The Widow's House

by Daniel Abraham

  “Sir?” Yardem said.

  Alys and Merian were in flames, the child curled in her mother’s lap. Their screams reached over the crackle of the flames.

  “You should wake up now, sir,” Yardem said. “Something’s happening.”

  Marcus opened his eyes and took a deep, gasping breath. The little room was thick with buttery yellow light. Kit knelt on his cot and peeked out the window into the black night. Dream and reality mixed, the screaming and the smell of fire still in his ears and nose as Marcus swung his feet to the floor. He tried to say What is it? and managed some part of the syllables.

  “Not sure yet,” Yardem said. His sword was in his hand.

  The death screams of his family moved out from their intimate place in Marcus’s ear, out to the window and the dark streets beyond. That wasn’t his nightmare, then. People were screaming. He yawned, the force of it cracking his jaw, as he rose.

  “Palliako’s army?” he asked.

  “Could be,” Yardem said.

  “I can’t believe that they could travel so far or so quickly,” Kit said. “Do you think it’s possible?”

  Marcus reached under his own cot, hauling out the vile green sword and scabbard. He slung it across his back. “I know a way to find out. You stay here.”

  In the night-black city, lanterns flared and people filled the squares. Marcus moved among them, his senses stretched for the peculiar signs of violence. Yardem, at his side, shifted his ears one direction and then the next. The city guard stood at the corners and choke points where the rush of a mob could be controlled, but so far as Marcus could make out, there was no riot, no invasion, no burning buildings or boiling pitch or flights of killing arrows.

  He was in the middle of a wide square, perhaps three hundred men and women in it looking around in confusion that echoed his own, when the screaming came again, and from all around him. Yardem tapped his shoulder and pointed up toward the distant stars.

  A deeper darkness moved against the sky, blotting out stars. The movement gave it shape—wide, tattered wings, a great tail and serpentine neck. The dragon glided silently against the night, swooping over the city like a hawk looking for a rabbit. A gout of flame poured forth from the mouth in a great gold-and-smoke cloud brighter than the moon. Women shouted, pointed. Men screamed and tried to push themselves back into the buildings against the flow of other people coming out. Others stood in openmouthed wonder. All round the city, lanterns and torches flickered to life, the citizens of Northcoast flooding the streets or fleeing them in terror and elation.

  Kit was pacing when they came back in, his expression a mask of distress. He stopped, his gaze shifting from one to the other in anticipation of the worst.

  “Ships are here,” Marcus said.

  The late morning found the square outside the Grave of Dragons packed almost too tightly to walk through. Marcus and Yardem had to lead with their shoulders and push to make any progress at all. For the most part, they got no worse back than angry looks and some mild profanity. One man so thick across the shoulders he could have passed for Yemmu from behind pushed back and lifted his chin, but Yardem met his gaze and shook his head. The man backed down.

  King Tracian’s private guard held the entrance, blades drawn. Even they kept looking back over their shoulders to catch a glimpse of Inys as he moved along the long, pale rows. When he reached the soldiers, Marcus looked for the one in charge. A Kurtadam woman in plate armor so bright and gilded, he was fairly sure he could have poked through it with a dinner fork. Not all armor was for fighting, though, and hers did the work of showing who mattered. Yardem at his back, Marcus pushed through to her.

  “I’m here to see the dragon,” he said.

  “You and everyone else,” she said, looking past him into the crowd.

  “I know him. We travel together,” Marcus said. The guard captain ignored him. Yardem flicked an ear. His empty expression wouldn’t have read as amusement to anyone else. “I’m Marcus Wester.”

  “Fuck off,” she said.

  “No offense, ma’am,” Yardem said, his voice deep as thunder. “He is.”

  For the first time, the Kurtadam woman really looked at Marcus, and her eyes went wide. “Oh shit.”

  “It’s all right,” Marcus said. “No one ever believes me right off. But I have come to see the dragon.”

  “Sorry, I can’t do that,” the woman said. “King gave orders. No one’s to bother the… God. The dragon. Marcus Wester and a dragon. What next? Orcus the Demon King?”

  “He’s back at the compound,” Marcus said. “Tracian didn’t mean me. You should let me through.”

  “Not an option. I’m really very sorry.”

  Marcus shrugged and cupped his hands around his mouth like a speaker’s horn. “Inys!”

  The dragon’s head shifted toward the crowd. The vast, warm eyes found him at once. “Marcus Stormcrow. You have come.”

  Marcus looked a question at the guard captain. She stood aside. The path down to the graveyard proper was pale and empty. Marcus and Yardem stepped down toward the huge beast. The scars of the battle in Porte Oliva were healed, for the most part. Wide scars striped Inys’s flank, roughening the scales and making a range of small shadows when the sun came at a sharp enough angle. The dragon’s wings were ripped where the huge Antean spears had pierced the webbing. Inys was still magnificent; there was no question about that. But also ragged and tired. Marcus wondered whether the injuries it had suffered would heal further than they already had, or if this was as whole as the dragon would ever be again.

  Inys shifted forward and put a taloned paw into the imprint of some long dead dragon. The expression of grief on the dragon’s face was unmistakable. “Arach. This was Arach. She used to sing the most beautiful pieces. I can hear them in my mind if I try to. Her voice was so pure.”

  “You recognize them from their… paw prints? Or handprints. I don’t know what the respectful term is,” Marcus said, but Inys took no notice of him.

  “She said that all her compositions were inspired by the colors of the stars.” Inys shifted, caressing another imprint. Black talons dug into the stone. “Kairade. He was my brother’s friend. He knew things had gone too far, but he was loyal. I asked him once to help me stop the war before it went beyond the point that we could mend the damage. His laughter had tears in it. I remember that. No one else remembers it, but I do. I am the only one who knows. And if I’m wrong, if I misremember a name or detail, it becomes true now. I can make the past simply by saying what is so and what is not. Any past that reaches this point, this place, is as good as another.”

  Marcus looked at Yardem. The Tralgu scratched his arm.

  “So,” Marcus said. “You’re looking better.”

  Inys shifted his great head, the vast eye focusing on Marcus.

  “Well,” Marcus said. “Improved, anyway.”

  “These dead around us,” Inys said, sweeping his wings in a gesture that took in everything in the long arcades. “How did they pass? Was it in the war? Was it after? Did Morade turn on his own in the end?”

  “Don’t know,” Marcus said. “I wasn’t there, and the records that far back… well, could say they’re spotty.”

  “The weapons they brought against me,” Inys said. “I have never seen their like before. They were designed to let slaves like you bring down dragons.”

  “That’s what it looked like,” Marcus agreed.

  “Who made these designs? And why?”

  “Again, I can’t really say.”

  Inys settled onto the ground, tucking his huge legs under him like a cat preparing for a nap. His ragged wings folded against his sides. Marcus had the sudden image of a man sitting alone in a room filled with ancient bones. He felt a pang of discomfort, as if he might be intruding on something sacred. He scowled at the feeling and the deference to the dragon that it carried along.

  “Magistra Isadau’s back at the compound with Cithrin and the others,” he said. “Cithrin’s plan to end
the war seems to have done something, so that’s good. I suppose. Unless it just means the Antean army that kicked our asses in Birancour are coming to kick our asses in Northcoast, in which case, that’ll be a pity.”

  “The truth is lost,” Inys said. “All truth is lost in the blackness of my sleep and the emptiness of your history. There was a crime. A treason worse than mine. Worse than my brother’s. Slaves armed against us. How desperate must we have been to allow it. How terrible that rage.”

  “We’re thinking it might be good to have someone go take a quick look south of the city here. Just in case there’s an army on the road. We haven’t heard word of Antea crossing into Northcoast, but since there’s someone here that can go aloft and check. To see if we’re about to be attacked. Which could be important.”

  “Or perhaps we did not permit it,” the dragon said. “Perhaps the slaves rose up themselves. Perhaps these evil designs were born in a slave child’s mind, forged in a slave’s fire. Perhaps we weakened ourselves with war, and the animals rose up against us, smelling our blood and fear.”

  “All respect, sir,” Yardem said. “There’s not a way we can know that. And it doesn’t change much if it’s truth.”

  Inys blinked, as if surprised to find them there. Marcus wondered what exactly the plan would be if, between grief and injury, the dragon lost its mind. That seemed a distraction that wouldn’t help anyone.

  “Would you, Marcus Stormcrow? Would you turn against me?” Inys asked.

  No, he thought. For God’s sake, tell the lizard you’ll lick his ass if that’s what he wants to hear. We don’t have time for this.

  “I don’t know. Maybe? Depending on what you were doing.”

  The scales along the dragon’s side rippled like grass in a high wind. Acrid smoke leaked out from between Inys’s dagger-sharp teeth. “Treason. You would turn your hand to treason!”

  “If you don’t want the answer, don’t ask,” Marcus said. “Would I ever say you’d gone too damned far, and no farther? Yes, if you earned it. Would you rather I tell you that I’d follow you to the death of the world and the sky just because you’re such a great and powerful you? Because I’m fairly certain I can find you a dozen or so of that sort just by walking back up the path there if you want them.”

  Inys was silent for a long moment. Long enough that Marcus began to feel little flutters of unease in his belly. Then the dragon chuckled. “You are more like her than you know, Marcus Stormcrow. Not so educated, not so graceful, but carved from the same stone all the same. Drakkis would have laughed with your jokes.”

  “Honored,” Marcus said. “But here’s the thing. This war we’re fighting is a long way from done, and it’s getting more complicated by the day. Back down south, we all thought you were the big damned secret that’d turn things our way. You thought it too. We called it wrong, and so we’ve pulled back. It’s left us weaker and in a less defensible position. If Antea comes here before Cithrin can do whatever it is she’s doing, we’ll have to pull back again, and we’re getting damned thin on places to pull back to. So while I’m sorry your dead friends are dead, I need you to focus on the next few days and weeks. If you’re strong enough to help us in the war, that’s a great good thing. If having your ass handed to you on a Birancouri platter’s put you off your game, that’s less good, but I’ll manage. What I can’t have is everyone making the plan to move forward counting on you if you’re too weak. So, all respect, are you going to sit here feeling sad for yourself, or are you going to stand up and do the job?”

  “No one speaks to a dragon so,” Inys said, his voice deep and resonant as a gong.

  “Almost no one. What’s it going to be? Do what needs doing? Or mope like a child who didn’t get the candy he wanted?”

  Yardem flicked his ear, the rings jingling against each other. The Tralgu’s expression was pained. Fair point, Marcus thought. May have gone a bit far there.

  The dragon closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, the house-wide ribs expanding, pausing, and falling again. The air filled with a smell like brimstone and hot iron.

  “You shame me. Tell me what it is you need, Stormcrow,” Inys said. “I am in despair, but not yet in defeat.”

  “Yes, well. You and me both,” Marcus said.

  Clara

  Of all the things that could have been occupying her mind as she rode back across the dark landscape of Birancour, the one that Clara could not dislodge was the letter she had promised to carry back to Camnipol. She had meant to, of course. She had resigned herself to going back to court, and the one bright moment of it was the thought of carrying Jorey’s words back to Sabiha. And Annalise. Little Annalise.

  She had letters like it herself, or once had. When Dawson had been away in the field as a young man riding at the order of his dear friend King Simeon, he had been consistent with his love letters home. She must have had fifty of them. More, perhaps. Dawson had had a traditionalist’s view of poetry, so each letter included some bit of verse he’d composed for her along with his professings of love and descriptions of desire. She rode now in the darkness, the little horse tramping south through the cool air that spoke of autumn. The soldiers of Birancour were surely patrolling the countryside, as were Jorey’s men. The gloom of night gave her only so much cover, and the risk of being caught by either side was great. Barriath rode behind her on a thin mule. He was wrapped in a hooded cloak, and stayed behind her, the way a servant should. Pretending that men she loved were her servants had become something of an expertise of hers, and Barriath had been willing enough to take her direction. He played the role now in case they were seen before they knew it. One played one’s role always when it was possible to be seen, or else, more often really, one accepted the risks.

  They rode on the turf at the roadside to muffle the sounds of the hooves. They bore neither torch nor lantern, but used the moon and stars to see by. They passed, she hoped, as ghosts across the face of the land, and she could not stop thinking of that letter.

  She had taken great pleasure in the letters she’d had in her time. She’d kept them all, except one that Dawson had written when he was in his cups. His appreciation of her beauty had grown more explicit than he was accustomed to putting to paper, and he’d embarrassed himself. She’d had a second letter the next day asking that she destroy what he had written. Not without regrets, she had complied, though she had made him repeat certain parts of the missive upon his return. And she was taking that experience from Sabiha. It felt like theft, though that wasn’t true. There would be other couriers than herself, surely. Men sent their wives love letters all the time.

  It was only that she’d promised to keep this one safe to Camnipol, and she wasn’t going to do that.

  “Mother,” Barriath whispered.

  “My lady,” she corrected.

  “My lady,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Look south.”

  The light of fires was almost too faint to see, but he was right. They were there. She tried to recall how the camp had sat in relation to the road when she’d left it. She was almost certain that the lights came from Jorey’s men. She paused, patted her poor horse on its neck, and turned it south, across the trackless fields. She made no attempt to at stealth now, but talked to her horse in soothing tones loud enough to carry in the black. The sentry’s voice was harsh and sudden. Even when he spoke, she didn’t see him.

  “Who’s there!”

  “What?” she said. “Lady Kalliam, of course. Why do you ask?”

  There was a moment’s silence. When the voice came again, it was wary, but less so. “Lady Kalliam? What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I went out for a ride after supper to clear my head. The tents can be so terribly stuffy, you know. Only I seem to have gotten a bit turned about, and it took me much longer than I expected. But I have my man here with me for protection and we were quite careful not to go anywhere near enemy territory, so I was entirely safe the whole time.”

  “You’re coming in from the north,
ma’am,” the sentry said. “That’s where the enemy is.”

  “Really? Are you sure? I thought we were headed east.”

  “Fair certain you’re heading south, ma’am,” the sentry said.

  “Oh. Well, how embarrassing.”

  There was a clicking, and a spark, and a thin flame in a little tin lantern. The man holding it was younger than Vincen or Jorey. A boy, almost. His caved-in cheeks and deep-set eyes belonged to a starving man, but he smiled all the same.

  “You really shouldn’t be leaving camp at all, ma’am. It’s not safe.”

  Clara made an impatient noise in the back of her throat, and then sighed. “I suppose as I’m a doddering old woman who can’t tell south from east, I’m in no position to disagree with you. Still, do you suppose we might keep this between us? If I promise very solemnly not to wander out again? I don’t like to worry my son.”

  “I’ll have to make a report,” the sentry said. “But I’ll make as little of it as I can.”

  “You’re entirely too kind,” Clara said, then turned to Barriath. “Come along.”

  The sentry passed the lantern up to Barriath as they went by. The ground became more even. The smell of cookfires and latrines was as familiar as a well-loved song, and Clara angled her horse toward the rough corral she’d taken it from.

  “You’re entirely too good at that,” Barriath said.

  “Never discount the power of being underestimated,” she said. “And don’t talk so impertinently to your betters. You’re my servant after all.”

  “Yes, my lady,” he said again, and poorly.

  With night folded over it, the camp seemed both smaller and endless. The air was still warm enough that many of the soldiers hadn’t bothered to put up tents, but slept in the fields around guttering fires or else in darkness. The flame of Barriath’s little lantern ruined her dark-adapted eye, making the blackness outside its little circle deeper. The cunning men’s tent called to her like water to thirst. She wanted to go to Vincen, to tell him all that had happened in that dark little house in Sara-sur-Mar. Of Barriath and his comrades and the decision she and her son had made and hoped that Jorey would make as well. She wanted to hold Vincen’s hand and make sure his fever hadn’t come back and lay her head on his chest to hear him breathe.