“Sir?” Yardem said, his voice humming with concern. Marcus lifted his hand, waited until the world stopped spinning.
“I’m all right. That was a good counter. Nice work.” He hauled himself to his feet. The fighting pit was ten yards across, and a little longer. The walls curved, but not into a circle the way they made them in the south. It still had corners. The poisoned sword leaned in one of them beside Marcus’s overcoat and Yardem’s less exotic blade. In the summer people would stand at the lip, or sit and dangle their legs. The cold made it a less enticing spectacle. Marcus didn’t care either way. Let them look, let them stay indoors by their fires. It didn’t change what he had to do.
“Let’s go again,” Marcus said, taking a grip on the hilt of the wooden practice sword. “I’m good for it.”
Yardem huffed out a white, frozen breath and raised his own false blade, but not fully to the ready. “Might want to discuss that, sir.”
“You knocked me on the cob,” Marcus said. “Not the first time it’s happened. Come on. Take position.”
“Comes a point where more training doesn’t gain you anything, sir.”
“You think we’re there?” Marcus said through a tooth-baring grin.
“Were an hour ago. Didn’t mention it.”
Marcus let his shoulders sag. Truth was, he didn’t feel well. Hadn’t in a while. He sank to his haunches, leaning on the practice sword. He was breathing harder than he should have been. His back ached, and not with the vigorous burn of worked muscle. More like the sharp complaining of loose joints. He coughed and spat. The brick walls rose up on all sides, the looming wall of the gymnasium to the east, and the white winter sky above that. He wondered where the habit had begun of sinking practice pits into the ground. It wasn’t done for formal dueling. He pictured vast perches at the edges, and dragons looking down at them, slaves fighting each other for the masters’ pleasure. It seemed a little too plausible.
“It’s not the sword,” he said.
“Didn’t say it was, sir.”
“No, but you thought it mighty loud. So don’t crawl up my back again about how I should leave it be more.”
“Or let someone else take a turn carrying it,” Yardem said.
“You think it’s rotting me from the inside out, and you’d pass it to someone else? That seems cruel of you.”
“Fit across my back,” Yardem said. “Give you some time to find your strength.”
“I know where my strength went,” Marcus said, pulling himself up. His scalp felt cold where the sword had taken it. Oozing blood, most likely. “It’s not the sword. It’s age.”
“It’s both, sir.”
“Well don’t paint it gold for me,” Marcus chuckled. “Tell me how you really see it.”
“You’re past the age when most men in our profession have stopped,” the Tralgu said, his ears flat against his head. “Taken long-term duties running a guard company or opened a training camp or died. Instead, you’ve trekked across the world two times over, half died in the interior of Lyoneia, been hauled up mountaintops by a dragon, and strapped this blade across your back. You act as if you could go on forever, and your body’s starting to show you it isn’t truth.”
“I was joking, Yardem. You can go ahead and paint it gold a little.”
His second-in-command looked down and flicked an ear. “All right. You’ve got a mostly full head of hair, and that one girl at the inn still thinks you’re handsome.”
“Fuck you,” Marcus laughed, walking across the brickwork to their things. His legs actually seemed to creak. Yardem was right about one thing, at least. There was such a thing as overtraining. They bundled the wooden swords together with a leather strap, and Yardem tossed them across his shoulder like a day soldier carrying a pack. Marcus pulled on his overcoat, and then the dark-green scabbard and hilt of the culling blade. As they walked toward the ladder, a figure appeared at the edge of the pit. The sole observer of their showfighter’s practice.
If the last few years had worn Marcus down, they’d grown Cithrin up. She’d never have the shard-of-milk-ice paleness of her mother’s race, but she carried something of the Cinnae calm. She no longer showed the awkward girlishness that Master Kit and Cary had tried to train out of her back in ancient days. Back when they’d been smugglers running from an Antean army not yet fueled by the spite of dragons. She was a woman now. A young one, but experienced beyond her age.
She’s not your daughter, Marcus thought. And yet, standing before her as Yardem climbed the ladder behind him, he felt the same mixture of pride and melancholy he imagined a Merian grown to womanhood might have called forth.
“I need you,” she said.
“And here I am,” Marcus said. “What’s the problem?”
“I have a plan, or part of one, but it means the two of you talking.”
Yardem grunted his way over the lip of the pit and leaned against the wooden railing. Marcus glanced at him.
“We’re here,” Marcus said, settling the blade more firmly on his shoulder. “What is it we need to talk about?”
“Not you and Yardem,” Cithrin said. “You and him.”
“Well, God smiled,” Marcus said sourly.
Inys stood on his perch, staring out over a slate-grey sea. The vast head turned as the three of them came close. The intelligence in the huge eyes was unmistakable, as was the weariness. Marcus hadn’t spent much time around the dragon since they’d come to Carse. There had been no end of people to serve Inys—bring him food, clean away his dung, sing and caper for him. Marcus understood it. Even felt some of the same urges to cater to the master of the fallen world. Almost all of humanity’s races had been built to serve the dragons and to read the feelings in their faces like sheepdogs watching the shepherd. For thousands of years, no one had suffered that burden, and now, with Inys suddenly among them, no one had any practice resisting it.
Marcus had the feeling someone should, and he was fine with its being him. Part of the job. He had the sense that Inys knew it too. That, perhaps, it was why the dragon had a fondness for him.
“Stormcrow,” Inys said, the words low and deep, “you return at last.”
“So it seems,” Marcus said. “You’re looking ragged.”
When Marcus had woken him, Inys had been sluggish from ages of stonelike sleep, but he’d been unscarred. The dark, shining scales had been dulled by dust, but perfect, row on unending row. Porte Oliva had changed that. Long streaks along the dragon’s side were roughened by scar. The huge wings had holes in them where Antea’s great spears had pierced them and pulled the dragon down. Weapons designed to slaughter dragons, and invented, it seemed, after Inys began his long hibernation. That they existed at all meant someone out there had shared Marcus’s opinion of the masters of the world and the dignity of being their slaves.
Cithrin stepped between them, taking the moment for her own. It was a good skill to have, in her position.
“We’ve had more reports from the east. Birds now. Not just cunning men.”
“That’s good,” Marcus said. “Half of what the cunning men make out winds up being dreams anyway. I’d rather we had an actual courier, though.”
“I’m working on that,” Cithrin said.
“What will it matter?” Inys said, his gaze turning back to the sea. “The world is empty anyway.”
Cithrin ignored the comment. “For now all we know for certain is that Kiaria is no longer under siege, and the forces that were meant to hold Elassae are hunkered down in northern Birancour.”
“Hunting you,” Marcus said.
“Hunting me,” Cithrin agreed. “Geder was so fixated on that, he left himself open, and the Timzinae are taking advantage of the fact. There was fighting in Suddapal and along the coast. We don’t know how bad it was, but… people there have more reason to be angry than merciful.”