The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

dust.
    Magistra Isadau’s nictitating membranes clicked closed and open. Cithrin felt the pressure of the older woman’s attention and frowned, willing herself to think of something—anything—that would justify it.
    Nothing came.
    “There’s no hurry,” Magistra Isadau said, folding the papers and putting them back into her private strongbox. “I don’t need to send a reply for a day or two. If anything does come to you, I can add it.”
    “How old is the information?” Cithrin asked.
    “Weeks, at the least. But Inentai isn’t under siege yet. So perhaps it still counts for something.”
    The Timzinae woman shrugged and smiled. Cithrin thought that she saw unease in her dark eyes and the angle of her mouth. It was hard to be sure.
    “Do you still think that the war won’t come here?” Cithrin asked, and the physical memory of making the same query assailed her. She’d said almost identical words once to a man now dead, in a city now ashes.
    Magistra Isadau lifted her hands in a gesture of confusion and despair.
    “I don’t know any longer. The truth now is that your opinion carries more weight than my own,” she said. “All I have is the numbers and reports. You know the people.”
    “The person,” Cithrin said.
    “The person. So. Knowing what you do of Geder Palliako, will the war come here?”
    Cithrin sat forward, her hands clasped. Memories of the Lord Regent of Antea rose before her mind like fumes from a fire. His laughter. The roundness that fear gave his eyes. The rage as he slaughtered the traitor from within his own court. The taste of his mouth and the feel of his body. A cold shudder passed through her. Magistra Isadau made a small clicking sound at the back of her throat and nodded as if Cithrin had answered.
    Perhaps she had.
    A thin fog rose just after nightfall, the first Cithrin had seen in weeks. The summer in Suddapal rarely grew cool enough to allow it, but now wisps and patches littered the streets as if a cloud had shattered and fallen to earth. Cithrin sat in an open garden with a lantern behind her, sluggish moths beating at the glass with thick, furry bodies. She had contracts and ledgers spread before her in the buttery light. The wide carved timbers above her gathered the shadows in close, cradling them. The history of the Medean bank in Suddapal seemed less important now than its future.
    The trade of Elassae relied on the traffic of metalwork from the north, textiles and cloth from the Free Cities, and spice and gold from Lyoneia. The mines and forges of Sarakal might fall under the control of the Severed Throne, but the trade would remain. Or she thought it would.
    Or the armies of Antea might burn them all, as they had Vanai. Surely Magistra Isadau was selling letters of credit to the nervous and wealthy, transferring the gold and jewels of Elassae into paper that could go west, to the safer ports, father from Antean blades. There would be a way to move that wealth away from Suddapal before the end came. Before the armies. Before it burned.
    She shook herself, turned back to her books, and found she’d lost the thread of them. Her fingers were on a payment entry, and she could no more say what deposit it came from than she could will the sun to dance on the seashore. She said something vulgar and closed the books. She could sit here enjoying the moment of cool in the midsummer’s heat with her mind scattered and lost or go back to her rooms and stare sleepless at the walls. The knot in her belly didn’t permit anything else.
    She snuffed out the lanterns and stacked the wax trays with her notes in a corner with a strip of red cloth that would tell the servants to leave them undisturbed. The sensual music of reed flute and sanded drum that made their hymns murmured even in the darkness of midnight. More than any other race she knew, the old men and women of the Timzinae turned away from sleep. The compound—indeed the five cities of Suddapal—only rested. They never slept. She found herself drawn toward the music and the promise of company and warmth, but it was an illusion. She didn’t know the songs. The snapping of her pale, soft fingers wouldn’t give the sharp percussion of Timzinae hands.
    She wondered if Yardem was on guard duty. Or any of her little retinue from Porte Oliva. She wondered where Cary and Sandr and Hornet were tonight. She wondered what Captain Wester was doing and what would make him think that Yardem Hane would ever betray him. She