And there’s no one to stop him. He’s drawing from the biggest coffer outside of Far Syramys. “And when things go wrong, a bad loan denies it. Everything is someone else’s fault. Antea is already looking for who to blame when the starving starts. I’ve heard it in the taprooms. And it won’t be Geder.”
Cithrin sat back. She found she was out of breath. That was interesting.
“Komme?” the king said.
“It’s a valid perspective,” Komme Medean said. “But I’m not sure what we’d do with it.”
A soft knock interrupted them, and a servant came in bearing silver cups of cold water. No one spoke until he left.
“Magistra,” the king said. “If I were to agree to your reading of the text, what would you recommend?”
Cithrin considered. War wasn’t something she knew about. It wasn’t something she studied. And yet her opinion was asked, and after the line about lying down with Geder, it seemed late to be demure.
“I would recommend gathering forces together now. Don’t act against him, but make your predictions about where he’ll go and share them discreetly with allies. If the predictions start to come true, you’ll seem like the one who knew what trades to make before the ships arrived, and everyone will want to know what you knew.”
“I have friends in Sarakal,” Komme said. “Not business, but friends and with connections. I could send letters discussing things. At least we could see what people are saying near that border.”
“We could make closer relations with Antea,” the king suggested. “Your delegation was informal. If I put together a party. If I went myself.”
“Don’t do that,” Cithrin said. “If he feels betrayed, he’ll bite you harder than if you were an enemy from the start.”
“No offense,” the king said. “That might put you in an uncomfortable position.”
“That occurred to me,” Cithrin said.
Around the table, they were all silent. The air of confidence and reassurance was gone as if it had never been. Cithrin drank her cup of water, enjoying the cool of it, and the faint taste of lemon.
“Is there anything that can be done?” the king asked.
“Watch. Wait. Hope he overreaches himself early on and badly,” Cithrin said. “The best you can say about Geder is he’s the sort of man who makes good enemies.”
Clara
Over the days that followed, Clara was slowly convinced that in a way—in many ways—she’d died with Dawson on that terrible floor in front of all their friends and relations. She couldn’t watch the violence, but she’d heard it. The sounds of it might have been worse than the actual seeing. But perhaps not. Everything that happened afterward made more sense to her if she thought of herself as dead when it happened. Walking from the Kingspire, widow of only a few minutes with no one she knew speaking to her. None of the women she’d known all her life to say a kind word. The only one who had touched her, offered comfort, had been the thin, pale merchant girl whose name she’d forgotten as soon as it had been said.
She’d been in a daze, lost even to her own mind. Doing the things that her body felt needed to be done. Visiting old friends and enemies. Well, that was what a ghost did, wasn’t it? It made perfect sense, seen in that light.
The pain that came after Vincen Coe’s reappearance wasn’t the pangs of death, then. Those were done. These were the pains of being reborn, and much like the first time, they were terrible. She woke in the middle of the night weeping until she couldn’t breathe. If she called out for him, Vincen would come and sit at the foot of her bed, but she tried not to call. There was nothing for him to do there except lose sleep. And eventually the seizure faded and she slept her normal sleep.
She found herself expecting to see Dawson. Especially, she found herself trying to think how she would explain being there in her night clothes with the family huntsman sitting beside her in nothing but his hose. And then she would correct herself. She would never explain herself to Dawson because he was dead. And then she’d weep for a bit and move on with her day. It wasn’t strength that kept her going on; it was a lack of options.
“You going out again today, ma’am,” the house woman said. Her name was Abatha Coe as it turned out. One of apparently several dozen cousins that the Coe clan had spread throughout Antea. Before Abatha, Clara hadn’t really considered whether Vincen had a family. He was a servant, and apparently she’d thought that servants sprang out of the walls when you wanted one and left again when they got pregnant. Looking back, she hoped she hadn’t been too much the noble lady.
“Yes, I am.”
“Back for lunch?”
“I doubt it. I’ll be walking nearly to the Kingspire, and I don’t think I can manage that without something fortifying while I’m there.”
“Apples just come in,” Abatha said. “Go all right with cheese.”
It had taken Clara three days to realize that this was not only an offer, but the only offer that Abatha was likely to make. This time, she didn’t say That sounds lovely or Really don’t bother about me. If she had, the conversation would simply have ended, and her without apples or cheese.
“Thank you,” she said. It was safe because it didn’t require a response and it was good for her because her ghost-self still thought she should be polite.
She wore a grey mourning dress and her hair wrapped in a cloth, and she walked with the air of a woman who knew where she was going. Down the narrow, shit-stinking street to the broader but still nameless way that would eventually give way near the Prisoner’s Span. In all the years she’d lived in Camnipol, she’d almost never crossed the Prisoner’s Span, and she didn’t care for it much now. The groaning and wailing from the cages hanging beneath it upset her, and once she was upset it could be difficult to stop. She’d been weak and wailing on a bridge once already. It was quite enough.
But it was the quickest path, and now that there were no carriages or litters or palanquins, the number of steps began to matter.
Vincen was about today too. Looking for work, he said. She felt oddly guilty about that. She was supposed to provide for him, not the other way around. He was her servant, only of course he wasn’t. And she couldn’t very well ask Jorey to give her money for his support. It would have felt too much like having her son support her lover, which was ridiculous because Coe had kissed her exactly once, and that was a lifetime ago. But even she had to admit that between his constant, gentle, dog-loyal presence, her own painful, slow remaking of herself, and the fact that he was an undeniably beautiful man, it was growing somewhat less ridiculous.
She reached the far side of the Prisoner’s Span and looked back. It was much shorter looking at than actually crossing. She took one of the apples. It was red and ripe and she knew that she shouldn’t eat it now, because she’d only be hungry on her way back and not have it. The first bite was tart and sweet and lovely. The second was too.
Her first stop was a baker’s that made its trade at the point where another dozen steps would have made it too unfashionable to go to. It was literally the last place one of her old friends would look for her. Ogene Faskellan was a distant sort of cousin at best, but she was hopeless when it came to knitting and Clara had always been sure to change the activity when she was with the party so that she never had to. Small kindnesses, it turned out, paid large returns.
“Clara, you look wonderful,” Ogene said, rising from the little table. “Please, let me get you something. A little to eat.”
“No,” Clara said. “You’re doing far too much for me already. I don’t want to feel any more a charity than I am.”
“A bite of this?” Ogene asked, holding up a plate with soft white pastry and a red cream that smelled of strawberries.