The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

wondered where Geder Palliako slept that night and if he ever thought of her. She hoped he didn’t.
    In her own room, the servants had left a lamp burning low. Her window let in a spray of moonlight, the cool blue mixing with the gold of the flame. She changed into her night clothes and slipped her legs beneath the thin summer sheets, sitting with her back against the wall.
    Sleep wouldn’t come. She already knew it. She could lie in the darkness and stew in her own thoughts or turn up the lamp and read through the essays and histories Magistra Isadau had assigned her along with the books of the bank. Both options sounded equally unpleasant. For an hour she only sat, listening to the fire mutter in its stove, the distant whisper of drums.
    She rose sometime in the darkness well after midnight, turning up the lamp’s wick more for variety’s sake than from any real desire. The floor cooled her feet. The papers waited on her bedside table, held down against the breeze by the old dragon’s tooth. Cithrin lifted it now, running her finger idly along its serrated edge, as she considered the writing beneath without really caring what it said.
    The war was coming. It was all happening again, just the way it had in Vanai. She could feel it like a storm. The blades of Antea wouldn’t be stopped. As much as she wished otherwise, she knew the violence would spill past Sarakal. Perhaps to Elassae. Or into Borja. Or turn west toward Northcoast and Birancour. It was like a fire. She might not know where the flames would jump, but wherever it landed it would burn. And Magistra Isadau knew it too, as much as she pretended doubt. Cithrin understood the impulse to pretend the danger away. She’d done it herself in Vanai, and she’d had so much less to lose. Isadau had family—sister, brother, nieces, nephews, cousins. Cithrin had only had Magister Imaniel, Besel, Cam. Or perhaps it was the same. Losing everything was still losing everything, however little someone began with.
    But Herez? Hallskar? Lyoneiea? None of them shared a border with Imperial Antea. Perhaps Geder and his counselors were looking farther ahead, to a wider, greater conquest. She tapped the dragon’s tooth against her palm. The thought didn’t sit comfortably. There was something else. Something about the dragon’s roads and the places they didn’t pass through.
    Understanding came to her with an almost audible click. She stood up, her heart racing and a grin pressing her lips. She didn’t even pause to throw a cloak over the night clothes. The dragon’s tooth firmly in her hand, she strode out into corridors darker than mere night. Her footsteps didn’t falter. She knew the path.
    Magistra Isadau was in her office chamber, reclined on a divan with a book open on her knees. She looked up without any sense of surprise as Cithrin entered the room.
    “May I see the new report again?” Cithrin asked.
    The Timzinae woman marked her place and closed her book. Opening the strongbox was the work of a minute. Cithrin took up the pages, turning them silently until she found the passages she sought.
    A small group to Borja, led by someone named Emmun Siu. Two groups to Lyoneia under Korl Essian. And one to Hallskar, led by Dar Cinlama.
    Dar Cinlama, the Dartinae adventurer who had once given her a dragon’s tooth. Cithrin tapped the page.
    “Something?” Magistra Isadau asked.
    “These aren’t scouting groups for the armies,” Cithrin said. “They’re looking for something.”

Clara
    S omeone in the house was screaming. Clara found herself out of her bed before she had wholly woken, wrapping the thin summer blanket around her waist, alarm running through her blood. The sound was constant, barely pausing to draw breath. A woman, she thought, or a child. Her first thought was that one of the new maids had encountered Dawson’s hunting dogs again. Except that was wrong, because Dawson was dead, and the dogs sent back to Osterling Fells or set loose in the streets. Somewhere nearby, a door slammed open or perhaps closed. Footsteps pounded down the hall. Clara dropped her blanket and snatched up the pewter candlestick from beside her bed, holding it in a clenched fist like a tiny club. She willed away the last confusion of sleep and prepared herself for the onslaught, whatever it was.
    A man’s voice came from just outside the door of her rooms. Vincen Coe.
    “My lady?”
    “Vincen? What’s happening?”
    “Stay where you are. Bar the door. I will