The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

about this?”
    “Not this, precisely,” Clara said. “I’ve said that if a letter arrived under the Petty name, to hold it for me. They don’t know who it will be coming from nor what it will say.”
    “But Clara,” he said, and her name on his lips still had the strange joy of transgression, “they know it’s going to you. Palliako will investigate this. If he goes there, he might track the conspiracy back to you.”
    “It won’t happen.”
    “You can’t be sure of that.”
    “The man who’s watching for the message was a footman in my house. When his wife birthed their first boy, I went to visit her myself. The babe was ill, and I paid for the cunning man that saved him. The man would move the sky if I asked him to,” Clara said. “Certainly, he won’t balk at a few simple lies.”

Cithrin
    M arcus left her again, this time more explicably. There was less confusion. Less of the inexplicable hollowness. Half of her was angry with him for going, but the rest of her seemed resigned. He was leaving her because he felt he had to, and looking at it coldly, she agreed. She was under her own protection now. She had been for over a year. It was only seeing that her half-ackowledged hopes that it might somehow go back to what it had been—or more likely what she only imagined it had been—dashed that felt so cruel. So she took her childish sense of abandonment and added it to the list of things she had to mourn.
    It was a long list.
    The next Tenthday, there was no march through the streets. The occupying forces didn’t respect the tradition and had sent out an edict prohibiting groups with more than four Timzinae from gathering together in public or ten in private. The temples were empty even where the priests weren’t dead. So instead, Isadau had the little chapel in the compound cleaned with vinegar and soap. Candles and incense burned on the humble wooden altar. Cithrin left her shoes in her room in the morning and walked there, joining the others silently. Jurin, Isadau, and Kani knelt at the front in their finest clothing. Cithrin sat in the middle with the other guests who had taken hospitality in the compound and were now trapped there by the occupation. The servants sat at the back. There were considerably more than ten Timzinae in the room, but no one mentioned it. There weren’t any Anteans either.
    Still, Cithrin wondered what would happen if the spider priest came back and asked whether there had been any violations of the edict. It made her uncomfortable to risk the notice of the new authorities without need. There were so many needful risks still to take that wasting them here seemed decadent.
    When the time came for the priest to arrive, Yardem Hane stepped out from the hallway. He wore a dark robe that went to his feet, and the rings in his ears looked different from the usual. He lowered his eyes, gathered himself, and brought his wide chin up.
    “I am not a priest of your faith,” he said, and his voice rolled through the air like a distant landslide. “Nor, any longer, of my own. I was once a holy man, though I am not now. Magistra Isadau and her siblings have asked me to speak here today, and I agreed to the request so long as I could make it clear that I am not a priest.”
    Cithrin smiled. She could see the discomfort in the Tralgu’s wide, canine expression, even if the others couldn’t. Her sympathy for him expressed itself as amusement.
    “I have seen a large number of cities fall. Sometimes I’ve been part of the reason that they did. Sometimes I was one of the men who’d tried to protect them and failed. But for whatever reason I was there, what I’ve seen followed a pattern, and though I make no claim to righteousness, I hoped to share that with you here.
    “Often when we gather in places of worship, it is in celebration. Celebrations of marriage or of birth. The smaller celebrations of the good in our lives. Even funerals are celebrations of lives well lived. And also we come together to mourn the evil and the sorrow and the pain in the world. Our failings and the world’s. We acknowledge these to each other because, whatever our race, whatever the shapes of our bodies and the inclination of our minds, doing this makes us more human. And by more human, I also mean more holy.”
    Cithrin’s amusement and embarrassment on Yardem’s behalf had fallen away. His voice was warm and soft as old flannel. Someone behind her was weeping now, and Yardem frowned in