The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

by Daniel Abraham

  He woke up trying to bring the blade down.

  The stars of the Keshet glowed above him, a vast and milky horde. He muttered an obscenity and rolled to his side. His body ached like someone had beaten him, but at least he wasn’t dreaming anymore. Long experience had taught him that he could. If he closed his eyes again now, it would all begin again from the start. He’d known men with fevers that let them be for months or even years at a time, and then descended again, pulling them into delirium and illness for weeks. This wasn’t so different. Except that it was his, so he had to suffer it.

  He sat up, yawned. The sky was clear, but the air smelled like rain. There would be a storm by midday. They’d stop and try to gather some drinking water from it. Not that they needed it. The dragon’s road they were following would meet another in a day or so, and there’d be a few semipermanent buildings there. A trader, a well, a place to sleep with a roof. The height of civilization.

  “You’re awake,” Kit said. He was sitting by the dim embers of the last night’s cookfire, the blanket from his bedroll over his shoulders. His expression in the starlight seemed distant. Maybe sad.

  “I guess that makes it my watch,” Marcus said.

  “If you’d like,” the old actor said, shrugging.

  “Doesn’t make sense both of us staying awake.”

  “I find myself needing less sleep,” Kit said.

  “You find yourself sleeping less than you need to,” Marcus said. “Not the same.”

  “I suppose that’s true. Good night, then.”

  Kit shifted from sitting down to a curled heap on the ground without actually seeming to move very much. Marcus stood, stretched, tried to decide whether he needed to piss. The mule woke enough to flick a wide ear, then went back to ignoring the men. Near the southern horizon, a plume of smoke stood dark against the dark sky, so dim and subtle that Marcus could only see it in the corner of his eye. A caravan or one of the nomadic cities. They’d have news, perhaps. They’d have something more convincing to eat than the two-days-dead rabbit that was his planned breakfast. Under other circumstances, he’d have discussed the possibility with Kit, come to an agreement. But he didn’t want to spend the time, and Kit didn’t care.

  Kit didn’t care about much of anything, it seemed.

  “You’re not sleeping,” Marcus said.

  “I’m not.”

  “Any particular reason for that?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Only I close my eyes, and then they seem to open again.”

  “Well, a fine pair we are.”

  Kit rose, taking his old position as if he’d never lain down. Marcus scratched at his shoulder. The place where the sword rode against him had a strange burned feel, and every few days a layer of grey skin would flake off. In truth, they were making good progress. They were two men accustomed to travel, carrying only what they needed and perhaps a bit less. If one of them grew sick or stepped on a snake, it would be a bad day, but they were going quickly. They’d be out of the Keshet and into Elassae well before the season turned. He was looking forward to it, and he wasn’t.

  “I was a fool,” Kit said. “I feel I’ve wasted my life.”

  “If you feel like that, you probably are a fool,” Marcus said.

  “I thought of myself as wise,” Kit said. “I carried the secrets of the world with me like a bag of pretty stones. I knew of the goddess, which was a secret held by only a few. And I knew her madness. Her weakness. Her confusion of certainty and truth. And for that I was singular. The only man in the world who saw it all for what it was. I am astounded I could carry that arrogance so long and not notice the burden.”

  “Arrogance doesn’t weigh much,” Marcus said. “No heft to it.”

  Kit chuckled. “I suppose not. Still, I am ashamed.”

  “You should get over that,” Marcus said.

  “I appreciate that,” Kit said, “but I think you don’t understand.”

  “Might. You thought you were some kind of God-touched cunning man because you had your spider tricks, only it turned out you were more like the rest of us than not. I was the greatest general in an age, determining who sat what throne and shaping the world with my will and a few thousand sharp blades. Only it turned out we were both men, and we both made mistakes. Yours set us off through some of the least pleasant terrain I’ve ever had the poor fortune to walk through and ended with me trying to hack a hunk of stone to death with a magic sword. Mine ended with a couple graves and a lot of bad dreams.”

  Kit was silent for a moment. Something scuttled through the grass off to his right, but it didn’t sound big enough that Marcus cared.

  “I believe I see your point, and I apologize. I didn’t intend to make light of your loss.”

  “You don’t see my point, then. My loss doesn’t matter. Alys. Merian. They don’t care that I failed them. They haven’t cared for a long time now. I care, but I can’t do anything. I carry it because it’s mine. You lived your life either in service to or revolt against something that turns out not to be real. I can see that’s embarrassing.”

  “It’s more than that,” Kit said. “It leaves me unsure whether my life has had any meaning at all.”

  “While you figure that out, you’ll need to get some rest. And start eating enough. And stop trying to take half of my watch along with yours. We have a job to do, and you need to be in a condition to do it.”

  “I’m the one that brought you the job,” Kit said. “You recall, don’t you? You were the chosen one because I chose you. And if I was wrong …”

  “It doesn’t matter where the job came from,” Marcus said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s something we can do. It’s the job. And you only get to pity yourself and sulk when it doesn’t get in the way of it.”

  “And you feel it’s begun to?”

  “Yes,” Marcus said. And then, “This is why you picked me, you know. Apart from needing someone to haul this damned uncomfortable hunk of metal, you knew at some point you might fall down and not want to get back up. I’m here to kick your ass.”

  “Your job.”

  “Part of it.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Kit said. “Thank you, Marcus.”

  “Anytime, Kit. I’m pleased I can help. Now, honestly? Go the hell to sleep.”

  The Keshet in the falling days of summer had a severe kind of beauty. The white morning sky carried shades of yellow and pink. The blue of midday served as backdrop for towering clouds that reached up a hundred times higher than mountains, white as sunlight at the top and angry grey blue at the base. At the day’s end, the slow sun would seem to linger on the horizon, red and swollen. The moon waxed and then waned. Before it waxed full again, they would be in Elassae. In Suddapal.

  By choice, they met few other travelers. Sometimes Kit would spend the day singing, and his years on the boards gave his voice a range from barrel-deep to sweetly high, depending upon the song. Marcus didn’t object. Sometimes he even joined his voice with Kit’s. But beneath that, he felt himself growing narrow. Sharp. Focused. The anticipation was like being on a hunt, but it lasted for weeks. He was preparing himself. It was a sensation he’d had before, once, and it brought the nightmares.

  There was no single moment when the western edge of the Keshet became the eastern reaches of Suddapal. No garrison marked the border, no tax man squatted by the side of the road. The oases and crossroads only became a little larger, a little more permanent, until at last they were villages. The dragon’s road became better traveled, and then thick. The flood of war refugees was mostly Timzinae, but Jasuru and Tralgu and Firstblood families were among them in numbers enough that Marcus and Kit could fold themselves in among them unremarked.

  They approached the fivefold city from the east, passing through farmlands and pastures Marcus had never seen. The commons were so thick with tents that it was as if new towns were forming within the city, and men stood in lines at the larger houses, negotiating hospitality from the locals or else begging it. Everywh
ere, the word was that Antea’s army was on the march, that they would be in Suddapal very, very soon.

  Displacement was a part of war, and Marcus had lived his life around it. It was a tissue of misery, fear, and uncertainty. Children would be sleeping hungry and in the streets tonight and tomorrow and likely for months if not years to come, provided nothing worse happened.

  “We can go to Ela and Epetchi,” Kit said. It took Marcus a moment to place the names as belonging to the café owners they’d stayed with before leaving for Lyoneia. “They’ll take us in if they can.”

  “You should stay with them for a few days,” Marcus agreed.

  Kit shot a glance at him, and Marcus shrugged. There wasn’t anything more to say. They both understood why he’d chosen Suddapal. When they reached the café, it was already full to the top with refugees, but they found room for Kitap. And they knew the way to the branch of the Medean bank. It was in the western end of the cities, and a way inland. Marcus thanked them, bought a bowl of charred mutton with a few coins Kit gave him, and walked out into the city.

  For months, he’d traveled with Kit. In the unfamiliar jungles of deep Lyoneia and the unforgiving mountains and planes of the Keshet, over the Inner Sea and back. The sense of being alone again, even on the busy streets and crowded commons of the city, surprised him and left him comforted. He wondered how much he’d been worried about carrying Kit and keeping him from despair. He wouldn’t have said he was much concerned, except that now he felt relieved in his isolation. Or maybe it was only that he now didn’t have to pretend he wasn’t hunting.

  Yardem Hane was one of the best fighters Marcus had ever known, and the acuity of the Tralgu’s great, mobile ears had saved them from ambush more than once. Marcus’s advantage was that he knew his old companion as well as he was known by him, and Yardem didn’t know he’d come. He would only have one opportunity.

  The compound of the Medean bank in Suddapal was a wide, low group of buildings around a vast yard. It looked more like a small, self-contained village than a bank. The streets were wide, which was good in that he could get a clear line of sight without coming too near the place, and bad in that there wasn’t cover enough to safely move in close. He found a place in the shadows of an alley and sat patiently, his face hidden and his shoulders sloped in dejection. Another doomed wanderer in a city sick with them. He waited. He watched. He noted the rhythms of the compound and its people. For a large place, it was well watched. He needed to wait until Yardem stepped out.

  Or until everyone else did.

  Three days later was Tenthday. The population of the city shed their shoes and marched together through the streets to the temples. Marcus watched them come out. Among the Timzinae guardsmen, Enen the Kurtadam stood out. But not so much as Cithrin. Marcus felt the sight of her like a blow. She looked taller. No, that wasn’t right. Not taller, but older. Her pale hair was pulled back and her green velvet gown was well cut without being boastful. She was walking arm in arm with an older Timzinae woman, her expression sharp with concentration. Seeing her from the distance of the alley was dreamlike and strange. The last time he’d been this near to her, she’d been leaving for Carse and telling him that taking him to Northcoast would be a mistake. If he’d fought against that, insisted that he stay with her, how different the world might be. He forced himself to look down for fear his gaze would draw hers. But she was here. She was well enough, it seemed. That was as it should be. But it didn’t change what he needed to do.

  Yardem wasn’t among the temple-bound throng. He’d stayed back, then, to guard the compound. Marcus forced himself to wait, but the tension growing in his back and legs made it difficult. The time had come. When the last of the household had turned the farthest corner, Marcus counted his breaths to a hundred, then did it again, then stood. The sword hung heavy across his back. He crossed the wide road to the compound’s gate, then walked down the wall until he found a place low enough to vault it.

  He found Yardem Hane on a low porch, a book in his massive hands and his ears canted forward. Marcus pulled the blade clear of its scabbard, keeping a finger against the steel so that it would not ring. The angle of his approach kept the Tralgu’s wide back toward him. He reached the edge of the porch in silence. A fast lunge would be all it took. Even a shallow cut, and the sword’s venom would do the rest.

  Marcus put the sole of his foot against the bare dirt and twisted. Yardem’s ears swiveled back at the sound, but he didn’t look up.

  “Sir,” he said.

  “You know why I’m here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You betrayed my trust.”

  Slowly, carefully, being certain no movement could be mistaken for an attack, Yardem placed a twig between the book’s pages and let them close.

  “I did.”

  “How long were you planning to let me rot in that little prison?”

  Yardem put a hand to either side and slowly lifted himself up to standing. He was tall, even for a Tralgu. He had the old sword at his side, but his fingers didn’t touch its hilt. His earrings jingled.

  “Until Cithrin came back, sir.”

  “And if she hadn’t?”

  “I’d have given myself a fair head start,” Yardem said. “All respect, sir. You were going to loot her bank and hire a company to march into the middle of someone else’s civil war.”

  “What of it?”

  “It was a bad idea.”

  Marcus tightened his grip on the blade, his mouth bending into a scowl. For three long breaths together, they stood motionless. He felt the rage in his breast reach its high-water mark and then recede.

  He pressed his lips together, and then lowered the blade.

  “Fair point,” he said. “So. Where do we stand?”

  “Pyk Usterhall’s running the Porte Oliva branch. Cithrin’s agreed with Komme Medean to a year’s apprenticeship with Magistra Isadau, and then a year back in Porte Oliva. Only it’s not certain we’ll make the full year here. Antea’s expected to invade at any moment. They’ve sent runners to say if we hand over the people responsible for the coup in Camnipol last year, they’ll leave, but no one seems to know who that would be. We’ve sent most of the bank’s capital out of the city, but the local magistra’s dedicated to staying and helping people get out of harm’s way for as long as she can. Cithrin’s apparently decided to do the same. And Roach just got married, only we’re calling him Halvill now.”

  “Halvill?”

  “His name.”

  “Ah.”

  “You, sir?”

  “Well, the war’s actually being driven by a set of mad priests who have power over truth and lies. The plan was to kill the spider goddess they worship and take away their power, only it turns out she’s a figment of their collective imagination. Kit used to be one of them, but he turned apostate. He’s at a café down by the port having what’s left of his faith collapse around him.”

  “I see.”

  “Oh,” Marcus said, holding up the blade. “Magic sword.”

  “Full year.”

  “Has been,” Marcus said. Then, “It’s good to be back, though.”

  “Happy to have you, sir.”

  Cithrin

  There are two books on my bedside table,” Isadau said. Months of close contact let Cithrin see her anxiety. The others—even Yardem—almost certainly didn’t.

  “Probably,” Kit said. “Certainly you believe there are.”

  “I also have a lamp there.”

  “No, Magistra,” the old actor said. “You do not.”

  Isadau sat back in her chair. Her smile might almost have been amused, but her inner eyelids were fluttering madly.

  It was profoundly strange. Cithrin had walked out on the Tenthday routine, her mind occupied with thoughts of the bank and the war, Isadau’s network for refugees of the old conflict and the coming one, and her own growing sense of dread. When she came back, Captain Wester was sitting in the courtyard and Master Kit was walking in from the stre
et. She’d heard of people who’d gotten fevers and lost their minds in them. She had to think it felt similar. Isadau didn’t seem to be put off her stride, but for her these were two men loosely associated with the bank who’d arrived much as a courier might. For Cithrin, they were two people she’d trusted and relied on who had left her without a word and arrived without a warning. She wanted to run to them both and hug them and yell at them and make sure they would never go away again, and so instead she fell into a politeness and distance that she hated even as she employed it.

  They gathered in a private courtyard with a small fountain and ivy growing up three of the four walls. It was cool and beautiful, and the tiny clapping hands of the ivy’s leaves meshed with the muttering of water to make eavesdropping almost impossible. Marcus and Yardem shared a bench, while Master Kit perched on the fountain’s edge. Cithrin sat in a chair beside Isadau. A servant brought a small wooden table and filled it with cups of cool water and bowls of cut apples. To anyone in the household, it would have seemed nothing more than another meeting among hundreds where the two magistras spoke about the private doings of the bank.

  Captain Wester’s absence hadn’t been kind to him. He was thinner than she’d ever seen him, his cheeks gaunt and his neck so ropy that she could trace the individual muscles and tendons. Master Kit also looked worn down by the road, but with him it almost seemed like a shedding of old clothes. His eyes were brighter, his smile just as open and pleasant, and the darkness of his skin a testament to weeks out of doors. He had none of the greyness that dulled Marcus’s skin, and his eyes hadn’t taken the same slight tint of yellow.

  And then, just as Cithrin began to feel she had her balance back, Master Kit had pricked his thumb with Yardem’s dagger and tiny black spiders had come out.

  “And if you were to speak to me,” Isadau said.

  “I would be very difficult to disbelieve,” Master Kit said. “Even those things which you had evidence against, you would eventually find some way to justify.”