“You look thoughtful,” Kit said.
“If I am, I don’t know which thoughts they are,” Cithrin said. “I can’t tell if I’m stuffed so full of them I can’t tell one from the other, or if I’m emptied of them.”
The old actor put a hand on her shoulder. His smile consoled her.
“When I was a child,” she said, “I had a nurse called Old Cam. She wasn’t really my nurse, but she took the role on as no one else was doing it. I remember once I was climbing a wall that I wasn’t supposed to. I was… eight years old at the time. Maybe nine. And I was afraid she’d catch me and punish me, and I hoped she would come and give me a reason not to go further.”
“Hoping for someone to rein us in?” Kit asked.
“Astounded that no one has,” she said.
“It’s been my experience that the world is often—”
“Cithrin!”
Aster’s voice cut through the warm air like a blast of winter. Had someone heard him? The prince sprinted out of the Kingspire, his eyes wide and his mouth a gape of horror. She found herself running toward him before she saw him. His chest worked like a bellows and he grabbed at her sleeve, shaking with distress.
“What is it?” she said, willing the boy to catch his breath and dreading what he’d say.
“Basrahip,” Aster said. “He knows.”
Clara
It had gone so well for so long, it was hard to believe how little it took to destroy it.
Clara had left Lehrer Palliako’s house after conferring with Cithrin bel Sarcour, knowing she’d stayed too late. She’d arrived at Lord Skestinin’s manor irrationally certain that by being tardy, she’d given the game away. Instead, laughter had greeted her at the doorway. The door slave nodded to her happily as she went in, and the footman led her to the largest of Lord Skestinin’s drawing rooms. The thing that had been her son sat on a divan dressed in priestly white. Sabiha and Lady Skestinin sat with him, and little Annalise cooed in his lap, reaching up toward his chin with thick, innocent fingers. The impulse to snatch the baby away was too much to resist, but she was able at least to make it seem like greed for the babe’s company more than fear.
“Mother!” the thing that had been Vicarian said, putting his arm around her. “Here I was afraid you’d taken off to fight in the war again.”
“Don’t be clever, dear,” she said, and kissed his cheek because it was something she would have done. “I’m certain Jorey has no need of me at the moment.”
“And he did before?” The mockery in his voice was gentle and warm and familiar. It was how he would have spoken before the spiders had taken him.
With her son, she could have laughed or lied or done whatever she pleased. With this one, every comment was an interrogation, every answer an evasion desperately trying not to seem evasive. “The need might possibly have been my own,” she said, matching the lightness of his tone. “I see you’ve met your niece.”
“Indeed I have,” Vicarian said. “She’s more charming than she has any right to be, given the hour.”
“She’s always stayed up late,” Sabiha said. “Ever since she was born.”
Clara put the child in her mother’s arms, took Vicarian by the wrists, and led him back to the couch and away from the baby. She imagined that his skin moved under her fingers. Tiny bodies crawling through the veins like living clots. Like a man already dead and worse than dead. She could picture too easily one of the little things slipping out of Vicarian’s mouth and stealing into the baby’s. She didn’t let go of him, even as her own flesh crawled. “Jorey was just the same,” she said. “He was always brightest when everyone else was half-dead from exhaustion. By everyone else, of course, I mean myself and his wet nurse. What was her name? Idrea, I think. Something like that. Lovely woman, though of course I haven’t needed a wet nurse for something near twenty years now, and even if I did, I can’t think she’s still in that line of work. One’s body cannot last forever, after all, and don’t look like that, dear. You’re in a house of women now.”
“I consider myself warned,” he said.
“But tell me everything,” she said. “What news from Porte Oliva?”
It wasn’t so hard from there, prodding him to speak about himself. Vicarian had always had a bit of the showman in him, and he enjoyed taking even so small a stage as this. The coffee in Birancour was better than in Camnipol. Porte Oliva was already starting to regrow after its difficult year. Trade ships from Lyoneia had begun negotiating fresh contracts. He’d had a report of Korl Essian, off on a treasure hunt for Geder Palliako and the throne, that made some fairly outlandish claims about tunnels passing under the depths of Lyoneia and a buried machinery deep underground that connected in some obscure fashion to dreams. He’d brought the report with him, ready to deliver to Lord Regent Palliako tomorrow.
Tomorrow. When Vicarian, who didn’t realize he’d been killed long ago, could finally be put to rest. Her throat ached and her eyes fought tears the whole night. Lady Kalliam left first, and then Sabiha and the child. When Clara rose to go, Vicarian rose with her and put his arm over her shoulder as they walked down the hallway together.
“Jorey’s a lucky man,” he said. “This Sabiha seems a genuinely good woman.”
“I’ve become quite fond of her,” Clara said. It was true. She could say it. Everything now she had to judge before it left her mouth. Was it true, did she believe it, would it give away more than she meant it to? Vicarian tipped his head to the side, resting it against her even as they walked, just the way he’d done before.
For a moment, she was taken by the transporting memory of a five-year-old Vicarian bringing her a sprig of lilac, his hands and feet caked in the garden mud. She’d knelt beside him, torn between amusement and annoyance. He’d pressed it in her hand with such solemnity and then touched his forehead to hers. It had been a gesture of such simple love from a boy to his mother. She’d thought then and for years after that it would be among her most treasured memories. Now it hurt.
“Good night, Mother,” he said, stepping away. “Will I see you in the morning?”
“I was hoping to walk to the Kingspire with you,” she said. “I have some business there.” True. All true.
“I would be honored, my Lady Kalliam,” he said with a flourish and a bow. Then, in a more prosaic voice, “We really do have to do something about getting Jorey the family title back. He’s earned it, that’s clear enough. And it feels odd not being able to call you baroness. Lady’s too general. Could mean anyone.”
“It would be dowager baroness now,” Clara pointed out. You were such a good boy. Such a good man. I am so sorry that I’ve lost you.
“Near enough,” the thing that had been her son said. “Good night, Mother.”
She could not say good night in return. It wasn’t a good night. It was a terrible one. Instead, she made herself ignore the things lurking under his skin and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
Vincen waited in her apartments, sitting by the window as faithful as a dog. As a husband. They didn’t speak, he only held her as she wept, muffling her sobs with his shoulder and the enfolding comfort of his arms.
As they rode through the city streets together in a small and open carriage, Clara’s gaze kept drifting to the Kingspire. The bloody banner of the goddess hung almost motionless and dark, heavy still with dew. This is the last day I will see it there, she thought. Tomorrow, it will be gone or I will. The fear and excitement and grief and rage all fused together in her body. Like metal in a forge, she became an alloy of herself, stronger than anything pure could be. Or so, at least, she hoped. Vincen rode behind, but not too close.