The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

epithets, her voice raw and ragged. The door to the street flew open and then closed again behind them. One of them whooped in victory when he reached the street. One of the Firstbloods. One of the men of her own race. Her kind.
    “The food,” Abatha said bitterly. “They took the food. That was everything for the next week. How’m I going to feed everybody now?”
    “Are you hurt?” Clara asked, clasping at her arm. As long as she kept her palm pressed against the blood, she didn’t have to see how deep the cut had gone. Better to tend to Abatha before that.
    “Hurt?” Abatha said, as if the word were one she’d heard before but never used. “They took the food.”
    “Vincen?” Clara called. “Are you all right?”
    There was no answer. Clara felt her heart go tight. The pain of her arm faded to nothing as she rose to her feet, floating, it seemed into the ruined kitchen. The bench by the little table lay on its side. The pale bodies of dried beans were scattered across the dark planks of the floor. Vincen sat with his back against a cabinet, his sword in his hand. As Clara watched, he heaved a breath, and then another. His gaze struggled its way into focus, and he frowned.
    “You’re hurt,” he said.
    “Vincen?” Clara said, kneeling at his side. Behind her, Abatha stood in the doorway. “Are you well? Can you walk?”
    He lifted his left hand as if he meant to scratch his nose. The fingers were black with blood and gore. Clara heard herself gasp.
    “Don’t believe so, m’lady,” he said, and then, more softly, “Oh dear.”
    Abatha’s hand tugged at her shoulder, pulled Clara back and up. Vincen couldn’t die. It was unthinkable. He was young and healthy and he had no enemies. And he was in love with her, and she, God help her, was in love with him, and he couldn’t—could not —die stupidly in a fight over ham. Clara’s breath came in sips and gasps. The world seemed to narrow. Abatha was saying something, and shaking her while she spoke. Clara tried to bring her mind back, but it was slow, difficult work.
    “It’s three streets to the east, two to the north,” Abatha said. It wasn’t the first time she’d said it.
    “Three east,” Clara said. “Two north.”
    “It’s a low house. Green with a red roof.”
    “Three east, two north. Green with a red roof.”
    “The cunning man’s named Hoban.”
    Clara nodded. Of course. A cunning man. They needed a cunning man. She would go and get one.
    “Three east, two north. Green with red. Ossit.”
    “Not Ossit. Hoban.”
    “Hoban,” Clara said. “I’ll be back. Don’t let him die while I’m gone.”
    “Wait!” Abatha said, shrugging out of her house robe and holding it out. “Take this. Y’ain’t decent.”
    Clara looked down at herself. The simple sleeping shift was torn and soaked down one side in blood. What a sight that would be. Lady Kalliam half naked and bloody running through the streets before dawn. She would have done it without a second thought.
    The air in the streets felt cool against her skin, the rough cobbles scraped at her bare feet. The half moon dodged between rooftops, here and gone and back again, as she ran. Three streets to the east, then turning left into a thin passage hardly more than an alley that stank of shit and piss and old blood gone to rot. She’d feared that in the dim light she might not be able to make out the colors, but the green was the green of new grass and the red almost crimson. Even by moonlight, there could be no mistake. Clara hopped up the single step and hammered on the door until a huge First-blood man with a greying beard to his navel and strange tattoos up both of his arms answered her. His accent spoke of Stollbourne and perhaps cities even farther to the west. She had to assure him twice that she wasn’t the one in need of help, but once he understood, he came quickly.
    Abatha had laid Vincen out on the kitchen table like a body being prepared for his funeral. His skin looked like wax, and webs of dark blood marred him. His eyes were closed and his mouth drawn back in a grimace of pain and determination. The greatest wound was in his side, just below his lowest rib, and the skin there hung loose and open. The cunning man crouched, placing his palm over the injury, closing his eyes and murmuring prayers and invocations that seemed to echo in a space larger than the kitchen.
    With the violence done, other occupants of the boarding house began to creep out. The