Clara opened her mouth.
Closed it again.
Something in her heart shifted, slipped away. You’ll become a joke in the court. Well, and she had been. A joke and an embarrassment. A curiosity. A noblewoman who chased after her boy’s army like a nurse chasing a wandering child. She’d been the kind of woman polite society turned away from. And she’d saved her family. Her kingdom. She’d ordered men killed before her eyes and engineered the slaughter of a general. She’d been carried by a dragon. Who she chose to share her bed with was almost literally the least interesting thing about her.
She took one slow, shuddering breath. Then another. Something uncurled in her. They stood in silence for a moment, and then, to her own astonishment, she chuckled. It was a low sound, earthy and rich. Vincen tried a smile, and watching him find it was a pure pleasure.
“Are you dressed for an occasion?” Vincen asked, all trace of her attempt to break off their affair gone from his voice.
“No,” she said.
“So… your evening’s open?”
“Why? Are you looking to take advantage of my fragile emotional state?” she asked, wiping back her tears.
“Only if you will it, my lady,” the huntsman said with a sincerity that asked whether he was welcome.
She was shaking, not a great deal, but noticeably. It was like the feeling of looking over a precipice until the dizziness came, and then—at the last instant—stepping back. After a long moment, she rose, walked to the door, impressing herself with the steadiness of her stride, and called for the house girl.
“Do you need something?” Vincen asked.
“I’m going to start with a glass of wine and a pipe while you tell me of your day,” she said. “We’ll see whether anything comes from that.”
“And if the girl spreads rumors that we’re meeting in private?”
“Well,” Clara said, her head still spinning, but less. Much less. “Then I suppose she does.”
Epilogue
The Last Apostate
In Herez, the summer rose and then broke as it always did. The vineyards in the low, rolling hills of the north gave their season’s crop of thick, black grapes, and the Kurtadam women walked with the fur around their feet stained red for a week. In Daun, seat of the kingdom, ambassadors came and went. Couriers and cunning men and merchant caravans as well. As week by week it became clear that the war which had lit two-thirds of the world on fire had burned itself to ash and embers without coming to Herez, King Cyrian became more expansive. A taproom story made the rounds that he’d had to be talked out of a plan to announce his personal responsibility for keeping Herez above the fray, but that might have only been a story. It was foolish enough that the people who heard it wanted to believe it true. There were other rumors that were more plausible, if less entertaining.
The pirate fleet that Callon Cane had led to occupy the bays and smugglers’ coves of Northcoast had fallen into mutiny when Cane was discovered to be an agent of Antea. Or else it was regrouping now with patronage from Narinisle. Or Cane had been the secret name of a cabal of Tralgu and had been found out. The truth that mattered was only that some of the pirates were coming back to their old waters in Cabral, but not so many as had been there before.
Porte Oliva remained under the yoke of Antea, but the signs were clear. With the fall of the regent, the empire’s focus on conquest had waned. The wisest bettors had it that Birancour would reclaim the port by spring, though whether it would pay Antea a ransom for it or extract payments from the Severed Throne in exchange for peace wasn’t at all clear. The Free Cities, led by Maccia, were threatening to band together against raiders crossing the Inner Sea from Lyoneia’s northern coast.
The high princess of Princip C’Annaldé had taken a Jasuru lover because the chances of an embarrassing pregnancy between the races was so small, but she hadn’t been seen in weeks, so maybe it wasn’t so unlikely as she’d thought. The sailmakers’ guild had come to an agreement with King Sephan of Cabral. In the next year, they would see the blue-water trade to Far Syramys out of the ports west of Daun triple. At least. Maybe more, if the treacherous strategies of Stollbourne could be countered…
Which, so far as Kitap rol Keshmet—once known as Master Kit, but now going by Duvit Koke—was concerned, showed as clear as water that the business of the world was once again flowing between its proper banks. He sat at a little tin mirror, brushing paint into the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes while Sandr and Mikel threw the last stitches on the new costume. It was the first time Kit had played Orcus the Demon King in years. Sandr was already dressed as Allaren Mankiller. The sharp reports of hammers assembling their temporary stage rang in from the yard, but the horses in the stalls ignored the players and the noise magnificently.
“Can’t see why it would cost so much to keep the stage,” Sandr said, not for the first time.
“Far Syramys is a long way,” Cary said from the loft where she was fitting Charlit Soon for her new gown. That Sandr wasn’t craning his neck in hopes of catching a glimpse of the girl’s bare flesh was a good sign. With luck, those two had burned themselves out of each other.
“I know,” Sandr said.
“It’s why they don’t call it Near Syramys,” Mikel said.
“They don’t call it Far Syramys once you get there,” Sandr said. “That would be stupid. Distant shores aren’t still distant when you’re standing on them.”
Mikel put on the empty, wondering smile he used to tease Sandr. “You think they call this Far Herez over there?”
“I don’t know what they call it,” Sandr said. “We can ask once we get there, the same time we try to find a decent stage to replace the perfectly good one Lak’s banging on out there.”
“I have heard many tales of the lands across the ocean sea,” Kit said. “I’ve heard the Raushadam walk on riverbeds, carried down by the stony weight of their skins, and that the Haunadam have wings like bats and butterflies. That the Tralgu who live there have fox ears, and the Southlings speak in languages no one but they can comprehend. There are even tales of a great hive where bees make gold from the flowers instead of honey.”
“Cary!” Sandr called. “He’s monologuing again!”
“It’s your fault,” she shouted back. “You started him on it.”
“But among all the wonders,” Kit said, ignoring them, “spread through even the most exotic and dream-soaked of lands, I’m fairly certain they’ll have trees.”
“I’m not saying they don’t,” Sandr said. “I just…”
“I believe the cost of putting it in the hold for the journey would be four times what it will cost to build a new one when we’re there.”
The hammering stopped, and Kit heard Hornet’s voice, speaking to someone.
“It floats, you know,” Sandr said. “All we’d need to do is tie a rope to it and drag it along behind. We wouldn’t need space in the hold.”
“Fair certain it doesn’t work that way,” Mikel said as a Tralgu man stepped out of the yard and into the stables. Kit turned, looked up into the wide, deceptively gentle eyes looking back at him. Kit’s gut went tight. Sandr and Mikel were silent. Even the horses seemed to sense that something ominous had happened.
“Kit,” Yardem Hane said as Marcus Wester came in at his side. The sickly green hilt rose over the captain’s shoulder, ready to be drawn. Kit heard Cary’s alarmed yelp and the clatter as she and Charlit Soon clambered down the ladder.
“Yardem. Marcus,” he said. “I hadn’t expected to see either of you again.”
“Picked up on that,” Marcus said.
Kit put down his brush with a click. “I think it might be best if the company gave us a moment in private.”