The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

massive head drooped, took a new position on its folded claws, and went still again. Milo heard something like a small girl’s laughter, high and small and paroxysmal, and knew it was him.
    A hard-callused hand took him by the hair and pulled him back, another hand clamping down over his mouth and choking off his yelp. Kirot looked peeved; he scooped up the still-burning lantern and pushed Milo back down into the tunnel. Soon the walls around them grew soft and rounded again, and the cracking roar of the waves returned. When they reached the stone beach, Kirot stopped and lifted the lantern.
    “I tell you that the world ends if the dragon wakes up,” the old fisherman said, “and to keep quiet, and what is it you do, boy?”
    “Sorry.”
    Kirot spat in disgust. When he spoke, his voice carried a full hold of contempt.
    “Milo son of Gytan of Order Murro, I stand witness that you are now a man. Don’t let it go to your fucking head.”

Clara Annalise Kalliam, Formerly Baroness of Osterling Fells
    C lara woke to the familiar sound of voices raised in the street below her window. The dawn had not yet transformed the darkness of her little room in the boarding house from black to grey, but it soon would. Her window was not glass, but oiled parchment that let in some light and a great deal of cold. She pulled the wool blankets close to her chin, pressed her body into the thin mattress, and listened while the married couple in the street berated one another again, as they did more mornings than not. He was a drunkard and a little boy in a man’s broken body. She was a shrew who drank a man’s blood and ate his freedom. He was sleeping with whores. She was giving all the coin he earned to her brother. The litany of marital strife was as common and boring as it was sad. And saddest of all, Clara thought, was that the two of them couldn’t hear the love on which all their resentments were built. No one shouted and wept in the street over someone they didn’t care about. She wondered what they would make of it if she sought them out and told them how very, very lucky they were.
    When at last she rose, the light was enough that she could see the winter’s cold turning her breath to smoke. She got quickly into her underthings, and then a dress with stays up the side where she could reach them without a servant girl’s help. Under other circumstances, she would still have been wearing mourning clothes, but when one’s husband is slaughtered by the Lord Regent as a traitor to the throne, the rules of grief are somewhat changed. She made do with a small twist of cloth tied around her wrist and easily covered by her sleeve. She would know it was there. That was enough.
    As the light waxed, she washed her face and put up her hair. The sounds in the street changed. The rattle of carts, the shouting of carters. Dogs barked. The sounds of Camnipol in the grip of winter. Dawson had hated being in the capital city during winter. Winter business, he’d called it, and his voice had dripped with contempt. A man of his breeding should spend the winter months on his lands or else with the King’s Hunt. Only now, of course, there were no lands. Lord Regent Geder Palliako had taken them back for the crown, to be doled out later as a token to someone whom he wished to reward. And Clara was living on an allowance scraped together by her two younger sons. Her eldest boy, Barriath, was gone God only knew where, and her natural daughter was busy clinging to her husband’s name and praying that the court would forget she had ever been called Kalliam.
    In the common room, Vincen Coe sat by the fire, waiting for her. He wore his huntsman’s leathers, though there was no hunt to call in the city and the master he’d served was dead. The perfectly ridiculous love he professed for Clara shone in his eyes and in the uncertain way he held himself as she walked into the room. It wasn’t at all dignified, but it was flattering, and despite herself she found it endearing.
    “I’ve saved you a bowl of the morning oats,” he said. “And I’m making fresh tea.”
    “Thank you,” she said, sitting beside the little iron stove.
    “May I be permitted to walk with you today, my lady?” It was a question he asked every day, like a child asking a favor of a beloved tutor.
    “I would be quite pleased with some company, thank you,” she said, as she often did. Often, but not always. “I have several errands today.”
    “Yes, ma’am,”