The Spider's War (The Dagger and the Coin series) (37 page)

Cithrin clasped her hands behind her back so tightly that her knuckles ached. Everything in her body was stretched so tightly that she felt the way a viol string sounded. Clara and Aster would be waiting by the path to the gaol, ready to go with her as soon as Geder returned. There was so much to do and so much doubt. She closed her eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll be waiting when you come back.”

Geder surged forward and took her hand in his. His eyes were intense and dark, his mouth in a scowl that was meant to be heroic. “We will return,” he said, then turned
to Yardem and spoke with a false lightness. “We’d best get started. As you said, it can be a long way up.”

Yardem nodded to her and smiled his placid canine smile that might have meant anything:
He’s green
or
Don’t worry, it will all work out
or
It’s been good knowing you
. Cithrin felt the urge to take the Tralgu man in her arms, but she was afraid that Geder might take it as a precedent. “Thank you, Yardem,” she said.

She watched them walk into the vast mouth of the tower. A moment later, the high priest joined them. She watched as the huge man traded words with Geder that she could not hear, and then walked away. She stood for a moment, her heart a complication of elation and fear and a vast anticipated grief.

When she walked away into the gardens, the actors were setting the weapons at the ready on the rough gravel paths. The bright steel looked wrong in Sandr’s hands, and she realized she’d become so accustomed to seeing mock weapons in their hands that the bright steel of the real thing seemed wrong. Cary’s laughter seemed to echo the birdsong. Sandr and Hornet and Mikel snapped and argued like they were trying to put together a stage.

Marcus strode to the knot of men, Lak at his side, and pulled Sandr and Mikel away from the weapon. He shook his head in an amused sort of disgust and strode off toward the dueling yard. It was all so familiar and also so estranged from all she knew. A dream she couldn’t wake from. The minutes stretched, time bending itself like a fiddler’s arm to make her nerves ring.

“You look thoughtful,” Kit said.

“If I am, I don’t know which thoughts they are,” Cithrin said. “I can’t tell if I’m stuffed so full of them I can’t tell one from the other, or if I’m emptied of them.”

The old actor put a hand on her shoulder. His smile consoled her.

“When I was a child,” she said, “I had a nurse called Old Cam. She wasn’t really my nurse, but she took the role on as no one else was doing it. I remember once I was climbing a wall that I wasn’t supposed to. I was… eight years old at the time. Maybe nine. And I was afraid she’d catch me and punish me, and I hoped she would come and give me a reason not to go further.”

“Hoping for someone to rein us in?” Kit asked.

“Astounded that no one has,” she said.

“It’s been my experience that the world is often—”

“Cithrin!”

Aster’s voice cut through the warm air like a blast of winter. Had someone heard him? The prince sprinted out of the Kingspire, his eyes wide and his mouth a gape of horror. She found herself running toward him before she saw him. His chest worked like a bellows and he grabbed at her sleeve, shaking with distress.

“What is it?” she said, willing the boy to catch his breath and dreading what he’d say.

“Basrahip,” Aster said. “He
knows
.”

I
t had gone so well for so long, it was hard to believe how little it took to destroy it.

Clara had left Lehrer Palliako’s house after conferring with Cithrin bel Sarcour, knowing she’d stayed too late. She’d arrived at Lord Skestinin’s manor irrationally certain that by being tardy, she’d given the game away. Instead, laughter had greeted her at the doorway. The door slave nodded to her happily as she went in, and the footman led her to the largest of Lord Skestinin’s drawing rooms. The thing that had been her son sat on a divan dressed in priestly white. Sabiha and Lady Skestinin sat with him, and little Annalise cooed in his lap, reaching up toward his chin with thick, innocent fingers. The impulse to snatch the baby away was too much to resist, but she was able at least to make it seem like greed for the babe’s company more than fear.

“Mother!” the thing that had been Vicarian said, putting his arm around her. “Here I was afraid you’d taken off to fight in the war again.”

“Don’t be clever, dear,” she said, and kissed his cheek because it was something she would have done. “I’m certain Jorey has no need of me at the moment.”

“And he did before?” The mockery in his voice was gentle and warm and familiar. It was how he would have spoken before the spiders had taken him.

With her son, she could have laughed or lied or done whatever she pleased. With this one, every comment was an interrogation, every answer an evasion desperately trying not to seem evasive. “The need might possibly have been my own,” she said, matching the lightness of his tone. “I see you’ve met your niece.”

“Indeed I have,” Vicarian said. “She’s more charming than she has any right to be, given the hour.”

“She’s always stayed up late,” Sabiha said. “Ever since she was born.”

Clara put the child in her mother’s arms, took Vicarian by the wrists, and led him back to the couch and away from the baby. She imagined that his skin moved under her fingers. Tiny bodies crawling through the veins like living clots. Like a man already dead and worse than dead. She could picture too easily one of the little things slipping out of Vicarian’s mouth and stealing into the baby’s. She didn’t let go of him, even as her own flesh crawled. “Jorey was just the same,” she said. “He was always brightest when everyone else was half-dead from exhaustion. By
everyone else
, of course, I mean myself and his wet nurse. What was her name? Idrea, I think. Something like that. Lovely woman, though of course I haven’t needed a wet nurse for something near twenty years now, and even if I did, I can’t think she’s still in that line of work. One’s body cannot last forever, after all, and don’t look like that, dear. You’re in a house of women now.”

“I consider myself warned,” he said.

“But tell me everything,” she said. “What news from Porte Oliva?”

It wasn’t so hard from there, prodding him to speak about himself. Vicarian had always had a bit of the showman in him, and he enjoyed taking even so small a stage as
this. The coffee in Birancour was better than in Camnipol. Porte Oliva was already starting to regrow after its difficult year. Trade ships from Lyoneia had begun negotiating fresh contracts. He’d had a report of Korl Essian, off on a treasure hunt for Geder Palliako and the throne, that made some fairly outlandish claims about tunnels passing under the depths of Lyoneia and a buried machinery deep underground that connected in some obscure fashion to dreams. He’d brought the report with him, ready to deliver to Lord Regent Palliako tomorrow.

Tomorrow. When Vicarian, who didn’t realize he’d been killed long ago, could finally be put to rest. Her throat ached and her eyes fought tears the whole night. Lady Kalliam left first, and then Sabiha and the child. When Clara rose to go, Vicarian rose with her and put his arm over her shoulder as they walked down the hallway together.

“Jorey’s a lucky man,” he said. “This Sabiha seems a genuinely good woman.”

“I’ve become quite fond of her,” Clara said. It was true. She could say it. Everything now she had to judge before it left her mouth. Was it true, did she believe it, would it give away more than she meant it to? Vicarian tipped his head to the side, resting it against her even as they walked, just the way he’d done before.

For a moment, she was taken by the transporting memory of a five-year-old Vicarian bringing her a sprig of lilac, his hands and feet caked in the garden mud. She’d knelt beside him, torn between amusement and annoyance. He’d pressed it in her hand with such solemnity and then touched his forehead to hers. It had been a gesture of such simple love from a boy to his mother. She’d thought then and for years after that it would be among her most treasured memories. Now it hurt.

“Good night, Mother,” he said, stepping away. “Will I see you in the morning?”

“I was hoping to walk to the Kingspire with you,” she said. “I have some business there.” True. All true.

“I would be honored, my Lady Kalliam,” he said with a flourish and a bow. Then, in a more prosaic voice, “We really do have to do something about getting Jorey the family title back. He’s earned it, that’s clear enough. And it feels odd not being able to call you
baroness. Lady
’s too general. Could mean anyone.”

“It would be
dowager baroness
now,” Clara pointed out
. You were such a good boy. Such a good man. I am so sorry that I’ve lost you.

“Near enough,” the thing that had been her son said. “Good night, Mother.”

She could not say good night in return. It wasn’t a good night. It was a terrible one. Instead, she made herself ignore the things lurking under his skin and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

Vincen waited in her apartments, sitting by the window as faithful as a dog. As a husband. They didn’t speak, he only held her as she wept, muffling her sobs with his shoulder and the enfolding comfort of his arms.

A
s they rode through the city streets together in a small and open carriage, Clara’s gaze kept drifting to the Kingspire. The bloody banner of the goddess hung almost motionless and dark, heavy still with dew. This is the last day I will see it there, she thought. Tomorrow, it will be gone or I will. The fear and excitement and grief and rage all fused together in her body. Like metal in a forge, she became an alloy of herself, stronger than anything pure could be. Or so, at least, she hoped. Vincen rode behind, but not too close.

“You’re quiet this morning,” Vicarian said. Clara smiled.

“I’m tired,” she said.

“Can I ask you something?”

Her heart began to tumble in her chest, but Vicarian’s demeanor hadn’t changed, or if it had it was only a bit embarrassed. She saw no malice in him, or no more than she ever did since the change. “If I may reserve the right not to answer, I don’t see why not,” she said, forcing a lightness she did not feel.

Vicarian nodded more to himself than to her. He rubbed his palm against his cheeks. It was a gesture he’d learned from his father, and seeing it here felt like an omen. Not a good one. “Mother, did you think no one would find out?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. She lied, and she saw in his face that he knew. But he hadn’t revealed the plot yet, had he? Surely if he’d told anyone, she’d be on her way to the gaol in chains, and Cithrin and the others beside her. The gaol or the Division. Perhaps there was something in him that was still her son, Dawson’s son. She held her breath.

“He’s my age,” Vicarian said. “Or if he’s older, not by more than a few years. And he’s a servant. A huntsman? What would Father think?”

Clara lowered her head. Bright relief ran against shame. It wasn’t the banker and the dragon he’d discovered. It was Vincen.

“I hope your father would understand,” she said. There was no point in denying it.

“Jorey has done everything he could to return the Kalliam name to dignity,” Vicarian said. “I love you, Mother. Never doubt that. But you’ll become a joke in the court. Chasing after the army was peculiar enough, but at least there was a way to tell the story that you did it from bravery
and love of the throne. Spending your nights with your dead husband’s huntsman?” He shook his head. “You know this has to stop. If not for your own dignity, for Jorey’s. And Sabiha and Annalise. Can you imagine what that little girl’s life will be like if the name she took from you comes to carry the reputation for fucking the servants?”

The truth was, she hadn’t. Now that she did imagine it, she didn’t like the picture. She didn’t ask how he’d found her out. It didn’t matter.

“This has to stop,” Vicarian said, “before someone else finds out.”

“You’ve made your point.”

They were almost at the low wall and the wooden gate that led to the paths of the royal quarter. The huge priest, Basrahip, stood by the open gate, embracing another man who looked much like him. One of the original priests come from the Keshet, she supposed. She was a fool. An idiot. A randy old widow like the jokes all painted, and it had taken her monstrous son to show her how she looked through other people’s eyes.

“It has to stop,” he said again.

“I said you’ve made your point.”

He turned away with a grunt, and the carriage stopped. She heard Vincen’s horse clatter to a halt, but she couldn’t look back to him. She stepped out of the carriage, her legs unsteady beneath her. Did Lady Kalliam know? Did Sabiha? Did Jorey? And if it did stop, if she did send Vincen away as she’d always known in her heart she should, what of her would be left?

“Brother Kalliam,” the huge priest said, wrapping his arms around Vicarian’s shoulders.

“Minister Basrahip,” the thing that had been her son said, returning the embrace. “You remember my mother?”

“Of course,” Basrahip said, bowing to her. “The fearsome Lady Kalliam and the swordsman who fights at her side.”

Did he know too, then? Only, no. Basrahip and Vincen had met each other before. Had faced Feldin Maas together once in some long-vanished world. God. How had she ever thought that any part of her life could be kept safe from any other? Everything mixed. Everything bled into all that surrounded it.

“Are you well, my lady?” the priest asked.

“Fine. Or, no. I’m not. But I’ll
be
fine, Minister Basrahip,” she said. “I find I need to refresh myself.”

“There are no servants or guards to lead you,” he said, apology in his voice. They were all so goddamned polite. She hated that. “The Kingspire today is the temple of the goddess first. Tomorrow, it will be the seat of the empire again.”

“I believe I can find my way,” she said, and walked away briskly before anyone could stop her. She was weeping again, and bitterly. The humiliation had flanked her, and now the full edifice of her composure was crumbling. She marched toward one of the smaller buildings whose use she neither knew nor cared. She prayed that Vincen would not follow her. Or that he would. She turned and found herself in a stables. A dozen horses stood calmly in their stalls, considering her with huge, soft eyes as she sat on a wooden stool and quietly cursed.

It was his voice. It was the spiders in Vicarian’s voice. The power they held to make anything seem plausible, to seem true. He’d as much as called her a foolish old slut, and she couldn’t help but believe it. It was his curse and his magic, the venom of dragons still deadly after thousands of years.

“It isn’t true,” she said. “It isn’t true.” Except that maybe it was. Some part of her had already thought or feared to
think everything he’d said. That the spiders had said it didn’t mean it wasn’t also true. In the distance, she heard voices fading in the direction of the Kingspire. She had to get up. She had to find Cithrin and the others, prepare herself for Geder’s return. She heard footsteps and wiped her eyes with her sleeve, ready to put a brave face on whatever indignity came next.

“Lady Kalliam? Are you all right?”

“Prince Aster,” she said. “I would say I’m well, but that might be overly simple.”

“I saw your son going to the tower, but no one knew where you were. I asked Basrahip, but he didn’t know. I was afraid that maybe…”

“All’s well,” she said, biting the words as she said them. “The plan is still intact.”

“It will be over soon,” Aster said, taking her hand, offering her comfort and perhaps asking some in return. “They’ll be dead and we can put it all right.”

She saw the shadow in the doorway even as the last words passed the prince’s lips. She thought for a moment it was another horse wandering loose, but of course it wasn’t.

Minister Basrahip was come to see if the prince had found her, if she was well, if there was anything he or his false goddess could offer. He stepped in among the animals as Aster finished speaking and stopped, as stunned as if he’d suffered a hammer blow. His huge eyes blinked, his mouth gaped, and then, as understanding blossomed in him, he flushed.

There could be no explaining their way free of this.

“Go,” she said, pushing Aster behind her. “Find Cithrin. Tell her.”

“But—”

“Go!” Clara shouted, and with that, Aster fled.

She stood before the priest, her hands at her sides but in
fists. The priest’s gaze shifted from side to side, as though he was seeing more than only her. His jaw clenched until she could hear his teeth groan, and his voice was raw with anger. “What is this?”

It didn’t matter what she said now. There was no deceiving her way out from under it. So, then, she was ready to be damned for what she was. “There is no goddess,” Clara said, speaking each word clearly and sharply. “You have spent your life in service to a deceit.”

He roared, surging forward, and the world seemed to narrow to her body. The sounds all around her stuttered into silence, and she was on the ground, her face pressed against the hay and filth. Her cheek bled where he had struck her, but she felt it only as a rivulet of wetness, both warm and cool. In their stalls, the horses shied and kicked, frightened by the violence. She rose to her feet, but Basrahip was gone, running on tree-thick legs toward the Kingspire.

She neither thought nor hesitated, only lowered her head and ran. She was a woman, and older than the priest, but he had spent his winter sitting in a temple worshipping a lie while she’d marched through snowbound mountains, and she was half his weight. She had no doubt that she could catch him.