Charlit Soon joined him. The play wasn’t one she’d done before, and since there hadn’t been time to memorize all the lines, Hornet would be taking the nursemaid’s role and playing it in a high comic falsetto. Marcus nodded to her and she smiled back.
“Don’t believe I thanked you for bringing Master Kit back to us,” she said.
“Didn’t know I was doing it at the time,” Marcus said. “But you’re welcome all the same. It’s good to see him back among family.”
“What about your family?” she asked.
He was on the edge of saying that they were dead. Alys and Merian, gone except in his nightmares. Only he didn’t.
“Suddapal. They’re in Suddapal for the time being. If things grow too dangerous there, I expect I’ll meet them again in Porte Oliva.”
“Cithrin, you mean?”
“And Yardem. And the company,” Marcus said. “They’re what I have. I got to see them for a time on the way north, but I couldn’t stay. They had their job. I had mine. But when the jobs are over …”
“When they’re over,” Charlit Soon agreed, and Sandr leaned out from behind the cart, his face painted red and white and his arms flowing with green ribbons.
“Oh. It’s time,” Charlit Soon said, and trotted to the far side of the yard.
Kit came out, stepping onto the stage, and the yellow silk of his costume seemed like cloth-of-gold in the firelight. He strode forward, the stage shifting a bit under his weight. At the edge, he paused. For a long breathless moment, Marcus saw not an actor, not King Lamas the Gold, but Kit. His friend Kit. And he saw the satisfaction in the old man’s face, the happiness and the belonging. The moment passed, and Kit began hectoring the crowd, declaiming, and bringing them close despite the darkness and the cold, with the promise of miracles and of joy.
Clara
When the season’s end came, Clara was not invited to any of the great parties, but Jorey and Sabiha were. Vicarian had not reappeared since the initiation at the top of the Kingspire, and there was no indication of when he would come back down. And so when the feasts and revels that marked the year’s end came and the streets and courtyards of the great houses filled with slave-drawn carriages and ornate palanquins fighting for positions and rank, Clara found herself outside of all of it. Last year, when Dawson had been newly dead, she’d stumbled through her days like a woman half asleep. Now she walked the edge of the Division or looked out over the southern plains, visited the Prisoner’s Span and the taprooms and the fresh markets. The increase in her allowance meant that even as the others around her struggled, she was able to keep herself near to the daily life to which she’d become accustomed. Things did change around her. The market for day-old bread had become competitive, and she gave up the practice of handing it out as charity. The price of tobacco dropped, though, so she could afford something that was actually worth smoking.
They were small examples of something larger. Years of war had changed Camnipol, and the changes weren’t yet done. Small pleasures went away and new ones appeared, and Clara found that so long as she paid attention to the new, mourning the old wasn’t so bad. If anything, it had become the way she lived her life.
After the last of the great parties, there were a handful of small occasions. Winter teas held in drawing rooms while the servants of the house packed the summer’s things away. A knitting group where several fallen women of the court, herself included, were taught a novel way of making shawls by an ancient Jasuru man with half his teeth missing, one blind eye, and an exquisite talent for lacework. There were farewells and promises that the next year would come and it would be different. As if any were ever the same.
She gathered what gossip and information she could for her letters, though the exercise had taken on an almost formal feeling. She wrote her letters, she sent them out, and nothing ever came back. Not that she’d given anyone a way to reach her. Sometimes she thought that she should. She could give them a false name to send to at the boarding house or direct them to Cold Hammer stables much as she had Ternigan. She never did, though. Part of that was concern for not being caught, but part was also that she liked the way things were now. Sending letters into nowhere and with no response was strangely calming. Like prayer, now that she thought of it.
As for her plan to undercut Lord Ternigan, she’d all but given up hope. Weeks passed, and though Kiaria hadn’t fallen, Ternigan didn’t reply.
Until, one day shortly after the last of Clara’s old friends had left the city, he did.
The morning had begun late, dawn creeping in later and later until it seemed that before long darkness would take the world entirely. Clara had extracted herself from the bed without waking Vincen, washed and dressed herself, and escaped into the grey streets. Frost crept along the bases of the buildings, and the horses in the streets walked slowly in order to keep their footing. At the bakery, she bought an apple tart and a cup of coffee, sitting by the doorway and watching the traffic in the street. It was her day to visit Sabi-ha’s unmentionable son and the family that was raising him, and had it been any other errand, she would have postponed it and gone back to the comfortable warmth of the boarding house. But children came with a different set of rules, and when she had drained the dregs of her cup and licked away the last of her tart, she bought a sugar bun for the boy and made her way to the house.
When she left, near midday, she meant to walk directly back to Vincen. Nothing more was required of her, and an afternoon smoking by the fire and reading poems either to herself or aloud to him sounded more than perfect. But her path was going to take her only a few streets from the stables, and she hadn’t bothered checking in there in days. She turned toward the southern gate.
She was still half a block from it when her former footman stepped out from the front gate and waved her to come closer. Clara’s heart beat a bit faster, and she walked more quickly without breaking into a run. When she drew up to him, he put a hand on her arm and leaned in close enough that his breath was warm against her ear.
“It’s come,” was all that he said. “Lirin Petty’s got a letter.”
The stables themselves were dark and hot in comparison to the street. While the sunlight didn’t warm them, the bodies of the horses in their stalls and the warmth radiating from the manure pile were as good as a brazier. Glancing furtively to be sure they were not being watched, he led her to the back and drew a folded and sealed page from beneath a bale of hay. Clara took it gently, as if it were spun glass.
The thread was simple, the knot work undistinguished. If a letter had been made to seem unremarkable, it would have been like this. The hand, however, was one she had seen many times before. Ternigan, Lord Marshal of Antea, had formed those letters with his own hand. She had to restrain herself from ripping the thread then and there. Instead, she tucked the page away for when she got back to her rooms.
“Thank you very much,” she said.
“Anything, m’lady.”
“Let’s just never mention this,” she said.
“Not ever,” he said.
All the way back to the house, the world seemed brighter and warmer, and her body felt buoyed up with the presentiment of victory.
My dear friend—
I have thought long about what you wrote, and though I am not present in court, do not believe that I am unaware of the sentiments you speak of. The siege of Kiaria is going as well as might be expected given that the men have fought through the swamps of Asterilhold, the streets of Camnipol, and all along the vast stretch of Timzinae-infested Sarakal and Elassae. The instructions I have received from Palliako have become increasingly frustrating. When I tell him the situation, he cites stories written in history books or the assurances of his pet cultists. My patience is wearing thin with his cheap buffoonery.
You have known me many years, and you know that my admiration for and loyalty to King Simeon were unmatched. Like you, I have come to the conclusion that the empire is in grave danger, but everything will rest on how we proceed. Without the support of the full court, I am afraid we would risk another summer like the last, and
