The King's Blood

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