“We can’t help, my lady,” Vincen Coe whispered in her ear. “If we tried, it would go worse for her. We should leave.”
Answer them, Clara begged the girl silently. Tell them what they want to know.
But the guardsman wasn’t asking questions, and the priest looked on impassively. Clara turned away, pushing through the crowd without Vincen’s help now. Her jaw ached. When they reached the main street again, her legs trembled with each step.
“Is it only me, do you think?” she asked. “Or does it seem this sort of thing is happening more often?”
“It’s the Timzinae, my lady. The story is that they were behind the trouble.”
“They weren’t,” Clara said with a mirthless laugh. “Dawson would have taken direction from a foreigner as soon as he answered to his own dogs.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Vincen said.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s only … you said foreign, my lady. The girl back there was likely a born subject of Antea. There aren’t a great many Timzinae in Camnipol, and they keep to themselves, but they’re still from here.”
“You know what I meant.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She had intended to be quiet then, to let her outrage turn inward and turn to something like resolve. She meant to walk down these streets that were no longer hers with head unbowed, and she meant to do it in silence. So when the words forced themselves from her throat, they had a broken sound, soft and low and unpleasant.
“What’s happened to us? Simeon gone. Dawson gone. What has happened to my kingdom?”
Vincen made a small sound in the back of his throat. As much as she hadn’t planned to speak, she doubly hadn’t hoped for him to answer. His voice was gentle and soft, almost mournful.
“Back at the Fells, there was a dog we had. Good hunter. Good nose. When the King’s Hunt came, he led the pack. Only, one time, the stag gored him. Took him in the belly and hoisted him in the air. We sewed him closed again, gave him time to heal up. He didn’t die, but after that, he ate himself. Started with the paws, just chewing them until they bled. We did everything we could to stop him. Wrapped him in bandages. Put bitter salve on his paws. Kept him in muzzle until his skin could heal. He was still a good hunter, and sweetest dog you could wish for, but he wouldn’t stop chewing himself raw. Sometimes shock does that.”
“And you think that’s what’s happening? The empire’s been hurt so badly that it’s biting itself to death?”
“Yes,” the young man said, and his tone made him sound older.
“And does that make me the tooth or the bitter salve?”
“Muzzle’s my bet, ma’am,” Vincen said. His smile bloomed sly. “Just haven’t figured how to strap it on the bastard yet.”
They passed by Lord Skestinin’s little compound. Its shutters were closed against the winter, and icicles as long as swords hung from the eaves. Jorey and Sabiha—her youngest son and his wife—were following the court for the season, and Skestinin himself spent his time with the fleet in the north. She missed her son, but for the time being it was best that Jorey establish himself without reference to his disgraced parents. She wasn’t so naïve as to trust the nobility of their blood to protect Jorey from being beaten in the streets if Geder Palliako’s favor should turn. Not in this new Camnipol.
Beyond the houses and compounds, the Kingspire rose. The stone looked dark against the winter sky, and the flock of pigeons that circled it seemed as insubstantial and grey as the snow through which they flew. Clara stood still, letting the traffic of the street pass her by. Her cheeks felt stiff with the chill.
By the time she reached the builder’s tents, the pies had cooled, but Clara didn’t let it concern her. The ruins had once been a stables and an open market, both burned the night the failed coup began. The charred wooden posts had been cleared away, the ground leveled, and new paving stones and supports were being raised. Piles of white brick stood as thick as two men and tall as three, soft wooden scaffolds clinging to the sides. Men in wool and thick workmen’s leather hauled handcarts filled with lime and reinforcing bars from one place to another. Their talk was rough and uneducated and nothing Clara hadn’t heard a thousand times in the servants’ quarters of her own house. It only took a few moments to find the face she sought.
“Benet! Here you are. I’ve been looking simply everywhere for you.”
“L-Lady Kalliam?” the boy said. Once, he had been a gardener’s assistant and plucked weeds from her flowerbeds. Now his hands were callused and his face pale with brick dust and starvation.