The King's Blood

Clara

Over the days that followed, Clara was slowly convinced that in a way—in many ways—she’d died with Dawson on that terrible floor in front of all their friends and relations. She couldn’t watch the violence, but she’d heard it. The sounds of it might have been worse than the actual seeing. But perhaps not. Everything that happened afterward made more sense to her if she thought of herself as dead when it happened. Walking from the Kingspire, widow of only a few minutes with no one she knew speaking to her. None of the women she’d known all her life to say a kind word. The only one who had touched her, offered comfort, had been the thin, pale merchant girl whose name she’d forgotten as soon as it had been said.

She’d been in a daze, lost even to her own mind. Doing the things that her body felt needed to be done. Visiting old friends and enemies. Well, that was what a ghost did, wasn’t it? It made perfect sense, seen in that light.

The pain that came after Vincen Coe’s reappearance wasn’t the pangs of death, then. Those were done. These were the pains of being reborn, and much like the first time, they were terrible. She woke in the middle of the night weeping until she couldn’t breathe. If she called out for him, Vincen would come and sit at the foot of her bed, but she tried not to call. There was nothing for him to do there except lose sleep. And eventually the seizure faded and she slept her normal sleep.

She found herself expecting to see Dawson. Especially, she found herself trying to think how she would explain being there in her night clothes with the family huntsman sitting beside her in nothing but his hose. And then she would correct herself. She would never explain herself to Dawson because he was dead. And then she’d weep for a bit and move on with her day. It wasn’t strength that kept her going on; it was a lack of options.

“You going out again today, ma’am,” the house woman said. Her name was Abatha Coe as it turned out. One of apparently several dozen cousins that the Coe clan had spread throughout Antea. Before Abatha, Clara hadn’t really considered whether Vincen had a family. He was a servant, and apparently she’d thought that servants sprang out of the walls when you wanted one and left again when they got pregnant. Looking back, she hoped she hadn’t been too much the noble lady.

“Yes, I am.”

“Back for lunch?”

“I doubt it. I’ll be walking nearly to the Kingspire, and I don’t think I can manage that without something fortifying while I’m there.”

“Apples just come in,” Abatha said. “Go all right with cheese.”

It had taken Clara three days to realize that this was not only an offer, but the only offer that Abatha was likely to make. This time, she didn’t say That sounds lovely or Really don’t bother about me. If she had, the conversation would simply have ended, and her without apples or cheese.

“Thank you,” she said. It was safe because it didn’t require a response and it was good for her because her ghost-self still thought she should be polite.

She wore a grey mourning dress and her hair wrapped in a cloth, and she walked with the air of a woman who knew where she was going. Down the narrow, shit-stinking street to the broader but still nameless way that would eventually give way near the Prisoner’s Span. In all the years she’d lived in Camnipol, she’d almost never crossed the Prisoner’s Span, and she didn’t care for it much now. The groaning and wailing from the cages hanging beneath it upset her, and once she was upset it could be difficult to stop. She’d been weak and wailing on a bridge once already. It was quite enough.

But it was the quickest path, and now that there were no carriages or litters or palanquins, the number of steps began to matter.

Vincen was about today too. Looking for work, he said. She felt oddly guilty about that. She was supposed to provide for him, not the other way around. He was her servant, only of course he wasn’t. And she couldn’t very well ask Jorey to give her money for his support. It would have felt too much like having her son support her lover, which was ridiculous because Coe had kissed her exactly once, and that was a lifetime ago. But even she had to admit that between his constant, gentle, dog-loyal presence, her own painful, slow remaking of herself, and the fact that he was an undeniably beautiful man, it was growing somewhat less ridiculous.

She reached the far side of the Prisoner’s Span and looked back. It was much shorter looking at than actually crossing. She took one of the apples. It was red and ripe and she knew that she shouldn’t eat it now, because she’d only be hungry on her way back and not have it. The first bite was tart and sweet and lovely. The second was too.

Her first stop was a baker’s that made its trade at the point where another dozen steps would have made it too unfashionable to go to. It was literally the last place one of her old friends would look for her. Ogene Faskellan was a distant sort of cousin at best, but she was hopeless when it came to knitting and Clara had always been sure to change the activity when she was with the party so that she never had to. Small kindnesses, it turned out, paid large returns.

“Clara, you look wonderful,” Ogene said, rising from the little table. “Please, let me get you something. A little to eat.”

“No,” Clara said. “You’re doing far too much for me already. I don’t want to feel any more a charity than I am.”

“A bite of this?” Ogene asked, holding up a plate with soft white pastry and a red cream that smelled of strawberries.

“Just a bite,” she said, “and tell me, have you heard from Elisia?”

The air in the bakery smelled of cinnamon and sugar, and Clara spent her last coin on a cup of lemon tea that tasted sharp and wonderful. For the better part of an hour, Clara took what news she could of her children. Jorey and Sabiha were fighting, which was to be expected given how hard the season had been. With luck they would get through it. It didn’t help that Barriath had vanished one day for places unknown. Ogene had heard that a letter had come to a woman of his acquaintance in Estinport from him, and that the courier had spoken with the accents of Cabral. Elisia was still away with her husband and his family, waiting until the shame of ever having been a Kalliam faded. The good news was that Vicarian’s position within the priesthood had been secured permanently. He was being sent to Kavinpol, which wasn’t his first choice, but regardless, he would not suffer worse for being his father’s son. It was a small victory, and she savored it more than the strawberry cream.

When, too soon, Ogene had to leave, Clara kissed her cheek and hugged her, mindful to do it in the bakery and not on the street where someone might see. Ogene’s reputation had to be safeguarded as well. It was the world they lived in.

After that, it was north toward Lord Skestinin’s little house, dodging carts whose wide wooden wheels tossed up the muck of the street and the dogs who would follow her for half a mile, sniffing at her in hopes that she would share her food with them. She’d remind them that they didn’t like apples, then she’d try and the dog would look reproachful and hurt, and then think how funny it was and that she’d have to tell Dawson, and then she’d weep for a while and go on.

She worried how Jorey would do over the winter. He’d have to go to Estinport. He couldn’t come to Osterling Fells. Poor Jorey, being saved by the girl he’d been saving. It all went back to Vanai, of course, and the guilt of having killed all those people at Palliako’s request.

She slowed as she reached the better part of the city. The ones she knew. There was a temptation to make an extra stop, drop in on someone she used to know, if only to see how they received her. It might only have been her imagination or a reflection of her particular life and place that the high courts of Camnipol were looking more anxious than they had even during the war. There was a pinched look to people’s faces, and more often, she was seeing the wirehaired priests in their brown robes walking among the black cloaks that Palliako appeared to have made into a permanent fashion. Sparrows and crows, Dawson had called them. Every now and then he had managed a truly memorable phrase.

“Mother,” Jorey said when she came into the garden. His embrace was brief but fierce. She kissed his cheek.

“Clara,” Sabiha said, coming to her. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying. Much like Clara’s own, she imagined.

Clara made a point to kiss her as well. There was so little she could do for the two of them and so much they needed.

“I’ve come for my allowance,” Clara said with a smile she only half felt. “I hope the timing isn’t bad.”

“You’re always welcome, Mother,” Jorey said, biting at the words. It was eating him. She saw that.

“You’re kind,” she said. “It’s your weakness. It’s mine too. Sabiha dear, I was wondering if, now that I’m disgraced, I couldn’t spend time with my grandson.”

“Your …” Sabiha said, then flushed.

“I told you to forget him once,” Clara said. “I was wrong to do that. We are not the family we had hoped to be, but we are the family we are. You are important to me, and so he should be as well. If I have your permission.”

“My permission?” Sabiha said.

“Of course, dear,” Clara said. “You’re his mother.”

“You have my permission,” Sabiha said.

“No tears. None of that,” Clara said.

They visited for slightly longer than usual, and Clara would have stayed longer if it weren’t such a long walk home. She left when there would be enough light to make it the whole way. She didn’t like the streets around her boarding house, but she liked them even less at night.

She was almost to the Prisoner’s Span when five men with drawn knives stepped in front of her.

When they lifted the cowl from her head, she was in a wide, dark room. The light came from an iron chandelier overhead, but she wouldn’t have been surprised by torches. Soldiers with bows at the ready were on either side, rising up impossibly high, a wall of men. And before her, a huge black bench topped by Lord Regent Geder Palliako. Clara felt the fear starting to shake her. Her ghost-self wailed and turned away in fear, and she went part way with it. The high priest stood behind her where she could not see him, though Geder could.

“Clara Kalliam,” Geder said. “Forgive the intrusion, but I had some questions I felt I had to put to you. If you lie to me, I will know and you will suffer. Badly. Do you understand?”

Her mouth was dry. How had she come here? What had she done? It was like she’d fallen asleep and come to a nightmare she couldn’t wake from. She felt caught at something, but she didn’t know what.

“I understand you are no longer living at your son’s house,” Geder said. “Is that true?”

Her breath was so ragged, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to speak. Wouldn’t silence count as a lie? She didn’t want to think what he could do to her. What he would do.

“It is,” she managed.

“Why is that?”

“My presence makes it difficult for Jorey and Sabiha to dissociate from the court’s memories of Dawson.”

“Have you been meeting with Ogene Faskellan?”

“Yes. We have had several visits.”

“Have you been meeting with Ana Mecilli?”

“Yes. Twice, I think.”

To her right, one of the soldiers shifted slightly, the sound sharp and dry. Her heart raced.

“Are you loyal to me?” Geder asked.

Clara shook her head, not no, but I can’t answer that.

“Are you loyal to me?” he asked again, his voice growing harsher.

“I don’t think about you one way or the other, my lord,” she said.

The sound of cloth shifting came from behind her.

“Really?” Geder asked. He sounded genuinely confused.

“You are Lord Regent, and the man who killed my husband, and Jorey’s friend from campaign. You’re the man who helped me to expose Feldin Maas. But none of that particularly affects what I have to do in my day. I suppose it should on some level, but I certainly don’t spend my time considering the question.”

“You’re meeting with all of these people. Are you organizing them against me?”

She laughed. She didn’t mean to. If she’d thought about it, she wouldn’t have, but there it was and the archer didn’t kill her for it.

“No. God, no. The thought never occurred to me. I’ve been trying to hold my family together.”

“Your family?”

“Yes. Barriath’s gone with hardly a word to anyone. Jorey and Sabiha are having a terrible time of it, and not even married a full season yet. Vicarian is the only one who hasn’t been seared by the whole terrible business. Well, and there’s Elisia. She appears to be doing well, but I can’t think she’s happy. Not really.”

“Oh,” Geder said.

“And of course with Dawson gone, there’s no one to hold it all together. There’s not even the house, which when you think about it is a fairly weak way to hold a family together, but we had it once, and now we don’t. And so there’s all this walking.”

Shut up, shut up, shut up, she thought, but her mouth kept tripping on ahead without her.

“And then there’s the question of mourning. How long does one wait, because on the one hand there’s a right and a wrong in court, but I’m not in court any longer, and so I don’t know what rules apply. I have to go about making them up. It’s terrible. It really is.”

“But you haven’t been conspiring against me or the throne?”

“No,” she said.

There was a pause.

“All right, then. Thank you for your time. You can go.”

Clara walked out into the open air. She was in the Kingspire. Her head was spinning a bit, and she stopped at the street gate to catch her breath. She felt absurdly relieved. As if she’d been attacked and escaped only through luck. Perhaps that was true. She understood the pinched faces now. The feeling of fear and oppression that hung over everything like black crepe. She wondered how many people had been taken away without warning and made to play Geder’s game of magistrate. More than only her, she was certain.

When she felt steady again, she made her way to the street. The Division was before her, and the Prisoner’s Span looked terribly far away. The sun was low and red and swollen in the sky, turning all the buildings west of her to silhouettes like a painting for a burning city. And what was worse, somewhere in the confusion, she’d lost her apples and cheese.

The sun had set long before she got back to her boarding house. Her feet were shouting with each step. Her spine felt like a column of fire. The smell of Abatha’s stew was actually attractive, which only gave an idea of how hungry she’d become. She made her way to the kitchen with the sole intention of paying her rent and buying a bowl of greasy stew, but Vincen was there, sitting by the oven. When he saw her, he leaped up, crossing the room in a stride, and lifted her in his arms.

“They told me you were gone,” he said. “They said the Lord Regent’s men took you.”

“They did,” Clara said and let herself fall into the embrace. Just a little. “You can put me down now if you like.”

“Never, my lady.”

“Very romantic,” she said. “Put me down.”

She sat by the oven, and Abatha gave her a bowl for free, so she bought a pipeful of tobacco instead. She told about her meetings with Ogene and Jorey and Sabiha, and then coming home only to be stopped by Geder’s men and carried away with a cowl over her face. She finished the last of her stew as she got to the strange dark room with the soldiers and Geder Palliako towering before her, demanding that she answer questions. She felt herself growing calmer with the retelling, as if she were seeing for the first time what had happened. The distance was reassuring.

She lit her pipe from the stove. Abatha’s stew might be salty and bland, but she did manage to find genuinely decent tobacco. Clara sat at the stove, puffing thoughtfully for a long moment before she realized Vincen and Abatha were waiting for her to go on.

“And then they let me go,” she said, rather gamely.

“But what did they ask?” Abatha said. Her face looked really animated for the first time since Clara had met her.

“Oh, that. They asked if I’d been conspiring against Geder Palliako and the crown.”

“What did you say?”

“That the thought hadn’t occurred to me,” she said.

“And?” Vincen said.

Clara raised an eyebrow.

“And now it has.”