The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

Northcoast that you’d bedded the Antean Lord Regent?”
    Cithrin felt the blush growing in her neck.
    “I wouldn’t call it boasting . They weren’t listening to me,” Cithrin said. “Geder Palliako and I were in close quarters for weeks. All they’d ever managed was a few meetings and letters. I wanted them to understand that I knew the man better than they did.”
    “And that you’d lain him was proof of that?”
    “I might have phrased it for effect,” Cithrin said
    Magistra Isadau’s laughter was warm and delighted, and Cithrin felt the knot in her belly loosen a notch.
    “Well, no one can call you timid.”
    “I don’t know I’d say that. I was annoyed with them,” Cithrin said. Then, a moment later, “Did Komme say anything else about me?”
    “That your heart hadn’t died yet,” Isadau said, her tone precisely as it had been before, “but that it was in danger of it.”
    Now Cithrin laughed, but it was a nervous sound even to her. In the courtyard, someone called out, a woman or a child. Magisra Isadau lifted a finger.
    “May I ask you a question?”
    “Of course,” Cithrin said.
    Isadau gestured with her chin to the tiny plant on the desk.
    “Why did I bring that to you?”
    Cithrin considered, chewing the inside of her lip. For a moment, she was a child again, sitting at evening meal with Magister Imaniel and Cam and Besel, answering question after question. It came to her as easily as breath.
    “Gifts create a sense of obligation,” she said. “Not debt, exactly, because it can’t be measured. And because it can’t be measured, it can’t be definitively repaid. If instead you’d given me the coin you spent to buy that, I’d know what I owed, and I could give it back and be done. By giving me a gift instead, you build the sense of owing without a path to repayment, and so I’m more likely, for example, to grant you a favor or make some concession that I’d never have agreed to if I’d been given an explicit price.”
    Cithrin spread her hands, as if presenting something. Magistra Isadau nodded, but her smile seemed melancholy.
    “Mani taught you well. I can hear him say all of that. Only … there is more than one way of doing what we do. Of being what we are.”
    Cithrin shrugged, vaguely disappointed not to have been praised.
    “All right,” she said. “How would you say it?”
    “I wanted you to like me, and I was anxious that you might not.”
    The older woman’s frank vulnerability brought a sudden tightness to Cithrin’s throat. She didn’t know if it was pity or surprise, sorrow or fear, only that she didn’t like it and didn’t know what more to say. Magistra Isadau nodded more than half to herself and stood.
    “We eat our evening meals late, but the kitchens are always open to you. The whole family comes to table, and it isn’t formal. Rest if you like, or look around the grounds. If you’d like to go into the city, I have a girl who can guide you. In the morning, I’ll show you the office and where the books are kept.”
    Cithrin tried to speak, coughed, and tried again.
    “Thank you, Magistra.”
    “You’re welcome. And truly? I am glad you’ve come.”
    For a long time after Isadau had left, Cithrin sat at the desk, her gaze on the little plant as if it might be somehow dangerous.

Captain Marcus Wester
    M arcus leaned against the slick, waxy bark of the tree and stared out over the valley. Their recent days in the cloud forest had kept his horizon close. Fifteen feet, twenty at most. The thick-packed trees, stubborn brush, and warm mist had tied a cloth across his eyes until he felt that each day had ended in the same stand of trees by the same brook, lulled to sleep by the same bright-colored birds. When he came to the ridge, it was like the world cracking open. Mountains as steep and sharp as black knives rose toward the white sky. Row after row, each more grey than the one before, until he could imagine them receding forever. The sun, high and to his left, was little more than a brighter stretch of haze.
    The steady footfalls of his companion came up from behind him, as familiar as his own breath.
    “Isn’t …” Marcus said, then coughed and tried again. “Isn’t there supposed to be a winter? I remember there being winter.”
    “I think you’ll find we’re too far south,” Kitap rol Keshmet said, “and that seasons don’t behave the same way here that they did north of the Inner Sea.”
    “No winter, then.”
    “I’m