The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

Kit’s friends told of a secret ring of Timzinae who’d been stalking the streets at night and stealing away Firstblood women. In one version, they’d been taken to a secret temple under the city and slaughtered as offerings to the dragons. In another, they’d been found in a secret room in the manor house of the traitor Alan Klin, which only served to show that Klin had been as much a tool of the Timzinae as Dawson Kalliam.
    It was almost night when they reached the Division. The great chasm ran through the city’s heart like a river. Marcus stood at the center of a span and looked down. The depth of it left him breathless.
    “I’ve never seen anything like this. How many bodies would you guess go into that in the course of a year?” Marcus said. Then, “Kit?”
    Kit’s face had gone pale. Marcus followed the man’s gaze to the far side of the great canyon. A building four floors high and painted the yellow of egg yolk loomed on the farther side of a common yard. A stable stood off to the south with carts and horses enough to mark the place as a wayhouse and a tavern. Kit began to walk toward it in a drunken stagger, and Marcus followed, confused until he saw what Kit was walking toward.
    The cart looked much the same as it had when Marcus and Kit and the others had hauled it as part of the last caravan from Vanai half a decade before. Two of the boards on the stage had been replaced recently, and the new wood stood out brightly from the old. Kit put a trembling hand to it. A tear tracked down his cheek.
    “Hey, you old bastard,” a rough voice called from behind them. “Watch whose cart you’re feeling up.”
    The woman, thin across the shoulders with dark hair pulled back in a braid, swaggered across the yard. Two men walked behind her. When she reached them, she fell into Master Kit’s arms. The two men wrapped arms around the pair until all four were in a tight knot of affection and humanity. The larger of the men turned his head to Marcus.
    “Good to see you too, Captain,” Hornet said.
    “Always a pleasure.”
    Hornet pulled back an arm, inviting him into the huddle, but Marcus declined with a smile.
    “Cary?” Master Kit said, half choked with sobs. “What are you … how did you come back here?”
    “You made an assumption there,” the other man, Smit, said. “You see how he made that assumption?”
    “I did,” Hornet said, grinning. Cary only looked up at Master Kit with a smile of defiance and pleasure. She looked like a child whose father had come home from a journey of years.
    “You’ve been here all this time?” Kit said, disbelief in his voice. “This same yard for … ? How can that be?”
    “Cithrin came by with a little side work,” Cary said. “Brought us enough money we could sit tight for a time.”
    “Been pretty much playing to dogs and pigeons the last six months, though,” Smit said. “Nothing like being in one place seasons in a row to take the novelty off a production.”
    “We’re all still here, though,” Smit said. “Sandr left for about two weeks once, but the girl caught on to him and he reconsidered.”
    “Why did you do this?”
    “So you could find us when you came back,” Cary said. Her eyelashes were dewy. “Because you were coming back. You couldn’t leave us behind.”
    “But I had no way to know that …” Kit said, and then ran out of words.
    “You see? That’s the problem with always playing the wise-old-man roles. You start taking them off the stage with you and thinking you’re Sera Serapal with all the secrets of the dragons in your purse and acting like it’s miraculous every time you’re wrong about something. I always knew you’d rejoin us. I only made it easier for you. And ,” Cary said before he could object, “I was right.”
    Master Kit laughed and spread his arms. “How can I argue against that?” he said. “Thank you. This is the sweetest gift the world has ever given me. Thank you for it.”
    Cary nodded once, soberly. “Welcome home,” she said.

Geder
    T he first group of Anteans to be initiated into the mysteries of the spider goddess stood in the great hall of the new temple. The pearl-white ceiling arched above them all, and fine chains with crystal beads flowed down from the top like dewdrops on a spider’s web. Three walls of the hall were glowing with lamps fashioned from shells that glowed soft gold, but the south was open, and Camnipol stretched out below them. The carts in the streets were