“Mother?” Jorey said. “What are you doing here?”
She shook her head. This was the moment. Whatever she said, truth or lies, would expose her. She could neither dissemble nor confess. The only alternative was to be misunderstood.
“Following you,” she said. “Trying, in my own way, to help.”
“Help, Mother?” Vicarian said. “How were you planning to help?”
“I know it isn’t what you’d have chosen, and I suppose that’s part of why I didn’t send word. Or tell anyone back at home, for that matter. It isn’t the sort of thing a woman of quality does, is it?”
“It really, really isn’t,” Jorey said, sitting down beside her. She scooped up his hand in her own, lacing their fingers together as if he were a child again. Vicarian brought a candle for her pipe, and she drew on the flame until the thick, fragrant smoke filled her lungs. She let tears come into her eyes. What child could press on in the face of a weeping mother? The manipulation of it disgusted her even as she embraced it. This was no time for righteousness.
“I didn’t want to embarrass you,” she said, and her eyes flickered toward Vicarian. It’s true. I didn’t. You can’t catch me out in a lie for saying that. “And I was so frightened, there in the court with you gone.” She sobbed, and it wasn’t even forced. She waited for them to ask what she’d been afraid of. She could say it was Geder without, she hoped, saying why. But if they did ask that, if they pressed…
“Shh. It’s all right,” Jorey said. “I mean, it’s raw madness and God help your reputation if word gets back home, but it’s all right. I’m not angry.”
“No?” she said.
“Of course not,” Vicarian answered, as if Jorey’s opinions were identical to his own. As if the things in his blood already controlled his brother’s mind. “We love you. We’ll always love you. Even when you’ve done something a little unhinged. How long have you been following the army?”
“I… I joined it in the Free Cities. Before the pass at Bellin. We kept to the rear with the caravans. I don’t think anyone suspected me of being anything out of the ordinary. Apart from Vincen. He knew, of course.”
Vicarian sat, slapping his thighs. “Well, at least you had the sense to bring a guard with you. I can’t imagine what you thought you could do.”
“I know,” she said, looking down. You can’t imagine, it’s true. And if that changes, if you do imagine, everything is lost. Don’t imagine.
Jorey sat back in his seat, passing a hand over his chin. His sigh had laughter in it. “You don’t need to go camp in the muck outside the city, do you? Tell me at least you’ll accept my hospitality.”
“I think my dignity would allow me to sleep in a real bed, were one on offer,” Clara said, surprised to find herself blushing. Seeing herself through their eyes—sentimental, silly, unaware of the consequences of her own actions—made her feel almost as if she were the woman they thought she was. The woman she was pretending to be. The sense that Jorey was indulging her as a man might a small child or old woman left her cheeks warm.
“And if I sent you back to Camnipol with a few men to see you made it there safely,” Jorey said. “Would you stay there this time?”
“I could say I would,” Clara said. “If it would make you feel better.”
“Tell me you would stay,” Jorey said.
“I would stay,” Clara lied.
Vicarian howled with laughter, slapping his thighs. “We’re not getting rid of her so easily. Let her be here, brother. She won’t come to harm. The goddess watches us and brings the world to our feet. She’s in less danger with our army around us than from the gossips back home.”
“Fine,” Jorey said, lifting his palms. Dawson would have been enraged that she’d come. That she’d done something so utterly outside of her proper role. But he had been her husband, and Jorey was her son. And perhaps some part of Vicarian still was her son as well. It was a simpler thing, she thought, to tell a wife what she was allowed to be than to say the same to one’s mother. She had held Jorey as a babe, had comforted him when he wept the bitter boyhood tears that no one else could ever be permitted to see. She had thought those things only love when she’d done them. She saw now they had been an investment.
She took his hand. I am sorry, she thought. I love you more than I will ever say, and I am using you. I will go on using you, as long as that is what I have to do to stop Palliako and his priests. And your… the thing that was your brother. I have become a huntsman, and I am so terribly, terribly sorry. Jorey put his hand over hers and smiled.
“Is there any news from home I might have missed during my travels?” she asked. Further discoveries, perhaps, about who sent the false letter to Lord Ternigan?
“You’ll have left before the baby was born, then,” he said. “Sabiha’s named her Annalise. After you.”
“Oh, no. Has she really?”
“Yes,” Jorey said, “and there’s a tale in it. It turns out Geder saved us again…”
Marcus
The waters off Cabral were deep blue, gentle and wide. The three roundships carved their way under the sky with a dozen smaller craft moving in among them, a fleet that answered to no king. The chuffing of the sails and the mutterings of wind were a constant, and the rolling of the ship only nauseated Marcus for the first day. The fleet moved slowly. The wounded dragon took up most of the deck of one roundship, threatening to capsize it if they hit even somewhat choppy water, and the others all cut their sails to keep pace. Marcus stood by the rail, looking across the water at Inys’s unmoving head, the great bulk of his body, the torn and folded wings. It had taken a full day and night to pull the barbed spears out of the great beast’s scales, and Inys had cried and wept the whole time. Marcus thought it had been less the pain of the wounds than the humiliation of having been bested by slaves and the dragon’s growing despair and isolation.
Marcus kept an eye on how the others—the humans—were dealing with the loss. In his experience, military victories were all more or less alike. The rush of joy was part relief that death had been postponed for another day, part the satisfaction of overcoming a force of humanity that wished him ill. And there was a note of sorrow like a black thread in a pale cloth, that came from focusing the whole mind on a single overwhelming question and then having it melt away like ice in the sun.
Failure, on the other hand, came in varieties.
The pirate fleet seemed the least affected. They were, in essence, a group of outlaws from the first. That Barriath Kalliam had managed to forge them into a functioning alliance—for a time at least—did nothing to unmake their pasts. The rhythm of attack and retreat was old news to them, and the fall of the city laid no particular weight on their hearts. The Porte Oliva they’d lost was a destination for the prey ships they’d hunted, and the future of the city under the Antean fist was much like its past so far as they saw it. Defeat was not entirely defeat when you could sail away from it, and the novelty of the dragon lifted them all nearly to cheerfulness.
The survivors of the bank—Cithrin, Isadau, the handful of the guards—bore their injuries in silence, but Marcus suspected their cuts were deepest. In the days since their escape, Cithrin had kept to her cabin, claiming nausea. Isadau and Maha had spent their days watching Maha’s baby learn to crawl on the shifting deck, but their smiles had a deadness and their clear inner eyelids were closed more than open. For the refugees of Suddapal, Porte Oliva had been the place of safety, the sanctuary from the rolling storm that was Antean hatred. And Cithrin particularly had been certain that the city could not fall, the defenders could not fail. Her mistake had been written in blood and fire, and if Marcus hadn’t taken quiet but thorough measures, her life would have ended in the streets there or led her back to Camnipol in chains.