It was such exceptionally good news that Clara couldn’t understand why it landed on her heart with such weight. Her family restored. Her status regained. Her sons in places of honor and respect in the court. Her remaining sons. Her sons besides Vicarian.
You’ll become a joke in the court.… Can you imagine what that little girl’s life will be like if the name she took from you comes to carry the reputation for fucking the servants?
“Ah,” she said, the implications of Barriath’s news unfolding in her mind like a poisonous bloom.
Barriath’s brows knit, but only a little. “Ah?”
“Remembered something,” Clara said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Nothing you need be concerned about.”
He rose and kissed her head, a gesture more informal than the gathering, but almost certainly it would be overlooked. “It’s a bad day for our enemies,” Barriath said.
“It is,” she said. For our enemies, and for others.
The sorrow and regret and deathly dread lay in her breast like a dead thing. Vicarian had been spider-ridden, but he hadn’t been wrong. Her dignity wasn’t only hers any longer. And Vincen…
She found quite suddenly that the company of the court was more than she could suffer. It wasn’t the others. They walked and ate and gossiped and fought just as they always had. It was only that she couldn’t do it. Not now.
Beside the garden, a thin artificial creek ran along its sculpted bed. Clara walked its murmuring length, pretending to admire the stonework and the statuary. She took out her pipe and filled it with leaf, struck it alight. The smoke tasted good. Familiar, at least. She would always have tobacco among her little pleasures.
The stream ended in a narrow grotto with benches around a rough stone god of some sort with several arms and two faces on his head. She didn’t know what it was meant to represent or who might have worshipped so odd and awkward a figure. She’d meant to sit alone for a time and gather herself there, but when she reached it, the benches were not empty.
Lehrer Palliako sat hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees. The white-salt tracks of dried tears striped his cheeks, but his eyes were dry now. Dry and fixed and empty. Clara thought of retreat, stepping back unnoticed to give the man room for his grief. Before she could, he spoke.
“He was a good boy,” Lehrer said. “They don’t say it now, but he was a good boy. Smart. The books I have that he translated? There are some that don’t exist anywhere else in the world except for him. I never told him how proud I was.”
Clara came forward and sat at the man’s side. “Losing a child,” she said.
“Fuck losing a child. People lose children all the time,” Lehrer said. “I know that sounds small of me, but it’s true. People have lost their babies all through history. Fevers and fights and stupid accidents. No one’s ever lost my boy before. No one will again. It’s not the same.”
“It never is.”
“Never is,” he echoed. “Never.”
Clara took his hand, and for a moment, it was like holding a dead thing. Then his fingers twitched. How odd, she thought, that everyone, whatever they were, whatever wounds they left on the world, had someone who would mourn them. Someone who loved them and felt their loss.
“He died a hero,” Lehrer said. “Died saving the throne. Not that you’ll hear any of them say it.”
“I know,” Clara said. “It isn’t fair.” And, she didn’t add, I don’t know what would be. I’m not even sure that fairness is something we need more than mercy. Or forgiveness. Or freedom from the past.
Lehrer turned to look at her now. The whites of his eyes were marbled with red, and he swayed like a drunkard or a man collapsing from fatigue.
“I’d kill every damned one of them if it would bring my boy back,” he said. “Even you.” For a moment, she saw his son in him. She squeezed his fingers gently.
“I know,” she said.
Winning carried its own costs. She saw that now. Even when all went well, there were consequences. She could celebrate their success and still regret the price of it. To her, and to Vincen.
She dressed well to do the thing, as if her clothing were a kind of armor of the heart. As if the wound would come from outside her. She chose a cream dress in a formal cut they called old empire, though in truth it was hardly more than a generation old. It had been tailored to her new body, and it seemed too slight until the servant girl fastened the stays. Then she had her hair plaited into an ornate braid that pulled back and showed the grey at her temples. Her face had been roughened by the wind and the cold and the sun, by a season spent as a soldier. She sent the girl away and applied her powder and rouge herself. War paint for her final battle. The one she could only lose.
She ended by putting on jewelry. Bracelets and a ribbon choker. Not too much. She wanted elegance. Formality. She wanted to make a mask of herself that would carry her through doing what had to be done. Not for her sake, but for the family’s. For the honor and status that had been restored to them. For fear of being a stupid old woman made foolish by an inappropriate lover. She turned away before tears could ruin the paint.
If it was to be done, better it should be done quickly. No wound was ever made less painful by going slowly.
She met him in the little drawing room, where she sat on the divan while he stood. His hair looked like raw honey in the light. His expression held the mixture of amusement and affection that had come to fill her world like the scent of flowers in springtime. She ached already with what she had to do.
“You called for me, Lady?” he said. Formal where they might be overheard. She felt herself drinking in the syllables. She would not be hearing his voice again after tonight.
“I did,” she said, heavy as lead weights. “Close the door.”
“If you like.”
She rose. She hadn’t meant to. In her mind, she’d conducted the whole bloody affair from her seat with the cold dignity of a queen, but here she was. Up and pacing the back of the room. Worrying her hands until the knuckles ached.
“What’s the matter, love?” he asked softly, and she coughed out something like a laugh. Love was the matter.
“Vincen Coe,” she said. “I have—”
Oh, God damn it. A sob choked her. She swallowed it back.
“I have to release you from service. You can go. Tonight. And if any of the things you’ve ever said to me were true, I will not hear from you again.”
He was silent and still. She chanced a look at him, unsure what to expect. Rage, surprise, heartbreak to echo her own. The smile was gone from the corners of his mouth, but nothing else had changed. She knew better than to go on, but she did it anyway.
“My son is going to be given his father’s title, you see? We’ve… we’ve returned to the good grace of the court, and I can’t… We will be found out, you and I. If we haven’t been already.”
“I see. And would that be so bad?” he said. “You’ve done other scandalous things, if I recall.”
“It’s not about me,” she said. “I have a granddaughter who carries my name. You don’t know how cruel the court can be, especially to a girl. If I’m known for taking a lover—”
“Below your dignity?” The words were spoken gently, and still they cut.
“A lover who is half my age, I’ll look a fool. And no, I don’t care for my own sake. If it was only me, I’d take you and retire to the holding and let them all say whatever they pleased to say, king and court and my sons besides. But it’s not only me. I have Annalise to think of.”
Vincen nodded slowly, a deep furrow marking his brow. “I’ll go if it’s your choice. I’ll make no trouble, but… why do you want your granddaughter to live her life with less courage than yours?”