The Tyrant's Law(147)

Suddapal receded. The great dark buildings greyed with distance. The great piers that pressed so far out into the water shrank to twigs and the tall ships became small enough to cover with her outstretched thumb. When she looked down into the water, she was surprised to see dark eyes looking up at hers. A pod of the Drowned had grabbed on to the ship, coasting with it like an underwater tail. Cithrin smiled at them and waved. One waved back, and before long, they had let go and fallen back into the depths of the water. By the time the sun fell into the sea, the city was gone.

And if she ever went back there, it would still be gone.

She felt Yardem come up behind her more than heard him. When she glanced back and up, he was standing there placidly, looking out at the pale white wake drawn out behind them and the darkening water.

“Well,” she said, “I’m afraid I’m about to disappoint the Lord Regent. I don’t imagine he’ll take it well.”

“To judge from his past, likely not,” Yardem said.

“Perhaps I should have left him a letter.”

“Saying what, ma’am?”

“I don’t know. That I’m sorry. That I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“Not sure that matters, ma’am.”

“It does to me. He’s a terrible person, you know. But he’s also not. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who managed to make himself so alone.”

Yardem grunted, then cleared his throat. “I’ve known hermits, ma’am. Very few of them burned down cities.”

“Fair point,” Cithrin said. “Still, I wish there was some way to talk just with the best parts of him.”

“Could wish that of anyone,” Yardem said.

The boat rose and fell gently. Rose and fell. It would be weeks yet before she reached Porte Oliva and home. She wondered what it would be like, hearing Pyk Usterhall’s rough, angry voice and sitting with Maestro Asanpur with his single blind eye and his perfect coffee and all the familiar faces again. She wanted to believe that she would fit back into the same place she had before, that she would find them as they had been, but she doubted it would happen.

She saw now that she had changed, though she still didn’t quite understand what she’d become. There was a contradiction in it, because Yardem was right. A year before, she would have been able to go through with it, and now she couldn’t. She had become capable of fewer things, and yet she felt freed. She wondered if Magistra Isadau was waiting in Porte Oliva. It was the sort of question that she could answer if anyone could.

“If I’d stayed,” she said. “If I’d been his lover, do you think he might have changed?”

Yardem stood silently for a long moment, his arms crossed and his ears canted forward.

“No,” he said.





Clara




Well, it’s mostly the bits the butcher usually throws away, but there’s enough salt in it, anyway,” Aly said, putting the soup bowl in front of Clara.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Clara said, picking up her spoon.

“I’m sure it’s not,” the other woman said, laughing. “But the company makes it better, eh?”

Aly lived in a small apartment on the fifth story of a narrow building. Her table was small enough that it was cramped even just with the two of them. The weak winter sunlight pressed in through dingy curtains and made the place seem warm and cozy, even though it was in fact almost as cold as the street.

With the court gone from Camnipol and the winter turning the black-cobbled streets to grey, Clara had given more time to the friends she’d made at the Prisoner’s Span. Ostin Soukar, the odd little man who kept forcing his way into homes that weren’t his, and being caught by the magistrates’ men because he’d fallen asleep there. Ishia Man, who was sweet as honey sober but fought like a bull when he got drunk. Aly Koutinen and her son Mihal. They were criminals, and some of them violent. There were many, many people she had met and spoken with whom she’d not choose to be in a room alone with, but taken as a whole, they were not particularly better or worse than the noblemen who debated at the Great Bear and fought in the dueling yards.

“Did you hear about Sasin?” Aly said.

“No,” Clara said, sipping at the weak, watery soup. “And I don’t dare to ask what’s happened this time.”

“Tried to take the begging cup from that one-legged Tralgu sets up by the northern gate. You know the one? Well, the one-legged bastard hopped up on his one foot and beat poor Sasin blue with his cane. Now they’re both in the pens with all those roach babies.”

“Well, warmer than the cages, at least,” Clara said.