Cithrin sighed and shook her head. “Porte Oliva’s never fallen in war. Never. The only times it’s been taken, someone inside the city betrayed it and opened the gates. No one’s going to do that now. We know to keep out of earshot of the priests or drown them out. They’re exhausted and in the middle of enemy land. We have freedom of the sea to resupply, we have well-rested soldiers protecting their own homes, and we have a dragon. We’re going to be fine.”
“That exhausted army’s got spider priests, and they’ve already conquered half the world,” Marcus said. “We shouldn’t underestimate them. You don’t know how bad this could get.”
Cithrin’s face went cold and she hoisted an eyebrow. “I think I do. I’ve lost two cities already and lived through the fighting in Camnipol. I’ve seen what war can do.”
“No disrespect, Cithrin. You’ve seen a handful of squabbling noblemen and a surrender. You haven’t lived through a battle. They’re worse, and once they start going bad, it’s usually too late to make fresh plans. However many high cards we’re holding, we should have been harassing their column, and we should have been hiring mercenaries to break the siege when it comes, and we should have burned every building north of the wall rather than leave it for the enemy to shelter in.”
“The governor would never agree to that,” she said.
“Shouldn’t ask permission, then.”
“We’re going to be fine,” Cithrin said, and the hardness in her voice ran on the edge of challenge. She wanted to believe it. He wished that he could too. “We’re going to be fine, Marcus. They can’t take the city.”
“All right,” he said, but when he stepped outside, he turned north. The air was thick with the smell of bodies and of the sea. The spring rains were late this year, but coming. He could feel the press of weather in the air, a stillness that made even the breeze feel sluggish. The dragon’s perch in the courtyard stood empty. Inys’s resting claws had stripped away the bark and carved deep gouges into the pale wood beneath. They’d have to replace that soon. Unless the siege went poorly. Then it’d be someone else’s problem. He looked at the sun. He’d agreed to relieve Yardem from the guardhouse. With the increase in coin and goods in the counting house strongbox and new people coming to the relatively defended city from the countryside, they’d both decided that tripling the guard was a good thought. But if he was an hour or two late, chances were Yardem would forgive him. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Passing through the defense walls was like stepping into a dream. He remembered the first time he’d passed this way, besieged by beggars. The great stone wall with its arrow slits had seemed like the artifact of another time then. It marked the edge of a city that had long since outgrown it. There were no beggars there now. He assumed they’d all moved to the port. There wouldn’t be many travelers arriving with charity by land.
Beyond the fresh gates, the buildings of Porte Oliva stood almost empty. The breeze set a shutter clacking open and closed and open again. A sullen dog followed him for a few streets and then wandered away. There was no new wall, no second defense. Birancour had been at peace for generations, and even before that, their wars had been in the north, at the seat of power. It showed in the architecture and the shape of the streets and the buildings that slowly grew sparser and lower, wider yards between them and more trees and grass. And then without ever passing an archway or marker, he was outside the city. He found the dragon in a meadow that had become a favorite place for its torpid sleep. The grass all around its body was smashed and dead, the dark earth showing through. Its eyes were narrowed but not closed, and it shifted to consider him without rising.
“Marcus Stormcrow,” Inys said in a voice like distant thunder.
“Back with the Stormcrow thing? Thought we’d moved past that.”
“I call you that, or not. As I see fit. I think of you that way or not.”
“That’s very flexible of you,” Marcus said. “I wanted to talk about the war.”
“It was terrible. It was the triumph of rage over cowardice, and I was the coward. I should have let him kill me. I should have bared my neck to him and let him take the light from my eyes. It would have been better for both of us than this.”
“Yeah. Not the war I was thinking of,” Marcus said, sitting on the grass beside the great head. “There’s an army coming this way. We haven’t done anything to slow it down or break its supply lines. The forces that could have backed us got spanked and are off pouting outside Porte Silena and Sara-sur-Mar. Everyone and their uncle seems convinced that you’re going to save us all.”
The dragon didn’t speak, but shifted its weight, claws digging deep into the turf like a housecat kneading a pillow. Marcus waited.
“Do you know what it is to mourn, Marcus Stormcrow?”
“I do.”
“There are days I can almost forget, and then I see something and think how Erex will smile to hear of it, only she will not. Not now, and not ever. Because of me.”
“That’s why we call it mourning,” Marcus said. “And it goes on for a hell of a long time before it gets better. But between now and then, I need to know if you’re planning to follow through and protect this city. Because if you aren’t, I’m going to have to.”
The dragon went still. Marcus leaned forward and brushed a blade of grass from his boots.
“Even Drakkis I never permitted to speak to me in such tones.”
Marcus felt a sweeping urge to apologize and bit his lips against it. “We are acting like we’ve already won,” he said. “It makes me very uncomfortable.”
“I am acting as though I have lost, and I have,” the dragon said.
“When you were drunk, you had hope. Something about filling the skies with dragons again.”
“When I am drunk, I have hope. When I am sober, I am too much a coward to let myself die. Even if I remake them, they will be new. Different. No one will remember the things I remember. There is no one to continue those conversations. I could bring a thousand dragonets into the world and still be alone.”
A thousand dragonets, Marcus thought. That doesn’t sound like a good thing either. He pushed the thought aside for the moment. It was a problem for another time.
“All right,” he said. “So I’m hearing you say that today’s one of the bad days, and you’re feeling hopeless and down. Have I got that about right?”
“You do not understand.”
“Like hell I don’t. You went to sleep and you woke up with everyone gone. I watched my wife and daughter die in front of me because I’d gotten too cocksure and full of myself. I stood witness, and I couldn’t do anything about it.” Marcus stopped, growling at the thickness in his throat like it was an enemy. He was courting nightmares here, but he didn’t let it stop him. “I smelled their hair burn. When you set fire to someone, they keep moving a bit even after they’re dead. Something about the way the sinews shorten up when they cook. They were in the flame, moving. They were dead and moving. And I spent years like that. Dead and moving. Some days I still do. But your family trouble is about to kill some people I know. Dead or not, you need to stop it. That’s the job.”
Inys rolled away, curling its back toward Marcus. The folded wings looked like furled sails on a ship.
“Perhaps you do understand,” the dragon said.
Marcus sat for a time. Inys didn’t speak again. Didn’t move. A dove fluttered by and landed on the branch of a tree at the meadow’s edge, cooing loudly. Marcus coughed.
“We should be harassing their column,” he said.
Inys didn’t answer.
“Was I that bad?”
Yardem flicked his ears thoughtfully, the earrings jingling against each other. “You weighed less.”
“I’m amazed you put up with me.”