The King's Blood

midday the sun felt like a hand pushing down against his shoulder, Marcus could still call it companionable. The attack would come—blazing days and sweat-filled nights. The Kurtadam would shave themselves back almost to stubble. The Firstblood and the Cinnae would abandon modesty in favor of comfort. The business of the day would stop just after midday, the city falling into fevered dreams until evening when the summer sun lost some of its violence.
    The attack wasn’t there yet. The spring was still lulling them all into lowering their guard. But it would come.
    Cithrin was over two weeks gone, and likely on the water between Sara-sur-Mar and Carse. The days without her had been made from the same cloth as those with—payments to deliver, the strongbox to watch, the payments to retrieve. Now and then, a client or partner would need a few swords to walk with someone or something. Now that Pyk’s role was uncontested, she seemed to calm a bit, but she still generated a dozen minor tasks that had to be done and complained at the money it cost to accomplish them. So in a sense, nothing had changed, and in a sense it all had.
    “I’m going to go after her,” Marcus said.
    Yardem sat forward, drinking his beer carefully. His silence was thoughtful and disapproving. Marcus leaned forward over the rough plank table. It wasn’t their customary taproom. Three young Jasuru boys, their scales bright as green-snakes, played drums in the yard, the complex rhythms making the air richer. Marcus took his bowl of beef and snow peas, looked at it, and put it down again.
    “I was thinking about coming from Vanai when Cithrin was passing herself as a boy,” he said.
    Yardem nodded.
    “You’d be in a dress then, sir?”
    “I could go in carter’s clothes. Or as a merchant. It isn’t as if I’d need to announce myself. Just ride in, stay quiet, and when she’s ready to come back I can travel with her then.”
    “Why?”
    “Not much point in staying hidden when I’m heading away, is there?”
    “I mean why would you go after her, sir? What’s the advantage?”
    “I’d think that was obvious. Keep her safe.”
    Yardem sighed.
    “What?” Marcus said. “Go ahead. You know you want to say it. Tell me she’s in no danger, and that Corisen Mout and Barth can keep her as safe as anyone. She’s heading toward a war. A real one, not one of the little shell games like who runs Maccia. She doesn’t understand how that kind of violence can spread. And you know that’s true.”
    “If you think three blades would make her safe where two won’t, why not send someone else, sir? Enen’s been to Carse.”
    Yardem’s dark eyes met his. Yardem’s ironic subservience had become such a habit over the years that Marcus sometimes forgot the hardness that could take the Tralgu’s features. In moments like this, it was easy to believe that the Tralgu had been bred for the hunt and the kill as well as a deadly kind of loyalty. Marcus silently hefted a few arguments, but under Yardem’s implacable gaze, they all seemed like felling a tree with a toenail knife.
    “You want her to be in trouble, sir, but she isn’t.”
    Marcus’s impatience shifted. He felt his own gaze cool.
    “Meaning what?”
    Yardem flicked an ear, the rings jingling, and turned back to his mug. When he started to lift it, Marcus put his palm over its mouth and pressed it back down to the table.
    “Asked you a question.”
    Yardem let go of the beer.
    “After Ellis, sir, you looked for revenge.”
    “I looked for justice.”
    “If you say so,” Yardem said, refusing to be turned. “I was with you for that. Not like we are now, but I was there. I saw it happen. You didn’t only kill Springmere. You planned it, you built it. You made sure that he could see his death coming, understood it, and couldn’t do anything to stop it. And when he was dead, you thought it would be better. Not fixed. You’re not stupid, but you thought that… justice … would redeem something. Only it didn’t.”
    “I am just certain you have an argument in this somewhere,” Marcus said. “Because I just know you aren’t hauling Alys and Merian out of their graves to score cheap points.”
    “I’m not, sir,” Yardem said. There was nothing like apology in his voice. “I’m saying you didn’t only kill Springmere because he needed to die. You were looking for redemption.”
    “More of your religious—”
    “And you were looking to Cithrin for the same,” Yardem