The Widow's House

Clara

Of all the things that could have been occupying her mind as she rode back across the dark landscape of Birancour, the one that Clara could not dislodge was the letter she had promised to carry back to Camnipol. She had meant to, of course. She had resigned herself to going back to court, and the one bright moment of it was the thought of carrying Jorey’s words back to Sabiha. And Annalise. Little Annalise.

She had letters like it herself, or once had. When Dawson had been away in the field as a young man riding at the order of his dear friend King Simeon, he had been consistent with his love letters home. She must have had fifty of them. More, perhaps. Dawson had had a traditionalist’s view of poetry, so each letter included some bit of verse he’d composed for her along with his professings of love and descriptions of desire. She rode now in the darkness, the little horse tramping south through the cool air that spoke of autumn. The soldiers of Birancour were surely patrolling the countryside, as were Jorey’s men. The gloom of night gave her only so much cover, and the risk of being caught by either side was great. Barriath rode behind her on a thin mule. He was wrapped in a hooded cloak, and stayed behind her, the way a servant should. Pretending that men she loved were her servants had become something of an expertise of hers, and Barriath had been willing enough to take her direction. He played the role now in case they were seen before they knew it. One played one’s role always when it was possible to be seen, or else, more often really, one accepted the risks.

They rode on the turf at the roadside to muffle the sounds of the hooves. They bore neither torch nor lantern, but used the moon and stars to see by. They passed, she hoped, as ghosts across the face of the land, and she could not stop thinking of that letter.

She had taken great pleasure in the letters she’d had in her time. She’d kept them all, except one that Dawson had written when he was in his cups. His appreciation of her beauty had grown more explicit than he was accustomed to putting to paper, and he’d embarrassed himself. She’d had a second letter the next day asking that she destroy what he had written. Not without regrets, she had complied, though she had made him repeat certain parts of the missive upon his return. And she was taking that experience from Sabiha. It felt like theft, though that wasn’t true. There would be other couriers than herself, surely. Men sent their wives love letters all the time.

It was only that she’d promised to keep this one safe to Camnipol, and she wasn’t going to do that.

“Mother,” Barriath whispered.

“My lady,” she corrected.

“My lady,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Look south.”

The light of fires was almost too faint to see, but he was right. They were there. She tried to recall how the camp had sat in relation to the road when she’d left it. She was almost certain that the lights came from Jorey’s men. She paused, patted her poor horse on its neck, and turned it south, across the trackless fields. She made no attempt to at stealth now, but talked to her horse in soothing tones loud enough to carry in the black. The sentry’s voice was harsh and sudden. Even when he spoke, she didn’t see him.

“Who’s there!”

“What?” she said. “Lady Kalliam, of course. Why do you ask?”

There was a moment’s silence. When the voice came again, it was wary, but less so. “Lady Kalliam? What are you doing here?”

“Well, I went out for a ride after supper to clear my head. The tents can be so terribly stuffy, you know. Only I seem to have gotten a bit turned about, and it took me much longer than I expected. But I have my man here with me for protection and we were quite careful not to go anywhere near enemy territory, so I was entirely safe the whole time.”

“You’re coming in from the north, ma’am,” the sentry said. “That’s where the enemy is.”

“Really? Are you sure? I thought we were headed east.”

“Fair certain you’re heading south, ma’am,” the sentry said.

“Oh. Well, how embarrassing.”

There was a clicking, and a spark, and a thin flame in a little tin lantern. The man holding it was younger than Vincen or Jorey. A boy, almost. His caved-in cheeks and deep-set eyes belonged to a starving man, but he smiled all the same.

“You really shouldn’t be leaving camp at all, ma’am. It’s not safe.”

Clara made an impatient noise in the back of her throat, and then sighed. “I suppose as I’m a doddering old woman who can’t tell south from east, I’m in no position to disagree with you. Still, do you suppose we might keep this between us? If I promise very solemnly not to wander out again? I don’t like to worry my son.”

“I’ll have to make a report,” the sentry said. “But I’ll make as little of it as I can.”

“You’re entirely too kind,” Clara said, then turned to Barriath. “Come along.”

The sentry passed the lantern up to Barriath as they went by. The ground became more even. The smell of cookfires and latrines was as familiar as a well-loved song, and Clara angled her horse toward the rough corral she’d taken it from.

“You’re entirely too good at that,” Barriath said.

“Never discount the power of being underestimated,” she said. “And don’t talk so impertinently to your betters. You’re my servant after all.”

“Yes, my lady,” he said again, and poorly.

With night folded over it, the camp seemed both smaller and endless. The air was still warm enough that many of the soldiers hadn’t bothered to put up tents, but slept in the fields around guttering fires or else in darkness. The flame of Barriath’s little lantern ruined her dark-adapted eye, making the blackness outside its little circle deeper. The cunning men’s tent called to her like water to thirst. She wanted to go to Vincen, to tell him all that had happened in that dark little house in Sara-sur-Mar. Of Barriath and his comrades and the decision she and her son had made and hoped that Jorey would make as well. She wanted to hold Vincen’s hand and make sure his fever hadn’t come back and lay her head on his chest to hear him breathe.

It would wait. It would have to.

She had stayed too long in Sara-sur-Mar. Her intention had been to go, deliver her warning, and retreat again at once. Instead, she’d stayed with Barriath, each of them talking too fast, trying to fit all they had to say into a few minutes. Barriath had been building a rough fleet to stand against Palliako, had worked with the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, had taken Lord Skestinin prisoner and saved a wounded dragon with his ships. Clara had sent reports and letters to the Medean bank in Carse, followed the army in disguise, and engineered the death of Lord Ternigan. Barriath’s laughter had been a roar, and the strength of it had lifted her. And here I thought it was Father I took after.

Jorey’s tent glowed at the seams. Clara’s steps felt awkward after the long ride. Or perhaps it was the exhaustion of so long a day. She was not so young as she’d once been, after all. Or the prospect of what she was about to do to herself and to her son and to her kingdom. She wished there had been some way to deliver that letter. To have let Jorey be the man to his wife that Dawson had been to her. There was so very much to regret.

The guard at the door nodded to her, the movement almost a bow, though not quite. There was, she supposed, no set etiquette for how to greet a Lord Marshal’s mother in the field.

“Is he awake still?” Clara asked loudly enough that her voice carried.

“I am,” Jorey called from within, his voice muffled. The guard nodded again, and Clara passed inside.

He was at his small field desk, as if he had been there for hours. The map before him was marked in red and black. He smiled when she sat across from him, but it was the sort of expression a boy used when he was pretending to his mother that all was well and he had not been crying.

“I don’t suppose I can convince you to return to Camnipol before your huntsman’s well?” Jorey asked. “I know he’s a favorite of yours, but I do have an army full of soldiers that can keep you safe.”

“I very much doubt that,” Clara said, drawing out her pipe and her little pouch of tobacco. “Jorey, the time has come that we need to have a talk, you and I. A serious one. As adults.”

“We don’t need to do that, Mother. It’s all right.”

“It isn’t all right. A very great deal of it is wrong. And we’re both aware of the fact, yes? Tell me, Jorey. How do you feel about what happened to your father?”

The boy’s face paled. He swallowed and looked down at the map before him without seeing it. “He conspired with the Timzinae against Prince Aster,” Jorey said.

“That isn’t true,” she said, and confusion passed through Jorey’s eyes. “It isn’t, and you know it isn’t. Your father was many things, but a servant to foreign powers was never one. What he did was in service to the throne, as he saw it. We are all in service to the crown. As we see it.”

“I…” Jorey began and then stopped. For a long moment, silence reigned. When he found his voice again, it was low. “I did what you asked, Mother. I renounced him. I made my peace with Geder, and accepted his forgiveness.”

“You did. You made yourself a place in the court. You were not cast out as I was.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be,” Clara said. “Don’t ever be. We did what needed to be done to survive, and for the most part we have, haven’t we? You’re Lord Marshal, favored of the crown. I’m… Well, if I had stayed, I’m sure I’d have been welcome at some of the feasts and balls, wouldn’t I? Only I didn’t. You have a child now, my dear. A baby of your own. There are so many things that you will learn with her. There are risks that you would take yourself without thought that you’d run over glass to keep her from chancing. It’s love, and it’s right when the baby is small, but then you’ve all grown up, haven’t you? And still to keep you safe… even when the price of the safety is…”

“Mother?” Jorey said carefully. “Are you well?”

Clara dabbed her eyes with her cuff and shook her head. “This war you’re leading. How will you end it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I try not to think about that.”

“Your father never conspired with Timzinae. Or the bank that this Cithrin creature held. Dawson was raised a certain way, and he did not change. Even when the world did. How would he have ended this war?”

“In my place?” Jorey said. “I don’t know. I don’t know that he could have. I know that we’re chasing shadows, Mother. I can’t say it, but I know it’s truth. All I can look at is the next step, and then the next, and then the next. Trying to keep my men safe and alive, trying to reach the next goal in hopes that something may happen that I haven’t anticipated. It was easier when Vicarian was here. Ever since he took these new vows, he’s been sure that everything will end well somehow. When I’m around him, I can convince myself it’s… not true even. Possible.”

“It isn’t,” Clara said.

“I know,” Jorey said. “But this war is a raft I climbed on to keep my family safe, and the river’s going wherever it goes. The best I can go is hold on. For Sabiha’s sake. And Annalise’s. And yours.”

“And your own sake, Jorey? What would your sake look like?”

“There is no my sake. I watched my father slaughtered before my eyes and I renounced him. Instead of bringing my wife respectability, I dirtied her name more. I am leading an army of half-starved men on an endless campaign because…”

Jorey stopped. His hands were in fists.

“Because Geder’s priests want you to,” Clara whispered. “And everyone knows, but no one dares object.”

“Father did.”

Clara plucked a bit of leaf from her pouch and pressed it in the narrow bowl of her pipe. “He was not the only one.” She lit the pipe from the lantern flame and sucked the sweet smoke into her lungs. Jorey’s eyes were fixed on her. It felt like standing on the edge of a cliff over deep water. She dreaded the leap, but there was no stepping back. She went to the tent’s door and sent the guard for her servant. It wouldn’t take long. She knelt at Jorey’s side, took his hand in her own. “I have been conspiring against Geder Pallaiko and his priests.”

“Mother. No.”

“Yes. Very much so.”

“You have to stop it. You have to stop now, and forever.”

“You know that isn’t true.”

Jorey was weeping now, and his tears called forth her own. A deep regret shook her. Her advice had brought him here. She had been the one who insisted that he make himself a place in court, that he renounce his father, that he compromise and compromise and compromise until he was this. The commander of a campaign he had no faith in, driven by fear and by guilt.

And still, it was better than being dead at Dawson’s side. And that had been an alternative.

Barriath stepped into the room behind her, and Jorey snarled without looking up, “Go away. You’re not wanted.”

“No?” Barriath asked, and Jorey started like the word was a wasp sting.

For an endless moment, they were silent. Two brothers divided by a rift as deep and profound as the one that split Camnipol. Jorey rose to his feet, his fingers trailing from her own hand.

“What are you doing here?” he breathed.

“Anything I can to pull Palliako down,” Barriath said. “You?”

“Anything I can to keep him propped up.”

“Ah,” Barriath said. “And you’re doing that why, now?”

“I’m fucked if I know,” Jorey said and threw his arms around his brother’s chest.

Clara closed her eyes. The blooming, opening sensation in her heart was joyful, but it was not joy. It was relief. It was the feeling of setting down a mask worn too long and finding that the world did not end with the role. When at length her two boys released each other, she motioned for them to sit and to speak quietly. For the second time that day, she and Barriath recounted all that had happened, all that they knew. Or almost all. That she had taken Vincen Coe as a lover seemed a bit more than the situation called for, even now. When Jorey found that she had engineered the fall of Lord Ternigan that had inspired his own promotion, he shook his head at the cruel irony. When Barriath revealed that Lord Skestinin was his own prisoner—alive, well, and still only half convinced that Barriath meant Aster and the throne no harm—his eyes went wide. And Barriath’s report of the true origins of the spider priests as the weapon of the insane Dragon Emperor was like a child’s bedtime tale come to life, except that it recast everything that had happened in Antea since before the death of King Simeon. The night went on and on, and sleep not even a thought. When she smoked the last of her tobacco, it was the first sign of how long their conversation had run. The birdsong that announced the coming dawn was the second.

Their time together was almost over, and she could see the grief of it in her sons’ eyes. Everything had changed for them all, but their situation was the same.

“We cannot allow the priests to know what we’ve done or what we’re doing,” Clara said. “The Severed Throne is in terrible danger, and our family—we three—are in the best position to save it.”

“Yes,” Jorey said, and it was the most beautiful word she had ever heard spoken. She took his hand in her own.

“You are Lord Marshal,” she said. “The army is yours. Keep it safe, and stop it from fighting.”

“I’ve already written half my report in my mind while we we’ve been talking,” Jorey said. “I’ll tell Geder that the men need to winter over someplace safe where they can rest. Porte Oliva. Bellin. Someplace that doesn’t have the local forces harassing us. It’s an easy argument to make, because it’s true. Come spring, I’ll be cautious. Slow. As much time as I can keep us out of the field, I’ll take.”

“Good,” Clara said. “These poor men didn’t ask for this. If we can keep them from killing anyone more or being killed themselves, all the better.”

“What are we going to use that time for?” Barriath asked.

Clara nodded. “Dawson saw the priests for the danger that they are. We are going to have to do well what he did poorly.”

“There are a lot of priests out there, Mother,” Barriath said. And one of them is Vicarian, he did not quite add. Because he didn’t have to.

“I know,” Clara said. “I didn’t mean to suggest it would be simple.”

“How do we start?” Jorey asked.

“With allies,” Clara said. “And with the work we’ve already done. I’m going to have to leave you. Jorey, be careful with yourself while I’m gone, and I will write as often and as fully as I dare. And I’m leaving Vincen Coe with you. See to him. Promise me that.”

“Of course,” Jorey said. “But where are you going?”

“With your brother,” Clara said. “I think it’s time I spoke with this bel Sarcour woman, don’t you?”