"Show me," Cithrin said.

The little courtyard was laid out in squares now. A bit over two dozen of them. At a guess, they were the men and women who'd paid for the woman's hospitality and been overtaken. The woman stopped at a square of blackened cloth.

"This was in about the right place, Magistra," she said. "It was in the corner away from the worst of it. There's a few things might be worth keeping."

Cithrin squatted down. Everything smelled of smoke and ash. Yes, here was the green dress she'd brought from Carse. Here was a thin silver necklace, the links fused. If this had been in the corner farthest from the fire, it had still been a kiln. The notebook she'd kept had burned along all its edges, but the center pages had only yellowed and curled. When she flipped through them, the reek of smoke was over-whelming. She tossed it aside. The blue silk cloak, ruined. The wool, ruined. A ring of gold and gems that wasn't hers she put aside for the innkeeper to either find its right finger or keep for herself.

Moving the ruined scraps of cloth, her fingers touched something hard and solid as stone. She pulled the dragon's tooth free. It was perfectly white. The complicated roots looked like a sculpture of water. Amid all the human destruction, the dragon's tooth stood untouched. She wasn't sure whether she found the idea reassuring or eerie, but either way, the tooth was hers. She slipped it into her pocket.

Another man came, and the innkeeper went to speak with him. Not another guest of the ruined house, but a tax assessor come to negotiate. The small people might suffer their tragedies, but the taxmen had bought the rights to collect, and if they couldn't make back the contract, their own children would go wanting. And so it all went on, endless and merciless and unyielding.

Cithrin stepped out to the street. The necklace she could sell as silver. The tooth was as uselessly beautiful as it had ever been. Everything else was a loss.

The tailor's shop was across a wide courtyard from the bathhouse where Cithrin had spent a full day after rising up out of the bolt-hole. She'd washed in the wide copper tubs, scrubbing her hair until it stood wide and unruly as a dandelion puff. She'd scraped herself with the wooden slats until her skin was pink as a newborn mouse. And still, when she'd walked out to the street, she'd felt the grit at her scalp and smelled the cat piss on her skin. In the end, she'd been forced to conclude it was all an illusion of habit, and she'd best just pour on the rosewater and wait for the feeling to fade. But in leaving, she'd seen the tailor's and made note of it.

Part of what made the place stand out was that the proprietor was Dartinae. Camnipol was a Firstblood city, and while there were a few people here and there of many of the races, to see a Dartinae with a business of his own was strange enough to make Cithrin well inclined toward him even before she went in.

"Yes, miss," he said as she stepped in from the street. "Can I help you?"

"I hope so," she said. "I am here from Porte Oliva, and my entire wardrobe has been reduced to ash. I'm going to need several pieces and I'm in a bit of a rush."

It was, she knew, the unsubtle merchant signal that she was willing to pay a little more coin if he was willing to give her a little more of his attention. It worked as she knew it would. He took her measurements with string and wax, making small notations in a system she'd never seen, and then bringing out samples of his work. She commissioned two dresses formal enough to stand before a king, or in this case Lord Regent. It was odd to think of dressing formally to attend Geder, but that was the world now. They weren't living like beggars and refugees, so she couldn't dress like one.

She'd also need something warm and sturdy for the journey back to Carse, but for those she'd check the rag shops and talk with Cary about where the company was getting its costumes. Maybe she could even commission something very simple from Hornet. He had a decent eye as a costumer, and despite the riches from Aster's clothes, a theater company was never so well off that it would turn away the coin.

"And perhaps a cloak, miss?" the Dartinae said, holding up what seemed a massive expanse of sewn black leather. "It is the fashion."

On whim, she tried it. It felt like she was swimming in a night-black sea and looked like she was being eaten by shadows. She shook her head and handed it back.

"Just the others, thank you."

"You're sure?" The tailor's eyes glowed a bit brighter. "It is the fashion."

When she found her way back to Lord Daskellin's mansion, Paerin Clark was waiting with an odd expression. The baron had been kind enough to offer lodging to the members of the Medean bank in no small part because of the extraordinary circumstances and his role in bringing them to the city. The understood message being that their welcome shouldn't be taken as precedent. Daskellin was, after all, a Baron of Antea. They might break bread in a peasant dining room in Carse, but this was Camnipol and his home. There were standards and boundaries. For instance, she went in by the side doors.

She walked up the wide stone stairs, her eyebrows raised in query. Paerin's smile was calm, disarming, and so practiced that she was sure he was unaware of it.

"I've just come from meeting with the Lord Regent," he said, opening the door for her.

"Yes?"

"He is in an astoundingly companionable frame of mind," Paerin said. "He suggested that the Medean bank might consider opening a branch in Camnipol."

"Really," she said, stepping into the hallway. The rooms they'd been given were the largest in the servants' quarters, and reaching them meant walking through the kitchen. "That doesn't seem likely, does it?"

"I wouldn't have thought so. But I also wouldn't have expected to be asked. And not only that, but he seemed very reluctant to have me leave. We talked for easily twice the time allotted for the audience. I almost had the sense he was working from some other agenda."

Cithrin laughed low in her throat.

"And what sort of agenda would that be?" she asked.

"That was what I wanted to ask you. You've become the bank expert of Geder Palliako. Why would he want a branch of the bank?"

Cithrin paused by a thin black doorway so unobtrusive it apologized for itself. Outside the servants' door, the voices of young women of the court floated like birdsong, beautiful and rich and essentially empty of meaning.

"I can't say for certain," she said, "but I would guess that he was hoping I might be set to watch over it."

"Really now," Paerin Clark said. "And you wouldn't have put that thought in his mind, would you? I only ask because your interest in running a branch is fairly well known."

"I don't want just any branch," Cithrin said. "I want mine. If you offered me Camnipol... well, I might accept, but you'd have to pay me a great deal more."

"His idea, then."

"His."

"That's quite interesting too. Is there anything you'd like to add to your official report?"

"No," Cithrin said. "There isn't."

"Where are your loyalties?" he asked. His tone of voice was precisely the same, but she could sense that the question was deeper, and she thought for a long moment before she answered.

"I don't know. I think we're in the process of finding that out, you and I. Don't you?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," he said. "Oh. And there's a letter come from dare I call it your branch. From a Yardem Hane? Nothing critical I don't think. Only that Captain Wester resigned. This Hane person was his second, and he's stepped in the role."

"What?"

He looked up at her, concern in his eyes.

"Is that a problem?"

Cithrin felt shocked and hollowed. He wouldn't be there when she went back. She tested the thought and found it implausible. Of course Marcus would be there. He was always there. Something must have happened, but she couldn't think what it would be, of what could make it all right.

"Not a problem," she said. "Only a surprise."

I.

might be able to get you some interest from Geder," Cithrin said. "Having the patronage of the Lord Regent could make you all quite fashionable."

"You're moving," Hornet said around a mouthful of pins. "Stop moving."

"I'd be quite happy for whatever patronage we could find," Cary said, lifting one of the mock swords and considering it. "But I'm not sure how much the Lord Regent is going to want to remember his time with the company."

"Don't know about that," Sandr said. "It was an adventure, wasn't it? It isn't like it's a thing everyone in court will have done."

"I don't think court grandees score points off each other by bragging on who's lived in the most squalid filth," Cary said. "Really, that hole reeked."

"I suppose it did," Cithrin said. "Well, if you don't make yourselves the favorite company of the noble classes of Camnipol, then what? Come back south?"

"Anyplace that's not so hot the stones sweat would be fine with me," Sandr said.

"Oh, don't bother leaving for that," Smit said. "This heat's about to break. You can smell it, if you know how."

Sandr snorted and rolled his eyes.

"You can't call the weather," he said.

"Sure I can," Smit said.

"No you can't. You always say the same thing. It's always that there's a storm coming. You'll go on for weeks that way." Sandr shifted his face, lengthening his jaw and pulling down in the eyes somehow that Cithrin didn't entirely understand. The imitation was so good, he seemed like Smit's brother. When he spoke, the voice was Smit's. "Storm's coming. Mark me, storm's coming."

"And I'm always right," Smit said. "Sometimes it just takes a little longer for it to get here."

"But you could just as well say snow's coming and claim every winter proved you right."

"I would be," Smit said. "And besides that, storm's coming." Cary turned, catching Cithrin's eye. They smiled at each other. This was Cary's family, and she loved it. Cithrin loved it too, though it wasn't hers. They were friends, some of them dear, but her home wasn't in the cart or on the stage or sleeping in the hayloft above some new stable. Hers was in the counting house and the cafe.

"All right," Hornet said. "Let me throw some stitches on that, and you'll have a nice simple traveler's dress, perfect for any occasion involving mud, mules, and mischief. And I've put in a little pocket here you can hide a knife in case the caravan master sets his aim for your virtue."

"I will fear no caravan master," Cithrin said in an artificial voice, the parody of stagecraft. Her bow was florid and unlikely to match. "My eternal thanks."

Hornet returned the gesture in kind, perfectly, and they both laughed.

Cithrin knew the rule from the first time she'd traveled with the company, back when Master Kit had been its control: run against the stream. In a city struck by plague, comedy. In a rich city in prosperous times, tragedy. The power of the stories they told was in the distance they took the people standing in the audience. Tonight, they were doing The Dog Chaser's Tale, which was about as low and bawdy a farce as Cithrin had ever seen. They did it well. Sandr's delivery of the lines had, she was sorry to admit, a certain genius to them. But her attention wasn't on the stage, but the men and women looking up at it.

When Smit leaped to the stage with the enormous leather phallus bulging out of his costume, the crowd roared and pointed. Tears streamed down their cheeks. They were hungry for this, Cithrin thought. They were desperate for pleasure, joy, laughter. And of course they were. They'd faced a conspiracy by their neighboring kingdom, the death of their king, war, and now a vicious battle on their own streets. They had earned their desires.

But she couldn't look away. A boy barely old enough to shave was laughing so hard he rolled back on the stone-paved ground. On the stage, Charlit Soon pretended to be a cunning man changing his shape into a woman and then being wooed by another man, and an ancient-looking tooth-less woman slapped her knees and roared. It was too much. The laughter bordered on the grotesque. Cithrin sat on the side of the crowd, stage and audience equally in her view.

There was no sense of victory. There had been when she'd first arrived. There had been banners and cloth, and children running in the streets throwing handfuls of bright and shining confetti. When Antea had conquered Asterilhold, the empire had been giddy and drunk. The defeat of Dawson Kalliam had no joy for them. The hilarity wasn't a mask. It was one side of a coin, and Cithrin had the growing suspicion that the image on the coin's other side was a bleakness that Camnipol would be a long time in shedding. It would be comedy along the Division's side for more than this season. The prospect left her with a feeling of dread and anxiety that was more personal than she liked.

Cary strode forth on the stage, the mock sword in her hand going limp and flaccid in the middle of her dueling challenge. The crowd laughed, and Cithrin didn't. She gathered herself and walked along the side of the crowd and into the common room of Yellow House.

The press of bodies wasn't as bad inside as out, but the heat was worse. The high summer of Camnipol meant a sunset that lasted until the early dawn was almost beginning. That it was dark now meant it was very late. There were a dozen men and women sitting at tables, drinking cider and beer out of brown mugs and eating hard cheese and twice-baked bread. The lovers of laughter had been drawn outside by the show. The ones who remained in the swelter were a somber bunch, which fit Cithrin's mood nicely.

The beer was rich and thick, and the alcohol in it bit at the soft flesh inside her mouth. It was a beer to get drunk with, and tempting as it was, she wasn't ready to lose herself. Not yet. Something was turning restlessly in the back of her mind. A thought or insight fighting its way into being. She looked down at the rough planks of the table and listened.

"He was with Asterilhold from the start," a man behind her said. "You think he was really able to make it to Kaltfel so easy without old Lechan giving permission, may God piss on his dead heart."

"But the Lord Regent knew, didn't he?" the woman beside him said. "Flushed the traitors out. Killed Lechan, and he'll break down the rest of them when he's ready. You watch."

"You heard what he was doing while the battle was on?"

"Up in the Kingspire calling the whole damned thing like he was a kid playing sticks."

"No," the woman said. "That's what they want you to think, but he was out in the streets the whole time. Dressed like a beggar, and he'd go right into the enemy lines and see what they were planning. No one looked at him twice."

"That's true," another man said. He was older, with a white mustache and bloodshot skin. "I saw him. Knew him. I mean, didn't know it was him. Old Jem, he called himself. I knew there was something odd up with Old Jem, but I never guessed the truth."

"And he talks with the dead," the first woman said. "My cousin guards the tombs, and the thing all his men know that no one talks about is how the Lord Regent goes there all the time. All the time. Twice a day, sometimes. Walks right into the tombs. My cousin says if you go listen, you can hear Palliako talking just like he was sitting here like we are. Joking and asking questions and having his half of a debate. And sometimes you can hear other voices too, talking back."

"He's no cunning man," the first man said. "I've known cunning men. Half of them couldn't magic up a fart. Palliako's something else, and we're damned lucky to have him on the throne. Damned lucky."

"No one else could have seen through Kalliam," the man with the white mustache said. "I sure as hell didn't. And you know what else no one talks about? Kalliam's advisors? They were all Timzinae. Now you tell me that's coincidence."

Cithrin listened, her hand around her mug. She forgot to drink from it. Instead, she listened to story pile upon story pile upon story as Geder Palliako grew toward legend.

Clara.

T.

he soldiers came with an edict from the Lord Regent. It wasn't that Clara had expected it, so much as that she wasn't surprised when it happened. Indeed, there was a level on which it was a relief. The long days of anticipation after Dawson's capture had been perverse in their normalcy. Waking in her room without him, speaking with the servants and the slaves, walking through the gardens. It was the same routine that she'd kept while he was away leading the war on Geder's behalf. Only instead, her husband was in the gaol. The anticipation of consequences had been so terrible that when the first one came, it felt almost like relief.

She stood in the courtyard before the house as they took her things away. The bed that her children had been conceived and born in. The violets from her solarium. Her gowns and dresses. Dawson's hunting dogs, whining and looking confused on the thin leather leads. She had a purse of her own and a bag she'd put together during the grace period the captain had allowed her. It wasn't in the order. If he'd lifted her on his shoulder and thrown her to the street, he would have been within the letter of Geder Palliako's law. He hadn't, and she was grateful.

"They can't do this," Jorey said. His voice was tight as a violin string. Outrage made him taut.

"Of course they can, dear," Clara said. "You didn't think they would let us go on living the way we'd been, did you? We're disgraced."

"You didn't do anything wrong."

I did, though, she thought. I loved your father. And that is a treason in which I persist. She didn't say it. Only took her youngest son by the hand and led him away.

The staff of the mansion, servants and slaves, stood at the street, their personal belongings in their hands. They looked like survivors of a cataclysm. Clara went to them, their mistress for the last time. Andrash still had the chain around his neck; his eyes were wide and horrified. Clara raised her hands.

"I am afraid that, as I think you've seen, the needs of the house have been somewhat reduced," she said. There were tears in her eyes, and she clenched her jaw against them.

Lift your chin, she told herself. Smile. There, like that.

"If you have been a slave of the house, I release you from your indenture. I hope your freedom treats you at least as well as your captivity has. If you have been a paid servant, I can offer letters of recommendation, but I'm afraid they may not carry much weight."

Someone was sobbing in the back. One of the cook's girls, Clara thought.

"Don't be afraid," Clara said. "You will all find your new places in the world. This is unpleasant. Painful, even. But it is not the end. Not for any of us. Thank you all very, very much for the work you've done here. I am very proud to have had such wonderful people working for me, and I will remember all of you fondly."

It took the better part of an hour, going through the whole crowd, saying her goodbyes to each of them in turn. Especially at the end, they kept wanting to embrace her and swear that they'd always be loyal to her. It was sweet, and she hoped at least some of it was true. She was going to need allies in the days ahead. She wasn't in a position to turn away the kind opinion of a third footman.

Jorey slung her bag over his shoulder and took her arm. They walked through the streets together. She stopped at a corner stand and bought candied violets from an old Tralgu man with a missing foot. The petals softened against her tongue as the sugar melted. She steered them south, toward the Silver Bridge. Lord Skestinin's house was on the opposite side of the Division, and Sabiha, bless the girl, had gone ahead to see that they were made welcome.

"I think this must be seen as an indication that your father will be called to account soon," she said. "This won't be easy."

"You don't have to worry, Mother," he said. "I won't disgrace him. He won't have to stand alone."