The city here sloped down to the south. The sea was a greater whiteness behind sun-glowing mist. The sky was pale as opal.
Magistra Isadau appeared at her side, and Cithrin nodded formally. Some swift calculation seemed to pass behind the older woman’s eyes before she returned the gesture.
“You’re looking well this morning, Cithrin.”
“Thank you,” Cithrin said over the chant and the bells.
“I saw that you’d begun your review of the books?”
“I have,” Cithrin said, then looked around her. They were where the private business of the bank would be overheard if spoken of, and yet the magistra’s comment felt like an invitation. Cithrin felt a tightening in her gut, like a rat smelling a dog, but not sure yet which direction held the danger. “I’ll want to look over them more this afternoon.”
“I suspect we can make time for it,” Isadau said. “There are some people I would like you to meet after the ceremony.”
Cithrin smiled carefully.
“Whatever you think wise,” she said, keeping her tone cheerful.
“Ati Isadau!” a voice called from behind them. A younger Timzinae boy—thirteen summers or possibly a bit less—was pushing his way through the crowd toward them. Men and women made way for him with expressions of annoyance. He reached them winded, one black-scaled hand clutched to his side. “Ati Isadau,” he said between gasps. “There’s a courier come. Package for you. From the holding company.”
Isadau’s smile seemed warm enough that she might actually have meant it.
“Thank you, Salan,” she said gravely. “I appreciate your letting me know.”
Salan, Cithrin thought. It took her a moment to recall where she’d heard the name. This was the nephew, son of Isadau’s brother, who’d decided to be infatuated with the exotic girl from Birancour. He looked at Cithrin, then tried to bow and walk forward at the same time. All in all, he managed creditably.
“Yes,” Cithrin said. “Thank you.”
The boy started to say something, lost the thread of it, and nodded in a sharp, curt way that was certainly intended to be manly. He fell in step between Cithrin and Isadau, escorting them to the temple.
“I’m studying to be a soldier,” Salan announced, apropos of nothing.
Yardem, at her other side, coughed once. No one who hadn’t traveled with him for years would have recognized the sound as amusement.
“Really?” Cithrin said.
“Entered gymnasium last year,” Salan said. “It’s a good one. It’s run by an old mercenary captain who fought in half the wars in the Keshet.”
“What’s his name?” Cithrin asked.
“Karol Dannien. Master Karol, we call him.”
Cithrin glanced at Yardem. The Tralgu’s expression was bland and blank, but his ears were tipped forward, listening. Her heart beat a little faster. His reaction to the words meant more to her than the words themselves.
“Really?” she said.
“I’ve been there for six months, and I’m already up to third rank,” Salan said proudly. “At the end of summer, Master Karol is taking the ten best fighters to Kiaria to try out for garrison duty. It won’t be me this year. Next year, probably.”
“Garrison duty would be hard work,” Cithrin said. Salan’s breast seemed to broaden with pride, and his expression took on a seriousness that it would have been unthinkably cruel to laugh at.
“Kiaria’s the old-style word for stronghold,” he said. “No one’s ever fought their way in there. Even during Falin’s occupation, Kiaria didn’t fall. And that lasted thirty years. Only the best fighters are allowed to work the garrison there. That’s what Master Karol said.”
“He would know better than I would,” Cithrin said. “Is the gymnasium close to the compound?”
“No, Master Karol’s down by the piers. He has all sorts of different people come through and help train. A month ago, he had a Haaverkin teach a session. Cep Bailan, his name was, and he taught me the tiger choke. You can knock a man unconscious in three breaths. If you do it right.”
The procession turned the last degree in its arc, and the basilica hove into sight. Granite walls rose to twice the height of even so large a man as Yardem, and then three heights more in dark-stained wood. Wide doors of iron-bound oak were open wide, and the chanters stood beside them making graceful figures in the air with wide-spread palms. Isadau put a hand on Salan’s head, the unconscious gesture of a woman to a child.
“Go find us a bench, won’t you?” she asked, and Salan trotted forward, pleased to have a task. Isadau smiled at Cithrin. “He’s terribly proud.”
“I could tell,” Cithrin said. “It’s not a bad thing, having a trade you care about.”
“I suppose. Still, I’d hoped he’d take to something less likely to have him killed. For a time, I thought he’d follow Jurin and be a farrier, but—”
“All respect, ma’am,” Yardem said. “Farriers die too. I’ve known several men that caught a hoof. And standing garrison at Kiaria, he’s more likely to die of boredom than a blade.”
Magistra Isadau set her gaze forward, watching Salan weaving through the crowd as they passed through the wide doors. She rubbed her fingers together, a dry, soft sound like the pages of a codex slipping against each other.
“I suppose that’s true,” she said. “Still, I could hope for something that reminds me less that he’s growing up.”
The interior of the basilica arched above them, vast as a mountain. The dark wood benches seemed to catch the light of the thousand candles, drink it in, and return it rich and mysteriously altered. The air was thick with the smell of ambergris, roses, and thick tropical mint, the warmth of bodies and candleflame. At the nave, a Timzinae priest stood beneath a massive rosewood dragon. The spread wooden wings dovetailed into the walls themselves, so that the whole basilica seemed to be within their span. The massive head had been fashioned with an expression of that could have been compassion or disdain. Or perhaps Cithrin was only seeing in it what she hoped and feared. Either way, it was nicely done.
They slipped into the outer edge of a bench, Yardem at her side. He handed her back her slippers, and she slid numbed and filthy toes into them, grateful that they could at least begin the journey back toward warmth. His own boots, he laid on the ground. The procession was still making its way in, the murmur of voices still growing within the wide and echoing space. Cithrin put her hand on his.
“Karol Dannien,” she said, not whispering—whispering always sounded like whispering, and so it caught attention—but speaking low. “Did you know him?”
“Did,” Yardem said. “It was years ago, though.”
“Still, he might know. He might have had word of Marcus. Captain Wester, I mean.”
“Might,” Yardem said, but his ears were pressing back against his skull and his forehead was furrowed.
“Will you ask?”
“I could,” Yardem said.
“I’m not angry with him,” she said, maybe too quickly. “He was in his rights to leave. His contract allowed it. It’s just … I wanted to talk with him. Say goodbye.”
Ask him why, she thought, though she would never say it.
Marcus Wester had been the captain of her guard, and before that, the man who’d taken her cause and kept her from being killed. That he’d left while she was gone north to Carse and Camnipol, that he’d stepped away from his work with the bank without so much as letter to explain his choice, shouldn’t have mattered. She didn’t answer to him, and he had kept the word of his agreements. But it irritated. Worse, it hurt.
She had her own work to do, her year’s apprenticeship under Magistra Isadau, and then her return to Porte Oliva and her own branch of the bank and, God help her, Pyk Usterhall. Whatever Marcus was doing, she wouldn’t have been part of it. And still, it would be something to know what had been so much more important than her.
Yardem nodded, and she thought she saw the same distress on his face. He had known Marcus much
longer than she had, worked as his second, and even, she thought, taken some responsibility for seeing the captain through his worst times. She felt a passing guilt at reminding him that he had also been left behind. When Yardem spoke, his voice was low and his words as careful as painting eggshells.
“You know that the captain wouldn’t have left without … reason.”
“Probably,” Cithrin said. “And still, I’d like to know what called him away. Wouldn’t you?”
Yardem flicked an ear, his earrings jingling against each other.
“I’ll speak with Dannien,” he said. “See what I can find.”
Cithrin squeezed his fingers and took back her own hand. At the nave, the priest raised his hands, and the crowd went silent. The bells had stopped and a deep, throbbing gong sounded three times. The priest closed his hands, opening them again with a shout. Gouts of flame rose from his fingertips into the wide air, swirling gold and green. Yardem grunted. Returning Cithrin’s glance, he shrugged.
“Cunning men shouldn’t be priests,” he said so softly that only she could hear. “Too much temptation to show off.”
“Gaudy,” Cithrin agreed, as the priest’s reedy voice began to recite from the holy books. She set her expression into an attentive half-smile and let her mind wander.
The arrival of the courier, she forgot about completely until Magistra Isadau called for her that night.
Magistra Isadau sat with her legs crossed and her feet resting atop her desk. The night breeze left the lantern flickering. Her full attention was on a letter in the company cipher that she held in her left hand, so that for a long moment, she didn’t move or acknowledge Cithrin’s presence. When she did, she nodded toward a low upholstered divan. Cithrin sat. Magistra Isadau tapped the papers against her fingertips. In the dim light, the darkness of her scales left her expression unreadable.
“In Carse,” she said, “Paerin argued that Antea would pose little threat for years at the least. You disagreed.”
“I did,” Cithrin said.
Isadau held out the letter. Cithrin hesitated for a moment, then took it from her. The handwriting was unquestionably Paerin Clark’s, the cipher as familiar to her eye as normal script. The words, however, were in a different voice. We have met, but I cannot think you would remember me. For reasons that will become clear, I prefer not to identify myself to you at this time. She turned the page over, glancing at the script.
“It appears that someone else has reached your same conclusions,” Magistra Isadau said. “A faceless voice from the wilds. It happens more often than you’d imagine, and usually it’s someone half mad and in need of coin. But this time … Komme and Paerin addressed this to me, but they meant it for you.”
Cithrin read the full letter from beginning to end, and she felt some part of herself that she hadn’t known was knotted relax. Her mind became stiller than it had been in weeks, clear and cold. For a time, she was in Camnipol, walking the streets that the letter spoke of as best her memory would allow. Detail grew upon detail: prisons, food supplies, the manufacture of weapons, the rising tide of violence against the poor and the powerless, the resentment of the Timzinae conspiracy in which neither she not the letter’s author had the slightest belief. In the end, she folded the letter and looked into the dancing flame of the lantern. She didn’t see it. She was elsewhere. She was in the darkness and the dust, hiding with Aster and Geder, working puzzles about the ancient dragons and the wars long past. If the Geder Palliako she’d known was taking these steps, what would he mean by them? For a moment, she saw him again as he had been the last time they’d been together: in the street smelling of vomit and another man’s blood, trying awkwardly to invite her to stay for tea.
She shuddered.
“Was there a question Komme wanted to ask me about this?”
“Not specifically. Your impression of the author. Whether your experience matched what he says.”
“It does,” Cithrin said. “As to the writer … The details are all as I’d expect, or near enough. The conclusions seem sound. I’ve only been in Camnipol once, and that was under peculiar circumstances, but this description is more plausible for me than the one Paerin gave.”
“So you would trust the source?”
“Not without knowing who it is, no,” Cithrin said. “But I’d read the next letter carefully and treat it with respect. And I’d prepare for another Antean war, though I couldn’t say against whom.”
“Sarakal,” Isadau said, rising from her chair. “The report came in from friends of Komme in Asinport that Lord Skestinin’s fleet had sailed east and south. Komme expects Antea will march early in the spring if they haven’t already.”
Cithrin felt a deep dread welling up in her breast, but she only nodded.
“What is the bank’s position?”
Isadau nodded, her chitinous lips pressing together.
“We’ve taken contracts on supplies. Food, of course. And we bought out any insurance contracts for caravans heading north and invested in three roundships that will be ready to offer an alternate route.”
“And the local coin and spice? Will we be moving it?”
Isadau shook her head.
“Antea can’t win against Sarakal,” she said. “The traditional families pester each other and play out their vicious little intrigues, but nothing unites them like a common enemy. At the height of its power, the Antean Empire found it easier to respect the border than challenge it, and whether the new Lord Regent recognizes it or not, Antea is weakened. There may well be a long and bloody fight. The borders may shift. It’s unlikely that Nus will change hands, though I suppose it’s possible. There will doubtless be starvation and blood on both sides, but Sarakal won’t fall.”
“You don’t think he’ll come here, then?”
“Even the great rulers are constrained by the world,” Isadau said. “The empire’s ambitions may be vast and ill-considered, but there are still only so many men, so many horses, so many siege engines, and there’s a great deal of territory in Sarakal that will resist being passed through. If the armies of Antea come to Suddapal, it will be because the nature of the world has changed in a way that hasn’t happened since the dragons fell. So no, they won’t come here. Not in my lifetime, and not in yours.”
Clara
The end of the winter’s hunt had always been a difficult and pleasant time. The long, dark weeks drew near their end, and Dawson returned from whatever corner of the empire his friend and king had taken him. He would come back to the holdfast at Osterling Fells exhausted and moody and spend the better part of a week complaining that the journey back to Camnipol for the opening of the season was coming too soon, that there was too much work to be done on his lands. The progress of every improvement and renovation would be weighed and found wanting, the questions of justice that had waited for his word would be answered and justice meted out, and slowly, his shoulders would relax, his smile become easier. He claimed it was the comfort of being at home and with her, but it was also anticipation. She remembered lying in bed with him, their bodies pleasantly spent, and listening to the gossip from the hunt and the dripping of melting ice. Her husband was a prickly man, loyal as a dog and proud as a cat, and he found the guiding star of his life in preserving the world against change. The fears that haunted his worst nights had always been that his children might inherit a kingdom debased from the one he had been given and that his wife might be discontent. When the time came to leave the Fells for their compound in the city, he was champing at the bit to resume the battles and intrigues of court. It was the work he’d been born to.
And so every spring, Dawson would go through the holdings one last time, giving orders and coin, instructions to his vassals that would take them through another summer and guide the lands that he protected safely to autumn. Every spring, husband and wife would travel the dragon’s road back to Camnipol, the rhythm of the team’s hoofs creating martial music as the couple leaned against one another in the well-cushioned
carriage. Every spring, she would take charge of the house and see it washed and cleaned and cared for while he snuck out, sheepish and delighted as a boy, to the Fraternity of the Great Bear to drink and smoke and debate with his friends and his enemies.
Every spring until this one.
Clara had seen the first arrivals. The grand carriages of Lord Flor clattering along the black cobbles inside the southern gate, ribbons trailing from it and a crier on horseback clearing its path. Lady Flor, who had more than once sat in Clara’s withdrawing room and shared the intimate details of her husband’s infidelities, had been looking out the window. Perhaps she hadn’t recognized the grey-cloaked woman walking through the street as her old friend. Perhaps she had. That had been three days ago. Winter’s grip loosened, and the court returned to Camnipol.
Clara listened to the familiar knock at her door. Her thin wooden door hardly robust enough to keep the wind out. Not Vincen’s tapping, but the proprietary rap of his cousin Abatha.
“M’lady, I know you’re in there.”
“I am indisposed,” Clara said.
“Second day running you said that,” Abatha said. “Vincen’s worrying you’ve got lady troubles.”
Clara laughed despite herself.