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

by Daniel Abraham

  “It’s going to be all right, Vincen,” she said, taking his left hand and holding it to her. “I’ll see to it. Everything will be all right.”

  Vincen managed a weak laugh. “If you say so, my lady.”

  The mansion of Porte Oliva’s newly deposed governor was as lavish as anything Camnipol had to offer barring the Kingspire itself. Its walls were covered with gold leaf, its divans upholstered in crimson silk. Scrolls with the exotic calligraphy of Far Syramys hung beside the doorway alongside portraits of the kings and queens of Birancour and a particularly gaudy and she suspected overly flattering one of the governor in a library, his eyes lifted to the mysteries of the world and his hand on a map of the city. Scented candles burned in silver holders. The fronds of potted ferns bobbed in the breeze that snaked in through the tall stone windows. A small fountain clucked to itself in the corner. The only two things that were at all out of place were a broad spill of blood slowly turning black on the golden carpet and Clara herself.

  She had insisted on accompanying Vincen to the cunning men’s tent the army had raised in a square not far from the defeated wall. The wounded and the dying had lain on cots of sailcloth and board or else the bare ground. The air had been thick and heavy with magic, and the weary nurse had looked over Vincen’s wounds with a practiced eye even as Kestin Flor had railed at him about the importance of saving the life of Lady Kalliam’s personal guard. She noticed that he made no mention of how Vincen came to be wounded, and she thought it rude to press the point. The nurse’s mouth twitched into a scowl as he examined the bruises on Vincen’s ribs. Still, before Clara left, she had the assurance of the old cunning man that Vincen’s injuries, while uncomfortable, were far from serious, and that he would see to it that her man’s care was not taken lightly. Of Clara’s own clothing, he said nothing.

  She wondered, sitting on the red silk cushion, what would have happened if she had not spoken. Or if she had spoken a moment later. When she closed her eyes, the knife waited for her like a dream that would not fade with the light. She packed her pipe with tobacco a servant boy had brought her. It was good leaf. Better than anything hauled along from Antea. The spoils of war, she imagined. She wondered whether whoever had bought it was still alive.

  When the door opened, she rose to her feet. Jorey and Vicarian came into the room almost together. Seeing them so close rather than through a glass brought tears to her eyes. Vicarian looked bright about the eyes, merry and amused by the world and everything in it. He stood on the blood-spattered carpet, grinning and shaking his head as if he’d stepped into an unexpected party. She smiled at him, wondering whether this was another thing the goddess did to strip men of their humanity. Blind them to the horrors all around them and leave them tossing gilt balls in the slaughterhouse.

  Jorey, by comparison, looked as though he had been ill. As if he still were. The pleasure and wonderment in his expression did something to allay it, but she could see the greyness of his skin, the way his cheeks were tight across the bone. From when he’d been a boy of eight, there had always been an expression he had when he was unwell. Something about his eyes or the way he held his mouth. No one else had recognized it but her and Dawson. Only her now, but there it was.

  “Mother?” Jorey said. “What are you doing here?”

  She shook her head. This was the moment. Whatever she said, truth or lies, would expose her. She could neither dissemble nor confess. The only alternative was to be misunderstood.

  “Following you,” she said. “Trying, in my own way, to help.”

  “Help, Mother?” Vicarian said. “How were you planning to help?”

  “I know it isn’t what you’d have chosen, and I suppose that’s part of why I didn’t send word. Or tell anyone back at home, for that matter. It isn’t the sort of thing a woman of quality does, is it?”

  “It really, really isn’t,” Jorey said, sitting down beside her. She scooped up his hand in her own, lacing their fingers together as if he were a child again. Vicarian brought a candle for her pipe, and she drew on the flame until the thick, fragrant smoke filled her lungs. She let tears come into her eyes. What child could press on in the face of a weeping mother? The manipulation of it disgusted her even as she embraced it. This was no time for righteousness.

  “I didn’t want to embarrass you,” she said, and her eyes flickered toward Vicarian. It’s true. I didn’t. You can’t catch me out in a lie for saying that. “And I was so frightened, there in the court with you gone.” She sobbed, and it wasn’t even forced. She waited for them to ask what she’d been afraid of. She could say it was Geder without, she hoped, saying why. But if they did ask that, if they pressed…

  “Shh. It’s all right,” Jorey said. “I mean, it’s raw madness and God help your reputation if word gets back home, but it’s all right. I’m not angry.”

  “No?” she said.

  “Of course not,” Vicarian answered, as if Jorey’s opinions were identical to his own. As if the things in his blood already controlled his brother’s mind. “We love you. We’ll always love you. Even when you’ve done something a little unhinged. How long have you been following the army?”

  “I… I joined it in the Free Cities. Before the pass at Bellin. We kept to the rear with the caravans. I don’t think anyone suspected me of being anything out of the ordinary. Apart from Vincen. He knew, of course.”

  Vicarian sat, slapping his thighs. “Well, at least you had the sense to bring a guard with you. I can’t imagine what you thought you could do.”

  “I know,” she said, looking down. You can’t imagine, it’s true. And if that changes, if you do imagine, everything is lost. Don’t imagine.

  Jorey sat back in his seat, passing a hand over his chin. His sigh had laughter in it. “You don’t need to go camp in the muck outside the city, do you? Tell me at least you’ll accept my hospitality.”

  “I think my dignity would allow me to sleep in a real bed, were one on offer,” Clara said, surprised to find herself blushing. Seeing herself through their eyes—sentimental, silly, unaware of the consequences of her own actions—made her feel almost as if she were the woman they thought she was. The woman she was pretending to be. The sense that Jorey was indulging her as a man might a small child or old woman left her cheeks warm.

  “And if I sent you back to Camnipol with a few men to see you made it there safely,” Jorey said. “Would you stay there this time?”

  “I could say I would,” Clara said. “If it would make you feel better.”

  “Tell me you would stay,” Jorey said.

  “I would stay,” Clara lied.

  Vicarian howled with laughter, slapping his thighs. “We’re not getting rid of her so easily. Let her be here, brother. She won’t come to harm. The goddess watches us and brings the world to our feet. She’s in less danger with our army around us than from the gossips back home.”

  “Fine,” Jorey said, lifting his palms. Dawson would have been enraged that she’d come. That she’d done something so utterly outside of her proper role. But he had been her husband, and Jorey was her son. And perhaps some part of Vicarian still was her son as well. It was a simpler thing, she thought, to tell a wife what she was allowed to be than to say the same to one’s mother. She had held Jorey as a babe, had comforted him when he wept the bitter boyhood tears that no one else could ever be permitted to see. She had thought those things only love when she’d done them. She saw now they had been an investment.

  She took his hand. I am sorry, she thought. I love you more than I will ever say, and I am using you. I will go on using you, as long as that is what I have to do to stop Palliako and his priests. And your… the thing that was your brother. I have become a huntsman, and I am so terribly, terribly sorry. Jorey put his hand over hers and smiled.

  “Is there any news from home I might have missed during my travels?” she asked. Further discoveries, perhaps, about who sent the false letter to Lord Ternigan?

  “You’ll have left before the
baby was born, then,” he said. “Sabiha’s named her Annalise. After you.”

  “Oh, no. Has she really?”

  “Yes,” Jorey said, “and there’s a tale in it. It turns out Geder saved us again…”

  Marcus

  The waters off Cabral were deep blue, gentle and wide. The three roundships carved their way under the sky with a dozen smaller craft moving in among them, a fleet that answered to no king. The chuffing of the sails and the mutterings of wind were a constant, and the rolling of the ship only nauseated Marcus for the first day. The fleet moved slowly. The wounded dragon took up most of the deck of one roundship, threatening to capsize it if they hit even somewhat choppy water, and the others all cut their sails to keep pace. Marcus stood by the rail, looking across the water at Inys’s unmoving head, the great bulk of his body, the torn and folded wings. It had taken a full day and night to pull the barbed spears out of the great beast’s scales, and Inys had cried and wept the whole time. Marcus thought it had been less the pain of the wounds than the humiliation of having been bested by slaves and the dragon’s growing despair and isolation.

  Marcus kept an eye on how the others—the humans—were dealing with the loss. In his experience, military victories were all more or less alike. The rush of joy was part relief that death had been postponed for another day, part the satisfaction of overcoming a force of humanity that wished him ill. And there was a note of sorrow like a black thread in a pale cloth, that came from focusing the whole mind on a single overwhelming question and then having it melt away like ice in the sun.

  Failure, on the other hand, came in varieties.

  The pirate fleet seemed the least affected. They were, in essence, a group of outlaws from the first. That Barriath Kalliam had managed to forge them into a functioning alliance—for a time at least—did nothing to unmake their pasts. The rhythm of attack and retreat was old news to them, and the fall of the city laid no particular weight on their hearts. The Porte Oliva they’d lost was a destination for the prey ships they’d hunted, and the future of the city under the Antean fist was much like its past so far as they saw it. Defeat was not entirely defeat when you could sail away from it, and the novelty of the dragon lifted them all nearly to cheerfulness.

  The survivors of the bank—Cithrin, Isadau, the handful of the guards—bore their injuries in silence, but Marcus suspected their cuts were deepest. In the days since their escape, Cithrin had kept to her cabin, claiming nausea. Isadau and Maha had spent their days watching Maha’s baby learn to crawl on the shifting deck, but their smiles had a deadness and their clear inner eyelids were closed more than open. For the refugees of Suddapal, Porte Oliva had been the place of safety, the sanctuary from the rolling storm that was Antean hatred. And Cithrin particularly had been certain that the city could not fall, the defenders could not fail. Her mistake had been written in blood and fire, and if Marcus hadn’t taken quiet but thorough measures, her life would have ended in the streets there or led her back to Camnipol in chains.

  The players fell somewhere between.

  “I met him in a little village outside Maccia,” Kit said, leaning against the rail. “He wasn’t even an actor. He was apprentice to an ironmonger. We were playing The Sand Maiden’s Regret, only without the Sho-Sho part because we weren’t a full company. He started answering back. Heckling. Opal was furious, but the way he delivered his barbs… he had a talent for it. Big Emmath was with us back then. You never met him. Before your time. Went after the show and beat Smit bloody for disrespect. When he came back in the morning, he must have been half bruises. He offered his apologies, and I hired him. He’s been with us from that day to… well, not to this. Not any longer.”

  “I liked him too,” Marcus said.

  Kit scratched his beard. His expression was dour, but not grief-struck. “I think we became too sure of ourselves. There is a temptation, I find, after you’ve learned enough plays and poems, to think the world follows the same patterns. I’ve found precious few tales where the heroes ride the winds on dragon’s wings and then die from falling off a pier.”

  “Comedies, maybe,” Marcus said, and immediately regretted the words.

  Kit chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t find it so comic when it’s true. I suppose that’s often the case.”

  “He might not be dead. People survive sacks. People survive being in boats that get swamped.”

  Kit turned to face him. The old actor’s eyes were red from the sun, and perhaps from weeping. There was more grey at his temples now than when they’d first met. “Do they survive being associates of Cithrin bel Sarcour in a city that Geder Palliako has taken, do you think?” he asked gently.

  “That’s less likely.”

  “I thought so as well. We’ve lost players before, Marcus. I’ve found that’s part of the richness of the world. And its sorrow. I think the magic of my trade is that a part can be played by many people. The wise man. The lover. The curious voice in the wild. Even the enemy. Part of our work has been to step into those roles, find who we are within them, play them, and then put them aside for another to pick up and remake. In my time with it, the company has changed and changed and changed again.”

  “You’re saying they’ll be all right with this? Cary and Mikel and the rest?”

  “I don’t know. They may, or they may not. What Smit was to each of us was different. I’m saying that tragedy is also something we are familiar with. Sudden loss or slow, deserved or the world’s caprice. We will ache and we will mourn and we will also play at the next stop with the parts rearranged. Mikel and Hornet will take Smit’s lines, and people will laugh and weep just as they did before. We’ll find someone new. The roles remain the same. Unless we change them.”

  “Suppose so,” Marcus said. A cry went up among the sailors, and the ship turned a degree, creaking. Gulls wheeled in the sky, their grey bodies too many to have traveled with the ship. The shore of Cabral was too far away to see from the deck, but it was close enough for the birds to find them.

  “What about you?” Kit asked. “Are you and Yardem well?”

  “I’ve got a lot of dead friends. Sorry Smit’s one, but…” He shrugged.

  “And Cithrin? How is she?”

  Marcus looked out into the water. He didn’t answer because he didn’t know.

  She emerged from her cabin on the fourth day. He didn’t know who’d told her about the make-do war council, but just as the midday bells rang, she rose from belowdecks, Cary at her side. He told himself that the thinness of her face and the paleness of her skin were normal. The dark flesh under her eyes, he couldn’t pretend away. She walked across the deck unsteadily, as if she hadn’t become accustomed to the motion of the waves in the time since they’d fled. Maybe she hadn’t. He could imagine her lying in her hammock, sleepless, for days. A thin ache bloomed in his breast. This was his fault. His and the fat lizard lying on the deck of the farthest roundship. If he’d let the dragon sleep…

  “Captain,” Cithrin said. Her voice was phlegmy.

  “Magistra,” he said, nodding his head.

  “I understand we’re deciding what to do from here.”

  “Seemed better than drifting.”

  “Thank you for arranging this.”

  “Always think it goes better when people talk,” he said.

  “No. All of this. Thank you for not letting me die in Porte Oliva. Or be sent back to him.”

  When that happens, it will be because I’m already dead, Marcus thought. All he said was “It’s the job.”

  Cary helped Cithrin to the swing, and they lowered her into the waiting ship’s boat. Yardem and Isadau were already there. Marcus went down last. They rowed to the flagship, such as it was, and went up one by one. Inys, it seemed, was not invited. Just as well.

  The captain’s table was a thick slab of oak with ironwork legs bolted to the deck. Stools had been set for them all. Barriath Kalliam was already at his, and two of his fleet commanders besides. One was an old Tralgu with ha
lf his left ear missing who went by Chisn Rake, the other a Timzinae woman called Shark. Lord Skestinin sat chained in a corner, his wrists and ankles in manacles of steel and leather.

  After they’d gone through the formality of welcome and taken seats, Marcus nodded at the captive. “Surprised to see the prisoner here. Not traditional to have the enemy present when you’re drawing up plans.”

  “We do it differently in Antea,” Barriath said, but his half-smile made the joke clear. “Truth is I’m not entirely certain he’s an enemy. We’ve had the chance to talk more since we left port.”

  “Still in chains, though,” Marcus said.

  “Not entirely sure he’s a friend either,” Barriath said.

  “Rude to speak as if I’m not present,” the older man said.

  Marcus scowled, then touched his forehead. “My apologies. Didn’t mean to be rude.” The captive nodded his acceptance. Marcus didn’t like it, but if Barriath thought it was the right thing, he wasn’t in a position to say otherwise. The two men had shipped together for years, and Marcus was trusting the pirate admiral with more than that already.

  “So,” Barriath said. “I’ve called this council for a reason. We’ve been moving slow. We’re only safe because we’re moving in force and we’ve got a dragon.”

  Cithrin made a painful, raw sound, part laughter, part cough. Barriath raised his hand like the master of a dueling ground awarding a point before he went on. “Two more days, and we’ll be at the cape. The ships are provisioned, but the smaller ones weren’t built for long journeys. We need to decide where we’re going. And what happens next.”

  The table went quiet. Yardem flicked his ear, his earring jingling. Shark coughed discreetly into her hand.

  “Seems to me,” Chisn Rake said, folding his arms, “that we’ve got two options. We can take on the army that’s already rolled through half the world, or we can stock up and head for Far Syramys. Maybe find a nice island in between where we can eat fish and fruit until we all die of sloth and indolence.”