“I wouldn’t be alone. Jorey would be there, and I’d take Vincen Coe to keep me safe.”
“No.”
“Dawson. Love,” Clara said, and her voice had taken on a hardness he rarely heard from her. “I let you stop me when there were foreign mercenaries in the streets, but that’s passed. And if someone doesn’t reach out, the breach will never be healed. Simeon can’t do it, poor bear, because it isn’t something that can be commanded. You and Feldin can’t because you’re men and you don’t know how. The way this happens is you draw your swords, and we talk about who wore the most fetching dress at the ball until you put them back in their scabbards. Just because you don’t feel comfortable with it doesn’t mean it’s difficult.”
“We’ve gone past that now,” Dawson said.
Clara lifted an eyebrow. The silence lasted three heartbeats. Four.
“You need to raise your army, then, don’t you?” she said.
“It’s forbidden. Part of my season of exile.”
“Well, then,” Clara said, picking her needlework back up. “I’ll write to Phelia this evening and let her know I’d be open to an invitation.”
“Clara-”
“You’re quite right. I wouldn’t dream of going without escort. Would you like to speak with Vincen Coe, or shall I?”
The anger that leapt up in Dawson surprised him. He rose to his feet, throwing the pages of Canl Daskellin’s letter to the floor. He badly wanted to take some book or bauble or chair and throw it out the gallery window and into the courtyard. Clara’s eyes were on her work, the thin glimmer of the needle piercing the cloth and drawing through, piercing and drawing. Her mouth was set.
“Simeon is my king too,” she said. “Yours isn’t the only noble blood in this house.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Dawson muttered, forcing the words out through a narrowed throat.
“I’m sorry, dear. What did you say?”
“Coe. I’ll talk to Coe. But if he doesn’t go with you, you aren’t going.”
Clara smiled.
“Send my maid to me when you go, dear. I’ll have her fetch my pen.”
The huntsman’s quarters were outside the great granite-and-jade walls of the holding. A long, low building, the roof’s thatching laced down by long ropes of woven leather and weighted by the skulls and bones of fallen prey. The courtyard had weeds growing at the sides where the boots of men didn’t trample them down and baled hay targets for the archers to practice against. The air stank of dog shit from the adjoining kennels, and a huge shade tree arched above the building’s side, snowy with midsummer blooms.
Voices led Dawson to the back of the building. Five of his huntsmen stood or sat around the table of an ancient stump, raw cheese and fresh bread on the wood. They were young men, stripped to their hose in the heat. Dawson felt a moment’s deep nostalgia. Once he’d been much like them. Strong, sure of his body, and able to lose himself in the joys of a warm day. And when he had been, Simeon had been at his side. The years had robbed them both.
One caught sight of him and leapt to his feet in salute. The others quickly followed. Vincen Coe was in the back, his left eye swollen and dark. Dawson strode over to them, ignoring all but the wounded man.
“Coe,” he said. “With me.”
“My lord,” the huntsman said, and hurried to Dawson’s side. Dawson walked fast down the wide track that led from the holding down toward the pond to the north. The shadows of the spiraling towers striped the land.
“What happened to you?” Dawson said. “You look like you tried to catch a rock with your eyelids.”
“Nothing of importance, lord.”
“Tell me.”
“We drank a bit too much last night, lord. One of the new boys got a bit merry and… made a suggestion I found offensive. He repeated it, and I found myself moved to correct him.”
“He called you a catamite?”
“No, my lord.”
“What, then?”
In spring, before the start of the court season, the pond was clear as water from a stream. In autumn, after Dawson’s return from court, it could be as dark as tea. He’d rarely seen it in the height of summer, the green of the water building on the reflections of the trees to make something almost emerald. Half a dozen ducks made their way across the water, their wakes spreading out behind them. Dawson stood at the edge where the grass had the dampness of mud beneath it. Vincen Coe’s uncomfortable silence became more interesting with every passing breath.
“I could ask the others,” Dawson said. “They’ll tell me if you won’t.”
Vincen looked out over water to the distant mountains.
“He impugned the honor of Lady Kalliam, my lord. And made some speculations that…”
“Ah,” Dawson said. Sour rage haunted the back of his mouth. “Is he still here?”
“No, my lord. His brothers carried him back to his village last night.”
“Carried him?”
“I didn’t leave him in fit state to walk, sir.”
Dawson chuckled. Flies danced across the water before him.
“She’s going back to Camnipol,” Dawson said. “She has the idea that she can make peace with Maas.”
The young huntsman nodded once, but didn’t speak.
“Say it,” Dawson said.
“With permission, sir. That’s not wise. It’s hardest drawing blood the first time, and that’s already happened. It only gets easier.”
“I know it, but she’s determined.”
“Send me instead.”
“I’m sending you in addition,” Dawson said. “Jorey’s still in the city. He can give you a better picture of where things stand. You protected me when this all started. I need you to protect her now.”
The two men stood together. Voices came from behind them. The kennel master shouting to his apprentice. The laughter of the huntsmen. It all seemed to come from another world. One not so far in the past when things had been better and safer and still right.
“Nothing will hurt her, my lord,” Vincen Coe said. “Not while I live.”
Three days after Clara left, riding off in the open carriage that had brought them with Vincen Coe riding close behind, the unwelcome guest arrived.
The heat of the day had driven Dawson out of the holding proper and into the winter garden. Out of its season, it looked plain. The flowers that would offer up blooms of gold and vermillion in the falling days of the year looked like tough green weeds now. Three of his dogs lay panting in the heat, dark eyes closed and pink tongues lolling out. The glasshouse stood open. Closed, it would have been hotter than an oven. The garden slept, waiting for its time, and when that time came, it would transform itself.
By then, Clara would have returned. He had spent time away from her, of course. He had court business and the hunt. She had her circle and the management of the household. And yet when she left him behind, the solitude was harder to bear gracefully. He woke in the mornings wondering where she was. He lay down at night wishing she would walk in through the dressing room door, alive with news and insight and simple inane gossip. Between the two moments, he tried not to think of her, or of Feldin Maas, or the possibility of her being used somehow against him.
“Lord Kalliam.”
The servant was a young Dartinae girl, new to his service. Her eyes burned in the manner of her race.
“What is it?”
“A man’s come asking audience, my lord. Paerin Clark, sir.”
“Don’t know him,” Dawson said, but half a breath later, he did. The pale banker, agent of Northcoast, and seducer of Canl Daskellin. Dawson stood. At his feet, the dogs sat up, looking from him to the servant girl and back while they whined softly. “Is he alone?”
The girl’s eyes widened, suddenly anxious.
“He has a retinue, my lord. A driver and footmen. And I think his private man.”
