and she was undeniable in her sorrow. But in the heart of her disgrace and loss, there was another woman. Not a younger one, but one who had caught the scent of a freedom unlike any she’d ever known, and who was dreadfully hungry for it.
From the time she’d been old enough to put on a dress, she had been a woman of the noble class. Her path had been trod by generations, and led more or less to the same grave that held their dry bones. The world was disrupted now, broken, and she was no one. What scandal could touch her that would compare with what she already carried? Even if the highest names in the court saw her now, they would turn away and pretend they hadn’t. She had ceased to matter. Her actions and opinions were impotent, and so they could be anything. She was already fallen, and so she’d been freed.
It was an illusion, she knew. All actions carried consequences, even among the disgraced. But it was a convincing illusion, and it gave her hope that the world she had lost was not the only world there was.
“Can I …” Vincen said, his voice breaking into her reverie. She was surprised to see how far they had walked in silence and how close she had been holding his arm. “I’m sorry, m’lady, but can I ask?”
“I reserve the right to lie,” she said cheerfully, but the moment of light repartee was gone, and the words sounded hollow.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “What is it we’re doing?”
“Walking home before sunset for another bowl of your cousin’s somewhat purgatorial stew, I believe,” Clara said.
“Not that, ma’am. I mean that every day, we speak to people and find out what we can. Put together what’s happening in the city and in the empire like we’re tracking broken twigs and scat. But … well, but what is it you hope to do after?”
It was a powerful question, and one that Clara knew she’d avoided asking herself. Thus far, truly, she’d done nothing. To wander the city and make what connections she could was a benign occupation for a widow living on her son’s limited charity. To conspire against the throne … well, it had an air of danger and romance about it, but what precisely it meant was an open question.
In truth, she didn’t hate Geder Palliako. She had heard from her son Jorey of the burning of Vanai. She knew of Palliako’s thwarted impulse to kill the entire noble class of Asterilhold. She had listened to him slaughter her husband as a traitor, though she hadn’t had the strength to watch. If she had swallowed darkness and sworn revenge, no one could have argued that it hadn’t been earned. But she had also seen Palliako frightened and at sea among the young women at her son’s wedding. He had been at her side when the treachery of Feldin Maas had been exposed. She felt about him the way she did about fire or flood or a blight that took a season’s crop. He was merely a catastrophe. One might fear the flames even as one stood against them, but to hate them was absurd.
But what, then, was to be done?
“Tell someone, I suppose,” she said with a sigh. “Preferably someone in a position to do something about it. Surely there will be a dissenting group within the court that would—”
“Know and recognize you? Palliako’s sent his private guard for you once already.”
“He didn’t keep me,” Clara said, but the point was not lost on her. There had been others to go before Geder’s odd religious tribunal who had not been so fortunate. And the next time she might not be either. The winter sun slipped down behind the roofs and walls of Camnipol, the sky fading to a soft grey. The taprooms and coffee houses lit their lanterns, the sounds of music and song curling out to the streets, but even that seemed strained and martial. It would have been pretty to believe that the poison in the blood of Antea was only Geder Palliako, but if she were to be honest, she knew it had already spread. Her kingdom had caught a fever, and it would be years before it was well.
If she hoped to avoid that, she would need to be discreet. Happily, she’d been raised as a woman in the royal court where discretion, subtlety, and the tacit control of information were already something