The Widow's House

Clara Annalise Kalliam, Formerly Baroness of Osterling Fells

The attic of Lord Skestinin’s manor in Camnipol was white. The boards of the floor and the plaster of the walls, the casement of the little dormer window, the shelves built into the wall and filled with crates and sacks. Everything was white, and it caught the winter afternoon sun and made something bright of it. Not warm to the skin, but to the eye. It made the little nest glow.

The mattress she lay on was white as well, and filled with down. The blankets pulled up to her breasts were soft wool, rich with the scent of cedar to keep away moths and now also of sex. They had been packed away for the winter season when the court was all gone from the city, and unpacked now in secrecy. Vincen Coe, the young huntsman who had once been her servant and then her lover and now both, lay spent. His long hair spread around his head like a rich auburn halo, and his breath was deep and soft. Clara Kalliam shifted, using her arm as a pillow, and considered the young man’s face. The improbably long eyelashes, the soft lips, the dark scattering of whiskers just under the surface of his cheek. He was a beautiful man. Young enough to be her son. A thousand ranks below her socially. Devoted to her in a way no man in her life had ever been, except her husband.

A pigeon fluttered up against the dormer’s glass, cooed in confusion, and flew away again. Clara let her body sink into the mattress, enjoying the warmth and softness and languor of her muscles.

She was not a young woman. Her hair was going white. Her skin not so taut as it had been when she was a girl. Vincen was the second man she’d lain with in her whole life, but she tried not to let her greed of him overwhelm her. A lifetime in the vicious meat-grinder of court politics had taught her that there were a thousand different reasons why people had affairs. To satisfy vanity, or for revenge, or out of sorrow. From political necessity or love of scandal. To create the story of one’s self. Or to retell it differently.

She had never imagined herself as the sort of woman to conduct an illicit liaison. And even now, and despite all evidence, she didn’t. Not really. Vincen was simply Vincen, and the woman she was with him, the woman who had risen from the ashes of her husband’s failure and execution, who had lived in a cheap boarding house and been questioned by the regent’s private inquisitors, was more real than the sugar-and-plaster woman she pretended among the court. But, of course, both were true. Her soul encompassed both of them.

“We should go,” Vincen said. “We’ll be missed.”

“We should,” she agreed.

Neither of them moved to reclaim their clothes, strewn on the white floorboards. Their intimate ritual was not done yet. The words were only the prelude to their parting. She breathed in, savoring the dust-smell of the attic and the chill of the air. Through the window, she could see the great tower of the Kingspire rising above the city. Even with the mattress on the floor, the spire’s uppermost floors were too high to see. Only the red banner with its eightfold sigil, the sign and symbol of the spider goddess’s temple housed in its high halls. The cloth shifted in the wind as if it were not only a religious cult’s marking but the new banner of Imperial Antea. Perhaps it was.

“Are things well?” she asked.

“As well as can be,” Vincen said. “I’m still a new man in an established house. It will be some time before I’m trusted. There was some resentment of Jorey.”

“Of Jorey?” she said, her heart moving instantly to her son’s defense. “Whatever for?”

“He married Lord Skestinin’s daughter just in time to make her the daughter-in-law of a traitor.”

“Oh. Well, yes. That.”

“Now that he’s better known as the regent’s right hand than his father’s son, it’s turning about, though.”

Clara considered the rafters. A spider’s web clung in a corner, empty. In the course of three seasons, she had gone from the Baroness of Osterling Fells to the disgraced wife of a traitor to the mother of the new Lord Marshal. And in among all of those, she’d become a widow and a fallen woman, a traitor to the crown in her own right and a patriot more devout than most of the men who had the running of the empire. The court had left her in the autumn a woman barely rehabilitated, her very name tainted. When they returned, they would find themselves jockeying to be in her good graces. It left her dizzy when she thought about it, like looking up at the stars.

“Things change so quickly,” she said, “and so completely.”

“They don’t, m’lady,” Vincen said, taking her hand. He kissed the knuckle of her thumb. “Only the stories we tell about them do.”

The dreaded moment came when Clara sighed and pulled the blanket aside. Knowing in the mornings that she might hope for these brief hours, she had adjusted her wardrobe to those garments she could put off and on with only minimal assistance from her servants or Vincen. She painted her face only lightly these days. When she’d lived in the boarding house, she had forgone the practice entirely. She descended from their hidden nest first, making her way by the central stair to the third-floor rooms, some of which were her own. Sabiha and Jorey’s marital apartments were on the same floor, near the street. Lower down, the guest rooms and the private quarters of Lord and Lady Skestinin, who very rarely used them. He was more often away with the fleet or at his holdings in Estinport, and she was famously allergic to the politics of the court. And likely wiser and more content because of it.

But as a result, the household in Camnipol was small. Its gardens were insignificant, and it hardly commanded more land than it took to place the house. Even the kitchens and stables were small, as if added as an afterthought. The house belonged to the commander of the Imperial Navy. Jorey Kalliam resided there now as the new Lord Marshal, with his brother Vicarian and his mother, Clara. Other estates in the city might boast more wealth and more beautiful grounds, but none had the military power of the empire in so concentrated a form. Except, of course, for the Kingspire.

“It seems like we do this every day.” Vicarian’s voice came from Jorey’s private study. The tone was on the knife edge between amused and annoyed, as it so often was with her boys. “You panic, you come to me, and I talk sense into you. We settle matters, and then as soon as I walk out of the room, you start working yourself back into a lather.”

“I go back to look at the numbers again,” Jorey said, his tone almost of apology. “They are frightening damned numbers, for what that’s worth.”

“They don’t matter. We didn’t win the wars on the back of numbers. Antea is chosen of the goddess. We’re going to win.”

“With exhausted men, a season’s planting that’s relying on the labor of recently captured slaves, and twice as much land to hold as we had a year ago, it seems that we’ve put upon the kindness of the goddess plenty long enough.”

“You don’t understand,” Vicarian said. “She will not let us lose.”

In the half dozen steps from the middle of the staircase to its end, Clara felt her body change as she adopted her role. Her chin rose and a polite smile took its accustomed place upon her lips. Decades she had not felt only minutes before settled on her like a shawl made from dust. She was the mother of grown men now, a widow, and—though her precise status would give etiquette masters belly knots—a woman of the court. She stepped into Jorey’s study with an arched eyebrow.

“I can’t help noticing that my boys are shouting at each other again,” she said, teasing. “Surely we can solve the complex problems of the empire in a civil tone of voice.”

Vicarian rose from his divan, smiling. Ever since he’d returned from the new temple within the Kingspire, his priestly robes included the swatch of red and the eightfold sigil, and there was a brightness in his eyes that reminded Clara of men taken by fever. It saddened her to see it, but she pretended it wasn’t there. He was lost to her now, but she could pretend he would return one day.

“It’s Jorey, Mother,” Vicarian said. “He’s seen the power of the goddess time after time, but he has a doubter’s heart. Come. Help me fix him.”

Vicarian took her hand and kissed her cheek. His flesh seemed warmer than the fire muttering in the grate could account for.

“I don’t believe I’ve had authority over Jorey’s heart for some time,” Clara said. “Though it is sometimes pleasant to pretend otherwise. What seems to be the trouble?”

“It’s the war,” Jorey said, as a farmer might have said, It’s the crops. “Ternigan’s death leaves everything in a muddle.”

Clara smiled. That her plot against Ternigan had borne fruit almost compensated for the fact that it had put Jorey in the old Lord Marshal’s place. Before that, she’d sent anonymous letters out, reporting on the plans and ambitions of the regent to his enemies as best she could from her diminished position. So far as she could see, it had been as effective as flinging pebbles into the Division. Tempting Ternigan into treason with forged letters and false promises had deprived the army of one of its most experienced minds, she was glad to hear. That it left her still uncertain how to unseat Geder Palliako and his spider priests without unmaking the empire as a whole could only be expected. You can’t make a rug from a single knot, as her mother used to say.

“The muddle being?” Clara asked.

“Most of the army sitting in the freezing mud outside Kiaria has been fighting for at least a year,” Jorey said. “Some of them haven’t seen rest since before Asterilhold. I have to go take command of the siege—”

“Which we should have done a week ago,” Vicarian said.

“—but I don’t know what to do with them. On one hand, putting a holding force outside Kiaria invites the Timzinae to try to break out. On the other, Father always said wars were won and lost over cookfires, and when I look at the supply reports, pushing on seems like begging the army to break.”

“They won’t break,” Vicarian said. “The goddess won’t let us lose. Look at all of the things that we shouldn’t have won already. The battle at Seref Bridge? Father should have lost that. Would have, if he hadn’t had the priests. And when the Timzinae turned him against the throne, he also went against the goddess, and he lost. How many people said we might—might—take Nus by winter. And we took Nus, Inentai, Suddapal, and we’re camped outside Kiaria. We wouldn’t have stopped Feldin Maas without Geder bringing Minister Basrahip from the temple. According to your numbers, we should have lost already half a dozen times over, and we didn’t. And we won’t. I keep telling you that.”

“And after you’ve said it five or six times, it even starts seeming plausible,” Jorey said. “But I sleep on it, and in the morning—”

“My lords,” the steward said. He was a Dartinae, and the glow of his eyes made his expression difficult to read. It seemed to Clara that he was excited. Or frightened. “The Lord Regent has arrived.”

Clara and her sons went silent. The man could as well have announced that the Division had closed. It would have been as plausible.

“The Lord Regent is in the south,” Jorey said. “Geder wrote that he was going to Suddapal. To get here from there, he’d have had to ride almost straight through.”

“I’ve put him in the western withdrawing room,” the steward said with a bow.

A cold dread moved down Clara’s spine. There were stories, of course, of Geder Palliako’s uncanny abilities. That the spirits of the dead rose up to march alongside the armies of Antea. That King Simeon pushed open his tomb to consult with the regent. To listen to all the tales, Geder Palliako was more than a cunning man. Of course, there were also stories that her fallen husband, Dawson, had been the puppet of foreigners and Timzinae, so there was only so much credence such things could bear. Still, as she walked arm in arm with Jorey, her mind was plagued by a sense of dark miracles just beyond her sight. Perhaps Geder was in Suddapal and Camnipol both. Perhaps distance had ceased to have meaning for him.

Or perhaps he’d simply ridden straight through.

Clara had known half a dozen aspects of Geder Palliako, from the awkward boy lost in the complexity of court etiquette to the frenzied executioner of her own husband, slaughtered before her eyes. He had stood over her as half-demonic judge and by her side as an ally against armed foes. He was a violent and unpredictable man, and she feared and opposed him as she would a wildfire or a plague.

The thin, ill-looking being on the divan looked up at them as they stepped in the room. His hair was lank and unwashed. His eyes were puffy and red. He rose to his feet slowly, as if in pain. When he spoke, his voice was thick with tears.

“Jorey. I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go,” the Lord Regent of Imperial Antea said. “I don’t have anyone I can talk to. So I came here. I’m sorry if I’m getting in the way.”

“Geder?” Jorey said, stepping toward the man. “Are you ill? You look…”

“I know. I look like hell,” Geder said, then nodded to Clara. “Lady Kalliam. I’m sorry.”

You murdered my husband with a dull blade and apologize to me for looking unwell, she thought. “Lord Regent,” she said.

“I thought you were in Suddapal. With…” Jorey glanced at her, embarrassment showing for a moment in his eyes. “With your banker… woman… friend.”

“Cithrin betrayed me,” Geder said, his lips shuddering with the words. Bright tears spilled down his cheeks. “I told her that I loved her, just the way you said, and that I wanted her. And I told Fallon Broot that she and her bank shouldn’t be interfered with and she…” Geder sobbed, staring at Jorey like a child with a favorite toy that had broken in his hands. “She worked with the Timzinae. And when I went to her, she left. She was gone when I came. I loved her, Jorey. I’ve never loved anybody.”

Clara nodded to Geder and then to Jorey, and stepped slowly backward out of the room, drawing the door almost closed behind her. Almost, but not quite. She stood in the corridor, her head bowed, and listened as the most powerful man in the world, hero and regent and unquestioned leader of the empire, poured out confessions of heartbreak between sobs. Clara knew the name Cithrin. There had been a part-Cinnae girl, pale as a sprout and as fragile, who’d come to Camnipol in some previous age, when Dawson still lived. Clara recalled the girl offering condolences after Dawson’s execution like it had been some particularly vivid dream. Cithrin bel Sarcour, assistant or some such to Paerin Clark of the Medean bank.

The same Paerin Clark to whom she had been sending her letters. She turned away, walking down the corridor on cat-soft feet. A thousand questions buzzed in her mind. What did the bank know? What did it suspect? What was its agenda in undermining Geder’s plans to enslave the Timzinae? Some answers she could glean from listening to her boys talk in the morning. Others she might have to take her best guess and be satisfied. When she regained her own rooms, she sent the servant girl away and lay on her bed, her arms spread wide, and laughed silently. It wasn’t mirth that shook her, but relief and fear.

The sun fell, turning her windows to red and then grey and then black. She lit her little bedside lamp herself and called for a servant to set a fire in the grate. She had her supper brought to her—beet soup and a thin shank of chicken. Hardly the sumptuous repast she was used to seeing in the houses of the powerful, but a thousand times better than what she would have had in the boarding house. And times, after all, were hard. Afterward, she lit her pipe and waited, her mind moving in silence.

Vincen came near midnight, his soft cough outside her door as deliberate as an announcement. She let him in and closed the door behind him. The warmth of sexuality and love was gone from his expression. And from hers.

“Well,” she said. “I think we have the scandal of the season, and the court not even returned from the King’s Hunt.”

“Does he know, then? Does the Lord Regent suspect you?”

Clara drew fresh smoke into her lungs, frowning. “I’m not in prison or dead, so I doubt it. And why should he?”

“This can’t be good, m’lady.”

“It may not be. Or it may be excellent. Until now Geder has stepped from success to success. Even his failures have been recast as master strategy after the fact. This is a humiliation, and what’s more, a romantic one. If there’s anything Geder understands less than war, it’s love. It isn’t a picture that can be made lovely by a different frame.”

“He won’t lose power over it. If anything, people will see him with greater sympathy.”

“Worse than sympathy. Pity. The hero of Antea will be remade as a victim. And I will wager you anything you like that Geder will take comfort in it. He is entirely too ready to point out the ways in which he’s been wronged, when what he ought to do is make light of it.”

“So this… is a good thing?”

“You’re the one that said it. It isn’t we who change, but the stories about us. This will make him less a creature of awe. Less the great man from legend. It may remind the noble houses that Geder and his priests are capable of losing, and if it does, that will be a very fine thing indeed,” Clara said. Her tobacco was spent, and she leaned forward, tapping the ashes out into the fire. “I feel sorry for the girl, though. She’s done us a favor, and for payment, she’s about to become the most hated woman in the world.”