she’d stumbled through her days like a woman half asleep. Now she walked the edge of the Division or looked out over the southern plains, visited the Prisoner’s Span and the taprooms and the fresh markets. The increase in her allowance meant that even as the others around her struggled, she was able to keep herself near to the daily life to which she’d become accustomed. Things did change around her. The market for day-old bread had become competitive, and she gave up the practice of handing it out as charity. The price of tobacco dropped, though, so she could afford something that was actually worth smoking.
They were small examples of something larger. Years of war had changed Camnipol, and the changes weren’t yet done. Small pleasures went away and new ones appeared, and Clara found that so long as she paid attention to the new, mourning the old wasn’t so bad. If anything, it had become the way she lived her life.
After the last of the great parties, there were a handful of small occasions. Winter teas held in drawing rooms while the servants of the house packed the summer’s things away. A knitting group where several fallen women of the court, herself included, were taught a novel way of making shawls by an ancient Jasuru man with half his teeth missing, one blind eye, and an exquisite talent for lacework. There were farewells and promises that the next year would come and it would be different. As if any were ever the same.
She gathered what gossip and information she could for her letters, though the exercise had taken on an almost formal feeling. She wrote her letters, she sent them out, and nothing ever came back. Not that she’d given anyone a way to reach her. Sometimes she thought that she should. She could give them a false name to send to at the boarding house or direct them to Cold Hammer stables much as she had Ternigan. She never did, though. Part of that was concern for not being caught, but part was also that she liked the way things were now. Sending letters into nowhere and with no response was strangely calming. Like prayer, now that she thought of it.
As for her plan to undercut Lord Ternigan, she’d all but given up hope. Weeks passed, and though Kiaria hadn’t fallen, Ternigan didn’t reply.
Until, one day shortly after the last of Clara’s old friends had left the city, he did.
The morning had begun late, dawn creeping in later and later until it seemed that before long darkness would take the world entirely. Clara had extracted herself from the bed without waking Vincen, washed and dressed herself, and escaped into the grey streets. Frost crept along the bases of the buildings, and the horses in the streets walked slowly in order to keep their footing. At the bakery, she bought an apple tart and a cup of coffee, sitting by the doorway and watching the traffic in the street. It was her day to visit Sabi-ha’s unmentionable son and the family that was raising him, and had it been any other errand, she would have postponed it and gone back to the comfortable warmth of the boarding house. But children came with a different set of rules, and when she had drained the dregs of her cup and licked away the last of her tart, she bought a sugar bun for the boy and made her way to the house.
When she left, near midday, she meant to walk directly back to Vincen. Nothing more was required of her, and an afternoon smoking by the fire and reading poems either to herself or aloud to him sounded more than perfect. But her path was going to take her only a few streets from the stables, and she hadn’t bothered checking in there in days. She turned toward the southern gate.
She was still half a block from it when her former footman stepped out from the front gate and waved her to come closer. Clara’s heart beat a bit faster, and she walked more quickly without breaking into a run. When she drew up to him, he put a hand on her arm and leaned in close enough that his breath was warm against her ear.
“It’s come,” was all that he said. “Lirin Petty’s got a letter.”
The stables themselves were dark and hot in comparison to the street. While the sunlight didn’t warm them, the bodies of the horses in