At the roundship, ropes and swings were waiting to haul them up. Master Kit helped Marcus onto the swaying deck, his eyes dark. He’d seen what had happened to the other boat and been as unable to stop it as Marcus had. Mikel and Sandr and Charlit Soon grabbed Hornet as soon as the swing he rode came near, and they all collapsed together on the deck, weeping and calling Smit’s name. Across the deck, Halvill and his new wife, Maha, stood, their baby between them, their foreheads touching. Only Cary stood apart, her chin lifted and her eyes dry. Marcus thought he saw hatred there, but he couldn’t say for whom. Magistra Isadau and Enen came up the ropes and were lifted over the railing.
Cithrin came on board last. Her skin, always pale, was white. Even her lips were colorless.
“You knew,” she said.
“I had a feeling. It was enough that I made some plans for the worst case. May have underestimated how bad it would get.”
Cithrin turned to look across the deck. It was wide as a building. The boards were scrubbed, but there was still a hint of green to the old wood. The timbers creaked, and by being so near, almost matched the screams from shore. The ship’s boat was being hauled back into place and the vast sails were being pulled up. When they caught the wind, they bellied out with a crack like breaking stone and the ship lurched a little.
“We’ve lost it all,” Cithrin said.
“We have the books and ledgers,” Marcus said. “The immediate wealth of the bank. The gold and jewels and spices. A couple dozen bolts of silk, I think. Hold’s full of it. It’s not the first time we’ve made this experiment. Lose a couple more cities and I’ll have it down to an art. Also took the liberty of putting Lord Skestinin on the other ship over there. Figured Barriath would be in the best position to keep him.”
“We’ve lost Porte Oliva.”
“That, yes. We lost the city.”
“We were supposed to win,” Cithrin said. The words were almost calm.
“We didn’t.”
“Oh,” she said, and then didn’t speak again. He put a hand on her shoulder. She was trembling.
The ship’s captain, a Kurtadam with a moth-eaten pelt and a missing eyetooth, strode over and nodded to Cithrin before turning to Marcus. “Himself’s signaled the ready. Unless you’ve got more coming.”
“Himself?” Cithrin asked abstractedly.
“Barriath,” Marcus said, and then to the captain, “No. We’re ready.”
“Asked where it was you wanted to head,” the captain said.
“Wherever’s fastest,” Marcus said. “Anyplace but here.”
The Kurtadam spat over the railing and turned back, shouting orders to the sailors that Marcus didn’t understand and didn’t care to. His clothes were starting to dry, the salt making his skin itch. Weariness bore down on him. Cithrin looked at the city as it grew slowly more distant, the seawall becoming small enough to cover with an outstretched hand. And then a thumb. Soon the only real marks of Porte Oliva were the columns of smoke. He stood by her silently until she spoke.
“This is my fault,” Cithrin said.
“It’s not a matter of fault,” Marcus said. “It’s war. People have been doing this since—”
“Marcus!” Kit shouted.
The old actor stood at the rail. His hair was pulled back from his face, and the gauntness of age and hard living made him seem more a pirate than the pirates. Marcus stepped forward. The motion of the waves made his steps uncertain.
“I’m sorry about Smit,” Marcus said.
“As am I, but I think that isn’t our immediate problem.”
“We have an immediate problem?”
Kit gestured out over the water, and Marcus’s gaze followed the gesture. There, almost at the horizon, a black dash marked the sky. As they watched, the darkness grew larger, clearer, closer. Inys flapped twice, hauling himself above the water. His head sank low before him, like a horse on the verge of exhausted collapse. Long ropes streamed down from his body to trail behind him in the sea. His scales shone red with fresh blood.
“Well, God smiled,” Marcus said sourly. “Where in hell are we supposed to put him.”
Clara
After the defenders of the city left the safety of their walls to pour out, selling their lives cheap in the effort to free the crippled dragon, the battle moved on. It entered the city itself, and was hidden from Clara by the great, scarred walls. At one point, shortly before evening, someone in the city had tried to close the gates again, but whatever that plan was, it failed with the defenses unrestored. The falling sun spread shadows across the churned mud and ashes of the ruins outside Porte Oliva. Within the city, the sack.
She knew better than to approach the walls until her son’s army had burned through its anger and its lusts, had celebrated its victory upon the bodies of the conquered. Until then, she was a creature of the fields of ash. There would be enough to learn, enough to report, when morning came and the beasts had remade themselves as men again.
Dawson had told her stories of war before. Of its glories and dangers. As she and Vincen and the other hangers-on picked through the bodies of the fallen—Antean and Birancouri alike—she could conjure up his voice. Battle is the proving ground in which boys discover what it means to be men. She wondered now whether he had truly believed that, or if it was only a story he’d told himself to forgive what could not be forgiven.
A Timzinae woman lay facedown in the ashes, motionless. Dead. If she’d borne a weapon, it was lost amid the rubble. A Firstblood boy was sprawled beside her, his open eyes as empty as stones. Clara couldn’t say by looking which side he’d fought on, but his frame was thin and his face gaunt, so likely one of Jorey’s. A young man of Antea come to find glory in ashes and blood.
“They say the spirits of the dead ride with Geder’s army,” she said.
“They say a lot of things,” Vincen replied. His voice was rough.
“I think it’s true,” Clara said, nodding at the dead boy. “He looks wasted enough he might have been dead for weeks. Months. I think perhaps we are the dead.”
“I’m not,” Vincen said. “And I think you aren’t either.”
Clara knelt by the body, checking it for any small items of value, not because she wanted them, but because it was expected of the kind of scavenger she was pretending to be. “Are you certain of that?”
“I’ve seen a lot of things be killed. Elk. Rabbit. Fox. Bird. Once they’ve died, they don’t suffer. So yes. Fairly certain.”
The dead boy had a little wallet folded over his belt, empty apart from a bit of oak with a mark cut into it in black. A charm against misfortune, a token from a lover or a parent, or a bit of scrap picked up and carried for no reason in particular. It didn’t matter now. The only one who could have put meaning to it was past caring, and the little chip of wood was now forever and irrevocably just a little chip of wood. She tucked it in the fold of the boy’s sleeve. Whatever it had been, it could rest with him. She rocked back on her haunches. Blackened timbers that had been houses and shops, launderers’ yards and cobblers’ stalls, stood all about, like bones made of char.
“My sons did this,” she said. “My husband did much like this in Asterilhold, and then came home to my arms. Can you imagine that? Loving someone who is capable of this?”
Vincen stood. For a long moment, they were both silent.
“Yes,” he said.
“So can I,” she said, “and it astounds me.”
“Hey! You there!” The new voice was rough, the voice of a man hoarse from shouting.
Vincen moved between her and the approaching men, his chin high. There were five of them, all wearing armor not so different from a huntsman’s leathers. One, the leader by his bearing and the adornments on his hilt, was familiar. Kestin Flor. Sir Namen Flor’s first son by his second wife. Clara hunched down and tried to hide her face.