The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

everybody’s name and something about the peculiarities of their lives. Forgive any mistake once, and none twice.
    In the long, subterranean struggles between the women of the court, she held her own. Someone else might have a more fashionable tailor or hairdresser in any given season, lured away by promises and bribes, but Clara’s was always perfectly respectable, and they didn’t leave her in times of difficulty. As compared with some who thought training servants meant alternating between throwing fits and showering them with praise. She couldn’t count the number of ladies of the court who, one time and another, had managed to throw their own houses and lives into chaos by losing the service of their more competent staff.
    And running a household, she supposed, was not so unlike running an empire.
    As the long days of summer began to grow short again, she found herself invited to more informal gatherings. Women who had pretended not to know her began smiling or nodding to her when she walked through the more affluent streets of the city. Few went so far as to speak, but some did. The gossip around her shifted from the balls and feasts at the season’s opening, and turned toward the preparations for its end. Clara smiled and laughed and wished people the best in ways that made it clear she didn’t care for them. She fell into the patterns of the woman she’d been for most of her life, and it felt like wearing a mask at a street carnival.
    Behind it, she was cataloging everything she heard. Of Geder Palliako’s inner court, Daskellin was far and away the best political mind. His daughter, who had been putting herself in compromising situations with Palliako before he’d been named Lord Regent, had fallen back into propriety. So perhaps Daskellin had gained a better insight into the kind of man Palliako was. Emming was a blowhard who played the gadfly on trivial matters and followed anyone more powerful than he was when the issue had weight. Mecilli was an honest man with a reputation for caution and tradition that most reminded Clara of Dawson. The two would have been friends, except that Mecilli had spoken out against dueling and Dawson had decided the man was a coward. Noyel Flor wasn’t dim, but he was the third generation of his family to be Protector of Sevenpol, and in everything he considered what was best for his city first and the empire as a whole after. Lord Skestinin commanded the fleet, which made him valuable to Geder, but he was also family, now that Jorey and Sabiha were married.
    And, of course, there was Ternigan.
    The Lord Marshal was an excellent strategist and had more experience commanding in the field than anyone else at court, and perhaps because of his habit of strategic thought, he’d placed himself on the winning side of almost every conflict in a generation. By being the man of talent, he made himself someone to be won over. Someone to be wooed.
    And so he also made himself vulnerable.
    For Geder to fall from power, he had to be alienated from the best minds in the empire and surrounded instead with charming idiots and the pleasantly incompetent. Knowing what she did of Geder’s temper and distrust, she thought the exercise might not be that difficult. At least not with low-hanging fruit like Bassim Ternigan.
    The temptation was to rush. To hurry. To create some crisis out of the whole cloth. The wiser choice was to wait and listen until the world in all its incomprehensible complexity presented her an opportunity, and then to be ready for it. She stayed at court as much as she could, maintained what friendships she had, and tried to keep her private role gathering information as loyal traitor separate from being her sons’ mother.
    It was not always possible.
    “Having a permanent port on the Inner Sea will change everything,” Vicarian said around a mouthful of roast pork. “There’s rumor that Palliako’s going to send Lord Skestinin there.”
    “Well, Father hasn’t mentioned anything to me,” Sabiha said. She was looking better, Clara thought. Brighter about the eyes, easier with her smile. She wasn’t a pretty girl exactly, and all the more interesting for that. “All he’s said is that wintering in Nus will be much more pleasant than Estinport.”
    “May just be a rumor,” Jorey said.
    “Likely that,” Vicarian agreed. “Honestly, I thought the court was the breeding ground for unfounded guesses spoken as fact, but it’s nothing compared to the