The armies of Antea arrived in the morning unopposed. It was understood that the fighting would be in Kiaria, where the soldiers had gone. Even a token resistance to the invaders in Suddapal would have meant a few dozen corpses and nothing more. They didn’t even try. The morning sun slanted down over the roofs and tent-thick commons. The Antean carts rolled through the streets, and soldiers marched behind them. Timzinae refugees who had left their homes behind to escape this same army sat quietly at the sides of the roads. Cithrin stood by the compound’s wall and watched. After so long, the mass of Firstblood faces seemed wrong. Out of place.
“Don’t stare, ma’am,” Yardem said. “Someone might take offense.”
“And what if they do?”
Marcus answered. His voice was tired.
“There’s still going to be a sack. If we’re lucky, it’ll be a short one, and centered someplace else.”
“What?” Cithrin said. “The soldiers just loot the place? Go through like bandits and take what they want?”
“If we’re lucky,” Marcus said again.
“We’ll stand against them,” Cithrin said.
“We’ll take everything of value in the compound,” Marcus said, “put it in the yard here, bar the doors, guard the windows, and hope for the best. This is going to be a bad night.”
He was right. It was. Through all the long hours of the night, Cithrin sat with Isadau in the relative safety of her office, reading by a small brass lamp, and remembering none of the words. The guards—Yardem, Enen, Marcus, and even Master Kit included—kept watch. Once, near midnight, voices came from the streets, a mad whooping followed by screams and then the sounds of something large and possibly wooden being broken. Then near dawn, the unmistakable sound of blades. Cithrin felt fear and fatigue grinding in her belly. She wanted badly to be drunk. Even if the worst came, at least she’d be insensible.
The morning air stank of smoke. Plumes of it rose from near the water, and Master Kit watched them with an expression so closed it frightened her. She remembered hearing that he had friends in the city. Their houses might be fueling those fires. Or their bodies.
Isadau stepped into her compound to survey the damage. Half of what they’d left out had been taken, and the other half destroyed. She lifted the remains of a lacquered box, and then let the pieces fall from her hands. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but otherwise her expression could have been carved from stone. This was more than her bank. It was her family’s home. It was her city. That she’d known this would come didn’t seem to pull the blow. She found Marcus and Yardem speaking with Jurin. Marcus nodded in salute. The gesture was familiar, and Cithrin felt herself clinging to it.
“Could have been much worse,” he said. “It was a near thing, but we didn’t lose anyone. And the Anteans are all falling back. Worst may be over.” Cithrin coughed out a mirthless laugh and Marcus nodded as if agreeing with her. In the street, someone was wailing. “Likely, they’ll send an order. The bank’s powerful enough they’ll want someone at the naming of the new protector.”
“Isadau?” Cithrin asked.
“It’s who I’d chose,” Marcus said.
“I’ll go with her.”
Marcus frowned and Yardem’s ears went forward, but neither of them made an objection.
“Come back when it’s done,” was all that Marcus said.
Cithrin went back to her rooms and changed into a formal dress and put up her hair. The city might be conquered, but the Medean bank was more than a city; it was the world. She would not pretend to be humbled. When she was done, she touched her lips and cheeks with rouge, vomited into the chamberpot, and applied the rouge again. The cut of the collar didn’t call for a necklace, but she put one on anyway: the silver bird in flight that Salan had given her. No one else might know the defiance it signified, but she would. When the order came, carried by a sneering Firstblood in Antean uniform, she accepted it on Isadau’s behalf. It was, after all, addressed to the magistra of the branch, and technically she fit the description. They were to come to the central square of the third city at noon. Lord Marshal Ternigan would accept their formal surrender of the city and introduce the new protector of Suddapal. Also every household was to surrender any weaned children younger than five against the good conduct of the city. There would be no exceptions made. Any children not turned over to the protector’s men would be killed without question.
Half an hour before the time came, Isadau let Cithrin guide her out to the street. The magistra wore ragged grey mourning robes and her eyes seemed empty. Shocked. When they passed the temple, a vast banner the red of blood hung from its roof. The eightfold sigil of the goddess looked out from its center like an unblinking eye, the symbol of nothingness. And below it, the body of the cunning man and priest that Cithrin and Yardem had snickered at from the pews. Terrible things had been done to him.
“She doesn’t even exist,” Isadau said, her voice quiet and brittle.
“She doesn’t need to,” Cithrin said.
Clara
When Clara’s only work had been the running of her household, it had still been enough to fill most days and even bring some occasional worries to bed. When things were well—and they were well more often than not—Dawson and the children were utterly unaware of the mechanisms and habits that kept the shoes cleaned and the food brought from the kitchen. If she asked Dawson to please keep his hunting dogs out of the servants’ quarters, he saw only her somewhat trivial focus. She didn’t tell him that one of the maids had been mauled as a girl and broke into sweats whenever the animals trotted through. Dawson would have told her to get a different maid, but this one had been the best at polishing the silver, and accommodations had to be made whether Dawson knew of them or not.
Her plan of battle was simple enough. Find competent, trustworthy servants, treat them with respect, and let them do their work. Listen when spoken to. Remember everybody’s name and something about the peculiarities of their lives. Forgive any mistake once, and none twice.
In the long, subterranean struggles between the women of the court, she held her own. Someone else might have a more fashionable tailor or hairdresser in any given season, lured away by promises and bribes, but Clara’s was always perfectly respectable, and they didn’t leave her in times of difficulty. As compared with some who thought training servants meant alternating between throwing fits and showering them with praise. She couldn’t count the number of ladies of the court who, one time and another, had managed to throw their own houses and lives into chaos by losing the service of their more competent staff.
And running a household, she supposed, was not so unlike running an empire.
As the long days of summer began to grow short again, she found herself invited to more informal gatherings. Women who had pretended not to know her began smiling or nodding to her when she walked through the more affluent streets of the city. Few went so far as to speak, but some did. The gossip around her shifted from the balls and feasts at the season’s opening, and turned toward the preparations for its end. Clara smiled and laughed and wished people the best in ways that made it clear she didn’t care for them. She fell into the patterns of the woman she’d been for most of her life, and it felt like wearing a mask at a street carnival.
Behind it, she was cataloging everything she heard. Of Geder Palliako’s inner court, Daskellin was far and away the best political mind. His daughter, who had been putting herself in compromising situations with Palliako before he’d been named Lord Regent, had fallen back into propriety. So perhaps Daskellin had gained a better insight into the kind of man Palliako was. Emming was a blowhard who played the gadfly on trivial matters and followed anyone more powerful than he was when the issue had weight. Mecilli was an honest man with a reputation for caution and tradition that most reminded Clara of Dawson. The two would have been friends, except that Mecilli had spoken out against dueling and Dawson had decided the man was a coward. Noyel Flor wasn’t dim, but he was the third generation of his family to be Protector of Sevenpol, and in everything he considered what was best for his city first and the empire as a whole after. Lord Skestinin commanded the fleet, which made him valuable to Geder, but he was also family, now that Jorey and Sabiha were married.