“But?”
“But I don’t know who I’d be if they’d lived,” she said. She spoke with the clarity of being just drunk enough to know she had to try not to slur her words. “I missed them. And I mourned for them, I think. But I like who I am. What I do. I’m looking forward to everything. The things that happened to bring me here? I can’t judge them. Good. Bad. Who would I be if I’d had parents? Who would I be if I’d gone to Carse? If something terrible leads to something good, where does that leave you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, though he didn’t understand the part about going to Carse. She’d come from Carse, so she must have gone there at some point.
She put the wineskin to her mouth, tilting back her head. Her throat worked, once, twice, last. A tiny red trickle slipped from her lips, and she wiped it away with her sleeve. When she smiled, the expression was lazy and joyful, utterly out of place in the ruins of a city at war.
“I,” she said, putting the empty skin on the ground, “am drunk enough to sleep now.”
“Well, then. Good night, Magistra.”
She nodded an unsteady bow, but her eyes were bright and merry.
“Sleep well, Lord Regent. We’ll see who has to find a home for the piss pot,” she said, leaned forward with pursed lips, and blew out the candle.
The darkness was utter and absolute. Geder found a blanket by touch and curled himself into it. The welts on his arm were itching, but not badly. He heard her struggling with her own blanket, muttering small curses, shifting, cloth moving against cloth. Her breath was shallow and impatient, and then softer, deeper, fuller. She snored a little, the rattle high in her throat. Geder lay on the dirt, his own arm for a pillow. He heard the patter of soft cat feet, one of the previous owners drawn by the smell of the chicken. The frantic licking of a small, rough tongue. When he moved, the cat fled, and he was sorry that it had. He didn’t mind sharing what was left of the meal.
He hadn’t realized how much the tiny candle flame had warmed the little room, but the air was growing steadily colder. He willed himself to sleep, counting his breaths to himself the way he had when he was younger. Going through his body, forcing each muscle to relax, starting with his feet and ending with the top of his head. It grew colder, but he minded it less. Slowly, by inches, he felt his mind letting go, slipping apart into the quiet darkness. When she shifted against him, he only half noticed she was there.
His last coherent thought was that he was sleeping beside a woman and it didn’t seem strange at all.
Dawson
The battle of Camnipol had raged for more than a week now, violence following violence, attack calling forth reprisal calling forth reprisal of its own. Twice now, someone had tried to open the gates, and both times they had been driven back. The city’s food supplies were growing shorter, the water in the cisterns lower. The high summer sun had joined the battle with the worst heat in years. It beat down from an implacable blue sky, turning all the roofs to a burning bronze, wilting the flowers, and driving men to madness.
Dawson stood on the rooftop of Alan Klin’s estate, his arms behind him, his chin jutting forward with a confidence he didn’t feel. His city was suffering. His nation was suffering. Asterilhold could have reassembled its army and stood outside the walls right now, and not only would Dawson not know it, it wouldn’t have made any difference. The siege they held themselves under was as vicious as any enemy could devise. It was like watching a beloved dog going slowly mad, biting itself to death while Dawson could only look on in horror and sorrow.
Behind him, Alan Klin cleared his throat. And Mirkus Shoat, never a man of particular originality, did as well. Dawson turned to his council. The patriots being mistaken for traitors. Estin Cersillian was dead, caught by a blade in the street. Odderd Mastellin looked small and sheeplike and weary. Only Lord Bannien lived and was not with them. He’d gone in the morning with a dozen men to salvage what he could of his mansion, burned in the night.
“We can’t keep this going,” Klin said.
“I know it.”
In the street below them, there should have been men and women, dogs and children. Servants should have been carrying their masters’ clothing back from the launderer. Horses should have pulled carts of turnips and carrots to the market square. Instead, men with swords walked in groups, wary-eyed. His men, Klin’s, Bannien’s. Aster’s banner flew over the house as well, a visible claim of loyalty that seemed to matter less and less with every passing day.
“If we have King Lechan,” Mastellin said, “we can lay claim to being the legitimate protectors of the throne. We’d hold the enemy of the crown as an enemy.”
“Are we sure no one’s killed him?” Mirkus Shoat asked. Klin’s laugh was low and nasty.
“We’re not sure anyone’s fed him,” he said. “He could be gone to the angels and not a dagger in sight.”
“Then we have to surrender,” Shoat said.
“Never to Palliako,” Dawson said. “If we lay down arms, it must be to the prince. Otherwise everything they say about us will be true.”
“I think you underestimate what they’re saying about us,” Klin said. “And it hardly matters. Until we find one or the other of them, we might as well give arms to Daskellin or Broot or whoever we find walking down the street. There’s no one we can surrender to that can guarantee our safety as far as from here to the gallows.”
“Why not?” Shoat demanded. “Those others could surrender to us.”
“But they won’t,” Klin said, his voice the melody of despair. “They’re winning.”
“What about the priests?” Dawson said. “Have we tracked any of them down?”
“A few,” Klin said. “Not all. The high priest especially can’t be found. We’ve rounded up six or seven of the bastards.”
“Where are they now?” Mastellin asked.
“Bottom of the Division,” he said. “We threw them off a bridge. I talked to one of them for a while first. They tell interesting stories.”
“I don’t care what pigs mean when they grunt,” Dawson said, but Klin went on as if he’d been silent.
“They say Palliako’s running the whole damned fight from a secret tower in the Kingspire. He’s supposed to have some kind of magical protection. When the blades hit him, they passed right through like he was mist.”
“It’s shit,” Dawson said. “The only thing my blade passed through was the priest.”
Klin shook his head. When he spoke again, his voice was harder.
“They say he planned all this. That it’s part of the purge he began with Feldin Maas, and only he knew how deep it really ran. They say the fighting now is all him putting a hot cloth on the wound so he can draw up the pus.” Klin looked around the rooftop. “We’re the pus, in case you missed the metaphor.”
In the street, someone shouted and half a dozen men drew blades and ran to the sound. Dawson wished his eyes could turn the corners and follow them instead of standing up where he could see so much more of the city, and still too little.
“You don’t believe it,” Dawson said.
“I don’t know,” Klin replied. “I didn’t, but even wild tales can have a grain of truth to them. Palliako knew we were coming.”
“He was suprised,” Dawson said.
“He didn’t know it was you, maybe,” Klin said. “But he does now. Maybe it was all built to see who was against him. It worked out that way, didn’t it?”
Sweat trickled down Dawson’s back and stuck his sleeves to his arms. The shouts in the streets below were growing louder, and the sound of steel against steel rang with them. Klin ignored that too.