The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

rainforest to the rocks and crags of the northern coast took on the feeling of a dream. Marcus remembered bits and pieces—the bone-deep exhaustion, the day an annoying welt on his leg had opened and spilled out live maggots, the tension between taking time to search for food and pressing on to reach the end of the forest—but they formed no single coherent string. They had walked and hidden and been bitten and starved and tried to find water that wouldn’t fill their guts with worms when they drank it. When Marcus thought back to the morning he had stepped out from the trees and onto a paved road, his ribs showing through his skin and half naked where his clothes had rotted away, he saw the scene as if he had witnessed it, as if he had been outside of his own body watching it happen to someone else.
    It was only on the ship back north that his mind returned to him enough that he understood. After months lost in the interior, he’d been starving and fevered and prey to insects that had been feasting on the blood of humanity since before the dragons. He told himself that the sword and its venomous magic likely didn’t have much to do with it. As weak as he’d been, he would likely have fallen just as ill, been just as confused. Still, as their little ship bobbed on the summer waves, Marcus left the green scabbard in with his things. He had no need of it on board, and less time carrying now meant more time later.
    The only disturbing thing was coming back to his cabin to find a circle of tiny dark-carapaced bodies around his bags where the fleas and insects had come out to die. It wasn’t that Marcus had doubted Kit about the sword’s nature, but seeing it confirmed was unsettling.
    Kit was looking skeletally thin as well. But as the days passed and the pair ate the sailor’s diet of fresh fish and old limes, salt pork and twice-baked bread, the flesh of the actor’s cheeks began to fill in, and Marcus felt his own strength returning. By the time the expanse of the Inner Sea began to break into islands and reefs, Marcus was near enough himself that he could keep pace with the sailors. Or at least with ones his own age.
    Kort was an island city, and ancient. In the story it told of itself, Kort was the site of the last battle, where Drakkis Stormcrow arranged the death of Morade, the mad Dragon Emperor. Its bay, wide and shallow and protected by a massive chain of dragon’s jade, went by the name Firstwater on the strength of being the first saltwater claimed by humanity for humanity. The high, narrow houses that rose up the steep rise from the shore were, it was said, the first built by free men, or at least they stood where those houses had. It was not the largest of cities. Carse in Northcoast could have swallowed six like it. It didn’t claim the imperial beauty of Camnipol or the wealth of Stollbourne. Its streets were narrow, its trade restrained by the constant wars and turmoil of Pût and the Keshet, its people a rough-spirited crew. But even if the flowers of Kort bloomed tough and simple, their roots grew the deepest. Marcus might even have found himself moved by it, if he hadn’t known three other places that made the same claims.
    They pulled into port near evening, the summer sun flinging gold and crimson across the clouds. At the chain towers great fires burned, a guide to ships at sea and a warning. The air smelled of brine and smoke and the subtle homecoming scent of land and stone. Marcus found himself standing at the bow and watching the city as it fell into twilight. Windows flickered with candlelight all up the side of the mountain like an army of fireflies.
    “I don’t believe I’ve seen you look so content in weeks,” Kit said.
    “I’m home,” Marcus said.
    “I didn’t know you came from Kort.”
    “Never been here before,” Marcus said. “But after that , it’s home.”
    T he inn sat at one end of a public square so small that only the thin cistern distinguished it from a widening of the road. Seven lanterns hung around the door, the ochre wall seeming to eat as much light as it reflected. The keeper was a Yemmu man with yellowed tusks and a friendly demeanor. Marcus stood in the street, letting Kit make the negotiations. The moon above was the blue white of snow. It was summer now, and Marcus had gone a full winter without seeing snow or feeling cold. It made time seem odd. He wouldn’t have thought that a rhythm so slow and deliberate would affect him from day to day,