Clara Annalie Kalliam Baroness of Osterling Fells My lady," the Tralgu door slave said, bowing.
"Good morning, Andrash," Clara said, stretching the kinks out of her back. "I can't begin to tell you how good it is to be back in the city. I do love the holding in its own right, but it simply wasn't built for the summer sun. Vincen will be... You remember Vincen? He'll be seeing to the things we brought, if you could find someone to help him?"
"Yes, my lady. Your sons are, I believe, in the summer garden."
"Sons?"
"Captain Barriath arrived some days ago," the slave said.
"Jorey and Barriath in the same house. Well, that can't have been pleasant."
The door slave smiled.
"It is good to have you back, my lady."
Clara patted the old man's arm as she left the heat and warmth of their private square for the dim and cool of the mansion proper. She saw at once how things had slipped. The flowers in the hall vases were wilted. The floor had a layer of grit blown in by the wind and not yet washed away. The air was close and stuffy the way it got when the windows had stayed shut for too many days in a row. Jorey had been much too amiable with the house staff. Or else he was growing to be as oblivious as his dear father. Either way, something would have to be done.
She heard the boys' voices before she reached the garden. Jorey's voice was higher, shriller, more demanding. Barriath tended to spit his arguments as if they tasted bad. From the time Jorey had had words, the two had been like fire and rain to each other, but they were devoted to one another. Clara had had much the same relationship with her own sister. No one can harm her but me, and I shall destroy her. Love was so often like that.
At the steps down into the summer garden, she paused.
"Because it's simplistic, that's why," Jorey said. "There's a hundred things happening, and they all tie into each other. Now that there isn't going to be a farmer's council, are we facing another grain revolt? If Northcoast's really on the edge of another round of succession wars, will Asterilhold be distracted from us? Are the new Hallskari ship designs going to mean more piracy in Estinport and less in Tauendak? You can't take everything like that and press it down into one thing. The world's more complex than that."
"There are fewer choices than you believe, brother," Barriath said. "You won't find someone against the farmers and supporting Asterilhold. If you want one, you take the other. No family will forbid mixing races and also trade with Borja. The king isn't like a sculptor with a fresh stone, able to make whatever he sees fit. He's like a man walking into a sculptor's yard picking from what's already there."
"And you think the prince is the only way he can show his favor?"
"The only one that matters," Barriath said. "If his majesty gave every favor and grant he has to Daskellin, and sent Aster to be the ward of Maas, he'd still be saying that in the long term, the kingdom will be shaped by Maas's vision. That's why Issandrian - "
"But if the king - "
The two voices intertwined, neither boy listening to other, and the threads of their arguments tangled into a single ugly knot. Clara stepped out into the garden and put her hands on her hips in feigned accusation.
"If this is how you greet your poor mother, I should have fostered you both with wolves," she said.
Her boys both grinned and came to embrace her. They were men now, strong-armed and smelling of musk and hair oil. It seemed like only the week before that she'd been able to take them in her arms. Then they started in again, talking over each other, only now the melee of words seemed to center on her and why she was there rather than the politics of the court. Clara beamed at them both and stepped down into the lush green and pale blooms of the summer garden. The fountain, at least, had been maintained, water splashing down the front of a contemplative if underdressed cast bronze Cinnae woman. Clara sat at the fountain's lip and began pulling off her traveling jacket.
"Your father, poor thing, is gnawing his foot off back at home, and as a favor to him and myself, I have come to keep up some semblance of normalcy. This idiotic bickering has cost me the better part of the season already, and I simply must see dear Phelia."
Jorey leaned against an ivied wall. Arms crossed and scowling, he looked like the image of his father. Barriath sat beside her and laughed.
"I have missed you. No other woman would call the first armed conflict on the streets of Camnipol in five generations idiotic bickering," he said.
"I am just as sorry as anyone about what happened to dear Lord Faskellin," Clara said, sharply. "But I defy you to call it anything besides idiotic."
"Peace, Mother, peace," Barriath said. "You're quite right, of course. It's only that no one else puts it that way."
"Well, I can't think why they don't," Clara said.
"Does Father know you're going to call on Maas?" Jorey asked.
"He does, and before you start, I am to be guarded the whole time, so please don't bother with the monster stories of Lord Maas and all the terrible thing he's like to do to me."
Her two boys looked at one another.
"Mother," Jorey began, and she cut him off with a wave of her hand. She turned pointedly to her eldest son.
"I assume you've taken leave from the fleet, Barriath dear. How is poor Lord Skestinin and that painted shrew he had the poor judgment to marry?"
The streets of the city were full and busy. Carriage wheels clattered over the cobblestones. In the market, butchers sold meat and bakers, bread. Petty criminals scooped shit out of the alleys and off the pavement, guarded by swordsmen wearing the king's colors if not precisely his livery. The cherry trees that lined the streets sported green fruit with real threats of red. Workmen hung out over the Division, repairing and maintaining the very bridges from which they were suspended. She had not thought it possible that a city could look as it had in better times, sound as it had, smell as it had, and still be bent double under the weight of fear. She had been wrong.
It showed in small things. Merchants too quick to laugh, altercations over precedence and right of way, and the stony expression common to everyone in the city when they thought no one was watching. Even the horses smelled something, their huge, liquid eyes a fraction too wide and their gait just barely skittish.
She'd chosen to take a sedan chair open on the sides with four bearers and Vincen Coe walking beside it. Something had happened to the poor man's eye just before they'd left Osterling Fells, and the bruise had started to seep yellow and green down his cheek. He wore boiled leather studded with steel and both sword and dagger. It was more than a huntsman would sport, and with the recent injury, he looked quite thuggish.
The mansion of Feldin Maas shared a private courtyard with House Issandrian. Both gates were of the same gaudy ironwork, the houses themselves painted and adorned in such rich profusion they seemed designed by a cake maker gone mad. Curtin Issandrian, of course, was exiled just as her Dawson was, and he had taken all his family and servants with him. Her uncle Mylus had suffered a blow to the head when he was young and spent his life with half his face slack and empty. The square reminded Clara of him, all bustle and action on the left and empty as death on the right.
Phelia stood at the top of the front steps. Her dress was purple velvet with silver thread all along the sleeves and collar. It should have been beautiful on her. Clara gave her shawl to the footman and went up to Phelia. Her cousin took her hands and smiled tightly.
"Oh, Clara," Phelia said. "I can't say how much I've missed you. This has been the most awful year. Please, come in."
Clara nodded to the door slave. It wasn't the Dartinae woman she was used to seeing, but a severe-looking Jasuru man. He didn't nod back. She stepped into the relative cool of the Maas front hall.
"Hey! Stop, you!"
Clara turned, surprised to be addressed in so curt a fashion, only to see that the comment had been directed at Vincen Coe. The Jasuru man was on his feet, his palm against Vincen's chest. The huntsman had gone unnaturally still.
"He's with me," Clara said.
"No one goes in armed," the door slave growled.
"You can wait here, Vincen."
"All respect, my lady," the huntsman said, his gaze still fastened to the Jasuru, "but no."
Clara put a hand to her cheek. Phelia had gone pale, her hands flitting one way and another like birds.
"Leave your blades, then," Clara said. And then to her cousin, "I assume we can rely on the rules of hospitality?"
"Of course," Phelia said. "Yes, of course. Of course you can."
Vincen Coe stood silent for a moment. Clara had to agree that Phelia would have been more convincing if she hadn't said it three times over. Vincen's hands went to his belt, undid the clasp, and handed it with sword and dagger still sheathed to the door slave. The Jasuru took it and nodded him through.
"I believe you've lost weight since I saw you last," Clara said, walking at Phelia's side. "Are you feeling well?"
Her answering smile was so brittle it cracked at the sides.
"It's been so hard. Ever since the king sent away Curtin and Alan - and you, of course. Ever since then, it's all been so hard. Feldin hardly sleeps anymore. I wish all this had never happened."
"Men," Clara said, patting Phelia's arm. The woman shied away, and then, as if realizing she ought not, permitted the touch with a nod. "Dawson's been beside himself. Really, you'd think the world was ending from the way he chews at every scrap of gossip."
"I love the king and God knows I'm loyal to the throne," Phelia said, "but Simeon's handled this all so badly, hasn't he? A brawl goes out of hand, and he sends people into exile? It only makes everyone feel there's something terrible happening. There doesn't have to be."
She turned up a wide flight of well-polished black stairs. Clara followed her. From the end of the hall they were leaving, Clara heard men's voices raised in argument but couldn't make out the words. One of the voices was Feldin Maas, but while the other seemed familiar, she couldn't put a name to it. She caught Vincen Coe's eye and nodded him down the hall.
Go find what you can.
He shook his head once. No.
Clara lifted her eyebrows, but by then they'd reached the landing. Phelia ushered them into the wide sitting room.
"You can wait here," Clara said at the doorway.
"If you wish, my lady," Vincen Coe said, and turned to stand with his back to the wall like a guard at his duty and didn't show the vaguest hint of going back down the stairs to investigate. It was all quite vexing.
The sitting room had been redone in shades of red and gold since the last time Clara had seen it, but it still had the low divan by the window that she preferred. And, like a good hostess, Phelia had a pipe prepared for her. Clara plucked up the bone and hardwood bowl and tamped a bit of tobacco into it.
"I don't know what to do any longer," Phelia said, sitting on the divan. She was leaning forward with her hands clasped between her knees like a child. "I tell myself things aren't so terribly bad, but then I wake up in the dark of the night and I can't get back to sleep. Feldin's never there. He comes to bed with me, but as soon as I'm asleep he goes back to his letters and his meetings."
"These are hard times," Clara said. She lit the pipe from a thin silver candle set there for the purpose and drew in the smoke.
"Curtin was going to take the prince on as his ward, you know. But now that he's gone, everyone's been scrambling. I think... I think Feldin may be named. I may be helping to raise a prince." Phelia giggled. "Can you imagine me raising a prince?"
"Aster's a boy," Clara said. "I've had three of them. One doesn't raise boys so much as try to keep fragile things out of their reach."
"Men aren't any different," Phelia said. "They never think about what might break."
Clara sucked on the stem of the pipe and blew out a cloud of sweet grey smoke before she spoke.
"That is the issue, isn't it? We have a problem, and it's spilled over from our court into Northcoast and Asterilhold. Sarakal and Hallskar are likely taking notice as well."
"I know it."
"Well then, dear," Clara said, keeping her voice light, "how shall we solve it?"
"I don't know why it's all such a concern. There were ages when Asterilhold, Antea, and Northcoast all answered to the High Kings. Everyone's intermarried with everyone else. We're practically a single kingdom already. When you think about it."
"That is so utterly true," Clara said, sitting beside her cousin. Phelia was plucking at her dress with her fingertips now, picking away threads and lint that weren't there.
"I just don't see why there should be any fuss about swords and bows and such. Nobody can possibly want that, can they? What would fighting gain anyone? It isn't as if we aren't already practically one kingdom."
"Yes, but as long as there's one throne in Camnipol and another in Kaltfel, they'll rattle their swords at one another," Clara said. "It's what they do, isn't it?"
Phelia started. Her eyes were wider than they should have been, and her hands gripped her knees until the blood was all gone from her knuckles. Now that was interesting. Clara cleared her throat and went on, pretending not to notice.
"The problem is how to give everyone a way to keep their honor intact without asking very much of them. I know Dawson won't bring himself to see reason unless we can find a path to it that doesn't involve stooping under something. I assume your Feldin's very much the same."
"But he's won. Feldin feels he's won, and if the prince does come to live with us..."
Clara waited.
"You know I admire Dawson," Phelia said. "He's always been so staunch. Even when he was being rude to Feldin, it was more from the way Dawson lives in the world as he would like it to be. I never thought it was out of anger or spite."
"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call my darling husband a man without spite, but I take your meaning, yes."
Phelia giggled nervously. Her shoulders were hunched like someone braced against a blow.
"Did you hear that Rania Hiren's pregnant?" Phelia asked. Clara debated for less than a heartbeat, and decided to let her cousin change the subject.
"Not again. How many times is this?"
"Eight, if you count the live births. There were three stillborn."
"I'm amazed she has the stamina," Clara said. "And her husband must be a man of some quality. Rania's the dearest soul under the sky, but after the twins, she did start to look a bit like a mop's head. It isn't her fault, of course. It's just her skin."
"I have the same sort, though," Phelia said. "I dread to think what I'll look like after my first child."
"You're young, dear. I'm sure you'll be able to get your figure back. I suppose it's rude for me to ask how work has been on that particular project?"
Phelia blushed, but she also relaxed. Bed gossip and the intricacies of the female flesh might be indelicate, but they were safer than politics and the rumors of war. Throughout the hour, Clara let them talk of nothing in particular, always leaving opportunities for Phelia to return them to the topic of their husbands and the threat hanging over the city like smoke from a fire. At no point did Phelia take the opportunities offered her. That said quite a bit in itself.
When the time came to take her leave, Clara found Vincen Coe precisely where he had been, scowling at the empty air. As they walked down the stairs, Phelia took Clara's arm, leaning into her with each step; the visit seemed to have calmed her as much as it had uneased Clara herself. At the door, Vincen reclaimed his blades from the Jasuru as Clara embraced Phelia in farewell. Her bearers brought the sedan chair to the ready, and Clara took her shawl back from the footman. It wasn't until she was out of the private square that the last of the tobacco ran out and Clara realized she'd accidentally stolen Phelia's pipe. She knocked the bowl clean on the side opposite from Vincen so as to keep the ashes from falling on him.
"You were eavesdropping, I assume?" she said, loudly enough to carry over the noise of the street.
"Not at all, my lady."
"Oh please, Vincen," she said. "I'm not dim. How much did you hear?"
A few moments later, the huntsman shrugged.
"Almost all, my lady. She spoke a bit softly when she was discussing her fertility problems, and you were laughing at the comments about Lord Sonnen's mistress."
"You heard the first part, then. About my husband and hers?"
"I did."
"Why do you suppose she would be concerned about Asterilhold and Antea sharing a common history? Being 'practically one kingdom'?"
"At a guess, my lady, because she expects they may be again."
He glanced at her, and his expression - guarded, calm, grim - told her that they were in agreement. Whatever the intricacies of blood and marriage, precedent and politics, Antea and Asterilhold could never be united while Simeon and Aster lived. And Phelia, never meaning to say it, thought unification possible. Even likely. And Aster was quite likely going to be living under her roof.
It seemed to follow that Feldin Maas and his foreign backers intended to kill Prince Aster.
"Well," Clara said with a sigh. "So much for making peace."