METHODS FOR DEFEATING THE ENEMY
The abominations that have corrupted Antea and brought war to the world are powerful, but they are not invincible. Their power is in their voices and in their blood, but they have been defeated before and they can be defeated again.
It went on. Simple, unadorned letters that outlined the dangers that the priests posed and how to drown out their voices, fight battles deaf to their commands, and avoid the contagion of tiny black spiders that spilled out like rotten blood when you cut one open. The words were simple to the point of simplistic, but they were a place to start. He ran his thumbnail hissing up one corner of the stack.
“Three thousand copies,” the master scribe said, and there was more than a little pride in her voice. “We will need more paper soon.”
“There’s a dozen people on Sisters’ Street taking old books apart and washing off the ink as fast as you all are putting it back on,” Marcus said.
He thought she flinched a little at the words. It would be hard, he supposed, for someone in her position to accept the idea that her work was less permanent than she liked to imagine it. But welcome to the world. It wasn’t as if any of the wars he’d fought in stayed won either.
“Where are these going?” she asked, changing the subject.
“This batch? Asterilhold, same as the last. We’ve got a fast boat ready to carry it along the coast and a few names in the city that might be open to a little life-threatening sedition.”
Yardem coughed gently. Marcus took the meaning behind it and forced himself to smile. It wasn’t this poor woman’s fault he was in a mood as foul as last month’s milk. He lifted the brick of papers from the desk and nodded to Enen and Halvill. They placed the chest gently onto the cleared desk, and Marcus unlocked it. The war gold was a bit longer than it was wide, embossed by a press that existed only in the bank, signed by Komme Medean and King Tracian’s master of coin. A few carefully worded lines promised that king and crown would honor the transferred debt, and a line of cipher made it possible to check the note against forgeries. Yardem handed the papers to the master scribe, and she accepted them with a small, formal bow. Her hesitation was almost imperceptible, but it was there. Yardem’s ears shifted toward her inquiringly.
“Are they helping?” she asked.
“Maybe,” Marcus said. “It’s throwing seeds to the wind. A stack like this in every city they hold? Give the people they’ve conquered a better idea what they’re facing and how to stand against it? Not to mention that it aims at the snake’s head.”
“Snake’s head?”
“He means the priests, ma’am,” Yardem said. “One of the things we hope the letters will do is keep the focus on the priests so that people won’t be distracted into other conflicts.”
The scribe smiled, and her eyes seemed older than her years. “I don’t care if they all burn each other to nothing, I just hope you can keep them from doing it here.”
Yardem’s gaze flicked to Marcus, expecting or dreading a cutting remark from him. But Marcus didn’t have one to hand. It was a bloodthirsty and selfish sentiment, but it wasn’t an uncommon one. Charity and compassion were easier when there was no sense of threat to poison them, and the world was woven from threats these nights. In other circumstances, the scribe would likely have thought a bit more before she hoped death and fire for the whole world, only not her city. It was war, though. It stained everything.
When, as a younger man, Marcus had lived in Carse, the taproom had just been a taproom and the field beyond it only an odd strip of commons. Since the dragon had come, wounded and morose, the place had become the most prestigious meeting house in the city. Someone had built a massive wooden perch on the commons so that Inys could rest there and look into the taproom’s yard. The tables within the building were packed close, adding the heat and stink of bodies to the smoke and fire in the grate. The meat was probably pork, but spiced to a tear-inducing heat that could have hidden anything. Marcus leaned his elbows against the table and tried to ignore the way the bar boy kept jostling him as he squeezed by.
“What’s the point of having a cart if you’ve nothing to put in it?” Mikel said. The thin actor’s hands spread across the table in something approaching supplication. The raw emotion over small issues was something Marcus had grown used to in his travels with the troupe. Soldiers tended to be more stoic than actors.
“Where are you going to put your props and costumes if you haven’t got a cart?” Cary snapped. Since they’d lost Smit in the fall of Porte Oliva, her temper had been shorter. Marcus liked her better for it. Mikel’s hands retreated from the surface of the table.
“I hope we can agree that both will be needed before the company is made whole,” Kit said. “I think we might be better listing out which plays we can perform in our present circumstances, and then determining which replacements will add most to the repertoire.”
“Like another actor?” Cary asked. “Is that what you mean?”
“I suppose it is one thing I mean,” Kit said, only the way he formed the words was like warm flannel on a cold night. Cary looked away. Kit turned a concerned expression to Marcus. “Are you well, my friend?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Yardem cleared his throat. “You made a noise, sir.”
“I did?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A noise?”
“Something between a laugh and a cough, sir. Could have sounded like sneering to someone who didn’t know better.”
“Didn’t notice doing it,” Marcus said. “Sorry. Must have been in my own head too much. Nasty place, that.”
The actors were all looking at him now, and all with different shades of concern. Soldiers didn’t tend to do that either.
“I’m fine,” Marcus said, more defensively than he’d intended.
“He’ll be better in a few days,” Yardem said.
“I will?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And why’s that?”
“Today’s Merian’s name day.”
“Ah,” Marcus said. The beer was warm and a little bitter. He shrugged. “I’ll be better in a few days.”
A flicker of understanding passed through the troupe crowded around the little table. Nothing spoken, but a moment’s understanding and companionship. A grief acknowledged and shared almost without the need of communication at all. That, at least, was a thing soldiers did as well. Marcus listened for a while more. Cary and Mikel, Sandr and Charlit Soon and Hornet, all of them talking through the next steps for the company they had been and the one they would soon become. Marcus took another few bites of the spiced whatever-it-was, finished his beer, and took a folded slip of war gold from his belt to pay for it all.
In the yard, a thin, resentful snow fell from a low, grey sky. On the perch in the middle of the field, Inys, the last dragon, hunched and played disconsolately with the carcass of a bull. It was like watching a five-year-old fuss with boiled vegetables. The dragon lifted his eyes to Marcus, let forth a small, stinking gout of flame by way of greeting, and then went back to batting the corpse across the frozen ground. Marcus leaned against the black wood fence, the chill of it seeping into his sleeves. The moon, if there was one, was eaten by clouds and mist. The greatest city of Northcoast endured the darkness and the cold, waiting for a day that would come as pale as it was brief. Inside the taproom, someone struck up a song, and a beery chorus rose. The sound grew louder when the door behind him opened and quieted a degree when it shut. He felt the looming presence of Yardem at his side without having to turn and look.
“You know,” Marcus said, “I keep hearing how other people have suffered terrible losses and then years pass and things change and they heal over it. Girl who falls in love with a bad-hearted man doesn’t always end up at the bottom of a cliff, no matter what the songs say. Often as not, she’s married to someone else five years on, and the bad-hearted man’s just something that gets brought up when she’s spatting with the new one.”