The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

conflict and the coming one, and her own growing sense of dread. When she came back, Captain Wester was sitting in the courtyard and Master Kit was walking in from the street. She’d heard of people who’d gotten fevers and lost their minds in them. She had to think it felt similar. Isadau didn’t seem to be put off her stride, but for her these were two men loosely associated with the bank who’d arrived much as a courier might. For Cithrin, they were two people she’d trusted and relied on who had left her without a word and arrived without a warning. She wanted to run to them both and hug them and yell at them and make sure they would never go away again, and so instead she fell into a politeness and distance that she hated even as she employed it.
    They gathered in a private courtyard with a small fountain and ivy growing up three of the four walls. It was cool and beautiful, and the tiny clapping hands of the ivy’s leaves meshed with the muttering of water to make eavesdropping almost impossible. Marcus and Yardem shared a bench, while Master Kit perched on the fountain’s edge. Cithrin sat in a chair beside Isadau. A servant brought a small wooden table and filled it with cups of cool water and bowls of cut apples. To anyone in the household, it would have seemed nothing more than another meeting among hundreds where the two magistras spoke about the private doings of the bank.
    Captain Wester’s absence hadn’t been kind to him. He was thinner than she’d ever seen him, his cheeks gaunt and his neck so ropy that she could trace the individual muscles and tendons. Master Kit also looked worn down by the road, but with him it almost seemed like a shedding of old clothes. His eyes were brighter, his smile just as open and pleasant, and the darkness of his skin a testament to weeks out of doors. He had none of the greyness that dulled Marcus’s skin, and his eyes hadn’t taken the same slight tint of yellow.
    And then, just as Cithrin began to feel she had her balance back, Master Kit had pricked his thumb with Yardem’s dagger and tiny black spiders had come out.
    “And if you were to speak to me,” Isadau said.
    “I would be very difficult to disbelieve,” Master Kit said. “Even those things which you had evidence against, you would eventually find some way to justify.”
    “Even if it was absurd?”
    Master Kit’s smile was melancholic.
    “I have tried to dedicate my life to the discovery of the world as it truly is,” he said, “and even knowing what I knew, it seems I have been unable to avoid believing absurdities. I believe I could convince you of anything.”
    Yardem made a low sound in his throat, part growl and part chuckle. Master Kit’s glance was a question.
    “Just recalling all our philosophical debates,” Yardem said. “You could have won all of them if you’d cared to.”
    “I hope I chose my words carefully enough to respect the beliefs I did not share.”
    “All the same,” Isadau said, “you are an abomination.”
    Cithrin scowled and began to object, but Kit beat her to it.
    “Certainly I agree that I have a potential for evil that those unlike me do not. And I am afraid that this present violence is the fruit that grew from that bloom.”
    “What is it they want?” Yardem asked, his voice a low rumble. “The other ones.”
    “I believe they want to bring the world together under the banners of the goddess,” Kit said. “To place everything within her and make it part of her flesh. Before I fell from grace, I was told that we were waiting for a sign, and when that sign came we would return to the nations of humanity, stand against the forces of the dragon, and free the world at last from lies and deception.”
    “By spreading their story,” Marcus said.
    “Until there are no other stories,” Kit finished. “By ignoring or destroying anything that failed to match with the certainties of the goddess who is immune from lies.”
    Magistra Isadau sat forward, her head sinking into her hands.
    “Geder was that sign,” Cithrin said.
    “In a sense, yes,” Master Kit said. “Though if it had not been him now, I suspect it would have been another at another time. I suspect signs are fairly easy to see for one dedicated to seeing them. And if a high priest believed that he had seen the hand of the goddess at work in the world, he would only need to say it, and it would become as true as anything else. As certain, at least. I don’t know the man who has