“You did. You made yourself a place in the court. You were not cast out as I was.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t be,” Clara said. “Don’t ever be. We did what needed to be done to survive, and for the most part we have, haven’t we? You’re Lord Marshal, favored of the crown. I’m… Well, if I had stayed, I’m sure I’d have been welcome at some of the feasts and balls, wouldn’t I? Only I didn’t. You have a child now, my dear. A baby of your own. There are so many things that you will learn with her. There are risks that you would take yourself without thought that you’d run over glass to keep her from chancing. It’s love, and it’s right when the baby is small, but then you’ve all grown up, haven’t you? And still to keep you safe… even when the price of the safety is…”
“Mother?” Jorey said carefully. “Are you well?”
Clara dabbed her eyes with her cuff and shook her head. “This war you’re leading. How will you end it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I try not to think about that.”
“Your father never conspired with Timzinae. Or the bank that this Cithrin creature held. Dawson was raised a certain way, and he did not change. Even when the world did. How would he have ended this war?”
“In my place?” Jorey said. “I don’t know. I don’t know that he could have. I know that we’re chasing shadows, Mother. I can’t say it, but I know it’s truth. All I can look at is the next step, and then the next, and then the next. Trying to keep my men safe and alive, trying to reach the next goal in hopes that something may happen that I haven’t anticipated. It was easier when Vicarian was here. Ever since he took these new vows, he’s been sure that everything will end well somehow. When I’m around him, I can convince myself it’s… not true even. Possible.”
“It isn’t,” Clara said.
“I know,” Jorey said. “But this war is a raft I climbed on to keep my family safe, and the river’s going wherever it goes. The best I can go is hold on. For Sabiha’s sake. And Annalise’s. And yours.”
“And your own sake, Jorey? What would your sake look like?”
“There is no my sake. I watched my father slaughtered before my eyes and I renounced him. Instead of bringing my wife respectability, I dirtied her name more. I am leading an army of half-starved men on an endless campaign because…”
Jorey stopped. His hands were in fists.
“Because Geder’s priests want you to,” Clara whispered. “And everyone knows, but no one dares object.”
“Father did.”
Clara plucked a bit of leaf from her pouch and pressed it in the narrow bowl of her pipe. “He was not the only one.” She lit the pipe from the lantern flame and sucked the sweet smoke into her lungs. Jorey’s eyes were fixed on her. It felt like standing on the edge of a cliff over deep water. She dreaded the leap, but there was no stepping back. She went to the tent’s door and sent the guard for her servant. It wouldn’t take long. She knelt at Jorey’s side, took his hand in her own. “I have been conspiring against Geder Pallaiko and his priests.”
“Mother. No.”
“Yes. Very much so.”
“You have to stop it. You have to stop now, and forever.”
“You know that isn’t true.”
Jorey was weeping now, and his tears called forth her own. A deep regret shook her. Her advice had brought him here. She had been the one who insisted that he make himself a place in court, that he renounce his father, that he compromise and compromise and compromise until he was this. The commander of a campaign he had no faith in, driven by fear and by guilt.
And still, it was better than being dead at Dawson’s side. And that had been an alternative.
Barriath stepped into the room behind her, and Jorey snarled without looking up, “Go away. You’re not wanted.”
“No?” Barriath asked, and Jorey started like the word was a wasp sting.
For an endless moment, they were silent. Two brothers divided by a rift as deep and profound as the one that split Camnipol. Jorey rose to his feet, his fingers trailing from her own hand.
“What are you doing here?” he breathed.
“Anything I can to pull Palliako down,” Barriath said. “You?”
“Anything I can to keep him propped up.”
“Ah,” Barriath said. “And you’re doing that why, now?”
“I’m fucked if I know,” Jorey said and threw his arms around his brother’s chest.
Clara closed her eyes. The blooming, opening sensation in her heart was joyful, but it was not joy. It was relief. It was the feeling of setting down a mask worn too long and finding that the world did not end with the role. When at length her two boys released each other, she motioned for them to sit and to speak quietly. For the second time that day, she and Barriath recounted all that had happened, all that they knew. Or almost all. That she had taken Vincen Coe as a lover seemed a bit more than the situation called for, even now. When Jorey found that she had engineered the fall of Lord Ternigan that had inspired his own promotion, he shook his head at the cruel irony. When Barriath revealed that Lord Skestinin was his own prisoner—alive, well, and still only half convinced that Barriath meant Aster and the throne no harm—his eyes went wide. And Barriath’s report of the true origins of the spider priests as the weapon of the insane Dragon Emperor was like a child’s bedtime tale come to life, except that it recast everything that had happened in Antea since before the death of King Simeon. The night went on and on, and sleep not even a thought. When she smoked the last of her tobacco, it was the first sign of how long their conversation had run. The birdsong that announced the coming dawn was the second.
Their time together was almost over, and she could see the grief of it in her sons’ eyes. Everything had changed for them all, but their situation was the same.
“We cannot allow the priests to know what we’ve done or what we’re doing,” Clara said. “The Severed Throne is in terrible danger, and our family—we three—are in the best position to save it.”
“Yes,” Jorey said, and it was the most beautiful word she had ever heard spoken. She took his hand in her own.
“You are Lord Marshal,” she said. “The army is yours. Keep it safe, and stop it from fighting.”
“I’ve already written half my report in my mind while we we’ve been talking,” Jorey said. “I’ll tell Geder that the men need to winter over someplace safe where they can rest. Porte Oliva. Bellin. Someplace that doesn’t have the local forces harassing us. It’s an easy argument to make, because it’s true. Come spring, I’ll be cautious. Slow. As much time as I can keep us out of the field, I’ll take.”
“Good,” Clara said. “These poor men didn’t ask for this. If we can keep them from killing anyone more or being killed themselves, all the better.”
“What are we going to use that time for?” Barriath asked.
Clara nodded. “Dawson saw the priests for the danger that they are. We are going to have to do well what he did poorly.”
“There are a lot of priests out there, Mother,” Barriath said. And one of them is Vicarian, he did not quite add. Because he didn’t have to.
“I know,” Clara said. “I didn’t mean to suggest it would be simple.”
“How do we start?” Jorey asked.
“With allies,” Clara said. “And with the work we’ve already done. I’m going to have to leave you. Jorey, be careful with yourself while I’m gone, and I will write as often and as fully as I dare. And I’m leaving Vincen Coe with you. See to him. Promise me that.”
“Of course,” Jorey said. “But where are you going?”
“With your brother,” Clara said. “I think it’s time I spoke with this bel Sarcour woman, don’t you?”
Marcus
The taproom was in the north of the city where the architecture changed, streets narrowing to a merely human size, the great stone towers replaced by wooden structures no more than three stories high. The yard didn’t open to the dragon’s road itself, but the jade ribbon was less than a minute’s walk to the south. Close enough that random travelers in need of a meal might find their way there by chance. The walls were dark and hung with shields of what seemed a hundred different houses. Low benches lined scarred wooden tables and three-legged stools crowded a fire grate longer than two men lying head to foot. The scents of roasting chicken and a spiced bean soup made the air feel warmer than it was. The players liked it for the keep’s open invitation to performers and cheap beer. Marcus liked it because he’d never been there before.