The King's Blood

at his elbow.
    “Mother, this isn’t going to work.”
    “It will,” she said. “It’s only hard now, but it will work. Barriath is in mourning. We all are. You have to treat him gently.”
    “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “You said that you wanted me to be to Sabiha what Father was to you.”
    “That’s right. I want that.”
    “Father put you ahead of everyone. Everything. If you’d asked him to, he would have done anything. There was no limit.”
    “That’s true, I think,” she said, but Jorey was shaking his head. Tears flowed down his cheeks the way they hadn’t since he was a child. Not even on the terrible day when Geder had killed her husband.
    “I can’t do this,” he said, and then again, more softly. “I can’t.”
    “I will,” Sabiha said, and put a hand on Clara’s shoulder. “Please. Come sit with me for a moment, my lady.”
    Clara let herself be led to a window seat. Sabiha sat beside her, holding her hand. The girl looked thinner. And not just in her face and body. For a time just after the wedding, there had been joy in her. A hopefulness born of seeing the changes that her new reputation brought. That was gone now, and Clara knew why. She knew, almost, what Sabiha was steeling herself to say. The words that had defeated Jorey.
    “We love you,” Sabiha said, “and we will always be your family, but you need to leave this house.”
    It was strange. Clara actually felt the words cut into her. It was a physical sensation at the neck and heart.
    “Oh,” she said.
    “It’s hard enough for Jorey alone,” Sabiha said, her fingers pressing Clara’s hand. “But everyone saw him when he renounced Lord Kalliam. They’re willing to give him a chance. Well, some of them are. But you didn’t speak. Bar riath didn’t. And truly, even if you had, my lady, no one can see you without seeing your husband too. You were too much the same thing, and even with him gone, you carry him with. You see that, don’t you? You understand?”
    “I do,” Clara said. “I feel him myself.”
    “Until the court forgets, at least a little, having you with us taints us more than it protects you.”
    “I will go,” Clara said. “If there’s room at the holding, I can… exile myself, I suppose.”
    “We were thinking that we could pay for a boarding house,” Sabiha said. “Something that wasn’t in my father’s name. Something to give us a little distance in the eyes of the court.”
    Not even that much? Clara wanted to say. Can’t you give me that one small thing? Must it be an anonymous grave of a room, in among people she’d never known?
    “I can see why that would be wise,” she said. “I’ll gather my things.”
    “No, please,” Sabiha said. “I’ll have them brought. You shouldn’t have to.”
    “None of us should have to,” Clara said, patting the girl’s shoulder. “But we live in a world of necessities. Don’t bother yourself. I understand. I should go now.”
    “No, please,” Sabiha said. “We’ll have someone go with you to find the right place. And we’ll bear the price of it.”
    Clara’s smile almost felt real. She took her hands out from the girl’s grasp and stood. She kissed Sabiha and Jorey both, each of them on the forehead, and took herself back out. There was no staying now. No sitting in the kitchen and discussing what sort of boarding house might be right for the widow of a famed traitor and enemy of the throne.
    By renouncing Dawson, they were supposed to have gained something. Protected it. Kept it. And perhaps they had. Perhaps if Jorey hadn’t said what he’d said, Clara would have even less than she did now. But she could hardly imagine it. She felt like the queen of nothing.
    She walked without knowing where she was walking to. Her feet ached terribly, but she ignored the pain. Once, she’d ridden through the city as the small people in the street made way for her, and she’d thought nothing of it. Now she found that she was moving aside to let carts of meat or turnips pass. She was avoiding the eyes of the men and women she passed.
    When the great arcing span of the Autumn Bridge rose up before her, she began across it, but at the midway point, she stopped. It wasn’t even that she intended to, it was only there that she was when her resolve finally broke. Leaning against the great beams and looking down over the abyss of the Division, she felt something like peace come over her. Not peace, not really, but something like