The Widow's House Read online

  “What news?” Kit asked.

  “Good news is we likely know where Cithrin and Yardem have gotten themselves to. The common wisdom puts them in Porte Oliva, probably under blockade but not siege. At least not yet. The bad news is all of Antea wants her killed slow for hurting the Lord Regent’s feelings or some such.”

  Sandr raised a rouged sponge toward his cheek, paused, and set it down.

  “I assume we won’t be continuing to Suddapal,” Kit said.

  “I was thinking we could go back up the dragon’s road, take it though Camnipol, then south to the Free Cities. Perhaps try the pass at Bellin in summer for a change,” Marcus said. “The worst of the fighting is still the siege at Kiaria, and that could last another year or more, depending on how the water supply is in the caves.”

  “And then?”

  Marcus shrugged. “Take our best guess and try it. Same as always.”

  “I’m afraid it may have gone too far to stop,” Kit said.

  “Then we’ll get everyone on ships for Far Syramis and try to keep it confined to this side of the ocean,” Marcus said. “If that doesn’t work, we can try to find some mountaintop with a good stream, build a few houses, and kill anyone who shows up unexpectedly.”

  Kit’s smile was dark. “I think that sounds uncomfortably plausible.”

  “That’s me,” Marcus said, tapping his temple with two fingertips, “always thinking ahead.”

  “I don’t think I can go on tonight,” Sandr said. His voice was wet and choked. His eye-grease was trailing down his cheeks in tiny black lines of tears. “I don’t think I can play for these people.”

  Kit and Marcus exchanged a glance, and Marcus knelt down, putting a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “This isn’t the place to make a stand. Time will come. I don’t know where yet, and I don’t know when, but it will come.”

  Master Kit’s voice was warm and gentle, and it carried a power more than only the words. “You can do this, my friend. Listen to me. It is within your power.”

  Sandr was silent for a moment. He shook his head. “Do I have to?”

  “We don’t want to stand out,” Marcus said. “Right now, we’re a bunch of Firstblood actors wandering through a nation of Firstblood people. As long as that’s what they see, we’ll be fine. If they find out, for example, that Kit and I were working with Cithrin in Suddapal or that we tried to slaughter their new favorite goddess? Well, then being in the fields with our Timzinae friends will be the best thing we could hope for. Keep calm, and keep quiet, and let’s all get through this bit alive.”

  “So just accept it?” Sandr asked.

  “Pretend to,” Kit said.

  Sandr blinked up at the old actor. His half-painted, tear-smeared face was a mess, the illusions of color and light, pale powder and rouge ruined. He swallowed. “How long can you pretend to be something before you aren’t pretending anymore?”

  The three men stood silent for a long moment, then Marcus sighed. “Stop saying things that sound wise, Sandr. It upsets my sense of the world.”

  True to the innkeep’s word, the yard was full that night. Men and women from all the surrounding hamlets had come. Kit, Sandr, Cary, and Hornet had taken to the little stage and done a fair performance of The Kingdom of Clouds, and afterward Charlit Soon had made an encore of the queen maiden’s speech from Leterpan’s Hill that lifted the crowd’s spirits and ended the evening with a little laughter for the audience at least. Through it all, Marcus and Smit had been in the crowd, leading the booing when the villainous Lord Stoop appeared and cheering for Prince Helsin. When a half-drunk young man tried to interrupt the performance with his heckling, Marcus had escorted him to the stables and explained why he might not want to be rude. The boy’s frightened expression had made him feel good at the time and guilty later. Pretty soon, he’d be proving his manhood by kicking puppies that chewed the wrong sticks.

  When the night was done, Marcus helped the players gather the coins that had been thrown on the stage and bounced down to the dirt of the yard. He cleaned out the candleholders with a work knife and fastened the stage when they hauled it up into place. Tomorrow, they’d be off again. It was a long road, and he didn’t like to think what would be at the end of it. Nothing good.

  Their agreement with the innkeep had been that the players would sleep in the stables, but as the last of the crowd left, he mentioned to Kit that three of the rooms hadn’t been taken. Enough for the women to take a room to themselves, and the men to split the other two. So, once Kit had assured himself that the innkeep wasn’t looking for more coin or one of the players to bed down with, the company accepted the extra hospitality. Sandr couldn’t bring himself to thank the man. Marcus couldn’t blame him.

  The walls of the inn were flimsy. From his cot, Marcus could hear the snores of Hornet in the next room and the hushed voices of Cary and Charlit Soon in the one past that. A soft wind set the rafters ticking and the lingering smell of onions reminded him how small the meal had been.

  “I don’t suppose you’re sleeping,” Marcus said.

  “No,” Kit answered.

  “How long do you think it will take us to reach Camnipol?”

  “At a guess? If the new axle holds, we could be there in a week.”

  “Court will be back by now. And Cithrin’s mysterious correspondent.”

  Kit shifted on his cot, the legs creaking under his weight. The window was stretched hide, a light square in the darkness of the wall that illuminated nothing. Still, Marcus had been traveling with Kit long enough, he could imagine the man’s quizzical expression.

  “Are you wanting to resume that hunt?”

  “I want to find some way to—”

  The sound was sudden and profound, and Marcus didn’t know what it was. The closest he could think was a massive stone thrown by siegecraft striking bare ground. He didn’t recall rising to his feet. He was simply there, the poisoned sword in his hand, ready to be drawn. His heart was thudding in his chest.

  “Marcus?” Kit whispered. “What was that?”

  Marcus raised his hand for silence, the gesture useless in the black. Outside the inn, something heavy slid across the yard. Marcus stepped to the door and lifted its latch as quietly as he could.

  “Get the others,” he murmured. “Do it quickly. I’ll go see—”

  Once, years before when Marcus had been working contracts as a mercenary, he had been present at the siege of a great garrison keep at the rough, informal border between Borja and the Keshet. The pale stone walls had stood thirty feet high, and the commander had hired a team of cunning men to undermine them. The sound when those walls came down—the thunder-deep rumble, the shriek of splintering wood, the screaming voices—was the same one that assaulted him now.

  A chunk of wood struck his shoulder like a blow. He felt Kit behind him, backing him, and Marcus drew the venomed blade. The ceiling of the inn rose, a strip of stars and moonlight cracking where it was lifting from the wall. The roof of the inn creaked into the darkness like the lid of a chest swinging up. The vast head of the dragon stared down at him, its vast eyes silvered by the moonlight.

  The roof tipped over, falling to the ground with a crash. People were screaming. Someone threw a lit lantern at the vast, dark bulk of the dragon that filled the yard, but missed badly. The smear of burning oil on the earth lit the beast from below as the cool moonlight did from above. Marcus held the blade before him. It felt like wielding a spoon against a forest fire.

  “You,” the dragon breathed. “I have followed your scent halfway across the land.”

  “Flattered,” Marcus said, but Inys took no notice.

  “I have seen it, and it was as you said. You did not lie. They are gone. They are all gone, but I will redeem my error. My workshop will be rebuilt. Those parts of ourselves we put into your kinds. I can retrieve them. I will retrieve them.”

  The dragon’s tail whipped in agitation, crushing the wall of the stables. Horses were screaming in terror. People
were weeping and calling out to God. The dragon’s gaze slid off Marcus, then found him again. A claw larger than Marcus’s body peeled back the wall of the room effortlessly. The door opened behind them, and Cary and Charlit Soon stepped in, blades in their hands. Marcus waved them back.

  “This… all of this,” the dragon hissed, the sharp stink of his breath filling the air, “is mine. All of it is my doing, and so I will undo it. The sky will be filled, filled, with dragons, and great perches will be raised again from the earth and the sea.”

  “All right,” Marcus said. “If you say so.”

  The massive head rose, searching the sky as if all it said were already true. A bloom of flame rose from the black-fleshed mouth, and the dragon’s wings spread until it seemed they would touch the horizons.

  “This is the darkest hour of the noblest race. And rising from it shall be our greatest triumph. A glory that will echo through time itself, and change the nature of the stars.”

  “No reason to aim low,” Cary said, and Kit shushed her. A great foreclaw folded, tightened, pressed the air before Marcus. The black talons looked sharper than spears, but Marcus made no move to parry them.

  “And you,” the dragon said. “Drakkis Stormcrow was to wake me, but it was you who did. So you shall be my Stormcrow. Murmus Stormcrow.”

  “Marcus.”

  “Marcus Stormcrow. You shall be my voice and my servant, my creature in this new, most glorious conquest. You shall be my general in the field of battle greater than any the worlds have ever known. We shall face down the armies of death, of nothingness, and we shall pull life from their corpses. Life!”

  The last word echoed through the darkness like a great storm wind. The last dragon reared up on his back legs, screamed defiance at the sky, and toppled. The huge body crushed the wall of the stable, freeing two of the horses, which sped off shrieking into the night. The dragon’s head lay against the ground, and its single raised wing folded down slowly, bending into itself like a moonflower folding at dawn.

  Somewhere very close by, a man wailed in fear. A lick of flame rose from the ruined common room where the embers of the fire grate had been scattered in the splintered wood of the walls. The moon sailed uncaring above them through a vast and star-sown sky.

  Cary spoke first. “Did we do something? Did we… defeat it?”

  “No, we didn’t. I’m not sure quite how he managed it,” Marcus said, carefully sheathing the sword, “but I do believe our great scaled friend here is drunk.”

  Clara

  Clara rode through the early evening rain, her pipe turned mouth-down to keep the droplets from drowning the tobacco. The lands of the Free Cities struck her as much like the cities themselves, varying from one valley to the next. The plains of southern Antea were only a day behind them now, and already she felt as if she’d ridden through three different worlds. This present landscape was made of low, rolling hills covered with a grey-green grass that seemed to collect the gloom from the clouds. The dragon’s road, permanent as it was, had outlasted the hills that had once supported it. Now it undulated toward the horizon, rising here into the air like a bridge and there disappearing for a space beneath the ground. It reminded her of nothing so much as the image of a sea serpent arching through waves.

  Orsen lay a day and a half a day ahead, perched on its lone mountain. She planned to turn aside before she reached it, leaving the dragon’s road for the more changeable paths of mere humanity. The army, her sons at its head, would be marching for Bellin and the pass through the mountains. It was her hope and intention to meet it there or else between the city at the mouth of the pass and the fields of Birancour.

  Her mount was a three-year-old gelding the color of wheat, and the hunting tent—a tiny affair that rose no more than two feet from the ground when employed—was folded across its back. She did not regret that she would not be spending yet another night in it, breathing air heated by her own breath and fighting to make the unkind ground do for a mattress. Vincen Coe rode beside her. In Camnipol, where she had been Lady Kalliam and he a huntsman of no particular rank, he would have ridden behind her. She preferred him where he was.

  The question that remained as they trekked across the damp, grey hills toward the flickering torches of the wayhouse was who precisely he should be.

  “Not husband,” she said. “Son. It’s simply more plausible.”

  “To who?”

  “To everyone,” Clara said. “A woman of my age simply isn’t married to a man like you. Even if they accepted the tale, it would stand out. I prefer not to be memorable.”

  “I think you underestimate the world, my lady.”

  “Do you, now?”

  “If you believe we’re the strangest thing in it? Yes.”

  “You are my son, I am your mother. We are making our way to Maccia to take up residence with my sister now that your father is dead.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “You’re laughing at me. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “And don’t call me my lady. You’ll give the game away.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Vincen said. As if in answer, Clara’s gelding sighed.

  The sun, shrouded by clouds, did not set. The world only grew darker by degrees. The constant patter of rain was broken by the rumble of distant thunder. Her hands and hips ached, and when they drew into the wayhouse’s yard and the grooms splashed out through the mud to take their horses, she mostly felt pleased that the day was done, and that there would be a warm room and a bowl of something to eat.

  The house itself was low and dark, the thatch roof black with the damp. The smell of beer and roasted peppers washed over her as she ducked through the doorway.

  “Let me do the talking,” Vincen murmured. “You can’t help sounding like you belong in a ballroom.”

  Clara nodded and clamped her lips tight around the stem of her pipe. The common room was low-ceilinged and smoky. The keeper was a broad-shouldered Jasuru woman with a scar across her cheek that complicated her bronze-green scales.

  “Evening, friends,” the keep said, baring her pointed teeth in a smile that managed to be warm and welcoming. “Hard weather for riding.”

  “Seen worse,” Vincen said. “The wife and I need a room for the night, if you have any.”

  “Silver if you don’t mind sharing. Two if you’re looking for privacy.”

  “Two it is,” Vincen said, putting an arm around Clara’s shoulder. “And perhaps a bowl of something to eat? Whatever you’ve got back there smells wonderful.”

  “You’re kind to say it,” the keep replied, waving at the blackwood table. “Take a seat, and I’ll bring your bowls and beers. At two silver, you’re already paying for it.”

  Clara lowered herself to the bench, her back and knees creaking. Vincen sat at her side, scooped up her hand, and laced his finger with hers.

  “You are a terrible man,” Clara said softly.

  “You are a beautiful woman,” he replied. “And your accent is fine.”

  Jorey and Vicarian had left before the court season had the chance to begin. They’d shared a carriage drawn by a team twice as large as the carriage required. Jorey was in haste, rushing to do what needed to be done and have it over. She’d watched it clatter away down the street, turning to the south when it could and vanishing from sight. Sabiha, standing beside her, had wept quietly as much from exhaustion as sorrow. The baby was taking more and more of the girl’s reserves, and Clara had taken Sabiha’s hand in her own, thinking to offer her strength. As if a few fingers laced together could do that.

  Over the following days, her suspicion that there was indeed a way to leave the court behind began to take root. And more than a way, a need. All her schemes among the lower classes of the city had rested on finding men and women loyal to her, who would lie for her. Now she saw that her armor was made of paste and paper, and the urge to flee the city before she could be found out grew with every day. And still, despite all her
growing plans and unspoken analysis, the arrival of the high families was a shock.

  The year before, Clara had watched from the gutters as the carriages arrived. Even those who had caught sight of her had pretended not to. The year before that, she had been Baroness of Osterling Fells and her husband one of the great names of the empire. This time, the powerful families of the court arrived in Camnipol already buzzing with scandal and confusion. Lord Ternigan had been exposed as a traitor. Ernst Mecelli had also been implicated, but the Lord Regent had either determined his innocence or reached some accommodation for amnesty. In any case, both men were gone: one dead, the other touring the captured cities of the previous year’s campaign. And in their place, taking command of the army as his father once had, Jorey Kalliam, husband of the somewhat tainted Sabiha Skestinin, son of the traitor Dawson Kalliam, and best friend of the Lord Regent. Clara, being a woman and so apparently having no identity of her own, was neither the baroness she had been nor the fallen woman she’d become. She was both Dawson’s widow and Jorey’s mother, and with every renewed acquaintance, she saw the wariness echoed again.

  To her surprise, the women who had most supported her in her year of social exile seemed the most unnerved by her rehabilitation. Lady Enga Tilliaken, who had invited Clara to garden tea but not into her home, who had given Clara a cast-off dress, who had by most measures been Clara’s greatest supporter, went white about the lips when they met at Lady Essian’s formal luncheon the day after the opening of the season. Ogene Faskellan, a distant cousin of Clara’s and one of the first to share little meals with her at a discreet bakery where they were unlikely to be seen, was brittle and polite. Even young Merian Caot, fully a woman now but with enough of the adolescent in her to treasure scandal and upheaval, was cool to her. At first it had all taken Clara aback, but soon she felt that she understood.

  Fallen, she been what each of these women needed. She had filled a role in the stories they told themselves about who and what they were. Enga Tilliaken wanted to believe she was a generous soul, and Clara had been the opportunity for her pride to feed itself by condescending to accept a disgraced woman’s company. For Ogene Faskellan, Clara had been a safe sort of shame. A secret and a whiff of brimstone that could safely enliven an uninspiring marriage and constrained life. Merian Caot had wanted a way to argue that she was not tied by the same social bonds as the rest of them. Taking tea with Clara had been an act of rebellion for her at an age when rebellion—or in truth only the appearance of rebellion—was part of the subtle mourning that came with womanhood in the court of the Severed Throne. And so, for all of them, Clara had failed. Tilliaken could no longer take her clandestine joy in looking down on Clara, Faskellan found no drama in her company. And for the young Caot girl, the older woman who had shown some ray of hope that court life might not be entirely constrained had instead stepped back into line. None of it had been about who Clara truly was, and so neither was it now. And still, it left her sour.