I’m sorry, she thought.
The morning traffic across the Silver Bridge took no particular notice of her or of the grime on her hems. The blood on them. Mules and carts moved behind her, crossing from one side of the city to the other while she stood in the center with the memory of her husband. I’m sorry, she thought, and then knew the word was wrong. Not sorrow. She was horrified, of course, but that wasn’t what had brought her here either. Regret had and the sense of something ending, but nothing so apologetic as sorrow.
Dawson, my love, she thought, speaking each word without giving them voice. I would have stayed the same for you if I could. I loved being the woman you loved. I miss her. I miss you. Perhaps I should have been more careful of myself. Not done things that would change me.
Behind her, a man cursed and a horse snorted. Before her, crows spiraled down into the depths of the earth. The depths of the city. The rainclouds had cleared, and the morning sun drew steam from the streets. It poured over the sides of the Division like fog settling. She looked to her left. Vincen Coe stood at the edge. His face was pale, but his spine straight. He didn’t look at her. Hadn’t asked where she’d been or what she’d been doing. She knew already that she wouldn’t tell him and that this new woman she’d become was the kind who could keep secrets. Secrets made anything possible. They made her free, but alone. The price was small.
The Kingspire seemed almost to glow in the morning light. The vast new banner—the red of blood, the eightfold sigil—hung from its heights, marking the newly founded temple. On the far side of the Division, a troop of men herded another group of Timzinae children toward the prisons. The small, brown-scaled bodies moved slowly. Clara had seen the way exhausted children moved, the slackness of their joints and the dullness in their eyes, the same for every race. Even from halfway across the Division, she recognized it. These were the prisoners Geder had prepared for. She closed her eyes for a moment.
There was so much to mourn. And so much that could still be lost. One of the guards shouted out abuse. Another laughed. Servants of the Severed Throne every one of them.
She wanted to say it was Palliako who’d done it all. That Geder’s sins had infected the city, the kingdom, and the world. In a sense, she even believed it was true. Except that none of those men driving children from their homes and families had a knife to his throat. None of the women at court were forced into the black leather cloaks. They did it, all of them, because it was easier for them not to weigh their loyalty against their conscience. Palliako might be the occasion of it, but she herself was evidence that the choice belonged to each of them. She wondered how many other loyal traitors there might be out there, thinking private thoughts much like her own. She wondered how she might find them without too terrible a risk. She noticed that she wasn’t thinking about Dawson.
Clara gathered herself together, put a pleasant smile on her lips, and turned away from the bridge. It was the nearest thing she had to a tomb for her husband, and it left her heart feeling empty to know she wouldn’t feel the need to come back to it.
Vincen smiled and nodded when she stepped back onto the solid ground of the street. Apart from a paleness to his skin that the days hadn’t quite erased, the only sign he had been near death was a scar of living silver where the cunning man had called on angels or spirits or dragon’s art to fuse flesh that wouldn’t have mended. She had seen it when she sat by his side, nursing him back to strength. With his shirt on, it wasn’t visible. She took his arm and wrapped it around her own. It felt different than it had the times before. Likely it was only that he held himself more carefully, but she liked to imagine it was also that she had changed as well.
“Are you well, my lady?” he asked. The formality in his voice told her that he knew the answer, and that it was no.
“I have been thinking, Vincen,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Writing letters has been very useful in gathering my thoughts,” she said, “but I feel the time has come for something more.”
Cithrin
The trick to moving the wealth of the bank was not being seen to do so. If word went around that the Medean bank was leaving Suddapal, it would cause any number of problems. The people still under contract with the bank would stop paying their loans, because why give money to someone who wouldn’t be present to take the complaint to the magistrate? The scent of coin and cloth would call pirates and bandits, making it less likely that the goods would survive the trek to Porte Oliva. Tax assessors and agents of the city’s governor, seeing the wealth trickling away, would want to eke out as much as they could quickly, before the chance disappeared. Or the high council might send guards to take command of the gold and use it to hire mercenaries, if any mercenaries would accept the work.