safe in Carse.”
Cithrin chuckled. “Last you heard I was in Carse, anyway. There’s no place safe. Not now.”
“Got Barriath Kalliam to carry you here?”
“He’s back north with the ship now, in case we need a way out. I think he may have soured on my company.”
“Yardem told me some hairwash about you confronting Geder Palliako and… I don’t know. Turning him sane and good with the power of your kiss? What is the plan here? Because all I can see looks like a particularly gaudy kind of mad.”
“Don’t raise your voice,” Cithrin said.
“Apologies. I’m bone-tired and scared as hell. Every hour you spend in this place puts you and all those back there at risk.”
“I agree we should move quickly,” she said. “But this is our best hope.”
“Then our best hope is shit,” he said. “Listen to me, Cithrin. You cannot change Geder Palliako.”
She turned sharply. “I don’t want to. I need Geder, and more than that I need Geder to be Geder.”