The Widow's House (The Dagger and the Coin)

by Daniel Abraham

  The thing that had been her son laughed with his warm laugh, and clapped his palms together as he had. But any hope she’d kept that he might return to her was doubly gone now. If her crimes were exposed to him, he would not shield her. He couldn’t have, even if he’d wanted to. The cruelty was monstrous.

  The afternoon was a little farewell party for Lord Skestinin in whose house Clara was now permanent guest. Elisia had come now that Jorey was Lord Marshal and having once been a Kalliam weighed not so heavily upon her. Lord and Lady Skestinin’s daughter—and since the marriage to Jorey, Clara’s too for that—sat across the room from the three of them, her hand on the swell of her belly. Outside, a spring storm had come in from the north and was dropping tiny chips of ice from a low, grey sky. Sabiha shifted her hand and smiled. The babe was kicking, then.

  “Is that all your new goddess can do?” Elisia asked.

  “It’s one of the best tricks,” Vicarian said. “But it’s not the only one.”

  “Because everyone says that Geder Palliako can speak to the dead. I’ve heard that he consults with King Simeon every night. They’ve been seen at the royal crypt, ever since the Timzinae tried to kill Geder.”

  It was your father who tried to kill Geder, Clara thought but did not say, and I wish he’d managed.

  “Well, that isn’t something I can do, but there may be more secrets than I’ve been brought into.”

  “Priests and their secrets,” Elisia said, rolling her eyes.

  Everyone and their secrets, Clara thought, and God help us all.

  A servant boy announced the meal was served. Clara left her little clay pipe to burn out the remnant still in its bowl and allowed Vicarian to help her to her feet. Her flesh did not crawl when it touched his. He seemed no different than he had been before his induction into the mysteries of the spider goddess. And still she could not afford to pretend that was true.

  Jorey and Lord Skestenin were already at table, Lady Skestinin at her husband’s side. A warm beef soup was already being served, the steam from it rich as smoke and good, the cunning men all said, for a woman bearing a child. Sabiha eased herself into the chair beside Jorey, though strictly speaking etiquette should have placed her by her mother rather than her husband. No one commented on the lapse, Clara least of all.

  The talk was light and empty. Lady Skestinin was staying in Camnipol for the season to be with Sabiha when the baby came. Once the meal was done, Lord Skestinin would begin the long carriage ride to Nus and the fleet, and from there halfway around the world to Birancour. Jorey and Vicarian would begin their journey to the south in the morning, the Lord Marshal at last taking the field after his consultations with the Lord Regent. They made the usual jokes about not getting lost on the way, and Clara laughed with them politely, the chaos of her mind hidden behind years of form and etiquette. She had to tell Vincen. As soon as she could, she had to find him and warn him to say nothing. Not even to lie. And how many, many lies had she embraced in these past months? Half of her life was fabrications. Her mind spun like a child’s top as she tried in vain to recall everything she’d said and whom she had said it before.

  “Clara? Are you well?” Lady Skestinin said, and Clara became aware it wasn’t the first time her name had been spoken.

  “I’m sorry,” Clara said, and then very nearly, I was just thinking about what the storm might do to the garden. It was the kind of simple, social lie one told all the time. She flailed for a moment. “I was just thinking… about the war.”

  And then, damn them, damn them, tears came to her eyes. She recognized that she was on the edge of panic, but was unable to draw herself back from it. She looked down at the soup. I have not been discovered, she said to herself. If they knew, I would not be here. Even if they only knew of Vincen, I wouldn’t be welcome at the table. My secrets are my own. The room was silent. Sabiha leaned forward and took her hand, and when Clara looked up, there were tears in several eyes besides her own. Lady Skestinin, Sabiha, even Jorey’s.

  “We will end in victory,” Vicarian said. He meant it as reassurance. It was a threat, and for a moment, she could not help but believe him.

  “I’m just frightened, dear,” Clara said.

  The thing that had been her son smiled at her, misunderstanding. It was good enough.

  Once the meal was ended, Lord Skestenin said his farewells to Clara and her sons, then took a private moment with Sabiha and Lady Skestinin. Clara would dearly have loved to know what he said to them when he believed no one else could hear. This new plan to blockade Birancour couldn’t have pleased him, but precisely how displeased he was would be of interest. That she was curious was the best indication that her shock was beginning to fade. It was afternoon now. As much as she wished to find Vincen, going to him now would be a danger in itself, so instead she took to her withdrawing room and sat at her writing desk, pen in hand, uncertain what if anything she should do. The storm was thicker outside. The bits of falling ice were turning to hail, the rattle of ice bending and breaking the new grass and bruising the buds of the flowers.

  She had promised herself that she would not use anything she learned from her sons in the covert reports she wrote to Paerin Clark of the Medean bank. If the missives were intercepted, there could be nothing to lead back to Jorey, and so many of the things she was now positioned to discover were known only to a few. And yet because these things were little known, they were the most important to pass along.

  Perhaps it was time to stop her campaign. They knew the dangers that Geder posed. They had acted against him already. And she herself had taken Ternigan from the board and sown distrust in the ranks with the unfortunate effect of putting Jorey in harm’s way. My dear friend, I fear the time has come for our correspondence to end, she could say. There was no one to insist that she continue. And now that she felt the danger so close at her side…

  But there was an attack coming, and she knew it was coming to Birancour. The priests of the spider goddess could smell out deceit, and she could warn them of that. Perhaps no one else could. But at what cost? And if some detail that she put to paper was something that only Jorey could tell, how would she live with herself, knowing that she had engineered his death?

  She had her nib above the inkwell, trapped by indecision, when a soft tap came at the door. Fear set her heart racing, but there was no call. She hadn’t written a stroke. She put the pen away and shifted to the divan near the window as the tapping came again.

  “Hello?” she said. “Is anyone there?”

  The door swung open and Jorey stepped in.

  “I’m not interrupting, am I?” he asked.

  “Never, dear. I was just looking at the back gardens. I’m afraid they won’t escape ruin at this rate.”

  “What will?” he said, and it sounded only half a jest. He came to stand by her and put his hand on her shoulder. She touched his fingers with her own. For a moment, they stared together at the grey and the white and the damage that it wrought.

  “It’s a shame Lord Skestinin couldn’t wait for better weather.”

  “It is. And I hope it’s cleared by tomorrow, or Vicarian and I may freeze before we reach my command.”

  “I’m sure that won’t happen, dear. The freezing, I mean. I can’t speak to the weather. I’ve never been good about that sort of thing.”

  Jorey sighed, and for a moment she thought he might not speak at all. “I don’t want you to be afraid, Mother. I’ll see this through.”

  “And had it occurred to you that might be what I was afraid of?” she asked tartly, and immediately wished she could take the words back.

  Jorey sank to the divan at her side. The hail tapped angrily against the glass. “After Vanai, Father told me about his own experiences in the field. About war and what it was. What it is.”

  “And did that help you?”

  Jorey’s jaw went tight. It was answer enough. In truth, she’d been cruel to ask.

  “War is an evil thing that we have to do,” he said. �
��It is what duty and honor demand. And it’s terrible.”

  “And do you believe him?”

  “Duty and honor are making demands of me,” Jorey said, chuckling despite the grimness all about them, “and it’s terrible, so I’d have to say I do.”

  “Your father was always a man of honor. What precisely that meant was sometimes surprising, but he did not waver.”

  “I can’t either.”

  “Do you… Do you want to win?”

  “I want the war ended,” Jorey said, “and I’m not permitted to surrender, so winning’s the only path I’ve got. And I want you and Sabiha safe. And Vicarian. Everyone, really.”

  “You’re Lord Marshal of Antea in the teeth of a war that’s already spilled over three nations. It seems odd employment for someone seeking safety for everyone.”

  “That’s why I didn’t ask for the position,” he said. “I will make this all work if I can, though. I have to try.”

  Clara felt sorrow in her breast like a rising flood. But also pride. “We all have to, dear. In our own ways.”

  “I won’t be here when my child’s born,” Jorey said. “Lady Skestinin and Sabiha… They don’t have the warmest relationship. Ever since her scandal.”

  The scandal had happened before Jorey and Sabiha had met and fallen in love. It was now a boy old enough to be learning his letters, and being raised by a kind family in the lower quarters of Camnipol, and Sabiha loved the child. Little wonder that the girl and her mother would carry each other’s scars over it.

  “I understand,” Clara said.

  “Thank you, Mother.”

  Clara rose to her feet and put her arms around her youngest boy. Little Jorey who’d wept after his first hunt, but not where Dawson could see him. Who had come back from the burning of Vanai with ghosts behind his eyes. He would lead an army for a man he feared in a war he hated because it was the right thing to do. Dawson would have been proud of him too, though for very different reasons.

  “I will do what I can,” she whispered.

  “So will I.”

  When he left, she took up her pen again, and began her letter.

  Pregnancy sat well on Sabiha Kalliam and sorrow poorly. Between the two, they complicated her. Clara found her in the nursery with three of the house servants—two Firstblood women and a Dartinae man—holding curtains to the high windows. In the grey light of the storm, Clara saw little to distinguish the different cloths. Sabiha leaned against the great carved-oak crib where before many more weeks had passed, the child would sleep and mewl and puke and coo and generally twist every heart in reach and exhaust every body in earshot. Clara found herself looking forward to it.

  “Clara,” Sabiha said. “Have you come to dither about window dressings? Because that’s how I’m spending the day.”

  “It’s an honorable pursuit. Painful but necessary. I’ve come to make sure you were well and see whether you needed anything from me in particular.”

  “So Jorey sent you.”

  “You didn’t expect him to do anything else, did you? The poor thing’s riding off to the service of his nation and leaving the one person he actually cares for behind. Well, two. One and a fraction.”

  “Two and a fraction. He loves his mother as well. Did he warn you about mine?”

  “Your mother? Yes, he did.”

  Sabiha chuckled. “We nipped at each other once when she was tired and I was hungry. It was nothing.”

  Clara didn’t believe that for a moment, but it was a lie she could respect. It occurred to her that Vicarian could have removed all doubt, and the thought left her feeling colder. The servants stood still, waiting for their betters to finish their conversation, as was their place. Sabiha turned to them. “Take them all down. Yes, that one too. All of them. The light’s too dim in this weather. I’ll look again tomorrow when the weather’s passed.”

  The servants nodded, thanked her, and vanished with grace and speed. They gave no sign that they were being dismissed, and everyone present knew that they were. Good help was precious. Clara hoped Sabiha was aware of the fact. When they were alone, Sabiha lowered herself to the nursing chair with a grunt.

  Sabiha pulled a face, and then laughed. “The truth is, he outpaced me,” she said. “I was going to come to you tonight and ask how we could conspire to care for him while he’s away.”

  “Is he not well, then?” Clara asked, half certain she knew the answer.

  “He doesn’t sleep,” Sabiha said. “And when he does, it isn’t restful. Honestly, he’s gone away some nights for fear of keeping me up. I’ve found him curled on a divan in the dressing room in the morning.”

  “Is it the war,” Clara said, “or is there something more?”

  “He won’t say,” Sabiha said, “but it’s Geder. He hates Palliako, only he won’t permit himself to feel it, so it’s become this terrible sort of loyalty.”

  “Geder’s been very kind to us, in his fashion. It isn’t every man who would put a traitor’s son in command of the army.”

  “I suppose not.” Sabiha sighed. A vicious gust pressed at the windows and the smell of the weather seeped in around them like a perfume. “I’m afraid that even when the war ends, the man that comes back may not have much in common with the one that’s leaving. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I do,” Clara said.

  “Does it frighten you too?”

  “It does. But not so much as the thought that the war might not end. Not ever. We may be chasing conspiracies and shadows for the rest of my life and yours. And his,” she added, gesturing toward her belly.

  “Hers.”

  Clara looked up into Sabiha’s smile.

  “The cunning man says to expect a daughter,” the girl said. “Jorey won’t mind, do you think?”

  “He will be delighted. He’s always been quite fond of girls.”

  “I wish I could go with him,” Sabiha said. “Or if not that, I wish that you could.”

  “One does not take one’s pregnant wife and aged mother on campaign,” Clara said. “I think it would be seen as unmasculine.”

  “If you really want to take care of me, find a way to take care of him. There must be one.”

  “I wish there were. At the moment, I’m not certain what that would mean,” Clara said, but a thought had begun to take form at the back of her mind. Camnipol was thick with the priests and the loose ends of her plots. It was not safe to stay. And with Sabiha asking her to look after Jorey, perhaps—perhaps—there was something that could be done.

  Captain Marcus Wester

  The great city of Rukkyupal squatted at the edge of the ice-slush sea. Massive grey walls of granite as thick as they were high marked the city’s perimeter, defending the men and women of Hallskar as much from storms as war. The port itself lay outside the walls with jetties of slime-green stone and docks of pale, fresh pine. There were no old piers in Rukkyupal; the violence of the weather was such that only dragon’s jade could have withstood it. Instead, there was a tradition of rebuilding what was lost, remaking what everyone knew would be destroyed and then remade again. If the motto above the city gates had been Endure and Create, it would have captured the soul of the city. Instead, the gates held worked letters in green brass that read HMANICH SON HMINA UNT, and no one Marcus had met knew what they meant.

  The streets were broad and paved with brightly colored brick—yellow and green and red. Leather banners announced the businesses along the high streets and the temples and churches of a hundred different gods in the low.

  The men and women of the city were almost exclusively Haaverkin. Great rolls of fat thickened their bodies and ink marked their faces. They walked through the breaking cold in light wools, brushing frost from their shoulders like it was dust. Of all the thirteen races of humanity, the only other that might have been at home in the city were the Kurtadam, and even they appeared to prefer the warmth of the south. A band of Firstblood actors coming to the city not from the south road or the port, but straggling
in from the rural northern wastes, exhausted from the effort of simply not freezing to death, was as curious as finding a dozen bright-colored finches making nests at midwinter. Marcus and Kit and the players had arrived to stares of amazement and concern from the locals, and the near-universal assumption that they were all idiots.

  Cary, her hair tied back, stood by the fire and looked out at the crowd, her breath coming in plumes. It wasn’t the largest of the public houses near the port, but it was the warmest. The hearth was built from clay with bits of colored glass in it that let through some of the fire’s light. Like the city itself, Marcus thought, it should have been ugly and wasn’t. The Haaverkin sat at their tables, watching her. Hornet knelt at her side, tuning a small dulcimer. He looked up at her, nodded, and lifted the little hammers. With the first notes he struck, Cary’s voice lifted, her expression cleared. Marcus, huddled beside Master Kit at the back of the room, thought she looked miserable, chilled, and unhappy. He also knew that anyone who hadn’t traveled the length and breadth of the world with her wouldn’t see it. The joy in her performance only seemed artificial to him because he had seen her joy unfeigned.

  “Something to drink?” Kit asked. Marcus shook his head. Kit looked over at the Haaverkin boy who served the tables and lifted one finger. The boy nodded and trundled back toward the serving room, returning in a moment with a mug of steaming wine. Kit gave the boy the price of the drink and a couple of coins besides, then cradled the cup in his hands and sat forward.

  “Are you actually going to drink that?” Marcus asked under his breath.

  “I may not,” Kit said. “I suspect thawing my fingers with it may be the best I can hope for.”