The Widow's House

Marcus

What needs to happen,” the innkeep said, his expression soft and ruminative, “is they slit the Cinnae bitch’s throat and hang her on the wall as a warning to sluts.”

The other people in the common room, men and women both, added their voices to his in a chorus of support. There weren’t more than a dozen of them all told, but the violence of their fantasies made them seem more. Marcus leaned forward, looking into his cup. Across the table from him, Cary’s smile was empty and her eyes as hard as stones.

“From what I heard, she was working with the Timzinae from the start,” one of the other men said.

“All them Western Triad bastards are the same,” the innkeep said. He was a gentle-faced man, his voice soft and melodious. Any words he said, however harsh, seemed to take on a kind of philosophical sorrow. “Look different on the outside, but inside, they’re the same. Not saying they’re all like that Cinnae piece of shit. I’ve known some Cinnae were fine people. Just it was in spite of what they was, if you see what I’m saying.”

“Birancour’ll give her up,” a woman in the back said.

“Unless they were part of it all from the start,” the innkeep said. “All those roaches that scuttled out of Elassae headed west, didn’t they? There were caravans of them ready to go, and houses in Porte Oliva and Sara-sur-Mar already bought and fitted out for them.”

“No, really?” the woman said, pausing in her path.

“Oh yes,” the innkeep said. “Only reason Lord Geder didn’t root out all the conspirators was they knew he was coming and they had their retreats in mind. They’ll be running out of land soon, though. Then they can swim for blue water, and good riddance.”

Marcus stood.

The keep looked over to him, eyebrows raised in polite query. “Need anything else there, friend?”

“Just going to stretch my legs and check on the others,” Marcus said.

“Well, if there’s anything else you need, just say it. We’re all looking forward to the play tonight. Sent my boy down to Lesser Bronlet to spread the word. We should have a full yard, and no mistake.”

“Kind of you,” Marcus said.

They had thought to travel through Antea by avoiding the main roads and attracting as little attention as was plausible for a theater troupe. They could not have done much better. The town was hardly more than a cluster of houses at a place where dirt paths crossed. The dragon’s road ran ten miles to the northwest, carrying most of the carts and carriages between Sevenpol and Camnipol. Without it, the merely human paths and roads that laced the plains and farmlands of Antea might have earned the dignity of pavement. But the eternal jade was so near and so effortless that the need never rose above the effort required. The land all around was the fresh green of springtime, the days warm, and the nights not quite cold enough to freeze. After Hallskar, it felt like the jungles of Lyoneia all over again.

Antea itself had altered. Marcus had walked its length already in his life, and while the shape of the land, the accent of the voices, and the flavors of the food remained the same, there were changes that soured all the rest of it. It wasn’t only that it was near to a starving spring. Those came from time to time, and then they went. A blight might cause it, or a rogue storm. Or a war. The men who had farmed these lands were soldiers now, and some had been since the invasion of Asterilhold. The labor to manage the lands had been spent elsewhere, until now. The planted fields that the players passed were tilled. The first sprouts of a bountiful summer were pushing through the dark soil. That hadn’t changed. But the men who worked the lands weren’t Firstblood farmers, subjects of the Severed Throne. They were Timzinae, and they were in chains.

The first time they’d seen it had been half a day out of the port of Sevenpol. There had still been snow on the ground then, and the morning ground was covered with frost. The horse Master Kit had bought, using his unnatural magics to negotiate a price so low it was barely fair, had hauled the reconstructed and creaking cart down a long, tree-lined road, heading toward the wide jade of the dragon’s road, and then south. Charlit Soon had been huddled on the driver’s bench, Marcus and Smit walking beside the wide, slow, turning front wheel. To their right, an old Firstblood man had been in the middle of a field, screaming in anger. The boy absorbing his abuse was perhaps as old as Magistra Isadau’s nephew. The Timzinae was stripped to the waist and shivering. The morning light played off his dark scales. The old man brandished a whip made from thorn branches, not striking the boy—not yet—but terrorizing him.

Marcus had seen the shock in Smit’s face. The actor was a man of good years who’d been walking the world for most of them. Marcus knew he’d seen ugly sights before, and that he would again. Scenes like it had played all through the countryside. A tree in the middle of a half-tilled field with five Timzinae men tied to it by the neck like dogs. A dead Timzinae woman, abandoned by the side of the road, her back split open by some violence Marcus hadn’t seen. But no children. That had been the Lord Regent’s great plan. Take the children of Sarakal and Elassae as insurance of their enslaved parents’ good behavior. It left all of them ready to see Antea’s far border, and Marcus only hoped when they crossed it things would be better. Not here, of course. Antea had declared the Timzinae inhuman—dragons fashioned in human form and thus the ancient enemy of the spider goddess. The atrocities would continue, but since Marcus didn’t know how to stop them, at least he didn’t want to watch.

In the yard outside the little inn, Kit and Sandr had lowered the side of the cart, making the little stage where they would put on their show. Hornet was placing small, dense candles in tin cups that would throw back the light all around its edge. Marcus nodded to him as he hauled himself up and into the cramped space behind the soft red curtains at the stage’s back. Kit was in the long purple robes sewn with spangles at the edge that would transform him into Kil Hammerfrost, tragic king of the imaginary Kingdom of Clouds. Sandr was hunched down over a little mirror of polished metal, putting on eye-grease and rouge to become the sickly Prince Helsin, and applying it a little too thickly, Marcus thought. He shook his head.

Marcus Wester had been the most celebrated general in Northcoast, and its most feared regicide. He had trekked across two continents to confront a goddess who didn’t exist and woken a dragon from the age of legend. And with all those marvels and terrors, that he had strong opinions about men’s eye-grease still had the power to astonish him.

“What news?” Kit asked.

“Good news is we likely know where Cithrin and Yardem have gotten themselves to. The common wisdom puts them in Porte Oliva, probably under blockade but not siege. At least not yet. The bad news is all of Antea wants her killed slow for hurting the Lord Regent’s feelings or some such.”

Sandr raised a rouged sponge toward his cheek, paused, and set it down.

“I assume we won’t be continuing to Suddapal,” Kit said.

“I was thinking we could go back up the dragon’s road, take it though Camnipol, then south to the Free Cities. Perhaps try the pass at Bellin in summer for a change,” Marcus said. “The worst of the fighting is still the siege at Kiaria, and that could last another year or more, depending on how the water supply is in the caves.”

“And then?”

Marcus shrugged. “Take our best guess and try it. Same as always.”

“I’m afraid it may have gone too far to stop,” Kit said.

“Then we’ll get everyone on ships for Far Syramis and try to keep it confined to this side of the ocean,” Marcus said. “If that doesn’t work, we can try to find some mountaintop with a good stream, build a few houses, and kill anyone who shows up unexpectedly.”

Kit’s smile was dark. “I think that sounds uncomfortably plausible.”

“That’s me,” Marcus said, tapping his temple with two fingertips, “always thinking ahead.”

“I don’t think I can go on tonight,” Sandr said. His voice was wet and choked. His eye-grease was trailing down his cheeks in tiny black lines of tears. “I don’t think I can play for these people.”

Kit and Marcus exchanged a glance, and Marcus knelt down, putting a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “This isn’t the place to make a stand. Time will come. I don’t know where yet, and I don’t know when, but it will come.”

Master Kit’s voice was warm and gentle, and it carried a power more than only the words. “You can do this, my friend. Listen to me. It is within your power.”

Sandr was silent for a moment. He shook his head. “Do I have to?”

“We don’t want to stand out,” Marcus said. “Right now, we’re a bunch of Firstblood actors wandering through a nation of Firstblood people. As long as that’s what they see, we’ll be fine. If they find out, for example, that Kit and I were working with Cithrin in Suddapal or that we tried to slaughter their new favorite goddess? Well, then being in the fields with our Timzinae friends will be the best thing we could hope for. Keep calm, and keep quiet, and let’s all get through this bit alive.”

“So just accept it?” Sandr asked.

“Pretend to,” Kit said.

Sandr blinked up at the old actor. His half-painted, tear-smeared face was a mess, the illusions of color and light, pale powder and rouge ruined. He swallowed. “How long can you pretend to be something before you aren’t pretending anymore?”

The three men stood silent for a long moment, then Marcus sighed. “Stop saying things that sound wise, Sandr. It upsets my sense of the world.”

True to the innkeep’s word, the yard was full that night. Men and women from all the surrounding hamlets had come. Kit, Sandr, Cary, and Hornet had taken to the little stage and done a fair performance of The Kingdom of Clouds, and afterward Charlit Soon had made an encore of the queen maiden’s speech from Leterpan’s Hill that lifted the crowd’s spirits and ended the evening with a little laughter for the audience at least. Through it all, Marcus and Smit had been in the crowd, leading the booing when the villainous Lord Stoop appeared and cheering for Prince Helsin. When a half-drunk young man tried to interrupt the performance with his heckling, Marcus had escorted him to the stables and explained why he might not want to be rude. The boy’s frightened expression had made him feel good at the time and guilty later. Pretty soon, he’d be proving his manhood by kicking puppies that chewed the wrong sticks.

When the night was done, Marcus helped the players gather the coins that had been thrown on the stage and bounced down to the dirt of the yard. He cleaned out the candleholders with a work knife and fastened the stage when they hauled it up into place. Tomorrow, they’d be off again. It was a long road, and he didn’t like to think what would be at the end of it. Nothing good.

Their agreement with the innkeep had been that the players would sleep in the stables, but as the last of the crowd left, he mentioned to Kit that three of the rooms hadn’t been taken. Enough for the women to take a room to themselves, and the men to split the other two. So, once Kit had assured himself that the innkeep wasn’t looking for more coin or one of the players to bed down with, the company accepted the extra hospitality. Sandr couldn’t bring himself to thank the man. Marcus couldn’t blame him.

The walls of the inn were flimsy. From his cot, Marcus could hear the snores of Hornet in the next room and the hushed voices of Cary and Charlit Soon in the one past that. A soft wind set the rafters ticking and the lingering smell of onions reminded him how small the meal had been.

“I don’t suppose you’re sleeping,” Marcus said.

“No,” Kit answered.

“How long do you think it will take us to reach Camnipol?”

“At a guess? If the new axle holds, we could be there in a week.”

“Court will be back by now. And Cithrin’s mysterious correspondent.”

Kit shifted on his cot, the legs creaking under his weight. The window was stretched hide, a light square in the darkness of the wall that illuminated nothing. Still, Marcus had been traveling with Kit long enough, he could imagine the man’s quizzical expression.

“Are you wanting to resume that hunt?”

“I want to find some way to—”

The sound was sudden and profound, and Marcus didn’t know what it was. The closest he could think was a massive stone thrown by siegecraft striking bare ground. He didn’t recall rising to his feet. He was simply there, the poisoned sword in his hand, ready to be drawn. His heart was thudding in his chest.

“Marcus?” Kit whispered. “What was that?”

Marcus raised his hand for silence, the gesture useless in the black. Outside the inn, something heavy slid across the yard. Marcus stepped to the door and lifted its latch as quietly as he could.

“Get the others,” he murmured. “Do it quickly. I’ll go see—”

Once, years before when Marcus had been working contracts as a mercenary, he had been present at the siege of a great garrison keep at the rough, informal border between Borja and the Keshet. The pale stone walls had stood thirty feet high, and the commander had hired a team of cunning men to undermine them. The sound when those walls came down—the thunder-deep rumble, the shriek of splintering wood, the screaming voices—was the same one that assaulted him now.

A chunk of wood struck his shoulder like a blow. He felt Kit behind him, backing him, and Marcus drew the venomed blade. The ceiling of the inn rose, a strip of stars and moonlight cracking where it was lifting from the wall. The roof of the inn creaked into the darkness like the lid of a chest swinging up. The vast head of the dragon stared down at him, its vast eyes silvered by the moonlight.

The roof tipped over, falling to the ground with a crash. People were screaming. Someone threw a lit lantern at the vast, dark bulk of the dragon that filled the yard, but missed badly. The smear of burning oil on the earth lit the beast from below as the cool moonlight did from above. Marcus held the blade before him. It felt like wielding a spoon against a forest fire.

“You,” the dragon breathed. “I have followed your scent halfway across the land.”

“Flattered,” Marcus said, but Inys took no notice.

“I have seen it, and it was as you said. You did not lie. They are gone. They are all gone, but I will redeem my error. My workshop will be rebuilt. Those parts of ourselves we put into your kinds. I can retrieve them. I will retrieve them.”

The dragon’s tail whipped in agitation, crushing the wall of the stables. Horses were screaming in terror. People were weeping and calling out to God. The dragon’s gaze slid off Marcus, then found him again. A claw larger than Marcus’s body peeled back the wall of the room effortlessly. The door opened behind them, and Cary and Charlit Soon stepped in, blades in their hands. Marcus waved them back.

“This… all of this,” the dragon hissed, the sharp stink of his breath filling the air, “is mine. All of it is my doing, and so I will undo it. The sky will be filled, filled, with dragons, and great perches will be raised again from the earth and the sea.”

“All right,” Marcus said. “If you say so.”

The massive head rose, searching the sky as if all it said were already true. A bloom of flame rose from the black-fleshed mouth, and the dragon’s wings spread until it seemed they would touch the horizons.

“This is the darkest hour of the noblest race. And rising from it shall be our greatest triumph. A glory that will echo through time itself, and change the nature of the stars.”

“No reason to aim low,” Cary said, and Kit shushed her. A great foreclaw folded, tightened, pressed the air before Marcus. The black talons looked sharper than spears, but Marcus made no move to parry them.

“And you,” the dragon said. “Drakkis Stormcrow was to wake me, but it was you who did. So you shall be my Stormcrow. Murmus Stormcrow.”

“Marcus.”

“Marcus Stormcrow. You shall be my voice and my servant, my creature in this new, most glorious conquest. You shall be my general in the field of battle greater than any the worlds have ever known. We shall face down the armies of death, of nothingness, and we shall pull life from their corpses. Life!”

The last word echoed through the darkness like a great storm wind. The last dragon reared up on his back legs, screamed defiance at the sky, and toppled. The huge body crushed the wall of the stable, freeing two of the horses, which sped off shrieking into the night. The dragon’s head lay against the ground, and its single raised wing folded down slowly, bending into itself like a moonflower folding at dawn.

Somewhere very close by, a man wailed in fear. A lick of flame rose from the ruined common room where the embers of the fire grate had been scattered in the splintered wood of the walls. The moon sailed uncaring above them through a vast and star-sown sky.

Cary spoke first. “Did we do something? Did we… defeat it?”

“No, we didn’t. I’m not sure quite how he managed it,” Marcus said, carefully sheathing the sword, “but I do believe our great scaled friend here is drunk.”