The tea smelled peppery as it steeped, and weirdly astringent. Geder drank it quickly to get it over with. Waves of heat and cold pressed out from his throat through his body, leaving him queasy.
“Sleep tonight,” the cunning man said. “Tomorrow, we can talk again?”
“Yes, fine. Yes,” Geder said.
The Tralgu smiled, nodded, and packed away his herbs and daubs and the iron pot. Geder watched him, disconsolate. Something was wrong with him. There was no question about that. Everything was going so well, after all. Antea had conquered the world, or close to it. With the power of the goddess, he’d doubled the empire’s territory. Maybe more than doubled. He’d gained the respect of every kingdom he didn’t run. Respect or else fear. Same thing, really. He’d exposed the Timzinae threat, killed the apostate, ushered in an age of light and truth that was being born now with terrible birthing pangs in the Timzinae’s own homeland.
Every time he doubted, all he had to do was sit with Basrahip. The huge priest’s deep, rolling voice had the gift of putting everything in its right place. Only lately he’d wanted Basrahip’s reassurances more often, and for longer, and the sense of calm that came after had lasted less.
The Tralgu cunning man bowed and Geder waved him away. Maybe the tea would do something. Maybe tomorrow he’d feel better. Or maybe he was simply heartsick. How many songs were there about the man whose lover had broken him? At least some of those had the injured man wasting away, didn’t they?
For a moment, the memory of walking into the compound in Suddapal flooded back to him, fresh as a cut. He ground his teeth until it went away. God, he’d been such a fool. And everyone knew it. He was going to live and die with that moment pricking him forever.
He wasn’t sick. He’d been poisoned. By Cithrin, whom he’d thought he loved.
The bitch. He clenched his fists until his knuckles ached. The evil, two-faced, manipulative bitch.
“Geder?”
Aster stood in the doorway. His lifted chin made him look both stronger and younger than he was, like a child prepared to fight a mountain. Of course. Of course. The boy had watched King Simeon sicken and die, now here Geder was consulting with a dancing line of cunning men. Aster was frightened. Of course he was frightened. The thought put another stone on Geder’s chest. He wanted to leap up, to tell Aster that everything was fine. Or, more accurately, he wanted someone else to do it.
Geder Palliako, Lord Regent of Antea, protector and steward of the Severed Throne. It was his duty to care for the prince. Aster was his friend. One of his only friends. Geder wanted to want to comfort him, but all he really felt was tired.
And still…
“Aster,” he said, waving him closer. The prince came with halting, tentative footsteps. “How are you? Did I miss anything important in court, or is it all still the same?”
Aster tried to smile. Managed it, mostly. Geder lowered himself back on the pillows. The cunning man’s tea was doing something odd in his gut, and it didn’t feel particularly healing. Aster sat on the mattress beside him, hands folded together. He struggled to meet Geder’s eyes and failed.
“I was thinking we could walk,” Aster said. “Just down to the Division and back, maybe? Some fresh air?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think so. Perhaps after I sleep a bit, I could manage.”
Aster’s nod came quickly enough that Geder knew he’d had it on the ready. He’d expected the refusal. For a moment, guilt almost made Geder reconsider, but it was too much. It was too far.
“It’s the weather,” he said. “It’s the cold. Just that. The thaw’s sure to come soon, and I’ll be back to myself.”
“All right,” Aster said.
“I’m not that bad,” Geder said with a little forced smile. “I’m just weary. That’s all.”
“Is there anything I can get for you? There was beef stew last night. It was very good.”
“No. Thank you, no. Just. Just a little rest.”
“Do that and you won’t sleep tonight,” the prince said, trying without success to make a joke of it.
“It doesn’t matter. I won’t sleep anyway,” Geder said. Aster flinched at the words, and Geder closed his eyes for a moment. He didn’t need another reason to feel worn. He loved the boy, wanted well for him, all that, but just now—just for today—he wished Aster would go away. Go chase girls or fight boys or read books. Something that didn’t require him. Geder longed to be outgrown.
“I have some good blankets,” Aster said.
“I have blankets,” Geder said. “I have lots of blankets. As many as anyone could need.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Geder said. “I didn’t mean to snap, it’s just that I’m tired. I’ll rest. I’ll be better. Just let me rest for a little, yes? I’ll be up again before sundown. We can play some cards, you and me and Basrahip. Only we’ll always lose to him.”
“It’s all right,” Aster said, his smile a little nearer to genuine now. “I don’t mind losing.”
“That’s because you’re a wise man,” Geder said, taking the prince’s hand. “A wise man who’ll be a wise king one day. You’ll make your father proud.”
They sat for a moment in silence. Geder tried not to wish it was ended and the boy gone elsewhere, but he did. And then, when Aster rose and walked to the door, he immediately wished he would come back. The door closed behind him, and Geder sank, giving his full weight to the mattress. His body felt too heavy, his muscles too slack. He was a puppet version of himself with the strings all cut. Or fouled in each other.
He closed his eyes, hoping that sleep would take him. Hoping that when he woke, he would be himself again. Or maybe someone better. The pillow felt unpleasantly hot against his cheek, and when he turned, his shirt twisted, clutching at him like a huge cloth hand. He willed his mind to let go, but when he did begin to slide into dream, the voice of the fire was waiting for him, all the way from Vanai. A woman’s body silhouetted by flames, and the sense that he should have sent someone to get her, quick before she burned.
Winter had always been the slow time in Camnipol. The lords and ladies of court were elsewhere, killing deer and boar in the King’s Hunt or at their holdings managing the lands that they ruled. The feasts and intrigues and ceremonies rarely began before first thaw. If anything, being in the capital carried a nuance of the merchant class. Geder and Aster were above petty status wrangles, but most people concerned themselves with it all deeply. Which was why it was so surprising when the court began to arrive early.
It was only a few at first. Minor families, mostly from the east. Breillan Caust had only just gained a holding for his family on the plains outside Nus, the first actual land his family had commanded in four generations. He and his wife and daughter arrived at the trailing end of a storm, ice and snow caked inches thick on the sides of their carriage. Then, two days later, Mill Veren. Then Sallien Halb. Karris Pyrellin. Sutin Kastellian. Iram Shoat. Not the grand names of court, but their younger cousins and nephews.
At first, Geder was pleased. It gave Aster new faces and people and distractions. But as the trickle grew to a stream, it became… not worrying, but strange. He wondered if it might signal some shift in the customs of the court. Younger nobles longing for the company of their own, perhaps. Or less established members of their houses vying for the attention of the Lord Regent and prince.
It was only when Geder found himself reading over a report on the strife in Elassae that he understood. The flow of young and minor nobles to court reflected not the age of the people, but the recentness of their holdings. They had all been given lands and titles in the lands that had been Sarakal and Elassae, and now, before the thaw, before the fighting season, they were coming back to the heart of Antea. It was hard for Geder to see it. His mind, considering the map, brushed over the short-term fighting. It was, after all, the death throes of the old world, and not something that would have a permanent effect. But the pattern was there. Those who’d
arrived early to Camnipol had not been drawn by the prospect of the court. They had fled the threat of violence.
They were afraid.
Letters and reports had been building up, of course. Since the day he’d overseen the execution of the hostages—that was how he’d come to think of it—he’d been under the weather. The letters that had come in, he’d skimmed. Yes, the news had been delivered to the slaves on the Antean farms. No, there had been no uprisings there. He’d shown that Antea had the strength to do what it had promised, and peace had been the prize for it, so that was as it should be. No need to dwell on it.
The reports from Inentai, most from Ernst Mecelli, had been alarmist as they always were. News from Elassae was understandably sparse. That was fine because, after all, the broad strokes were clear. No city where a temple had been raised in the name of the goddess could fall. Her power wouldn’t allow it. Elassae would fight, would struggle, and would fail. The question was only how long it would take and how much blood—Firstblood and Timzinae both—would be spilled along the way, and in his present funk, that wasn’t a question Geder wanted or needed to meditate upon. There would be time enough later.
Mecelli appeared unexpectedly at the Kingspire early on a cold morning. The sky that day was whiter than bleached cotton, and bright. He wore his riding leathers and stank of the road. He was thinner than Geder thought of when he pictured his advisor. Thinner and older and grim. He bowed when Geder entered the withdrawing room, but that was the only concession he made to etiquette.
“Inentai has fallen,” he said. “I’ve ridden here with the couriers. I would have used a cunning man but… but there weren’t any.”
“No,” Geder said. “It’s not fallen. It can’t. It has a temple. So we might lose control of it for a time, but it won’t—”
The older man cut him off. “A force of seven thousand came south from Borja. We stood against them as long as we could, but most of the men had gone to support Broot’s remnant in Elassae. These letters, these… recipes for how best to unmake the priests, had been appearing since midwinter. The priests stood and shouted, but the enemy weren’t listening. We tried to stop them, and we couldn’t.”
“It’s not like that,” Geder said. “I’ll call for Basrahip. He can explain. It’s not like that.”
“You have to raise an army. You have to call the army back.”
“Just rest. I’ll have them bring you tea. Some dried fruit. Would you like some dried apples? Just wait. Just hold together, eh?”
Mecelli collapsed into his chair, his gaze fixed on the flame of the lantern hanging above it. Geder stepped out to the corridor, grabbed the first servant who came to hand, and told her to get the priest. And Canl Daskellin. And to hurry. Even so, it was almost half an hour before Basrahip’s heavy tread approached the door. He entered the room smiling his broad, placid smile, as calm as it was certain.
“Prince Geder,” the priest said, and then to Mecelli, “Lord.”
“We’re dead,” Mecelli said, and the gutter diction was like a slap. “The Lord Regent wanted you to hear it, and by God, I do too. We’re dead. Elassae’s all but taken back from us, Inentai’s fallen. Sarakal will not hold.”
Basrahip’s expression sobered, and he lowered he head. “I hear the despair in your voice, my friend,” he said. “But know this: the power of the goddess has already won. No force in the world can stand against her will. She is truth itself, and the allies of deceit will—”
“Stop it!” Mecelli shouted, standing so quickly that his chair tipped back and clattered against the floor. Geder’s heart skipped. Rage darkened Mecelli’s face to purple and the man’s clenched fists promised more than rhetorical violence. “You listen to me, priest. You hear my voice. There is not a single Antean soldier left alive in Inentai and there are thousands of sword-and-bows that answer to Borja or the traditional families of Sarakal or a paymaster bent on taking bounties from our dead. Your priests there are burned. Your temple there, they knocked to the ground and pissed on the gravel. It’s gone!”
Geder’s breath was coming too quickly, shuddering. Something was wrong. He was having an attack of something. He stumbled back, wondering whether he would have time to reach a cunning man. If Mecelli saw his distress, he ignored it.
“We have no way to retake the city. None. What little we had left is busy dying in Elassae. If the Timzinae and the traditional families have made common cause—and they have—Nus will fall with the first thaw. There will be enemy armies marching on Kavinpol by midsummer!”
A moment came, shorter than a breath.
It struck Geder in the heart like a hammer.
After the moment passed, Basrahip smiled and bellowed, he invoked the goddess and her will and her power as he always had. Geder watched as Mecelli’s despair and rage were battered by the flood of words and imprecations. He watched Mecelli shift from the certainty of their doom to a listless, halfhearted kind of hope. The optimism of a fever. By the time Canl Daskellin arrived, it was all but over. Mecelli made his report to Daskellin: there had been a setback in the East. Inentai would have to be reconquered when the spring broke. The temple there would have to be rededicated. Daskellin listened soberly. It was all as it had been before. As it would be again, if they needed their faith in the powers of the goddess renewed.
All of it the same as ever, except for when the priest had heard Mecelli say the enemy army would arrive by midsummer, and for a moment shorter than a breath and longer than a lifetime, Geder had looked into Basrahip’s face like he was looking down a well and seen confusion there.
Cithrin
No,” the dragon said. “I’m not your cart horse. I took the Stormcrow on his errand. I don’t care to take you on yours. If it’s so important that you be there, go. I will find you if I need you.”
Inys turned his great head away from her and laid it on the ground. His great claws flexed, gouging the flesh of the land apparently without his being aware of doing it. The chill wind bit at Cithrin’s cheeks and earlobes as she stood, deciding whether to press on. She knew that he was sulking, and she thought she guessed why. With Marcus gone and her going, both of the humans Inys knew best were leaving the last dragon behind. And God forbid that he not be the center of all things.
The temptation to chide him for his behavior was difficult to withstand. Phrases like You’ll have other people to tell you how important you are and This is beneath the last dragon and Are you a child? all rose in her mind, and she turned them all away. They might shame Inys into doing what she wanted of him or they might spur him to casual slaughter. And of all humanity, the only one he seemed to care about preserving was Marcus. She wasn’t certain that her value in the dragon’s eyes was high enough to protect her, so she stood for a long moment, looking out over the slate-grey sea under a slate-grey sky, then turned and walked away.
The taproom was warm and loud and busy, and she walked past it without a thought. Since her night with Barriath, she’d stopped drinking. It was always hard, every time she did it, but she needed her wits now. Around her, Carse fell away, step by step. The wide roads were as cold as they had been when the winter was new. The towers as grey.
If there was any change at all, it was only in the slowly contracting span of the nights, the inexorable effort of the light to hold the darkness at bay a few minutes more than the day before, and a scent in the air that hinted at the green and new. In a different year, they’d have been the beacons of hope. Winter’s back broken at last. But this would be a war spring. If she failed, it would be the first of a very long line of them. Or no. Not even the first.
At the holding company, the servants ignored her and the guards nodded her past their swords and axes. The first hard taps of rain sounded against the stones as she ducked into the warmth of the house. Not snow. Not even hail. Rain. Even the clouds were warmer than they’d been.
She found Komme Medean waiting for her in her room. A small fire danced and spat in the grate. The old man’s gout had take
n pity on him, and his joints were of a merely human proportion for the time. He looked up at her with eyes unshadowed by the cunning man’s draughts and tinctures, and she made a little bow, only half in jest. She felt the coppery taste of fear, but pressed it down.
“Will he take you away, then?”
She considered pretending ignorance, but discarded the thought. Better to play it bare. “No hope,” she said. “Not from him.”
“Probably better,” Komme said. “You’d make up something in speed, it’s true. But a fast boat with a good crew’s nothing to look down on either.”
Cithrin lowered herself to the floor beside the grate, the heat of the flames pressing against her arm. Komme Medean looked down at her along the length of his nose. In the flickering light, she could almost forget who he was: the master of a bank that had spanned nations. And still did. And would again, if the idea of nations and countries and kingdoms survived the coming chaos. All her life had been lived in awe of Komme Medean, in the shadow of him and the institution he’d piloted to greatness. He was only a man. Clever, talented, and lucky, but as subject to illness and time, fear and foolishness, as anyone. He smiled at her.
“I met your parents once,” he said. “When they placed their money with the bank, Magister Imaniel had them meet with me. I was traveling in the Free Cities at the time, so it wasn’t as grand a gesture as it sounds. We all had dinner together at a table beside a canal. It was roast pork. And almonds. I didn’t remember that until just now, but it was.”
Cithrin was quiet. She knew little of her family apart from the fact of her parents’ death and the extended family’s disavowal of the half-breed daughter. She thought she should feel something more when she heard of her parents, but it was like hearing names from a song. I ate with Drakkis Stormcrow once, and danced with the Princess of Swords. Father and Mother were ideas, not people. Roles that someone might play, like Magister or Clerk. Or Enemy. Statement of function and relationship, not identity. Komme sighed.