The King's Blood

to kiss her as well. There was so little she could do for the two of them and so much they needed.
    “I’ve come for my allowance,” Clara said with a smile she only half felt. “I hope the timing isn’t bad.”
    “You’re always welcome, Mother,” Jorey said, biting at the words. It was eating him. She saw that.
    “You’re kind,” she said. “It’s your weakness. It’s mine too. Sabiha dear, I was wondering if, now that I’m disgraced, I couldn’t spend time with my grandson.”
    “Your …” Sabiha said, then flushed.
    “I told you to forget him once,” Clara said. “I was wrong to do that. We are not the family we had hoped to be, but we are the family we are. You are important to me, and so he should be as well. If I have your permission.”
    “My permission?” Sabiha said.
    “Of course, dear,” Clara said. “You’re his mother.”
    “You have my permission,” Sabiha said.
    “No tears. None of that,” Clara said.
    They visited for slightly longer than usual, and Clara would have stayed longer if it weren’t such a long walk home. She left when there would be enough light to make it the whole way. She didn’t like the streets around her boarding house, but she liked them even less at night.
    She was almost to the Prisoner’s Span when five men with drawn knives stepped in front of her.
    W
    hen they lifted the cowl from her head, she was in a wide, dark room. The light came from an iron chandelier overhead, but she wouldn’t have been surprised by torches. Soldiers with bows at the ready were on either side, rising up impossibly high, a wall of men. And before her, a huge black bench topped by Lord Regent Geder Palliako. Clara felt the fear starting to shake her. Her ghost-self wailed and turned away in fear, and she went part way with it. The high priest stood behind her where she could not see him, though Geder could.
    “Clara Kalliam,” Geder said. “Forgive the intrusion, but I had some questions I felt I had to put to you. If you lie to me, I will know and you will suffer. Badly. Do you understand?”
    Her mouth was dry. How had she come here? What had she done? It was like she’d fallen asleep and come to a nightmare she couldn’t wake from. She felt caught at something, but she didn’t know what.
    “I understand you are no longer living at your son’s house,” Geder said. “Is that true?”
    Her breath was so ragged, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to speak. Wouldn’t silence count as a lie? She didn’t want to think what he could do to her. What he would do.
    “It is,” she managed.
    “Why is that?”
    “My presence makes it difficult for Jorey and Sabiha to dissociate from the court’s memories of Dawson.”
    “Have you been meeting with Ogene Faskellan?”
    “Yes. We have had several visits.”
    “Have you been meeting with Ana Mecilli?”
    “Yes. Twice, I think.”
    To her right, one of the soldiers shifted slightly, the sound sharp and dry. Her heart raced.
    “Are you loyal to me?” Geder asked.
    Clara shook her head, not no , but I can’t answer that .
    “Are you loyal to me?” he asked again, his voice growing harsher.
    “I don’t think about you one way or the other, my lord,” she said.
    The sound of cloth shifting came from behind her.
    “Really?” Geder asked. He sounded genuinely confused.
    “You are Lord Regent, and the man who killed my husband, and Jorey’s friend from campaign. You’re the man who helped me to expose Feldin Maas. But none of that particularly affects what I have to do in my day. I suppose it should on some level, but I certainly don’t spend my time considering the question.”
    “You’re meeting with all of these people. Are you organizing them against me?”
    She laughed. She didn’t mean to. If she’d thought about it, she wouldn’t have, but there it was and the archer didn’t kill her for it.
    “No. God, no. The thought never occurred to me. I’ve been trying to hold my family together.”
    “Your family?”
    “Yes. Barriath’s gone with hardly a word to anyone. Jorey and Sabiha are having a terrible time of it, and not even married a full season yet. Vicarian is the only one who hasn’t been seared by the whole terrible business. Well, and there’s Elisia. She appears to be doing well, but I can’t think she’s happy. Not really.”
    “Oh,” Geder said.
    “And of course with Dawson gone, there’s no one to hold it all together. There’s not even the house, which when you