Winter was passing. Every hour brought spring closer, and with it the fighting season. She felt it in her gut. The growing certainty that this was the last year, that if next winter found the banner of the spider goddess still flying in the temples of Porte Oliva and Camnipol and Nus, it would be too late. Like a glass grabbed for the instant it passed her reach, the world would shatter into war within war within war, forever. And for all she had done, for all she was doing, she still dreamed at night of trying to stop a river by pushing the water back with her hands.
There had been no word from Marcus or from Kit, which was either a blessing or a sign that their plan had gone wrong or both. Or neither. The companion to the pirate ship that had spirited Isadau to the south had turned back with word that the magistra had made it as far as the smugglers’ coves at the edge of Herez. The treacherous passage around Birancour’s southern coast had still been before her, and the long, swift run past the Free Cities—free now only in name, since fear of Antea left their ports too dangerous for landing.
The most recent word had been good, so Cithrin clung to it, but still she went to the taproom near Inys’s field, and listened to the chatter of the people, the gossip, the lies and fabrications and half-formed hopes of a city as frightened and unsure as she was herself. And the singers—Mikel and Charlit Soon among them. And the fortune-tellers and jugglers—Cary and Sandr and Hornet as well as a different, less-practiced local bunch.
And she drank. More often than not, in the days of emptiness and absence, she found she drank with Barriath Kalliam.
“One time the freeze lasted so long we found a pod of the Drowned washed up on the beach,” he said. “If you’ve never sailed the north in winter, you’ve never been cold.”
“You seem to have a great many opinions on what I have and haven’t felt,” Cithrin said.
Their table wasn’t theirs, except that they were sitting at it. It was long enough for a dozen, and six besides them shared the benches. The cook’s boy brought low wooden devices more trough than platter filled with flatbread and pepper jam and cheeses that smelled like grass and summer. The others dropped coins on the table or in the boy’s open hand and took out food to eat straight from the table. Cithrin lifted her cup, and the boy nodded. More cider would come when he had a moment.
Across the common room, Yardem Hane and Enen sat across a square board, both scowling at the low wooden markers. The fire in the grate popped now and then, scattering embers and the smell of cut wood. The wind that blew through the streets promised snow, and clouds hid moon and stars alike, and the bitterness of it made the taproom’s warmth sweeter. When Cithrin said as much, Barriath laughed.
“I think you’re talking about more than weather,” he said.
“Oh do you?”
“Sure,” the man said, leaning his elbows on the table and hunching toward her. “It’s the same for everything, isn’t it? Everything’s more itself with a bit of contrast. All this?” He nodded at the room around them. “None of it would feel quite the same if the world weren’t tearing at the seams. It’d just be a taproom in winter, and we’d all be here for the food and the drink and a way to kill a bit of the boredom until the sun came back. Instead, it’s…”
The sentence stopped without ending. Cithrin followed his gaze, trying to see the room as he did. Men and women of half a dozen races, sharing warmth and bread and air. Outside, a dragon slept in the darkness, and beyond it, a city waited to find out whether it would be the next to face an invader’s blades, and then war and the threat of war spilling out to the edges of all maps. Seen that way, it was hard not to imagine the spill of firelight as the last breath of clean air in a world of smoke and fire. Barriath sighed and brushed the back of his hand wearily across his eyes.
He had changed since Lady Kalliam had arrived. Or, no. That wasn’t quite true. He had changed when she came, but he had also changed again when she left. He’d come to them, his navy at his back, a warrior and an unexpected ally. And he was that still, but also a man whose family faced danger without him. A man who’d seen his father killed before him. An exile from his home, wounded but unbroken. His gaze shifted to hers. A moment of confusion flickered in his eyes. A question.
“I was wondering who you would have been if none of this had happened,” Cithrin said.
“Just another sailor hoping for Lord Skestinin’s approval,” Barriath said. “What about you?”
“I’d have been… I don’t know. A girl in Vanai with a bit of money her parents left her and no clear work, I suppose. I could have managed a launderer’s yard or some such.”
“You’d have made a good yard manager,” Barriath said. “In a better world.”
Across the room, Yardem’s ears perked up and he moved one of his tokens. Enen growled, the silver-grey pelt of her arms rippling as she shrugged her annoyance. The cook’s boy brought Cithrin’s cup of fresh cider, then hurried over to tend the fire. A Firstblood woman at the end of the table laughed and coughed and laughed again. The knot in Cithrin’s belly—her constant companion—was looser now. The cider had a bite to it, and this was her fifth. Her mind was clear, though.
Barriath shifted on his bench. His fingers brushed against her arm as if by accident, but not by accident. Cithrin felt her blood go suddenly bright, her heart triple its pace, and for a moment she thought she was afraid. Then she turned to look at his wide, callused hand, again into the darkness of his eyes, and her body made it clear to her that it was not fear.
Oh, she thought. And then How did I not see this coming?
Barriath’s smile was soft, neither apologetic nor gloating, but again with a question at its back. Cithrin’s mind went suddenly blank. There was, she was certain, something she was supposed to do now, some way she was supposed to act. She tried to imagine that she was Cary or Isadau or anyone other than herself. Anyone who knew what to do at moments like these. The best she could manage was the polite regard of the negotiating table. Barriath nodded as if she’d spoken, regret in his eyes but humor as well, and shifted his hand away. Her skin felt warm where he’d touched her, and she immediately wanted his fingers back where they’d been.
Oh by all gods ever, this is undignified work.
“I find I’ve grown a bit fatigued,” she said, her voice crisp as frost. “It may be time that I retire for the evening.”
“Of course, Magistra,” he said. “Your company’s been a pleasure. As always.”
She looked to Yardem and then back to Barriath. Every movement she made seemed like the first performance of an amateur actor. Secret queen of the world, Komme called her, and she was awkward as a colt. “It seems my guard is busy. Would you be so kind as to walk me back to the holding company?”
She watched him understand, doubt his understanding, and then match her fragile formality. A particularly vivid and pleasant image intruded on her imagination and she pushed it away. “I would be happy to,” he said. “Just give me a moment to… finish my cider?”
“Of course,” she said, folding her arms.
Barriath took his cup and sipped from it twice, his gaze focused on the middle distance, his attention intense. Enen growled again, and Cithrin felt a sudden stab of fear. Don’t let their game be over. Please God, don’t let them be done. Barriath seemed to share her thought. He put down the cup and stood, offering her his arm.