The little drawing room by the garden became a war room. Or no, not that. Something like it, but dedicated to something different. As desperate, as dangerous, as likely to end in sudden death, but different. She had to believe that.
“We’ll need to have the letters out to the farms as soon as the couriers won’t get cut down by the Timzinae,” Cithrin said.
“We could send them to the south,” Clara suggested.
“They won’t leave the south road open. The main body of the army will swing to the west, but they can’t have a siege with an open route to the south.”
“No,” Clara said. “No, of course not.”
The siege of Camnipol that would mean the end of the Antean Empire. The death of Clara’s friends and family, the sacking of her city. It was the war they were trying to stop, it and all the wars after it. Or as many of them as Cithrin could.
“The gaol will be the first thing,” Cithrin said. “And after that…”
“I have… friends ready,” Clara said. “I’ve sent word. When we go out the gates, we’ll be well accompanied. There’s a baker I used to frequent near the Prisoner’s Span? I have him devoting himself to raisin cakes and lemon bread. And there’s a footman who used to serve at my house. Back when I had a house. He’s gathering up toys. Dolls, you know. Little things for the children.”
Cithrin took Clara’s hand, and the older woman’s head bent forward. Wet tracks slid through the powder on her cheeks, and Cithrin felt tears of her own coming up in answer. She didn’t know what they were for. She thought Isadau would have understood.
“I feel as if I’ve been playing at making peace my whole life. Only playing. Now I look at all my nation has done,” Clara said, “and I think we’re going to defend ourselves with children’s baubles and ribbon. A knife will cut through that so quickly, and so deep.”
“It’s how peace gets made,” Cithrin said. “At least I hope it is.”
“It is when it is,” Clara said, “but I wonder whether we deserve mercy.”
“It isn’t mercy if you deserve it. Mercy justified is only justice.”
Clara laughed once and mirthlessly. “That has all the virtue of being true and none of the comfort.”
“It wasn’t mine. Someone told me it once. I don’t remember who.”
“Someone with more mind than heart,” Clara said, and looked at the candle on the little table by the wall. It had already burned a third of its length. “I should go back now. It would be strange if I weren’t at Lord Skestinin’s home.” Her voice carried a burden of dread, and she wiped at the tears angrily.
“Is there something happening there?” Cithrin asked.
“Yes, dear. My son the priest has come home from Birancour. Vicarian is no doubt waiting for me.”
And you will let him go to his death, Cithrin thought. The two women were silent for a long time before Clara rose, placed her hand briefly on Cithrin’s head as if passing her a blessing, and left. Cithrin sat alone after that, listening to the patter of moths against the screens and the voices of Sandr and Lak, Charlit Soon and Cary, Marcus Wester and Yardem Hane and Lehrer Palliako. Her chest hurt, just between her breasts and up a little, and she tried to remember if she’d been hit there. It felt like a bruise, but she came to the conclusion it was only sorrow and nothing to be done about that.
She was in her room near midnight, a third bottle of wine on its way to ignominious death by her hand, when the soft knock came at the door. She rose, sat, and rose again more carefully. The little twinge of shame she felt at being drunk was easy enough to push away. Without the wine, she’d have been sick hours ago. She opened the door, her chin already lifted in defiance. Marcus Wester stood alone in the corridor, not even Yardem at his side.
He looked old. Still strong, but old. His hair had gone whiter since the first time she’d seen him on the caravan from Vanai. His skin had a transparency despite a lifetime of being roughened by the sun. His eyes were the same, though, and the way he held himself.
He nodded to her. “You sent for me?”
“Hours ago,” she said. “I assumed you’d chosen not to come.”
“Lost track of time. Night before an action, I’m always worried.”
She held the bottle out to him. “So am I.”
He hesitated, but only for a moment. He sat on the little stool beside the washbasin and she sat on the bed. He was a handsome man, well bruised by the world. He wore his scars and weariness gracefully. She wondered whether, when she was as old, she would do the same. He wiped the mouth of the bottle with his sleeve and drank. Smacking his lips, he passed it back to her.
“Not bad,” he said.
“I didn’t see call to save anything for a better occasion.”
“Well, there’ll be a better one along shortly or else not at all,” he said.
“Call this a hedge, then. If we lose, at least I won’t have spared the good wine.”
“Thanks for sharing it.”
“And,” she said, and then faltered. She looked at her feet. The room wasn’t spinning. She wished that it were. If her mind had lost a little more of its clarity, this might have been easier. “Thank you. For being who you’ve been to me.”
“Not sure what you—”
“Don’t. Not now. Not tonight.”
It was the mercenary captain’s turn to look away. “Right. Night before the battle. Sorry.”
“I met you when I was a child who thought walking outside the city walls was like jumping off a cliff. I have taken terrible risks with myself and the people around me, and I’ve won more than I lost. And you have done everything you could to keep me safe. We don’t talk about it. We don’t say it. But it’s true, and I want you to know that I appreciate it. All of it.”
“It’s the… Hell. Yeah. All right.” Marcus took a deep breath and held his hand out for the bottle. This time when he took it, he nearly drained it. “You’re near the age my daughter would have been. A little younger now than my wife was when I met her. You’re not them, but you fit in that part of my head for a time.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be them.”
“No, not that. Be sorry for something else if you have to, but not for that. I did what I did because I thought it wanted doing. That’s all. And I knew you weren’t my daughter. Yardem kept pointing it out, for one thing. It’s been… it’s been the longest, strangest job I ever took. I always thought of bankers as being dull.”
She laughed. “We want you to think that.”
His sheepish grin made him look younger. She could see who he’d been as a boy. “Picked up that part. Took me long enough, but I see it. You… you didn’t know your parents, yeah?”
“I remember remembering them, but nothing more than that.”
“For all this? They’d be proud of you, scared as hell, I expect, but proud.”
“They don’t care,” Cithrin said, taking back the bottle. “They haven’t cared in decades. They’re dead.”
She drank the wine to the dregs. There had been a bitterness in her words that surprised her. If someone else had said it, she’d have said they sounded hurt, but she didn’t feel it. To her surprise, Marcus laughed. “You’re one ahead of me, then. Fine. I’m proud of you, then. Proud to know you, proud to work for you. Proud of all you’ve done, though God knows I don’t understand half of it.”
“If we die tomorrow…”
“Then we do,” Marcus said with a shrug. “If it’s all the same, I’d prefer to go first. Bad for my reputation if you die before me, and it’s hard enough to get jobs when you won’t work for kings.”
“I’ll try to survive, then.”
“Do that,” Marcus said. He looked up at her from under lowered brows. “What are the chances I’ll be able to keep you from coming to the Kingspire?”
“Poor,” Cithrin said.
“I’ll be there to call Inys. Yardem’s going to run sheepdog on Palliako. Chances are decent that the dragon’ll follow up killing the priests by turning everyone else there to slag. Not sure how having you present’s going to improve things.”