The Widow's House

Marcus

For years, Northcoast had been in the back of Marcus’s mind. It had taken on a depth and significance that had nothing to do with the actual stones and skies. Northcoast was the place where the past had happened. Where he had been loved and powerful and betrayed. When he’d left Carse the last time, it had been in a fast boat going south with a king dead behind him and an old enemy on the throne by his hand. It was the kind of romantic gesture young men made because they didn’t have any better way to purge their grief. And now he was back, and walking through the city was like the blankness in the eyes of an old lover who didn’t recognize him. The taproom across from the great launderer’s yard where he and Alys had eaten their meals was still there, but the old man who’d served them sausages and apples and beer wasn’t. The empty house where he’d met with his men that last, fatal night before King Springmere earned his place in history as the Mayfly King had been taken over and cleaned. Half a dozen children were playing pebble-tossing games on the same stones where he’d cut Butun Skinkiller’s throat. There was a memory. He hadn’t thought of old Skinkiller in years.

After Springmere’s death, Marcus had run from this city and from everything he’d been when he was here. He’d been a legend. The great general who’d pulled victory from a lost war and then cast it all away in the name of vengeance. Or justice. Or whatever name people wanted to put to it. He’d become a minor mercenary captain and head of a merchant bank’s guard. Northcoast hadn’t forgotten him, but the Marcus Wester it remembered had been younger, more certain of himself, and hadn’t had the rash across his back where the damned sword made his skin itch and peel.

He passed through the city like a ghost. The holding company made room for him and Yardem and Kit, putting them all in a brick-walled storeroom that smelled of wheat flour and old oil. The three men spent their days in the taprooms and at the docks, finding what word they could. They spent their nights at the holding company, sharing information and telling tales and jokes. Cithrin’s great scheme still seemed like something a street-corner swindler would do to rook the unwary out of a few bits of silver, but for the moment she was safe from Palliako and his armies. Yardem and Kit made good company when they didn’t wander off on religious debates about the nature of truth and doubt and the spiritual roots of wealth. And even when they were talking hairwash like that, having familiar voices while he sharpened his knife or ate rice and meat from the holding company’s kitchen or started building plans for what to do when Carse fell under Antea’s hammer made the evening pass faster. In the nights, he would lie on his cot, looking out the narrow window at the stars, and try to put off sleep for a few minutes more.

Because the nightmares, of course, were back, fresh and raw and more terrible than they had ever been before.

Kit snored, but not enough to make an annoyance of himself. His blanket was a series of dark brown lumps where he tangled himself. The top of his head poked out at one end, and a single bare foot at the other. Yardem, by contrast, slept on top of his blanket, his eyes slitted but not quite closed, and his sword on the stones beneath him where his hand could find the hilt without requiring him to stand or even roll to reach it. Only his ears drooping to the sides showed the Tralgu was actually asleep.

Marcus scratched his chest. His arms and legs felt like they were sinking down into the earth, limp as overcooked chicken. In his memory, Cithrin looked out over the city and said, The violence we do with a contract is the sort I understand. The thought left him caught between pride and melancholy. She spent so much time and effort seeming older, it was easy to forget that she was only just past her girlhood.

She’ll be fine, Alys said, walking through the thin spread of trees outside their little house. He couldn’t see the details of her face, but he knew it was her with the false certainty that came in dreams. Some part of him was already screaming in anticipation of what was coming. The violence, the smell of burning skin, the feeling of his daughter in his arms, her blackened skin against his own. She’ll be fine.

He tried to speak, to warn Alys that it wasn’t true. Merian was in danger. They were both in danger. All of them. All he could manage was a whisper, and she couldn’t hear him. Couldn’t tell that he was trying to scream. Behind him, Merian laughed. He tried to turn around, but his body wouldn’t move. Something was wrong with him. He felt like he was stuck in thick, invisible mud. Merian’s laughter turned to a scream and he tried to run. It wasn’t too late. If he could only get there in time. Her scream was constant now, like a storm wind that didn’t have to pause for breath. The air stank of smoke and his skin was beginning to peel back from his hands, exposing the meat of his fingers. The bone. The thickened air was ripping him apart rather than letting him through. He gritted his teeth and tried to scream his daughter’s name, his heart thudding against his ribs even as the wise, watching part of him turned away, knowing what would come next.

“Sir?” Yardem said.

Alys and Merian were in flames, the child curled in her mother’s lap. Their screams reached over the crackle of the flames.

“You should wake up now, sir,” Yardem said. “Something’s happening.”

Marcus opened his eyes and took a deep, gasping breath. The little room was thick with buttery yellow light. Kit knelt on his cot and peeked out the window into the black night. Dream and reality mixed, the screaming and the smell of fire still in his ears and nose as Marcus swung his feet to the floor. He tried to say What is it? and managed some part of the syllables.

“Not sure yet,” Yardem said. His sword was in his hand.

The death screams of his family moved out from their intimate place in Marcus’s ear, out to the window and the dark streets beyond. That wasn’t his nightmare, then. People were screaming. He yawned, the force of it cracking his jaw, as he rose.

“Palliako’s army?” he asked.

“Could be,” Yardem said.

“I can’t believe that they could travel so far or so quickly,” Kit said. “Do you think it’s possible?”

Marcus reached under his own cot, hauling out the vile green sword and scabbard. He slung it across his back. “I know a way to find out. You stay here.”

In the night-black city, lanterns flared and people filled the squares. Marcus moved among them, his senses stretched for the peculiar signs of violence. Yardem, at his side, shifted his ears one direction and then the next. The city guard stood at the corners and choke points where the rush of a mob could be controlled, but so far as Marcus could make out, there was no riot, no invasion, no burning buildings or boiling pitch or flights of killing arrows.

He was in the middle of a wide square, perhaps three hundred men and women in it looking around in confusion that echoed his own, when the screaming came again, and from all around him. Yardem tapped his shoulder and pointed up toward the distant stars.

A deeper darkness moved against the sky, blotting out stars. The movement gave it shape—wide, tattered wings, a great tail and serpentine neck. The dragon glided silently against the night, swooping over the city like a hawk looking for a rabbit. A gout of flame poured forth from the mouth in a great gold-and-smoke cloud brighter than the moon. Women shouted, pointed. Men screamed and tried to push themselves back into the buildings against the flow of other people coming out. Others stood in openmouthed wonder. All round the city, lanterns and torches flickered to life, the citizens of Northcoast flooding the streets or fleeing them in terror and elation.

Kit was pacing when they came back in, his expression a mask of distress. He stopped, his gaze shifting from one to the other in anticipation of the worst.

“Ships are here,” Marcus said.

The late morning found the square outside the Grave of Dragons packed almost too tightly to walk through. Marcus and Yardem had to lead with their shoulders and push to make any progress at all. For the most part, they got no worse back than angry looks and some mild profanity. One man so thick across the shoulders he could have passed for Yemmu from behind pushed back and lifted his chin, but Yardem met his gaze and shook his head. The man backed down.

King Tracian’s private guard held the entrance, blades drawn. Even they kept looking back over their shoulders to catch a glimpse of Inys as he moved along the long, pale rows. When he reached the soldiers, Marcus looked for the one in charge. A Kurtadam woman in plate armor so bright and gilded, he was fairly sure he could have poked through it with a dinner fork. Not all armor was for fighting, though, and hers did the work of showing who mattered. Yardem at his back, Marcus pushed through to her.

“I’m here to see the dragon,” he said.

“You and everyone else,” she said, looking past him into the crowd.

“I know him. We travel together,” Marcus said. The guard captain ignored him. Yardem flicked an ear. His empty expression wouldn’t have read as amusement to anyone else. “I’m Marcus Wester.”

“Fuck off,” she said.

“No offense, ma’am,” Yardem said, his voice deep as thunder. “He is.”

For the first time, the Kurtadam woman really looked at Marcus, and her eyes went wide. “Oh shit.”

“It’s all right,” Marcus said. “No one ever believes me right off. But I have come to see the dragon.”

“Sorry, I can’t do that,” the woman said. “King gave orders. No one’s to bother the… God. The dragon. Marcus Wester and a dragon. What next? Orcus the Demon King?”

“He’s back at the compound,” Marcus said. “Tracian didn’t mean me. You should let me through.”

“Not an option. I’m really very sorry.”

Marcus shrugged and cupped his hands around his mouth like a speaker’s horn. “Inys!”

The dragon’s head shifted toward the crowd. The vast, warm eyes found him at once. “Marcus Stormcrow. You have come.”

Marcus looked a question at the guard captain. She stood aside. The path down to the graveyard proper was pale and empty. Marcus and Yardem stepped down toward the huge beast. The scars of the battle in Porte Oliva were healed, for the most part. Wide scars striped Inys’s flank, roughening the scales and making a range of small shadows when the sun came at a sharp enough angle. The dragon’s wings were ripped where the huge Antean spears had pierced the webbing. Inys was still magnificent; there was no question about that. But also ragged and tired. Marcus wondered whether the injuries it had suffered would heal further than they already had, or if this was as whole as the dragon would ever be again.

Inys shifted forward and put a taloned paw into the imprint of some long dead dragon. The expression of grief on the dragon’s face was unmistakable. “Arach. This was Arach. She used to sing the most beautiful pieces. I can hear them in my mind if I try to. Her voice was so pure.”

“You recognize them from their… paw prints? Or handprints. I don’t know what the respectful term is,” Marcus said, but Inys took no notice of him.

“She said that all her compositions were inspired by the colors of the stars.” Inys shifted, caressing another imprint. Black talons dug into the stone. “Kairade. He was my brother’s friend. He knew things had gone too far, but he was loyal. I asked him once to help me stop the war before it went beyond the point that we could mend the damage. His laughter had tears in it. I remember that. No one else remembers it, but I do. I am the only one who knows. And if I’m wrong, if I misremember a name or detail, it becomes true now. I can make the past simply by saying what is so and what is not. Any past that reaches this point, this place, is as good as another.”

Marcus looked at Yardem. The Tralgu scratched his arm.

“So,” Marcus said. “You’re looking better.”

Inys shifted his great head, the vast eye focusing on Marcus.

“Well,” Marcus said. “Improved, anyway.”

“These dead around us,” Inys said, sweeping his wings in a gesture that took in everything in the long arcades. “How did they pass? Was it in the war? Was it after? Did Morade turn on his own in the end?”

“Don’t know,” Marcus said. “I wasn’t there, and the records that far back… well, could say they’re spotty.”

“The weapons they brought against me,” Inys said. “I have never seen their like before. They were designed to let slaves like you bring down dragons.”

“That’s what it looked like,” Marcus agreed.

“Who made these designs? And why?”

“Again, I can’t really say.”

Inys settled onto the ground, tucking his huge legs under him like a cat preparing for a nap. His ragged wings folded against his sides. Marcus had the sudden image of a man sitting alone in a room filled with ancient bones. He felt a pang of discomfort, as if he might be intruding on something sacred. He scowled at the feeling and the deference to the dragon that it carried along.

“Magistra Isadau’s back at the compound with Cithrin and the others,” he said. “Cithrin’s plan to end the war seems to have done something, so that’s good. I suppose. Unless it just means the Antean army that kicked our asses in Birancour are coming to kick our asses in Northcoast, in which case, that’ll be a pity.”

“The truth is lost,” Inys said. “All truth is lost in the blackness of my sleep and the emptiness of your history. There was a crime. A treason worse than mine. Worse than my brother’s. Slaves armed against us. How desperate must we have been to allow it. How terrible that rage.”

“We’re thinking it might be good to have someone go take a quick look south of the city here. Just in case there’s an army on the road. We haven’t heard word of Antea crossing into Northcoast, but since there’s someone here that can go aloft and check. To see if we’re about to be attacked. Which could be important.”

“Or perhaps we did not permit it,” the dragon said. “Perhaps the slaves rose up themselves. Perhaps these evil designs were born in a slave child’s mind, forged in a slave’s fire. Perhaps we weakened ourselves with war, and the animals rose up against us, smelling our blood and fear.”

“All respect, sir,” Yardem said. “There’s not a way we can know that. And it doesn’t change much if it’s truth.”

Inys blinked, as if surprised to find them there. Marcus wondered what exactly the plan would be if, between grief and injury, the dragon lost its mind. That seemed a distraction that wouldn’t help anyone.

“Would you, Marcus Stormcrow? Would you turn against me?” Inys asked.

No, he thought. For God’s sake, tell the lizard you’ll lick his ass if that’s what he wants to hear. We don’t have time for this.

“I don’t know. Maybe? Depending on what you were doing.”

The scales along the dragon’s side rippled like grass in a high wind. Acrid smoke leaked out from between Inys’s dagger-sharp teeth. “Treason. You would turn your hand to treason!”

“If you don’t want the answer, don’t ask,” Marcus said. “Would I ever say you’d gone too damned far, and no farther? Yes, if you earned it. Would you rather I tell you that I’d follow you to the death of the world and the sky just because you’re such a great and powerful you? Because I’m fairly certain I can find you a dozen or so of that sort just by walking back up the path there if you want them.”

Inys was silent for a long moment. Long enough that Marcus began to feel little flutters of unease in his belly. Then the dragon chuckled. “You are more like her than you know, Marcus Stormcrow. Not so educated, not so graceful, but carved from the same stone all the same. Drakkis would have laughed with your jokes.”

“Honored,” Marcus said. “But here’s the thing. This war we’re fighting is a long way from done, and it’s getting more complicated by the day. Back down south, we all thought you were the big damned secret that’d turn things our way. You thought it too. We called it wrong, and so we’ve pulled back. It’s left us weaker and in a less defensible position. If Antea comes here before Cithrin can do whatever it is she’s doing, we’ll have to pull back again, and we’re getting damned thin on places to pull back to. So while I’m sorry your dead friends are dead, I need you to focus on the next few days and weeks. If you’re strong enough to help us in the war, that’s a great good thing. If having your ass handed to you on a Birancouri platter’s put you off your game, that’s less good, but I’ll manage. What I can’t have is everyone making the plan to move forward counting on you if you’re too weak. So, all respect, are you going to sit here feeling sad for yourself, or are you going to stand up and do the job?”

“No one speaks to a dragon so,” Inys said, his voice deep and resonant as a gong.

“Almost no one. What’s it going to be? Do what needs doing? Or mope like a child who didn’t get the candy he wanted?”

Yardem flicked his ear, the rings jingling against each other. The Tralgu’s expression was pained. Fair point, Marcus thought. May have gone a bit far there.

The dragon closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, the house-wide ribs expanding, pausing, and falling again. The air filled with a smell like brimstone and hot iron.

“You shame me. Tell me what it is you need, Stormcrow,” Inys said. “I am in despair, but not yet in defeat.”

“Yes, well. You and me both,” Marcus said.