“I’m going to go after her,” Marcus said.
Yardem sat forward, drinking his beer carefully. His silence was thoughtful and disapproving. Marcus leaned forward over the rough plank table. It wasn’t their customary taproom. Three young Jasuru boys, their scales bright as green-snakes, played drums in the yard, the complex rhythms making the air richer. Marcus took his bowl of beef and snow peas, looked at it, and put it down again.
“I was thinking about coming from Vanai when Cithrin was passing herself as a boy,” he said.
Yardem nodded.
“You’d be in a dress then, sir?”
“I could go in carter’s clothes. Or as a merchant. It isn’t as if I’d need to announce myself. Just ride in, stay quiet, and when she’s ready to come back I can travel with her then.”
“Why?”
“Not much point in staying hidden when I’m heading away, is there?”
“I mean why would you go after her, sir? What’s the advantage?”
“I’d think that was obvious. Keep her safe.”
Yardem sighed.
“What?” Marcus said. “Go ahead. You know you want to say it. Tell me she’s in no danger, and that Corisen Mout and Barth can keep her as safe as anyone. She’s heading toward a war. A real one, not one of the little shell games like who runs Maccia. She doesn’t understand how that kind of violence can spread. And you know that’s true.”
“If you think three blades would make her safe where two won’t, why not send someone else, sir? Enen’s been to Carse.”
Yardem’s dark eyes met his. Yardem’s ironic subservience had become such a habit over the years that Marcus sometimes forgot the hardness that could take the Tralgu’s features. In moments like this, it was easy to believe that the Tralgu had been bred for the hunt and the kill as well as a deadly kind of loyalty. Marcus silently hefted a few arguments, but under Yardem’s implacable gaze, they all seemed like felling a tree with a toenail knife.
“You want her to be in trouble, sir, but she isn’t.”
Marcus’s impatience shifted. He felt his own gaze cool.
“Meaning what?”
Yardem flicked an ear, the rings jingling, and turned back to his mug. When he started to lift it, Marcus put his palm over its mouth and pressed it back down to the table.
“Asked you a question.”
Yardem let go of the beer.
“After Ellis, sir, you looked for revenge.”
“I looked for justice.”
“If you say so,” Yardem said, refusing to be turned. “I was with you for that. Not like we are now, but I was there. I saw it happen. You didn’t only kill Springmere. You planned it, you built it. You made sure that he could see his death coming, understood it, and couldn’t do anything to stop it. And when he was dead, you thought it would be better. Not fixed. You’re not stupid, but you thought that… justice… would redeem something. Only it didn’t.”
“I am just certain you have an argument in this somewhere,” Marcus said. “Because I just know you aren’t hauling Alys and Merian out of their graves to score cheap points.”
“I’m not, sir,” Yardem said. There was nothing like apology in his voice. “I’m saying you didn’t only kill Springmere because he needed to die. You were looking for redemption.”
“More of your religious—”
“And you were looking to Cithrin for the same,” Yardem said, refusing to be silenced. “She was a girl and she was at the mercy of a merciless world. We helped her. Hatred didn’t bring you peace, and somewhere in your soul, you thought that love would. And here we are, Cithrin bel Sarcour saved, only you still don’t have the redemption you wanted. So you’re trying to tell yourself and everyone else that she still needs saving when she doesn’t. She’s fine, sir.”
“I didn’t want to work for her,” Marcus said. “I wanted to walk away. You were the one who argued that we should go back. That was you.”
“It was. But that was when she needed us.”
“The way she doesn’t need us now?”
“Yes, sir. The way she doesn’t now,” Yardem said, his voice going soft and gentle in a way that was worse than shouting. “We have steady work for fair pay. We have shelter and we have food. Interesting if that’s not what we were looking for.”
“We spend our days taking people’s houses and throwing them out in the street. How’s that a way to live?”
“Used to be, we’d kill them, sir,” Yardem said. “Not sure this is worse.”
Marcus rose to his feet. The drumbeats throbbing out from the yard reached their crisis and collapsed. In the silence, Marcus’s voice was louder than he’d meant it to be.