“Callon Cane. Jorey has a path into the city that will reach him. I’ve seen the map. I think… I think I might be able to steal it. Or copy it. We have to move faster than Jorey does.”
“Or else we lose another ally,” Vincen said.
“Or else we lose Jorey, I think.”
Vincen looked over his shoulder, his brow furrowed. “Find the map, then, and I’ll go.” The meaning of the words was deeper than mere syllables. Of course I will risk my life to save someone you love. Clara smiled and Vincen turned back to the mules and reins. She smiled at his back and shook her head. He was an impossibility, she thought. Men like Vincen Coe simply didn’t exist. And perhaps neither did women like herself. He’d been right, of course, that it wasn’t age that had freed her. It was loss. Her husband had died and she had been stripped of all the roles that had defined her. It should have felt like a vine suddenly missing the trellis it had grown upon, and it had. And it had also been like a cage opening. Jorey was still in that cage, only his was crueler, and the demands it made might be more than he could stand.
She could imagine him, if things went forward as they were now, ten years older, twenty. The misery of pretending to be a man that at heart he was not would tell on him. He would grow bitter, and his wife and daughter would know it. His mother would as well, for that matter. Because, of course, pretending a thing did not make it true.
Vincen stopped the cart, the mules jostling one another and looking back at him. Vincen had no attention to spare them. His head was shifting, like a dog tasting the wind. She tried to follow his gaze, but all she saw were trees by the roadside, scrub beyond them. All she heard were the voices of the soldiers and the distant murmur of the river in its bed.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Something. Something isn’t right.”
“Should I find Jorey?” she asked, and the horns of the advance guard sounded. Vincen cursed and yanked on the reins. The mules hunkered down, their great ears set in defiance. There were more sounds now. Men yelling. Shouting. She looked back down the road, and the sword and bows were struggling into formation, some blades at the ready, some waving uncertainly as a banner in a whirlwind, trying to find the source of their peril.
“Get down, Clara,” Vincen said.
“What is it?”
“We have to get you someplace safe.”
She moved forward quickly, lowering herself to the road. The dragon’s jade felt oddly slick under her feet, like the road itself had become uncertain where it should be. “What’s happening?”
“We’re being attacked. They’ll try to drive us into the water.”
“How do we stop them?” Clara asked.
Vincen drew his sword with one hand and a dagger with the other. He pressed the hilt of the dagger into her hand. “I don’t know.”
The riders burst out from among the trees to their right, proud, tall men in the green and gold of Birancour. She could see four of them, though the screaming seemed to come from everywhere. Up the river and down. The nearest of them looked from her to Vincen and back again, scowling, then spurred his mount in a charge. Vincen dodged behind the cart, pulling Clara with him. The queensman sank his blade into the side of the first mule. The animal screamed and tried to run, the cart lurching and creaking. There were more men boiling out of the brush. Clara tried to keep the moving cart between her and the attackers. The mules ran forward, trying to find a path not already blocked by trees or water, the enemy or the army all around them. She heard Vincen shout before she realized that she’d left him behind.
Something deep happened, and the sounds around her all went quieter. Still there, but also distant. Her head hurt at the back, and she was on her knees now without knowing quite how she got there. A man moved into her view. His tunic was green and gold, and the club he held in his hand was tipped with lead and blood. He lifted it again, preparing to bring it down on her, so she pushed the dagger in her hand out, into the man’s crotch. His eyes went wide. It was hard to move her arms. They seemed very distant, but she did it again as he fell. His mouth was round with surprise and distress. She pushed the blade into his neck. It was like cutting an orange. She’d thought killing a man would be harder.
A roar came, like a windstorm or a wave. The thin, black-clad soliders of Antea. The brown-robed priest she’d seen speaking with Jorey earlier strode into her line of sight. He was shouting. Flee or put your weapons down! You have already lost! The goddess cannot be defeated. Everything you love is already gone! You cannot win! You cannot win! You cannot win!
And with each phrase, she felt herself folding down. The dying man at her feet looked up at her in wonder and despair. We cannot win, she thought. Everything we love is already lost. Already gone. The spider goddess will take it all and leave us with nothing, and there is nothing to be done. Listen to my voice! Antea cannot be defeated! You cannot win!
I cannot win.
“Here!” a man’s voice called. “To me! To me!”
A familiar-looking man pulled her to her feet. There was blood all down the front of her dress. The sounds of the battle were closer now, louder and more real. The pain at the back of her head was sharper, and she felt what must have been a trickle of her own blood running down the back of her neck.
“Lady Kalliam!” the man said. “Are you well? Can you run?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “A little tap on the head, but these little fucks will have to do better if they want to kill me.”
The man laughed.
“Come with me,” he said. “I’ll see you to safety.”
“Yes,” she said. “No. Wait. Where’s Vincen?”
The man shook his head. Her heart went cold.
“Where is Vincen Coe?”
Marcus
The Thin Sea that divided Northcoast from Narinisle was calm water, for the most part. The currents were predictable, the winds smelling of land and metal. The small ship with its shallow draft and high masts had been built to travel quickly and maneuver well. The lumbering roundships with the little flotilla to protect them had fallen away in a matter of hours, slowed by their shapes and their load. Even so, as near as they were to Carse, Marcus didn’t expect they’d reach the city more than a day or two before the rest caught up.
Kit and Cithrin stood together at the bow, deep in conversation. Marcus sat at the stern, looking out over the water with a scowl. The white cliffs of Carse were hardly more than a thickening of the horizon. The water they crossed could almost have been anywhere. It was only knowing where they were and where they were headed that made the waves seems familiar.
The last time Marcus had been in Carse, he’d been a younger man, and a hotter one. He’d thrown King Springmere’s body off those cliffs first and his head afterward. If he thought about it, he could still conjure up the stickiness of the dead man’s blood-drenched hair. The stink of the body. It had been months of work and planning. Schemes and conspiracies. He had cut out all of Springmere’s support, undermined the throne that Marcus had given him, until the day came when wearing a crown was no defense.
Springmere hadn’t asked him why. Hadn’t begged. As soon as the trap closed around him, he’d known why. Alys and Merian. Marcus’s wife and daughter. Marcus had imagined any number of things he might say there at the end. He’d practiced whole speeches about justice and falsehood and the kind of cowardice that could bring a man to betray his own allies. I gave you Northcoast, Marcus had said a thousand times in the privacy of his mind, and I will take it back.
He hadn’t actually said any of it when the time came. He’d kicked Springmere down and sawn off his head while the man burbled and screamed. As moments of sublime justice went, it had been ugly, brutish, and unsatisfying. When Springmere’s corpse was feeding the crabs and gulls at the base of the cliffs, he had stood for a moment, waiting for the peace that he’d expected retribution to bring. There hadn’t been any. His wife and child were still dead because he’d given his loyalty to an untrustworthy man. He hadn’t expected vengeance to bring them back, but he had thought that it might ease the pain of missing them. Just a bit.