The Widow's House

Cithrin

Porte Oliva did not break, but neither did it remain the same. In all its history, no army had taken it by force. The puppet shows that sprang up outside every public house, in every square and corner told of ancient battles and the bravery of Birancour. But, Cithrin noticed, alongside the epics of war and defiance, there was another genre. Comedies like The Pardoner’s Wife and PennyPenny’s Last Vengeance. Those stories were of clever villains tricking good people into fighting battles on their behalf. When, at the end of the laughter and violence, PennyPenny realized how he had been manipulated, he beat the duplicitous Ga-Go with a stick. Only this time Ga-Go was a pale puppet, with the light hair and eyes of a Cinnae, and instead of the traditional red confetti, tiny coins spilled from her pockets after every blow.

The Grand Market was a place of woe and agony. The few merchants whose trade hadn’t been gutted by the blockade were wise enough to pretend to suffer with the rest. Some days as many as half the stalls went empty. The carts that rolled in along the dragon’s road carrying grain and beer and cloth weren’t enough to make up for the loss of the port. The price of bread had risen, and would rise farther. The price of meat had tripled. Generations ago, the city had spilled out past its own defensive walls, until the great stone archways seemed almost in the city’s center. That geography changed now. The price of buildings within the walls rose almost tenfold, the price of those outside dropped almost to nothing. Cithrin would have liked to buy up some of those, if only as a symbol of solidarity with the city and optimism for its future. The gesture would have been empty. When Geder’s army came—and it would come—those buildings would be char and ash, and the people living in them fled or left for crows. She was as sure of that as her own name.

New ships arrived to join the blockade. Larger ones, including a great roundship that Yardem told her was the flagship of the Antean fleet. The ten Antean ships stood ready to board whatever vessels dared enter the harbor, the red flag with its eightfold sigil claiming ownership of the waters and all that passed upon them. Now and then the governor sent out small harassing forces from the port, and always they were driven back, held at the piers like dogs backed into a cave. The stories in the market said that Antean ships had been harassing fishing boats all along the coast and razing the salt drying yards. Even though anyone might come or go along the roads, the sense of being under siege changed the taste of the water and the scent of the air. The serving girl at Cithrin’s favorite taproom became chilly and cold when she arrived. The boy Pyk had hired to keep the counting house clean came later and later in the day, doing less and less for his pay. Maestro Asanpur’s café saw fewer people at its benches and tables than was usual. Porte Oliva was the home she’d made for herself, and she ached seeing it turn against her.

The question was clear: How was Cithrin to win a war against an army that had already broken the world across its knee? How could gold and silver, silk and spice, contracts and agreements stand in the field against swords? It was ridiculous on the face of it, and like so many things, less ridiculous the more she looked at it.

Cithrin spent her days considering the world through the lens of her new question. She spoke to Yardem about mercenary companies and what was needed to build a successful campaign. She visited the blacksmiths and armorers, the millers and the cunning men, the governor and the captain of the city guard. She drank coffee with Magistra Isadau, each of them prodding the other to some insight or perspective that might open a new pathway for them.

Geder’s army had the advantage of being infected by the priests, which undermined her first line of attack: pay the enemy soldiers to switch sides. It was still possible, but there would need to be other factors at work. No rational fighter would move to the side being slaughtered, no matter what the pay. But there were other places in the management of an army that were like articulated joints of heavy armor—vulnerable, if she could find a way to hit them hard enough. No matter how the priests cried and cajoled, the Antean soldiers would have to eat. If the bank were to let it be known that they would pay an inflated price for tobacco and cotton, the farmers along the path of Geder’s army would till under their wheat and vegetables. No amount of false certainty could pass for food. Swords broke, arrows lost their heads. The bank could buy the ore out of Hallskar and Borja and the Free Cities. She could hire people to break the smelters in the Free Cities and Northcoast, so that Geder’s forces had less chance to repair their goods and resupply. A cunning man she’d found in a tavern in the salt quarter had told her about a kind of grass that rotted out a horse’s stomach. If she found the seeds for that and sowed the pastures along the dragon’s roads from the east, the Antean cavalry might lose half its mounts. More, if she were lucky.

Once she started looking at it, there were a hundred tools at her disposal that could harass and degrade the enemy’s army. Some were better targeted than others. Given the choice, she preferred hiring on mercenaries, paying bounties on actions against the enemy, and rewarding Anteans for desertion because they did, for the most part, what she wanted them to do and nothing more. If she convinced the Free Cities to plow under their food, the starvation that came wouldn’t only hurt Antean soldiers. If she filled the bays with iron ores and broke the smelters to gravel, plows would be as difficult to replace as swords.

War was about damage, though. And if she had to starve a nation to save the world, that was something she could bring herself to do. She sat in her offices, writing out estimates and working through the wording of contracts, estimating timing and schedules, seeing what could and couldn’t be done if she had a week or a month or a season. Time would be as important as gold.

She was most aware of her fear when she tried to sleep. Those nights, she would take a guard or two to the seawall and watch the blockading ships on the dark water as they patrolled the mouth of the bay or, when the wind permitted, retreated to resupply at the base they’d made on a little island just over the horizon to the southwest. Wolves at the door, and not the only pack running. During the daylight, her mind was too much at work for emotion to intrude.

She had known since Paerin Clark’s visit what would come next. It still knotted her gut when it came.

Lord Mastién Juoli, the queen’s master of coin, was a younger man than Cithrin had expected. He was a Kurtadam, his face covered in a thick pelt that seemed as glossy and bright as a child’s, and the silver and lapis beads that were woven into it made her think of young men preening themselves before girls. The youthful foolishness was an affectation, she told herself. An encouragement to underestimate the man. Cithrin was likely younger than he was, and she knew something about being underestimated.

“Magistra bel Sarcour,” Juoli said, rising and holding out his hand as if they were friends or business acquaintances. “It is a pleasure to meet you at last. I’ve heard many stories.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Cithrin said, taking his fingers in her own for a moment. “I hope they were all exaggerations.” The governor coughed sourly. Likely he’d been looking forward to making introductions. The garden around them was the green of spring, and losing the brightness of new leaves. A cage of finches sufficed for music, and even the servants were absent. Unwelcome. She sat on the stone bench across the little blackwood table from Juoli and the governor himself poured their wine and watered it.

“I have a cousin in King Tracian’s court,” Juoli said. “You have a reputation for speaking your mind. And, I have to say, for being unswayed by sentiment.”

“Well,” Cithrin said with a smile she didn’t mean, “at least I’ll be damned for what I am.”

“The magistra has always been one of the great citizens of Porte Oliva,” the governor said. It was clearly untrue. There were children just walking who’d lived in the city longer than she had, but the governor was laying claim to her. It might only have been because the master of coin was here for her and the governor had been the sort of boy who would grab a toy just because someone else wanted it. Or he might have known how precarious her position was and denied it to keep her off balance. She would understand better as she learned more, but regardless it was interesting.

“What can I do for you, Lord Mastién?” she said, and sipped her wine.

“You can help me save our nation,” he said. “We have reason to believe that the army of Imperial Antea is making its way to Birancour. The blockade that’s already begun will become a siege as well. Not only here, but Porte Silena and Sara-sur-Mar as well. Between us, the queen has sent letters demanding assurances that Antea will not violate our borders.”

“And did Geder promise to behave?” Cithrin asked with a lightness she did not feel.

“The queen hasn’t had a response. Which brings us to here.”

“Because she hasn’t had a response from me either.”

He smiled, and she imagined there was a touch of sorrow in his eyes. “I had hoped not to bring it up, but if we are to repel the forces of the enemy, Birancour will need every resource it has. Your branch of the bank is among the most powerful institutions in Porte Oliva. It is in all of our interests to see this invasion repelled.”

“It is.”

“Then certainly you see the need for all the great citizens of Birancour to come together. Yourself included. You were in Suddapal, I understand.” He said the words carefully. What he did not say—You have brought this upon us—was all the louder for his silence. Cithrin considered whether to laugh or shout, weep or be sober. She put her cup on the blackwood table with a delicate click.

“We are all aware of the particular role I’ve played in this,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “If I turn over my bank’s wealth—and let us not pretend this is anything besides surrender—what assurances will the crown offer for my safety and the safety of my people?”

“You have my word, and the promise of the queen,” Lord Mastién said without hesitation. The words and their phrasing had been ready on his lips. My word, and the promise of the queen. It was less even than a contract, and the queen was in a position to break contracts with impunity. No collateral was offered, no minor cousin put into the bank’s control as hostage. No rights to collect royal taxes. Only a word and a promise.

“There can be no more meaningful bond than that,” Cithrin said. After all, if the crown had chosen to offer her something more, it could as easily have reneged. What she had suspected coming in and knew now was that the crown wasn’t even willing to pretend to offer hard assurances. It wasn’t a good sign. “I have had my notary reviewing our position. What I can offer the crown, I will.”

“We ask nothing more,” the governor said with a nod. As if he were in any position to say what the master of coin did or didn’t ask. Cithrin felt a wave of contempt so profound it bordered on hatred. The taste of bile crept up the back of her tongue, and she smiled at the governor.

“I will have my accounting completed immediately,” she lied.

“My thanks,” the master of coin said with a little bow. She didn’t think for a moment that he was taken in, but there was little else to say at this point. He’d made his demands, and she had put on a show of acceding to them. The next conversation they had would, she suspected, be less pleasant. They spent almost an hour more chatting about the small business of the kingdom and the city, drinking wine, and decrying Geder Palliako. Both men were polite, and Cithrin maintained her composure though the knot in her gut was almost at the point of pain by the time she left.

Yardem was waiting in the square outside the Governor’s Palace watching a cunning man conjure fire for a group of children. The prisoners of the city stood or sat on their platforms all through the square and the upright citizens came by to jeer at them or, if they were family, give them food and wash them where they’d soiled themselves. If it could have kept the army from her door, she’d have traded places with any of them. Yardem fell into step with her, his earrings jingling as they walked. For almost half of the way back to the counting house, he was quiet. When he did speak, it was in the offhanded tones of common conversation.

“Went poorly then.”

“I need wine.”

“Need, or want?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

They stopped at the taproom, but there were too many people there, and Cithrin felt like they were all whispering about her when she wasn’t looking. She paid for a jug of wine, carried it back to her rooms, and sat on her bed, drinking with the steady, studied pace of long acquaintance. The wine turned her mind fuzzy, but it didn’t untie the knot in her belly the way she’d hoped it would. She might need to send Yardem out for a second jug.

Geder’s letter was in among the papers of the bank. She took it out again, handling the paper with the care of a street performer with a snake.

Oh, this is so much harder to write than I thought it would be. Jorey says I should be honest and gentle, and I want to be. Cithrin I love you. I love you more than anyone I’ve ever known.

How many women in the Antea court would have cut off toes to have a letter like this one from the most powerful man in their empire? How many could have given Geder the sex that he mistook for love and made the same mistake themselves? And if they both thought it, maybe that made it true. She took another mouthful of wine, this time straight from the jug. If only there had been some way to transfer the affection, if that was what it was, the way responsibility for a contract or a loan could be shifted. A letter of transfer, where she could have assigned the burden of Geder’s infatuation to some baron’s daughter in Sevenpol or Anninfort. Only, of course, then she couldn’t have used his affection to shield her work in Suddapal, and hundreds more people would have died or suffered in slavery.

I want to sit up late at night with your head resting in my lap and read you all the poems we didn’t have when we were in hiding. I want to wake up beside you in the morning, and see you in daylight the way we were in darkness.

“Cithrin?” Isadau said from the top of the little stairway. Cithrin hadn’t heard her come up.

“Why is it,” she said instead of hello, “that the most passionate letter I’ve ever had and maybe ever will have makes me want to curl up under a rock and never come out?”

“Because it was written by an unstable tyrant who kills innocent people on a whim,” Isadau said, walking into the room.

“Ah. That.”

“Yardem said you didn’t speak of the meeting.”

“What’s to say? They want the money. If I don’t give it to them, they’ll feed me to Geder in exchange for peace. If I do give it to them, they’ll feed me to him just the same. I’m not in manacles right now because I haven’t said yes and I haven’t said no. And I can keep that going until they feel certain that I won’t give them the coin. After which…”

Isadau sat beside her on the bed and scooped Cithrin’s hand in hers. The pale, smooth Cinnae fingers knotted with the black Timzinae scales. They looked like art. “After which,” Isadau said softly, “they feed you to him.”

“Not seeing a path I like in this.”

“Give them some. A little. Promise them more if they give you time.”

“I can’t,” Cithrin said, her voice breaking. Maybe the wine had had more effect than she’d known, because there were tears in her eyes now and her shoulders were shaking. It was a stupid reaction. It didn’t change anything. “I need that money if I’m going to beat him. Everything depends on our having the gold to pay for all of it. So we can beat him.”

Isadau nodded, her knuckles squeezing gently, gently against Cithrin’s own. Her voice was half hum and half singing. “You know, dear. You know that you know. Stop now.”

“I can do this. I can find a way to stop him.”

“You did find a way. You found a dozen ways. But?” It was an invitation to admit the truth they’d both known for days. For weeks. Since the first day of the blockade, and possibly earlier even than that. Cithrin felt the words in her throat like vomit. And then she relaxed. Surrendered. Let hope die.

“We don’t have enough coin,” Cithrin said.

“If we had all the money in all the branches and the holding company and more besides, we might still not,” Isadau said.

“There has to be a way.”

“No, dear. There doesn’t. Some things even gold cannot solve.”