“You have my permission,” Sabiha said.
“No tears. None of that,” Clara said.
They visited for slightly longer than usual, and Clara would have stayed longer if it weren’t such a long walk home. She left when there would be enough light to make it the whole way. She didn’t like the streets around her boarding house, but she liked them even less at night.
She was almost to the Prisoner’s Span when five men with drawn knives stepped in front of her.
When they lifted the cowl from her head, she was in a wide, dark room. The light came from an iron chandelier overhead, but she wouldn’t have been surprised by torches. Soldiers with bows at the ready were on either side, rising up impossibly high, a wall of men. And before her, a huge black bench topped by Lord Regent Geder Palliako. Clara felt the fear starting to shake her. Her ghost-self wailed and turned away in fear, and she went part way with it. The high priest stood behind her where she could not see him, though Geder could.
“Clara Kalliam,” Geder said. “Forgive the intrusion, but I had some questions I felt I had to put to you. If you lie to me, I will know and you will suffer. Badly. Do you understand?”
Her mouth was dry. How had she come here? What had she done? It was like she’d fallen asleep and come to a nightmare she couldn’t wake from. She felt caught at something, but she didn’t know what.
“I understand you are no longer living at your son’s house,” Geder said. “Is that true?”
Her breath was so ragged, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to speak. Wouldn’t silence count as a lie? She didn’t want to think what he could do to her. What he would do.
“It is,” she managed.
“Why is that?”
“My presence makes it difficult for Jorey and Sabiha to dissociate from the court’s memories of Dawson.”
“Have you been meeting with Ogene Faskellan?”
“Yes. We have had several visits.”
“Have you been meeting with Ana Mecilli?”
“Yes. Twice, I think.”
To her right, one of the soldiers shifted slightly, the sound sharp and dry. Her heart raced.
“Are you loyal to me?” Geder asked.
Clara shook her head, not
“Are you loyal to me?” he asked again, his voice growing harsher.
“I don’t think about you one way or the other, my lord,” she said.
The sound of cloth shifting came from behind her.
“Really?” Geder asked. He sounded genuinely confused.
“You are Lord Regent, and the man who killed my husband, and Jorey’s friend from campaign. You’re the man who helped me to expose Feldin Maas. But none of that particularly affects what I have to do in my day. I suppose it should on some level, but I certainly don’t spend my time considering the question.”
“You’re meeting with all of these people. Are you organizing them against me?”
She laughed. She didn’t mean to. If she’d thought about it, she wouldn’t have, but there it was and the archer didn’t kill her for it.
“No. God, no. The thought never occurred to me. I’ve been trying to hold my family together.”
“Your family?”
“Yes. Barriath’s gone with hardly a word to anyone. Jorey and Sabiha are having a terrible time of it, and not even married a full season yet. Vicarian is the only one who hasn’t been seared by the whole terrible business. Well, and there’s Elisia. She appears to be doing well, but I can’t think she’s happy. Not really.”
“Oh,” Geder said.
“And of course with Dawson gone, there’s no one to hold it all together. There’s not even the house, which when you think about it is a fairly weak way to hold a family together, but we had it once, and now we don’t. And so there’s all this walking.”
Shut up, shut up,
“And then there’s the question of mourning. How long does one wait, because on the one hand there’s a right and a wrong in court, but I’m not in court any longer, and so I don’t know what rules apply. I have to go about making them up. It’s terrible. It really is.”
“But you haven’t been conspiring against me or the throne?”
“No,” she said.
There was a pause.
“All right, then. Thank you for your time. You can go.”
Clara walked out into the open air. She was in the Kingspire. Her head was spinning a bit, and she stopped at the street gate to catch her breath. She felt absurdly relieved. As if she’d been attacked and escaped only through luck. Perhaps that was true. She understood the pinched faces now. The feeling of fear and oppression that hung over everything like black crepe. She wondered how many people had been taken away without warning and made to play Geder’s game of magistrate. More than only her, she was certain.
When she felt steady again, she made her way to the street. The Division was before her, and the Prisoner’s Span looked terribly far away. The sun was low and red and swollen in the sky, turning all the buildings west of her to silhouettes like a painting for a burning city. And what was worse, somewhere in the confusion, she’d lost her apples and cheese.
The sun had set long before she got back to her boarding house. Her feet were shouting with each step. Her spine felt like a column of fire. The smell of Abatha’s stew was actually attractive, which only gave an idea of how hungry she’d become. She made her way to the kitchen with the sole intention of paying her rent and buying a bowl of greasy stew, but Vincen was there, sitting by the oven. When he saw her, he leaped up, crossing the room in a stride, and lifted her in his arms.
“They told me you were gone,” he said. “They said the Lord Regent’s men took you.”
“They did,” Clara said and let herself fall into the embrace. Just a little. “You can put me down now if you like.”
“Never, my lady.”
“Very romantic,” she said. “Put me down.”
She sat by the oven, and Abatha gave her a bowl for free, so she bought a pipeful of tobacco instead. She told about her meetings with Ogene and Jorey and Sabiha, and then coming home only to be stopped by Geder’s men and carried away with a cowl over her face. She finished the last of her stew as she got to the strange dark room with the soldiers and Geder Palliako towering before her, demanding that she answer questions. She felt herself growing calmer with the retelling, as if she were seeing for the first time what had happened. The distance was reassuring.
She lit her pipe from the stove. Abatha’s stew might be salty and bland, but she did manage to find genuinely decent tobacco. Clara sat at the stove, puffing thoughtfully for a long moment before she realized Vincen and Abatha were waiting for her to go on.
“And then they let me go,” she said, rather gamely.
“But what did they ask?” Abatha said. Her face looked really animated for the first time since Clara had met her.
“Oh, that. They asked if I’d been conspiring against Geder Palliako and the crown.”
“What did you say?”
“That the thought hadn’t occurred to me,” she said.
“And?” Vincen said.
Clara raised an eyebrow.
“And now it has.”
