It wasn’t—couldn’t be—that he was oppressed because the morning would begin a long, cold journey along the jade road. Or that he already dreaded the work that would be waiting in Camnipol for him. Or that he still loved Cithrin, and hated her. Missed her, and who she could have been to him. That he was disappointed by how the death of the apostate and the moment of greatest victory had seemed to change so little.
Applause and cheering rose up at the end of Basrahip’s speech, and Geder stood to acknowledge it as his due. Once, long before, he’d told Basrahip that he wanted his enemies to suffer. It had been true at the time. The adulation of the court washed over him, warming him, cleaning him, forgiving him his failures or else denying they existed.
If that wasn’t enough, it was close. It would have to suffice. He drank in not love but renown like a man dying of thirst and pretended to be slaked.
Clara
Buildings, she thought, echoed each other. Though they might have been in different cities, every palace she’d been in had had the feel of a palace. The rooms, the decors, even the scents of the places might be as different as apples and walnuts, but they served the same functions, and so perhaps it was natural that they took on an ineffable sense of being the same. Marketplaces all seemed to have the same resemblance among themselves as siblings of a large family. Even the cunning man tents in the field had some resemblance to the sickrooms of great manor houses.
And the same was true, it now appeared, of gaols. The one she’d seen most recently had been a prison of the innocent: Timzinae children parted from their parents and brought to Camnipol as assurance of the good behavior of the newly enslaved race. The one she sat in now held the guests of King Tracian of Northcoast. And still they were meant to divide space, to confine, to represent the power that one person held and another did not. They were even meant, as unalike as they were, to represent justice, though if justice had so many different faces, she wasn’t at all certain she knew what the word meant any longer, and good God, but her mind was running away with itself.
Clara adjusted her sleeve for what must have been the fiftieth time. Cold radiated from the stone of the wall, and the weak winter light that came from the high, thin window did little to push back the shadows. Her throat felt tight, as though she might be coming down with something, and wouldn’t that be unpleasant. She’d heard cunning men say that unchecked emotion could bring on illness, but she couldn’t help thinking of all the times she’d felt swept away by strong feeling and hadn’t gotten so much as a sniffle, so perhaps that was only a story they told to explain away what they had no better answer for.
But why, after all she’d been through, all she’d done, should she feel so unmoored now? She had faced down soldiers drunk with bloodlust with no more than her voice and a raised eyebrow. She’d sentenced men to death and stood to watch her sentence carried out. What was this meeting—with an unarmed man who hadn’t enough power now to walk outside when he wished—that it should make her blood cold? The complications of her allegiance to her nation were well enough known by now. Jorey knew. Barriath. Vincen Coe had known almost before she had. Hers was a secret well-practiced in the telling, only…
Only never before to someone who would feel it as a betrayal. The thought settled on her heart, calming it, though not in a comforting way. At least she knew now what fear was driving her. Knowing made it easier to bear.
“Lady?” the gaoler said. He was a thick man. Firstblood, but as wide across the shoulder and belly as a Yemmu. She wondered—a passing fancy—if the races echoed one another the same way buildings did. If a gaoler in Borja might seem the fellow of this man, though he was Tralgu or Jasuru or Dartinae. Clara took a deep breath, rose, and banished all other concerns.
“Yes, I’m ready,” she said, and the gaoler turned. She followed.
The walls were too cold to be damp. Frost rimed them, and the gaoler’s torch smoked. He looked back at her when she coughed, his expression an apology. She lifted her chin and moved on. Their footsteps sounded lonely on the bare stone, as if they were looking for some companionship besides the walls. It was a silly thought, but that she’d had it meant something. The door, when they reached it, was black oak bound in iron. There was no rust, and she found herself perversely grateful for that. It would have been worse, somehow, if the cell had been poorly kept.
“I can come in with you if you like,” the gaoler said. “Keep him in line.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“You sure about that, lady?”
Was she? It didn’t matter. The answer had to be the same. “I’ll call if there’s need.”
The gaoler shrugged, undid the lock, and slid back the bar. Even with her assurances, he pulled the door open carefully, his torch at the ready like a cudgel. Within, the cell was small and close, with a window no more than a finger’s width just by the ceiling. But a crystal lantern hung from a hook, and there was room enough for a tiny desk beside the cot. If there was a lingering scent of the chamber pot, it was no worse than she’d suffered in far nicer rooms, and a small brazier left the air warmer than the hall. Lord Skestinin himself rose when she entered, his snowy eyebrows beetled, but his eyes bright and alert. He wore a prison gown rather than the uniform of a lord of the Antean court, but he wore it well.
“Lady Kalliam?” he breathed, as if uncertain of his senses.
“Clara,” she said. “If you’ll permit my calling you Anton. We are family by blood now, after all.”
“Sabiha?”
“I understand the birth was touch-and-go, but from all I’ve heard she and the baby are quite well now. They’ve named her Annalise, after me. I hope that’s all right.”
Lord Skestinin grinned. His teeth were yellow as ivory, and crooked. She wondered now whether she’d ever seen him grin before. “Whyever would it not be?”
“That’s a longer conversation,” she said, and turned back to the still-open door. “I’ll call.”
The door closed, though the bar did not scrape back into its place. Poised for a swift return, she supposed. Well, it would be embarrassing to have a visitor assaulted on one’s watch. She couldn’t blame the man for being anxious on her behalf. She arranged herself at the foot of the cot. Lord Skestinin lowered himself to the thin desk, seeming almost to deflate. Clara cast a weary eye on the walls, the cot.
“It’s not so bad,” Skestinin said. “I’ve shipped in smaller cabins than this. Miss having a deck to walk at will, though. And the sea. I seem to have fashioned myself into the sort of man who needs the sea about him. What news of the war?”
Clara shook her head. It wasn’t a question she knew how to answer. The war was going well, or poorly, or dancing on chaos’s edge. How was she to tell the difference? Or report it? Facts, she supposed. Simplicities. “Jorey took Porte Oliva. I suppose you know that, seeing as you aren’t there any longer.”
“May he burn the place flat,” Skestinin said with a rueful laugh. “It was not the site of my greatest triumph. And my men? The navy?”
“The ones who were still imprisoned in the south are freed. I don’t know how the ships stand. Winter, you know.”
“Winter business,” Skestinin said with a bitterness she recognized.
“Winter business,” she said, letting the words roll in her mouth.
“If it isn’t too indelicate to ask,” Lord Skestinin said, “how were you captured?”