Her players—Cary and Sandr and Mikel, Charlit Soon and Lak—were gone. As gone as Kit. As gone as Smit. As gone as Pyk Usterhall and Opal. They’d left without saying goodbye to her, leaving only a note saying that Camnipol was too rich in sorrow for them anymore. That their tour had begun in tragedy, and that they would follow it until there was a comedy again. Or a romance. Or an adventure that they could bring themselves to smile at. Cithrin didn’t blame them, but she felt their absence like a wound on some part of her that she could touch.
And so when Wester had said he was leaving as well, it had been doubly hard.
He’d brought his bad news in the afternoon. The high Antean summer was announcing its end with bright mornings and hard rains. Cithrin, on her way back from an informal gathering with Clara Kalliam and a nobleman named Curtin Issandrian, had paused in a baker’s shop while the clouds dropped a small river onto the city. The roar of the water would have been frightening if the men and women of the city hadn’t shrugged it off quite so calmly. Along with the lemon tea and the plate of flaky butter bread, Cithrin took comfort in the way the baker and her son treated the downpour as an inconvenience. She sat at the front, suffering a little mist for the pleasure of watching the streets flow like little streams, the filth and wreckage that came from humanity simply going through its day being washed away. Marcus, sitting across from her, had cleared his throat in a way that meant something.
“I’ve sent for Enen,” he said. “She’s a solid lead, been with us since Porte Oliva. She’s bringing a full company of guard with her. As long as you’re here, you’ll want watching, and I don’t recommend hiring local talent. Too many people in this city have been asleep for too long. Can’t trust they’ll all wake up just because it’s morning.”
“You think we need more guards?” she’d said, but there had been a tightness in her chest even then.
“Different’s more the issue,” he said. “There’s some things Yardem and I need to take care of.”
As the baker had made little of the rain, Marcus said the words like they only meant going off to visit an aunt or having a contract signed. She surrendered to understanding, and must have reacted, because Marcus took her hand.
“Inys?” she said.
“Among others,” Marcus said. “Just some things that want attention.”
A hundred questions had swirled through her, each clamoring to be the one that passed her lips first: How can you track a dragon? Do you think the danger from him’s real? What if Camnipol rises again in revenge for Geder and the Kingspire and the end of the war? What if Elassae changes its mind and marches back in force? Her world was a labyrinth of uncertainties, contingencies and barely restrained chaos. Which, in fairness, it had always been.
“Will you be coming back?” she asked. She cared about all the information, but this was the only question that seemed critical.
Marcus’s smile was as much an answer as his words. “Hope to, but you know how the world is.”
“I do,” she said. He’d nodded, and that was the last they’d spoken. When they got back to the inn, Yardem had horses ready for the two of them. The Tralgu had folded her in a vast, warm embrace, his chin resting on top of her head while she wept a little, and then they were gone.
She’d spent the evening on the roof of the inn, sitting on a stool and watching the carts hauling debris away from the royal quarter in the north to drop into the Division. The sun, setting behind her, had lit the high, ornate clouds in gold and orange. And then grey. She’d drunk a full bottle of wine by herself on that roof and had come back down steady as a stone.
And so she was a little drunk and a little maudlin three days later when, without warning, Magistra Isadau arrived.
Cithrin caught sight of her from the balcony as Isadau and her guards walked toward the inn from the public stables. She wore a dress the color of gold with a lacework shawl blacker than her scales, but no armor that Cithrin could see. Her guards were Firstblood men and Yemmu women, all in mail, with swords and axes at their sides, and the glowering expressions of people who’d taken up that kind of work because they enjoyed hurting people. Even in the relative darkness of the summer twilight, a crowd lingered at the margin of the group. A Timzinae woman walking in Camnipol. A sign that, welcome or not, change had come. The mix of pride and joy and apprehension was not made simpler by the dead bottles of wine at Cithrin’s feet.
The urge to wave and call and maybe crawl out the window and slide down the tiled roof to where she could lower herself down to the courtyard fought with the sense that she should behave as if she were already the voice of the Medean bank in Camnipol. Which meant clearing away the bottles and skins and chewing a handful of mint fairly quickly. She wiped away the tears she’d been crying, threw the evidence of her dissolution into a sack under her bed, and washed her hands and feet before the scratch came at the door.
“Yes?” Cithrin said, her heart racing.
“It’s a Magistra Isadau,” the guard’s voice said.
And then Isadau’s. “I’ve come to speak with you about… about the peace, I suppose.”
Cithrin opened the door. The older woman stood there like a vision from a dream. Her smile was calm and amused, her hands folded before her. Only the flickering of the nictitating membranes in her eyes, opening and closing without ever blocking her gaze, gave any sign of the strength of Isadau’s emotions. For a moment, Cithrin was frozen, filled with the powerful and irrational fear that anger was shaking the Timzinae woman. That by saving Camnipol from the armies of Elassae, Cithrin had lost her respect.
And then Isadau stepped into the room and opened her arms. Cithrin fell into her the way she imagined a sister might. Isadau smelled of earthy perfume and sweat and the open air.
“I’ve missed you,” Isadau said.
“You too,” Cithrin said.
Cithrin led her to the little table and sat with her, their two hands touching like a priest offering comfort to a mourner.
“How are things in Suddapal?” Cithrin asked.
Isadau’s laugh was low and rueful. “Complicated. Very complicated. But improving. After Kiaria, the fighting all through Elassae was vicious. It was only the Anteans at first, but after they’d been driven back, there was more. The occupation undid some of things that kept the five cities playing nicely with each other. In the last year, I’ve been brokering armistice agreements between the oligarchs as much as helping with the war against Antea.”
“Ah,” Cithrin said, and her mind caught at the fact. Found a toehold. “Is that why they had Dannien leading the army and not a Timzinae?”
“Yes,” Isadau said. “The mercenary was the compromise everyone hated least. And he was good, which was a blessing. He sent word of his victory along with the children. The ones who survived.”
“I’m so sorry,” Cithrin said. “How bad was it?”
Isadau’s smile was wistful. “Jurin lost one of his sons in the fighting. Kani is fine, though our mother is gone. She left the world last winter. It wasn’t violent, but I think it was the war. Seeing her world tear itself apart was an injury, if not a physical one. War always has more casualties than we see. All the things that we might have done instead are lost as well.”
“Could have made a glorious world with what we spent on this one. Or at least a few decent roads,” Cithrin said. She felt as though she were speaking in Wester’s voice, and the pang of loss came again. “Wait. Salan? Is he…?”
“Wounded in the battle that broke the Antean army. It went septic, but it didn’t carry him off. He still has fevers sometimes, and the cunning man says he will have for the rest of his life.”