Geder closed the book and sighed. It happened every few weeks. He would find some spare hour that could be carved away from the needs and responsibilities of the kingdom and retreat to his library. He remembered spending hours—days—lost in his books. There had been a time when exploring the speculative essays of history had been like the adventurer Dar Cinlama walking in the forgotten places of the world, discovering forgotten eras and stumbling upon insights that changed his understanding of history. It had brought him to the Righteous Servant, the Sinir Kushku, and the place of highest power in the world. But the price, apparently, was the joy he used to have and couldn’t find any longer. Basrahip derided all printed words as dead, and Geder found the position more and more persuasive. In all his books, there had been only a few mentions of the spider goddess. None at all of the fire years. Or of the oppression of the goddess and her followers by the dragons. Or their flight from the ancient lands that had become Birancour. The true history of the world was preserved in the temple at the edge of the Keshet, and so far as Geder could see, nowhere else. What evidence was there, after all, that Baltan Sorris had studied Drakkis Stormcrow? Or that Sorris had even existed, for that matter? The battles and struggles and intrigues of history might be nothing more than make-believe given dignity by print.
In that light, Geder’s personal library seemed empty. Not a field rich with truths to be uncovered, but a desert where if there were any truths, they were indistinguishable from lies. It was a conclusion he reached over and over again, forgetting every time, then going back and disappointing himself again. Perhaps it was time to find some other pursuit to distract him from the burdens of rulership.
Perhaps he could learn to play music.
“Lord Regent?”
“Yes, I know,” Geder said. “I’m coming.”
The chamber had been a ballroom once, before Geder had appropriated it. The tiers of benches that rose up on three walls had once been intended for men and women of nobility to take their rest while still seeing and being seen. Now Geder’s personal guard stood there, swords and bows at the ready. Where the wooden parquet that had supported some forgotten generation of dancers had splintered and warped, Geder had had black stone put in. The graceful lamps and candleholders he’d replaced with dark iron sconces and pitch-stinking torches. His own seat rose high above the floor, like a magistrate’s counter, only higher, wider, and grander. Basrahip’s station was across the way, where Geder could glance up from the prisoner and have the priest tell him whether the statements were lies or truth. He’d used it first to assure himself of the loyalty of his guards, and then of his subjects. The noble classes of Asterilhold were still being brought, one by one, through the chamber, and while the constant repetition of questions—Are you loyal to me? Are you plotting against the throne?—sometimes became tedious, the pleasure of catching out a liar never lost its charm.
Abden Shadra had been head of the one of the most powerful of the traditional families. His sons and daughters, nephews and nieces and cousins had controlled almost a third of the nation that had once been Sarakal. He knelt on the black floor without even the strength left to rise. His hair was white against his dark scales, his lip swollen. Bruises didn’t look like bruises on Timzinae. The blood pooling under their skin shoved the scales up and stretched them. Abden Shadra’s left arm looked almost like a sausage because of it. The rags that hung from his shoulders might have been fine robes once. They were certainly humbled now.
Geder leaned forward on his elbows, looking down at the man.
“You know who I am?” Geder asked.
The Timzinae’s gaze swam up and up until it found him. Even then, it seemed that he lost his train of thought, forgot the question and then remembered it. He licked his lips.
“Palliako,” he said.
“Yes, good,” Geder said. “Tell me about your part in the plot against my life.”
Abden Shadra swallowed, worked his mouth like he was trying to expel some foul taste from it. Even from where he sat, Geder could hear the dry clicking of tongue against teeth. The man’s eyes shifted to the left and then the right and then back again. Geder felt the stirrings of hope, of excitement.
“You started the war,” Abden Shadra said. “We didn’t attack you.”
“No. Before that,” Geder said. “Did you meet with Dawson Kalliam?”
“Never met him.”
Geder glanced up, and Basrahip nodded. It was true.
“Did you meet with his agents?”
“No.” True.
“Did you conspire to have me or Prince Aster killed?”
“No.”
“Do you know who did?”
“A great lot of your own people.” Geder didn’t bother looking at Basrahip for that one.
“Who in Sarakal? Who among the Timzinae?”
“I don’t know of anyone,” the man said. “You could talk to Silan Junnit. He had a reputation for caring about you people.” Geder glanced up. True. And interesting. He added a name to the list he had built. Silan Junnit. He’d have to see if that was one of the prisoners he’d taken. He’d had a few suggestions like this before, but more often than not, the person named was already dead. It was frustrating. The conspiracy always seemed on the edge of exposure, and then it would dance just out of reach. It never seemed to be the person he’d captured, but one they knew of or had heard about.
It frustrated him. And it frightened him more than a little.
“Will you swear to take no action against Antea, the Severed Throne, me, or Aster?”
“I will. If that’s what you want from me, I’ll do it.” Basrahip hesitated, shrugged, nodded. It was true. Geder’s eyes narrowed. This was always the hardest part, but he felt he was genuinely getting better at it.
“Would you mean it?”
“Yes.” Basrahip shook his head. No. He wouldn’t, and he knew he wouldn’t, and now Geder knew it too. It was as predictable as it was disappointing.
“Take him back to his cell,” Geder said. “Bring in the next one.”
Two guards stepped forward and hoisted Abden Shadra by his shoulders.
“No!” the Timzinae said. “I’ll swear whatever you want! I’ll do what you say, just don’t send me back there.”
Geder leaned forward.
“You,” he said coldly, “don’t get to lie to me. Take him back.”
The man’s cries echoed as they hauled him back. The great doors opened and then closed again. Two new guards hauled a woman’s form into the light. She was younger, her scales a glossy black. Her dress was rough canvas, and likely given to her in the prison. When they let her go, she sank to her knees, wrapping her arms around her chest. Geder checked his list.
“Sohen?” he asked. “Sohen Bais?”
The woman nodded, but the only sounds she made were sobs. Geder looked at Basrahip, but the priest neither nodded nor shook his head. In the absence of the living voice, there was nothing. A gesture was only a gesture, whatever the intent behind it.
“You have to answer,” Geder said. “You have to actually talk. Do you understand?”
The woman wailed. Geder felt a pang of guilt followed instantly by resentment at having been made to feel guilty. He pressed his thumb against his nose and considered calling the proceedings to an end for the day. He didn’t want to be here anymore. But once he started slacking off his duties, it would only get harder to pick them back up.
“Sohen,” he said, speaking as gently as he could manage. “Sohen. Listen to me. Listen to my voice. It’s going to be all right. It is. No one here wants to hurt you.”
She looked up. Tears ran from her eyes and mucus from her nose. Her mouth was set in a gape. Geder tried a smile, nodding encouragement. She closed her mouth and nodded back. He let his smile widen and felt a little better about himself.
“Good. You’re doing fine. No one here wants to hurt you. You just need to tell me the truth. Your name is Sohen Bais?”
Her voice was a creak. “It
is.” Behind her, Basrahip nodded.
“See?” Geder said. “Just like that. You’re doing fine. Now. Do you know who I am?”
There was a feast that night, just like every other damn night of the season. One of Canl Daskellin’s daughters—Alisa—was to marry a young baron from Asterilhold. On the one hand, since he’d conquered Asterilhold, it would be better if the noble classes there were fully engaged with ingratiating themselves to Antea. On the other, it was exactly this sort of political marriage a few generations back that had given rise to the mixed bloodlines that had allowed Feldin Maas to conspire against King Simeon. It was strange how long ago that seemed. Geder sat at the high table with Aster and Lord Daskellin and his family looking out upon the assembled courtiers. The trees in the gardens had been draped with bright cloth. Lanterns of colored glass glowed all around them and scented the air with sweet oil and smoke. The slightest breeze set the trees to nodding to one another like old magistrates impressed with their own wisdom, while the men and women of the court gabbled to each other below them. Geder tapped his knife against his plate, not because he wanted anything. He only felt restless, and it made a pleasing sort of clink.
Sanna Daskellin sat across from her father, near enough that Geder could easily catch her eye, and she his. There had been an incident not long after he’d become Baron of Ebbingbaugh and before he’d been named Lord Regent when he’d been fairly sure that Sanna had been, if not wooing him, at least making it very plain that she was open to being wooed. Tonight, though, her face was a mask of politeness and decorum. Geder couldn’t tell if it was because her father was present or if her opinion of him had changed. She leaned forward a degree, her eyebrow rising in query, and Geder realized he’d been staring at her a bit. He shook his head and waved his hand.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just lost in the haze of it all. Running the empire does tend to consume all one’s spare thoughts.”
“And yet you manage it wonderfully,” Sanna said with a smile, so perhaps her view of him hadn’t entirely shifted. Canl Daskellin shifted nearer as the servants refiled his wineglass.
“The fighting season is nearly at an end,” he said. “Summer’s high now, but autumn’s coming. All these leaves will be losing their green before you know it.”
“I suppose that’s so,” Geder said.
“Still,” Daskellin said, “we’ve done better than anyone expected. All of Asterilhold conquered one year, all of Sarakal the next? I don’t think anyone will dare cross the Severed Throne now. You’ve done a brilliant job of it. Brilliant.”
Geder smiled, but he didn’t particularly mean it. He heard the unspoken argument. Autumn would come. The army would have to be brought home and the disband called. The veterans would have to return to their lands and work. The war would have to end. Mecilli had been making the same argument in less oblique terms, and Geder didn’t find Daskellin’s softer approach any more endearing.
“The work’s not done,” Geder said. “Whichever group is behind all this, they’ve evaded me so far, but they can’t hide forever.”
A young man in the colors of House Daskellin fluttered by and Geder’s plate seemed to sprout a pink ham steak, two large bites already taken out where his official taster had already sampled it. There had been a time when Geder had been able to eat his own food without someone hovering over it. Maybe there would be again, someday. He cut a bite free and popped it into his mouth. At least it tasted good.
“Have you considered, my lord,” Daskellin said, his words careful as a cat walking along the top of a wall, “that there might not be a Timzinae conspiracy?”
Geder put down his knife.
“Have you forgotten how I came to be here? One of our own joined with King Lechan of Asterilhold to kill Aster and his father and take the throne. A year after that, my own patron tried to open my side with a knife. He actually cut Basrahip. This court has been so rotten with schemes and lies and covert plans, it’s amazing we didn’t all slaughter each other and hand the throne to the first idiot to wander across the border.”
“Of course no one disputes—”
“Everybody knows Dawson Kalliam was suborned by Timzinae,” Geder said, “and I am close to finding them. Very close. Almost every third person I’ve questioned from the traditional families knows someone who they say might have been involved. Our mistake was thinking we could catch them easily. The ones who escaped when Sarakal fell were the ones who knew the war was coming. The ones who knew there was a reason for it.”
Daskellin’s smile had wilted a bit, but it hadn’t vanished. He lifted a single finger, his skin smooth but as dark as a Timzinae’s.
“I’d thought the reason we’d crossed into Sarakal was to prove the empire wasn’t weak, despite all we’d been through. I would have thought we’d made that clear.”
“By letting our enemies escape?” Geder asked.
“Would my lord care for some of these greens?” Sanna asked, leaning in toward them. Her smile had a nervous edge. “The cooks used garlic and oil and salt, and the flavor is amazing.”
“You’ll have to send them to my taster,” Geder said. “My point—” The servant placed a cup of cool water beside his plate. “My point is that if we stop now, call Ternigan back, give him a triumph, and call the disband, the men who started this will still be out there. And everyone who knows of them will see that. Yes, I’ve heard Mecilli’s arguments, and yes, it will mean some sacrifice. But consider what happens if we’re too timid. We’ll see all the chaos and war we’ve suffered a hundred times over.”
“A hundred more years like these, and we’ll have conquered the stars,” Daskellin said, but Geder didn’t find the joke funny or the flattery convincing.
“We have to press on,” Geder said. “I know winter campaigns aren’t well thought of, but Elassae’s fairly warm, and if Ternigan does as well between now and next spring as he’s done until now, the whole problem will be solved by first thaw.”
“I understand,” Daskellin said. “My only concern is that the roaches may—”
Aster made a false cough that meant he wanted to speak. The boy was so quiet that it was easy to forget that he was there with them. Geder turned to him, even though it meant putting his back to Daskellin.
“If Elassae wants to avoid war, they can,” the boy said sweetly. “All they’d need to do is hand over the conspirators. And if they won’t do that, then we can’t really pretend they haven’t chosen sides.”
Geder felt objections boiling up, but he closed his lips against them. Talking to Aster wasn’t like sitting with Emming or Daskellin. Or even Jorey Kalliam. Aster would be king when he was old enough. The Severed Throne was his, and Geder was only protecting it for him. And Aster watched Geder as he’d watched King Simeon. He studied with his tutors and with Minister Basrahip, and his young mind, while not yet fully formed, was engaged and lively. Already, the shape of his face had changed from the roundness it had had. The first planes and angles were in his cheeks, showing what he would be when he’d grown to manhood. The same was true of his words. Letting him have his voice in the decisions of the crown wasn’t handing him live steel. Geder would still sign the commands. Hearing the boy out was the least he could do.
“So you think we shouldn’t press on?” he said.
“I think giving them the chance to avoid war would be the kind and honorable thing.”
“I agree with the prince,” Daskellin said. “If there is a way to end this gracefully and turn back to the business of rebuilding the kingdom, we should.”
Geder folded his hands together. “I will put together a proclamation for Ternigan to deliver before he comes to any more battles. If they turn over the conspirators—all the conspirators—we’ll show mercy. Agreed?”
“I do,” Aster said. “Though honestly, I can’t think they’ll take it. They’re Timzinae. It’s not as if they were people.”
Marcus
The dream came again. After so many months away, it was like enc
ountering an old enemy. Marcus knew, even as it began, as the normal meaningless patterns of his sleeping mind began to change to the terrible and familiar, that it wasn’t real. Perhaps it should have helped.
Alys and Merian were there, with him. He couldn’t see their faces anymore. They had been lost from memory years ago, but the sense of their physical presence was unmistakable. His wife. Their daughter. The flood of love and joy filled him against his will. He didn’t want it, but it came. The sense of relief was like an assault, because he knew what would follow it.
The crackling of fire. Merian was screaming. Marcus ran, his legs refusing him. Tree branches held him back, or men’s arms, or the thickened air itself. He panted and gasped, he willed himself forward even as he knew that he was already years too late. The green scabbard bounced against his back, the poison of the blade making him stumble. Merian’s shrieks were like a cat being strangled. Even though he couldn’t reach her, he could feel her breath against his ear.
He was in the fire, cradling her. She was still in his arms, and he thought—as he always did in this part—that she was safe. That he’d saved her. This time, he’d saved her, and when he woke, she would be alive because of it. And then he understood. The grief was wider than oceans. He screamed out for a vengeance that he’d taken almost a decade before.
The burned child in his arms was Merian, but it was also Cithrin. He didn’t put her down, but in the logic of dreams he was also drawing the venomed blade. He felt himself running, and this time the speed was like falling. He would take his revenge.