The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin) (31 page)

The revel ran on, and Cithrin drank and danced, but some of the joy had gone out of it. Given the Timzinae’s small need for sleep, it was quite possible that the music would go on until dawn drowned the torches, but it would have to do so without her. She sought out Halvill and Maha, gave them small presents of her own because custom required it, and then retreated to her own rooms. The sound of guitars and the smell of torch smoke wafted in through the open window, but more softly. She undid her dress stays, changed into the sleeping gown, but she didn’t take to bed. Not yet. The alcohol in her blood was fading, and with it the chance of sleep. She sat, looking into the candleflame. When the scratch came at her door, she realized she’d been waiting for it.

Isadau looked lovely. The silver of her dress set off the darkness of her scales. Her smile carried a gentleness that Cithrin had come to expect.

“Good evening,” she said.

“Magistra,” Cithrin replied. “I saw Yardem talking to you. I assume you’ve come to make the case that I should leave.”

“Less case and more plan,” Isadau said, sitting where Yardem had sat. “I’m not going to ask you to leave.”

“You’re going to tell me to?”

Isadau’s eyes went merry. “Do you think that would work? All I’ve seen of you suggests otherwise.”

“I don’t have a brilliant record for following the dictates of authority,” Cithrin said, laughing despite herself.

“Well, then. You came to me to learn how to build up a bank, and I’m not certain how much longer I will be doing that work.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ve protected Komme’s interests as best I can. I have funneled what capital I could out of harm’s way. And as we move forward, I will follow the contracts and honor the deposits that I can. But this is not the holding company. This is my bank, and the power of money is not only that it makes more money.”

“I wouldn’t tell that to the holding company,” Cithrin said, but the joke fell flat.

“Money is the physical form of power. And the time is coming for that power to be expended,” Isadau said. “Coins are only objects until they’re used. Then they become something else. Food for the hungry. Passage for the desperate. It’s the magic that we do. We take a bit of metal and use it to remake the world in the shape we want.”

“To stop a war?”

“To avoid its worst excesses, yes,” Isadau said. “I have spent my life tending this bank. Building it up like a fortune. And now the time is coming for me to spend it. No one thinks that Antea will stop with Sarakal. Kiaria may stand, but Suddapal will fall. And I will bankrupt this branch saving as many people as I can from it. I will bribe whoever I can. I will suborn and corrupt and trade. I will take risks that have no rationale in the world of finance. Moral risks. They won’t save my city, but they will preserve some part of it. In the end, I doubt the branch will survive.”

“Or you.”

“In the end, I doubt I will survive,” Isadau said. “I won’t be a good teacher for you anymore. It will be time for you to go.”

Cithrin rose from her seat, looked out the window. The flaring torches were hardly brighter than the star-strewn sky.

“I thought you were saving my heart,” she said. “The part that hadn’t died yet, but was in danger. Isn’t that what Komme said?”

Isadau hesitated. Cithrin turned to look at her.

“It is.”

“You’re choosing to use your power for something besides profit,” Cithrin said. “I understand that there are things of value that aren’t priced. Or … no. I
know
that, but I don’t understand it. This project you’re taking on is what Komme sent me here to learn.”

“And so you won’t leave. Even if your life is in threat.”

“I’m not bent on dying. I’d prefer not to. But I won’t leave you here,” Cithrin said. And then, “It’s your own fault, you know. You gave me a plant.”

Isadau’s laughter was delight and despair mixed. She rose, taking Cithrin’s hands, and for a moment they embraced. The older woman smelled of cinnamon and smoke. Cithrin rested her cheek on Isadau’s shoulder. She could feel the woman weeping.

“I will tell Yardem I failed,” Isadau said. “Once he hears why, I think he’ll be pleased that I did.”

“It won’t make his work easier.”

“He’s flexible enough, I think. You are doing something dangerous and unnecessary and wild. I don’t know whether to thank you or dress you down.”

“Neither one will alter my position on it,” Cithrin said.

“I believe you.”

After Isadau left, Cithrin felt the first tendrils of sleep. It was as if she’d been waiting to say those words, and now that she had, her day could end. She curled under the blanket, one arm raised up as a pillow, and let her mind drift. Coins as bits of metal with the power to make the world the way you wanted it to be. Coins that become food for the hungry or robes for the powerful, but rarely both. It struck her that blades were also metal, also used to remake the world. In the murk of her sleep-soaked mind, something stirred. The half-formed thought that her coins could, perhaps, cut deeper if she could only find
how
.

A week later, the news came that Inentai had fallen.

Geder

If the siegecraft of Baltan Sorris is to be understood, it must be in the context of Drakkis Stormcrow, for General Sorris was a student of the ancient classic texts. The more common, and in my view mistaken, interpretation is that the early kings of Northcoast had catapults and siege engines capable of lofting stones or burning pitch so high into the air that all parts of a besieged city were under threat from them. What I have shown is that, instead, the instructions Sorris gave were an unconsidered artifact of more ancient wars in which the field of battle was not restricted to the plane of the earth, but included dragons, wyverns, and gryphons capable of attacking from the sky. While this image of Sorris as a hidebound follower of outdated precepts contradicts the traditional account of his military brilliance, I will, in the next section, make the case that it better explains his decisions in the latter half of his career, especially in the Third Siege of Porte Silena and the infamous Four Kings War.

Geder closed the book and sighed. It happened every few weeks. He would find some spare hour that could be carved away from the needs and responsibilities of the kingdom and retreat to his library. He remembered spending hours—days—lost in his books. There had been a time when exploring the speculative essays of history had been like the adventurer Dar Cinlama walking in the forgotten places of the world, discovering forgotten eras and stumbling upon insights that changed his understanding of history. It had brought him to the Righteous Servant, the Sinir Kushku, and the place of highest power in the world. But the price, apparently, was the joy he used to have and couldn’t find any longer. Basrahip derided all printed words as dead, and Geder found the position more and more persuasive. In all his books, there had been only a few mentions of the spider goddess. None at all of the fire years. Or of the oppression of the goddess and her followers by the dragons. Or their flight from the ancient lands that had become Birancour. The true history of the world was preserved in the temple at the edge of the Keshet, and so far as Geder could see, nowhere else. What evidence was there, after all, that Baltan Sorris had studied Drakkis Stormcrow? Or that Sorris had even existed, for that matter? The battles and struggles and intrigues of history might be nothing more than make-believe given dignity by print.

In that light, Geder’s personal library seemed empty. Not a field rich with truths to be uncovered, but a desert where if there were any truths, they were indistinguishable from lies. It was a conclusion he reached over and over again, forgetting every time, then going back and disappointing himself again. Perhaps it was time to find some other pursuit to distract him from the burdens of rulership.

Perhaps he could learn to play music.

“Lord Regent?”

“Yes, I know,” Geder said. “I’m coming.”

The chamber had been a ballroom once, before Geder had appropriated it. The tiers of benches that rose up on three walls had once been intended for men and women of nobility to take their rest while still seeing and being seen. Now Geder’s personal guard stood there, swords and bows at the ready. Where the wooden parquet that had supported some forgotten generation of dancers had splintered and warped, Geder had had black stone put in. The graceful lamps and candleholders he’d replaced with dark iron sconces and pitch-stinking torches. His own seat rose high above the floor, like a magistrate’s counter, only higher, wider, and grander. Basrahip’s station was across the way, where Geder could glance up from the prisoner and have the priest tell him whether the statements were lies or truth. He’d used it first to assure himself of the loyalty of his guards, and then of his subjects. The noble classes of Asterilhold were still being brought, one by one, through the chamber, and while the constant repetition of questions—
Are you loyal to me? Are you plotting against the throne?
—sometimes became tedious, the pleasure of catching out a liar never lost its charm.

Abden Shadra had been head of the one of the most powerful of the traditional families. His sons and daughters, nephews and nieces and cousins had controlled almost a third of the nation that had once been Sarakal. He knelt on the black floor without even the strength left to rise. His hair was white against his dark scales, his lip swollen. Bruises didn’t look like bruises on Timzinae. The blood pooling under their skin shoved the scales up and stretched them. Abden Shadra’s left arm looked almost like a sausage because of it. The rags that hung from his shoulders might have been fine robes once. They were certainly humbled now.

Geder leaned forward on his elbows, looking down at the man.

“You know who I am?” Geder asked.

The Timzinae’s gaze swam up and up until it found him. Even then, it seemed that he lost his train of thought, forgot the question and then remembered it. He licked his lips.

“Palliako,” he said.

“Yes, good,” Geder said. “Tell me about your part in the plot against my life.”

Abden Shadra swallowed, worked his mouth like he was trying to expel some foul taste from it. Even from where he sat, Geder could hear the dry clicking of tongue against teeth. The man’s eyes shifted to the left and then the right and then back again. Geder felt the stirrings of hope, of excitement.

“You started the war,” Abden Shadra said. “We didn’t attack you.”

“No. Before that,” Geder said. “Did you meet with Dawson Kalliam?”

“Never met him.”

Geder glanced up, and Basrahip nodded. It was true.

“Did you meet with his agents?”

“No.” True.

“Did you conspire to have me or Prince Aster killed?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did?”

“A great lot of your own people.” Geder didn’t bother looking at Basrahip for that one.

“Who in Sarakal? Who among the Timzinae?”

“I don’t know of anyone,” the man said. “You could talk to Silan Junnit. He had a reputation for caring about you people.” Geder glanced up. True. And interesting. He added a name to the list he had built. Silan Junnit. He’d have to see if that was one of the prisoners he’d taken. He’d had a few suggestions like this before, but more often than not, the person named was already dead. It was frustrating. The conspiracy always seemed on the edge of exposure, and then it would dance just out of reach. It never seemed to be the person he’d captured, but one they knew of or had heard about.

It frustrated him. And it frightened him more than a little.

“Will you swear to take no action against Antea, the Severed Throne, me, or Aster?”

“I will. If that’s what you want from me, I’ll do it.” Basrahip hesitated, shrugged, nodded. It was true. Geder’s eyes narrowed. This was always the hardest part, but he felt he was genuinely getting better at it.

“Would you
mean
it?”

“Yes.” Basrahip shook his head. No. He wouldn’t, and he knew he wouldn’t, and now Geder knew it too. It was as predictable as it was disappointing.

“Take him back to his cell,” Geder said. “Bring in the next one.”

Two guards stepped forward and hoisted Abden Shadra by his shoulders.

“No!” the Timzinae said. “I’ll swear whatever you want! I’ll do what you say, just don’t send me back there.”

Geder leaned forward.

“You,” he said coldly, “don’t get to lie to me. Take him back.”

The man’s cries echoed as they hauled him back. The great doors opened and then closed again. Two new guards hauled a woman’s form into the light. She was younger, her scales a glossy black. Her dress was rough canvas, and likely given to her in the prison. When they let her go, she sank to her knees, wrapping her arms around her chest. Geder checked his list.

“Sohen?” he asked. “Sohen Bais?”

The woman nodded, but the only sounds she made were sobs. Geder looked at Basrahip, but the priest neither nodded nor shook his head. In the absence of the living voice, there was nothing. A gesture was only a gesture, whatever the intent behind it.

“You have to answer,” Geder said. “You have to actually talk. Do you understand?”

The woman wailed. Geder felt a pang of guilt followed instantly by resentment at having been made to feel guilty. He pressed his thumb against his nose and considered calling the proceedings to an end for the day. He didn’t want to be here anymore. But once he started slacking off his duties, it would only get harder to pick them back up.

“Sohen,” he said, speaking as gently as he could manage. “Sohen. Listen to me. Listen to my voice. It’s going to be all right. It is. No one here wants to hurt you.”

She looked up. Tears ran from her eyes and mucus from her nose. Her mouth was set in a gape. Geder tried a smile, nodding encouragement. She closed her mouth and nodded back. He let his smile widen and felt a little better about himself.

“Good. You’re doing fine. No one here wants to hurt you. You just need to tell me the truth. Your name is Sohen Bais?”

Her voice was a creak. “It is.” Behind her, Basrahip nodded.