They rode on the turf at the roadside to muffle the sounds of the hooves. They bore neither torch nor lantern, but used the moon and stars to see by. They passed, she hoped, as ghosts across the face of the land, and she could not stop thinking of that letter.
She had taken great pleasure in the letters she’d had in her time. She’d kept them all, except one that Dawson had written when he was in his cups. His appreciation of her beauty had grown more explicit than he was accustomed to putting to paper, and he’d embarrassed himself. She’d had a second letter the next day asking that she destroy what he had written. Not without regrets, she had complied, though she had made him repeat certain parts of the missive upon his return. And she was taking that experience from Sabiha. It felt like theft, though that wasn’t true. There would be other couriers than herself, surely. Men sent their wives love letters all the time.
It was only that she’d promised to keep this one safe to Camnipol, and she wasn’t going to do that.
“Mother,” Barriath whispered.
“My lady,” she corrected.
“My lady,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Look south.”
The light of fires was almost too faint to see, but he was right. They were there. She tried to recall how the camp had sat in relation to the road when she’d left it. She was almost certain that the lights came from Jorey’s men. She paused, patted her poor horse on its neck, and turned it south, across the trackless fields. She made no attempt to at stealth now, but talked to her horse in soothing tones loud enough to carry in the black. The sentry’s voice was harsh and sudden. Even when he spoke, she didn’t see him.
“Who’s there!”
“What?” she said. “Lady Kalliam, of course. Why do you ask?”
There was a moment’s silence. When the voice came again, it was wary, but less so. “Lady Kalliam? What are you doing here?”
“Well, I went out for a ride after supper to clear my head. The tents can be so terribly stuffy, you know. Only I seem to have gotten a bit turned about, and it took me much longer than I expected. But I have my man here with me for protection and we were quite careful not to go anywhere near enemy territory, so I was entirely safe the whole time.”
“You’re coming in from the north, ma’am,” the sentry said. “That’s where the enemy is.”
“Really? Are you sure? I thought we were headed east.”
“Fair certain you’re heading south, ma’am,” the sentry said.
“Oh. Well, how embarrassing.”
There was a clicking, and a spark, and a thin flame in a little tin lantern. The man holding it was younger than Vincen or Jorey. A boy, almost. His caved-in cheeks and deep-set eyes belonged to a starving man, but he smiled all the same.
“You really shouldn’t be leaving camp at all, ma’am. It’s not safe.”
Clara made an impatient noise in the back of her throat, and then sighed. “I suppose as I’m a doddering old woman who can’t tell south from east, I’m in no position to disagree with you. Still, do you suppose we might keep this between us? If I promise very solemnly not to wander out again? I don’t like to worry my son.”
“I’ll have to make a report,” the sentry said. “But I’ll make as little of it as I can.”
“You’re entirely too kind,” Clara said, then turned to Barriath. “Come along.”
The sentry passed the lantern up to Barriath as they went by. The ground became more even. The smell of cookfires and latrines was as familiar as a well-loved song, and Clara angled her horse toward the rough corral she’d taken it from.
“You’re entirely too good at that,” Barriath said.
“Never discount the power of being underestimated,” she said. “And don’t talk so impertinently to your betters. You’re my servant after all.”
“Yes, my lady,” he said again, and poorly.
With night folded over it, the camp seemed both smaller and endless. The air was still warm enough that many of the soldiers hadn’t bothered to put up tents, but slept in the fields around guttering fires or else in darkness. The flame of Barriath’s little lantern ruined her dark-adapted eye, making the blackness outside its little circle deeper. The cunning men’s tent called to her like water to thirst. She wanted to go to Vincen, to tell him all that had happened in that dark little house in Sara-sur-Mar. Of Barriath and his comrades and the decision she and her son had made and hoped that Jorey would make as well. She wanted to hold Vincen’s hand and make sure his fever hadn’t come back and lay her head on his chest to hear him breathe.
It would wait. It would have to.
She had stayed too long in Sara-sur-Mar. Her intention had been to go, deliver her warning, and retreat again at once. Instead, she’d stayed with Barriath, each of them talking too fast, trying to fit all they had to say into a few minutes. Barriath had been building a rough fleet to stand against Palliako, had worked with the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, had taken Lord Skestinin prisoner and saved a wounded dragon with his ships. Clara had sent reports and letters to the Medean bank in Carse, followed the army in disguise, and engineered the death of Lord Ternigan. Barriath’s laughter had been a roar, and the strength of it had lifted her. And here I thought it was Father I took after.
Jorey’s tent glowed at the seams. Clara’s steps felt awkward after the long ride. Or perhaps it was the exhaustion of so long a day. She was not so young as she’d once been, after all. Or the prospect of what she was about to do to herself and to her son and to her kingdom. She wished there had been some way to deliver that letter. To have let Jorey be the man to his wife that Dawson had been to her. There was so very much to regret.
The guard at the door nodded to her, the movement almost a bow, though not quite. There was, she supposed, no set etiquette for how to greet a Lord Marshal’s mother in the field.
“Is he awake still?” Clara asked loudly enough that her voice carried.
“I am,” Jorey called from within, his voice muffled. The guard nodded again, and Clara passed inside.
He was at his small field desk, as if he had been there for hours. The map before him was marked in red and black. He smiled when she sat across from him, but it was the sort of expression a boy used when he was pretending to his mother that all was well and he had not been crying.
“I don’t suppose I can convince you to return to Camnipol before your huntsman’s well?” Jorey asked. “I know he’s a favorite of yours, but I do have an army full of soldiers that can keep you safe.”
“I very much doubt that,” Clara said, drawing out her pipe and her little pouch of tobacco. “Jorey, the time has come that we need to have a talk, you and I. A serious one. As adults.”
“We don’t need to do that, Mother. It’s all right.”
“It isn’t all right. A very great deal of it is wrong. And we’re both aware of the fact, yes? Tell me, Jorey. How do you feel about what happened to your father?”
The boy’s face paled. He swallowed and looked down at the map before him without seeing it. “He conspired with the Timzinae against Prince Aster,” Jorey said.
“That isn’t true,” she said, and confusion passed through Jorey’s eyes. “It isn’t, and you know it isn’t. Your father was many things, but a servant to foreign powers was never one. What he did was in service to the throne, as he saw it. We are all in service to the crown. As we see it.”
“I…” Jorey began and then stopped. For a long moment, silence reigned. When he found his voice again, it was low. “I did what you asked, Mother. I renounced him. I made my peace with Geder, and accepted his forgiveness.”