lips and cheeks with rouge, vomited into the chamberpot, and applied the rouge again. The cut of the collar didn’t call for a necklace, but she put one on anyway: the silver bird in flight that Salan had given her. No one else might know the defiance it signified, but she would. When the order came, carried by a sneering Firstblood in Antean uniform, she accepted it on Isadau’s behalf. It was, after all, addressed to the magistra of the branch, and technically she fit the description. They were to come to the central square of the third city at noon. Lord Marshal Ternigan would accept their formal surrender of the city and introduce the new protector of Suddapal. Also every household was to surrender any weaned children younger than five against the good conduct of the city. There would be no exceptions made. Any children not turned over to the protector’s men would be killed without question.
Half an hour before the time came, Isadau let Cithrin guide her out to the street. The magistra wore ragged grey mourning robes and her eyes seemed empty. Shocked. When they passed the temple, a vast banner the red of blood hung from its roof. The eightfold sigil of the goddess looked out from its center like an unblinking eye, the symbol of nothingness. And below it, the body of the cunning man and priest that Cithrin and Yardem had snickered at from the pews. Terrible things had been done to him.
“She doesn’t even exist,” Isadau said, her voice quiet and brittle.
“She doesn’t need to,” Cithrin said.
Clara
When Clara’s only work had been the running of her household, it had still been enough to fill most days and even bring some occasional worries to bed. When things were well—and they were well more often than not—Dawson and the children were utterly unaware of the mechanisms and habits that kept the shoes cleaned and the food brought from the kitchen. If she asked Dawson to please keep his hunting dogs out of the servants’ quarters, he saw only her somewhat trivial focus. She didn’t tell him that one of the maids had been mauled as a girl and broke into sweats whenever the animals trotted through. Dawson would have told her to get a different maid, but this one had been the best at polishing the silver, and accommodations had to be made whether Dawson knew of them or not.
Her plan of battle was simple enough. Find competent, trustworthy servants, treat them with respect, and let them do their work. Listen when spoken to. Remember everybody’s name and something about the peculiarities of their lives. Forgive any mistake once, and none twice.
In the long, subterranean struggles between the women of the court, she held her own. Someone else might have a more fashionable tailor or hairdresser in any given season, lured away by promises and bribes, but Clara’s was always perfectly respectable, and they didn’t leave her in times of difficulty. As compared with some who thought training servants meant alternating between throwing fits and showering them with praise. She couldn’t count the number of ladies of the court who, one time and another, had managed to throw their own houses and lives into chaos by losing the service of their more competent staff.
And running a household, she supposed, was not so unlike running an empire.
As the long days of summer began to grow short again, she found herself invited to more informal gatherings. Women who had pretended not to know her began smiling or nodding to her when she walked through the more affluent streets of the city. Few went so far as to speak, but some did. The gossip around her shifted from the balls and feasts at the season’s opening, and turned toward the preparations for its end. Clara smiled and laughed and wished people the best in ways that made it clear she didn’t care for them. She fell into the patterns of the woman she’d been for most of her life, and it felt like wearing a mask at a street carnival.
Behind it, she was cataloging everything she heard. Of Geder Palliako’s inner court, Daskellin was far and away the best political mind. His daughter, who had been putting herself in compromising situations with Palliako before he’d been named Lord Regent, had fallen back into propriety. So perhaps Daskellin had gained a better insight into the kind of man Palliako was. Emming was a blowhard who played the gadfly on