When it did, it came from the north and it wore Canl Daskellin’s face.
“Lady Kalliam,” the Baron of Watermarch said. “I… I didn’t expect to see you here.”
The meeting was a small one: Clara and Jorey and Canl. They’d long since given up both the convenience and burden of the Lord Marshal’s tent. The leather sides and metal frames lay in a gully somewhere to the south where they could rot and corrode in peace. Instead of sitting on the field stools behind the little writing table, they stood on a barren hilltop with their men standing at a little distance to give an approximation of privacy. To her right, the land sloped down to the east, growing slowly greener. To the left, yellow dirt and sand. Finding Daskellin here, on the border between springtime and the wastes, was the sort of thing that would have seemed a portent if she’d been dreaming. Awake, it was only what it was.
“Nor I you,” she said. “How is your family?”
“Quite well, m’lady,” he said, taking refuge in the forms and customs of etiquette. Clara smiled, not entirely kindly. Faced with a woman standing with one foot in absurdity and the other in scandal, small talk was indeed a blessing from the good angels. “Yours?”
“They’re well,” she said, gesturing at the sere landscape, “given this present unpleasantness.”
“Yes,” Daskellin said, and then again more soberly. “Yes.”
“How many men do you have?” Jorey asked.
“Four hundred,” Daskellin replied. “Though none of them are the first cut. You?”
“Less than that, but I’m only one of seven. If your men are rested, armed, and well supplied, I think we can put them to good use.”
“I’m only pleased to find I’m not holding the road alone,” Daskellin said. “Last I’d heard you were still in Birancour. How did you come so quickly?”
“We weren’t quick. We started weeks ago,” Jorey said, “and came through the pass at Bellin before the thaw.”
Surprise and then respect flickered in Daskellin’s eyes. This, Clara thought, is how reputations are made. When they returned to Camnipol, the tale would be of the prescience and daring that had brought the Lord Marshal to the defense of the empire at the moment he was most needed. Assuming, of course, that they made it back at all and not in the chains of avenging Elassae.
“Good that you’re here,” Daskellin said.
“How is the situation at court?” Jorey asked.
Daskellin opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. Even here, far south of the Kingspire, he would not speak the truth aloud. Clara understood. Fear was a habit, and Geder’s fondness for pulling even the highest of nobles into his private court to be questioned by the priesthood had trained them all like dogs. Daskellin knew when not to bark, and that was ever. Not even now. His silence was enough to give an answer. Jorey understood as well.
Clara felt as if she were waking from a dream when she hadn’t known she was asleep. The court and Camnipol and her granddaughter were all quite near now. She’d left as a spy and returned as… as whatever it was she’d become. It felt like the end of something, though she wasn’t certain she could put a name to it.
“Good that you’re here, then,” Jorey said. “I have maps made of what we know about the enemy position and what we guess. Let me show you.”
“You’ll excuse me,” Clara said. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Canl. It’s been far too long.”
“Hopefully we can meet again soon in better accommodations,” he said. There was a melancholy in his voice that meant he did not expect that day to come.
“Hopefully,” she echoed, and turned away.
There had been a time not so long ago when the walk back over the rough, trackless ground to the tents would have seemed a long one. It was, after all, farther than the garden. At home, dignity alone would have meant calling for one of Lady Daskellin’s carriages. Now, it was nothing to her beyond a bit of an ache in her left hip, and that more the joint than the muscle.
Vincen sat at his tent with Captain Wester and the priest beside him. Kit and Vincen both rose when she approached. Marcus only nodded to her, as he would, she thought, to anyone, regardless of their station.
“What news, then?” Wester asked.
“Reinforcements have arrived. They’re building with straw in a windstorm, but they’re here.”
“Something’s better than nothing,” Wester said.
“I suppose it is,” Clara said, then turned to Vincen. “I believe it is time to gather our things.”
“Are you going somewhere, lady?” the priest asked. She knew that he was an ally, and that he had never done anything to undermine her efforts or Cithrin bel Sarcour’s. Still, the similarity of his face and skin and hair to those of the others who haunted Camnipol made it hard for her to keep from pulling away from him.
“Yes,” she said. “Back to court. I followed the army in hopes of bringing it to Antea’s true defense, and I’ve done it. There is no more I need do here.”
“And there is in Camnipol?” Marcus asked.
“One may at least wait for catastrophe on more comfortable beds,” she said smartly.
The captain laughed. “That may be the wisest thing I’ve heard said all week.”
“I find I shall miss your company, Lady Kalliam,” Master Kit said. “But I also hope we are not driven to meet again too terribly soon. When we come again to Camnipol, I pray that it is in peacetime.”
“That would be lovely, wouldn’t it?” Clara said, surprised to find a sudden grief rising in her. It seemed her hopes were as low as Daskellin’s. And like him, she would not say it.
One of the unexpected lessons she’d learned on the road concerned the speed of small groups and the slowness of great ones. The army of Elassae, even un-harassed, would have taken weeks to reach Camnipol. For her and Vincen on fast horses, the journey took four days. She arrived at Lord Skestinin’s manor having sent a runner ahead to give Lady Skestinin and Sabiha time to put anything in order that needed to be put. There might by an enemy army at her back, but that didn’t make an avoidable rudeness polite. When she arrived, the servants fought not to look shocked and Lady Skestinin’s usual reserve seemed deeper than Clara had become accustomed to. It wasn’t until she reached her rooms and for the first time since leaving Carse encountered a mirror that she understood.
“Vincen, I’ve gone brown as an egg.”
“You’ve been walking from dawn to dark for weeks, m’lady. Months.”
Clara sat at her private table and flapped her hands at the powders and kohl. “Everything I have is the wrong color. If I use any of this, I’ll look like someone dipped a cake in sugar! It all has to be replaced. You’ll have to find Sanna Daskellin or Kieran Shoat and ask what they have that I can borrow until—” She put her hand to her mouth, a sudden horror passing through her. “My dresses.”
“Your dresses?”
She rose from the table, marching to the dressing room. A simply cut yellow silk gown with pearl beads and complexly embroidered sleeves came first to hand. She stripped off her traveling cloak and leggings, at first by herself and then—distractingly—with Vincen’s wide hands to help her. For a moment, she considered dropping the yellow gown as well, but anxiety won out. She pulled the silk over her head and twisted. The cloth swirled around her. She didn’t sit down so much as fold.
“Clara?”
“They don’t fit,” she said. “None of them will fit. They’ll all have to be taken in. I have literally nothing I can wear to court. Nothing. Stop that, it isn’t funny.” She put a hand to her head. “The sun’s bleached my hair, hasn’t it?”
“Well, it’s a bit travel-worn at the moment,” Vincen said. “We can wash it, and then we’ll know better, but likely so.”
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and slapped the floor. She felt tears of frustration and embarrassment stinging her eyes.