“Congratulations,” Dawson had said loud enough to reach Mastellin’s ears. “You’re about to be the most loyal chicken in the wolf den.”
In truth, though, if Mastellin hadn’t broken, another of them would. Dawson understood that. It was the unholy power of their voices, insinuating their lies until they were indistinguishable from truth. Dawson had struggled against it. What hope was there for a weak-minded man like Mastellin? Or Klin. Or any of the others.
The enemy guard had accepted Dawson as a prisoner, and he’d been hauled away to the gaol and a day of beatings and humiliations ending here, in the same hole as his own captive and hoping that somehow Clara and Jorey had slipped the cordon. If he died, he died for his own judgment. But Clara… He’d have spared her that, if he could.
“Don’t blame yourself,” King Lechan said. “He’s more than either of us could have stood against.”
“What?”
“Palliako. Geder Palliako. He isn’t human. The dead walk with him and tell him their secrets.”
Dawson laughed, but it made his ribs ache and he stopped.
“Have you met him?” Dawson asked. “He’s a tool. He’d have been a scholar but he didn’t have the discipline for it.”
“I heard the guards talking about it. The one who brings the food? His brother saw Palliako by the fountain sitting with the dead king. He saw dead Simeon bow to him. This Palliako is a wizard, I think. Or a dragon in human skin.”
“He’s nothing like that. He’s a hobbyist. He didn’t command the death of your noblemen out of bloodthirst. He did it out of fear. The idea that if he could just cut off enough heads, he’d be safe. If he’d had to wield the axe himself, he’d have turned white and decided on clemency. He’s petty and a coward. He’s not even grand enough to be evil.”
King Lechan shook his head.
“He has defeated us.”
“No,” Dawson said. “I defeated you, and that hell-born priest defeated me. Palliako may have succeeded, but he’s never won anything. And he never will.”
T
hey found him,” Lord Skestinin said. He sat on a small three-legged stool the guards had brought for the purpose. The prisoners were consigned to the floor, but Dawson didn’t take the slight personally. He was well beyond that now. “They said he rose up out of the ground with Prince Aster at his side. Walked back to the Kingspire dressed in robes like a commoner. He’d been on the streets the whole time, but no one knows where.”
“I’m surprised they aren’t saying he was killed in the original attack and rose up from the grave to preserve the kingdom,” Dawson said dryly.
Skestinin’s chuckle had a nervous edge.
“Odd stories do seem to find ways to attach to that man, don’t they?”
“You’ve seen him?”
“I have,” Skestinin said. “We would have been here sooner, but as soon as news of the trouble came, there were uprisings all through the north. I had to decide whether to risk losing all we’d gained in Asterilhold. And I…”
You waited plausibly and at a safe distance until you saw who won, Dawson thought, but he didn’t say it.
“Thank you for being my chaperone today.”
“Least I could do,” Skestinin said.
He wouldn’t meet Dawson’s eyes. It looked much like shame.
“How are Barriath and Jorey?”
“They’re well, considering. They’re free, for now, though Palliako’s personal guard is watching them like cats stalking pigeons. It’s a different city than the one I left after the wedding.”
“Sorry about that,” Dawson said. “The renovations I’d planned turned complicated on me.”
“Don’t joke about it,” Skestinin said. His voice was hard now. “You’ll be heard, and I’m risking enough by being here. If they hear I was cracking jokes about assassinating Prince Aster and the Lord Regent, it won’t go well for me.”
“I apologize,” Dawson said. “Gallows humor.”
The door opened and a young man—one of the group that had beaten Dawson on his arrival—looked in.
“It’s time,” he said. “You can bring him.”
The audience chamber was packed full. The summer heat still hadn’t broken, and with the press of bodies, the air felt as if it had all been breathed through twice already. Dawson had to sit on the floor behind a screen of woven iron, invisible from the court. Palliako was already on the throne on his raised dais, the crown of the Lord Regent on his brow. Aster sat at his side. Lechan, King of Asterilhold, knelt on the hard stone without so much as a cushion for his knees. From behind the screen, everything seemed in shadow, and Dawson found himself rocking from side to side trying to see the details better.
He found Clara. She was standing in the second gallery with Barriath and Jorey at her side. Good boys. Sabiha wasn’t there. He found her on the first level, standing beside her mother. Basrahip was, of course, at the side where Geder could look to the man for his orders. Dawson wasn’t sure how many of the spider priests he’d had killed in the final account, but he wished they’d managed one more at least.
“Watch the priest,” he said softly.
“What?” Skestinin said.
“When the time comes, Palliako will look to the priest for permission. If you watch you’ll see it.”
“Enough, Dawson. We aren’t supposed to be speaking.”
“So we won’t discuss it. Only keep your eye on them. You’ll see what I saw.”
Geder rose and the hall grew quiet. King Lechan met Geder’s scowl with equanimity.
“I’m Geder Palliako, Lord Regent of Antea. Lechan of Asterilhold, you are before me now as prisoner and enemy.”
“I am,” the king said. He had the actor’s trick of speaking in a conversational voice, only loudly enough that it carried to the farthest ends of the hall.
“I have only one question before I pass judgment upon you,” Palliako said. “Were you aware of the plot within your court to see Prince Aster dead in hopes of placing a man loyal to Asterilhold on the Severed Throne.”
“I was,” Lechan said calmly. “I claim sole authorship and responsibility for the plan. The intention was born with me. The men in my court who took part did so only out of love for me and loyalty to my words and commands. Most were ignorant of my final design.”
Palliako looked as though someone had struck him on the back of the head. When he shot a glance at Basrahip, Dawson tapped Skestinin’s knee. The huge priest shook his head. No. Geder licked his lips, obviously confounded. Dawson understood, of course. It was Lechan’s duty to protect his people as much as it was theirs to protect him. Battle and war were lost, and now Lechan would do all he could to eat the sins of his people and carry the retribution to the grave with him. Dawson felt a surge of respect toward this man, his enemy. If Simeon had had half the spine of Lechan, what a world he and Dawson could have made.
Geder’s face was growing darker than a stormcloud. When he spoke again, his words were clipped, narrow, and rich with anger.
“All right,” he said. “If that’s how you want it, that’s how we’ll have it. Lechan of Asterilhold, for your crimes against Antea, I declare your life and your kingdom forfeit to the Severed Throne.”
Lechan didn’t move. His face was calm. Geder raised a hand, and the call went for the executioner. The man who came out wore the white, faceless mask. He bowed to Geder and again to Aster, then drew his sword and walked to the prisoner.
The crowd gasped when the blow struck, and then they cheered. The chorus of voices raised in joy and bloodlust was like a waterfall. It deafened. Dawson watched in silence as one enemy of his kingdom bled dry at the feet of another. The claiming of responsibility had been a noble gesture, he thought, but doomed. Palliako’s wrath wouldn’t be restrained by it. If he chose to spill every drop of noble blood in Asterilhold, he would do it. There was no one left to stop him.
The guard tapped his shoulder, and Dawson realized it wasn’t the first time he’d been told to stand
. He rose to his feet and began the walk back toward his cell. Skestinin walked at his side, his gaze cast low. The halls of the Kingspire seemed different now. Smaller, darker. It wasn’t that they had changed—the structures were all just as they had been since the day they’d been built. But it also wasn’t the Kingspire any longer.
As they walked out into the open air, Dawson looked to his left, craning his neck to see the dueling grounds, and beyond that the Division, and beyond that the buildings and mansions, one of which had been his. The wind was picking up, pressing a warm hand against him. It smelled of rain. He paused, looking for clouds on the horizon, and the guards shoved him.
His cell seemed larger now that he was its only occupant.
“Well,” Skestinin said.
“Thank you for that,” Dawson said. “And give my family my regards.”
“I will.”
Skestinin hesitated, desperate to leave and unable to. Dawson lifted his eyebrows.
“About Barriath,” Skestinin said. “He’s a good man. I’ve been proud to have him. But as things are… I’ve asked him to step down, and I’d rather you got word of it from me. It’s not wise right now to have a Kalliam commanding swords or ships. Not good for him and not good for the court.”
The anger came fast and clean.
“Are you going to have your daughter step down from her marriage?” Dawson said.
Skestinin’s contrition blinked out as if it had never been there.
“Might if I could,” he said. “I don’t agree with what you did, Dawson, but you’ll face your judgment and take the consequences. My Sabiha didn’t have the choice. They said she was a slut. Now they’re going to say she’s a traitor too.”
“But she isn’t,” Dawson said. “Truth isn’t what other people say. Sabiha isn’t a traitor, and she isn’t a slut. If she doesn’t know that without someone telling her, you’ve done a poor job as a father.”
For a moment, Skestinin didn’t answer. His expression was incredulous, fading slowly to disgust. Or worse, pity.
“You don’t change, Kalliam.”
“No,” Dawson said. “I don’t.”
Geder
G
eder stalked through the halls of the Kingspire. He had expected that the death of King Lechan would leave him feeling better. Relieved, perhaps. Victorious, certainly. Instead, he felt grumpy. He’d thought that returning to his bed and his place in the Kingspire would be more of a homecoming, the end to his time in exile. If anything, he felt less at home now than he had before.
When he’d been his own man, back before King Simeon had died, there had been days spent in his library, immersed in a translation, his mind utterly focused. He would forget to eat. He would forget to rest. Everything in him would come to a single point, a perfect kind of clarity. And when, as inevitably happened, something broke the trance, he would discover that he was hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and in the ragged edge of pissing himself. And even when all his bodily needs had been satisfied, he would still feel displaced, still reaching for that next word or phrase, the nuance that best captured what he thought the original author had intended. Everything around him—walls, chairs, people— could seem unreal.
The Kingspire, and in truth all of Camnipol, felt odd and unstructured. Out of joint. His mind and memory were aimed behind him, at a dusty, stinking ruin. Days in darkness with nothing to do but play simple puzzle games by the light of a candle and talk to a part-Cinnae banker. Cithrin bel Sarcour. Part of him was still there, with her, in that darkness. All the rest was distraction.
Geder knew he was the most powerful man in Camnipol, in Antea, quite possibly in the world. He could command the death of kings. The men who had mocked him once lived in fear of him now. It was everything he’d wanted. Everything he’d hoped for. Only now, he found, he wanted more. He wanted to wake in the morning and dress himself. He wanted to sit in his library and read until he slept. He wanted to sit and talk with Aster, or with Cithrin. He wanted to feel her body against his again.
And why not? Why couldn’t he have these things? And more than that, why shouldn’t he?
The chief valet was an older man with powder-pale skin and a fringe of hair around an ages-peckled pate. He answered to Geder’s summons immediately, bowing his way across the chamber.
“You called for me, Lord Regent?” he said.
Geder felt the unease in his belly and tried to put it aside.
“I don’t… I’ve decided I don’t want to be dressed anymore. I don’t need people to put my clothes on me or bathe me or trim my toenails. I’ve done all of that myself for years, and I managed.”
“The dignity of the regency, my lord, like the dignity of a king, is not—”
“I didn’t call you here to be lectured,” Geder said. “You’re here so that I could tell you something. I don’t want people to come dress me in the morning. Bring the clothes, draw the bath, and get out. Do you understand that? I want my privacy, and I’ll take it.”
“Yes, Lord Regent,” the older man said, his lips pressed together in disappointment and disapproval. “As you see fit.”
“Is this a problem?”
The man practically vibrated, conflicting impulses warring behind pale and watery eyes.
“Tradition, Lord Palliako, and the dignity of the throne argue against a man of your stature and position acting as his own servant. It diminishes—”
“Strip,” Geder said.
“My lord?”
“Your clothes. Take them off.”
“I don’t—”
Geder rose up, gesturing at the impassive faces of his personal guard.
“I have men with swords at my command. I am the regent of Antea. I sit the Severed Throne. When I tell you to do something, I’m not opening a debate. Take off your clothes.”
Trembling, his cheeks burning scarlet, the old man undid his robes. His undershirt was a pale yellow silk. His under-garments showed a spot of blood at the flank where the old man had a small round scab, a blemish that would not heal. His pubic hair was the yellow of white cheese and his belly sagged. Geder stood up. There was neither disappointment nor disapproval in the man’s face now.
“Why my good sir,” Geder said. “What ever is the matter? You don’t seem to enjoy this.”
The servant didn’t speak.
“Do you?”
“Lord?”
“Do you enjoy this?”
“I do not, my lord.”
Geder walked up, putting his face inches from the old man’s. With each word he spoke, the servant winced.
“Neither. Do. I.”
Geder turned on his heel, walking out of the room. Behind him, he heard his personal guard following and the soft sounds of the servant picking up his fallen clothes. And that simply, it was done. The ritual morning humiliations were over, and no one was going to laugh about it. Now the relief that killing King Lechan hadn’t provided flowed into him. Odd how the important things in life could be the smallest ones. He considered whether to clear his schedule, take all the audiences slated for the day, and set them to the winds. He could take his books to a comfortable place and have food and drink brought to him. Now that he’d done some— one—small thing genuinely for himself, anything seemed possible.
But no. Not yet. All of that could come on another day.
The banker looked perfectly at home in the grandeur of the meeting chamber. Canl Daskellin sat at his side, the pair of them smiling and joking as if they hadn’t seen the king of Asterilhold die that morning. Paerin Clark wore modest clothes of simple cut that looked understated rather than plain. Basrahip sat at the foot of the table, his genial smile the same as ever. Geder looked for Cithrin, but she wasn’t there. He tried to keep the disappointment from showing.
“My Lord Regent,” Daskellin said as all but Basrahip rose. “Thank you for making time.”
“Pleased to do it,” Geder said. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Cithrin speaks highly of you, even behind y
our back.”
“I’m gratified to hear it,” Paerin Clark said. “She sends her regrets, my lord. We suffered certain losses in the trouble, and Magistra Cithrin’s particular attention was needed to address some of them. I’m sure she would have come if circumstances had been different.”
Geder glanced at Basrahip, who nodded. A twist of anxiety Geder hadn’t known he was carrying relaxed. He was glad she wasn’t avoiding him. And he hadn’t made an effort to seek her out, as full as everything had been on his arrival. There would be time. The thought of seeing her again left him feeling a little breathless.
“Tell her I’m sorry she wasn’t here,” Geder said, smiling. “And I’m very sorry that all of this happened when you were in Camnipol. Really, armed insurrection isn’t as common as it’s seemed these last couple of years.”
Paerin Clark laughed, and Daskellin followed along.
“That does bring me to the reason we came in the first place,” the banker said. “Antea is in a difficult transition. The passing of King Simeon followed by the war, and now all of this. Any one of these could shake a kingdom. All three coming as they have are certain to.”
“Yes, I’m told that the harvest’s going to be a bit thin this year,” Geder said. “But it won’t be a problem.”
“You sound very confident. That’s good. Antea will want a steady hand. In that regard, I’m here in part to—”
“Oh stop it,” Daskellin said, with a chuckle. “Clark’s here to say that his bank would want to put their toes in Camnipol. They don’t lend to the nobility. It’s policy, and likely a wise one. But they can bring in gold to lend to artisans and merchants. When I went to Northcoast, I thought we’d still be fighting a war when I got back.”
“Banks are at their best when there isn’t war,” Paerin Clark said. “Trade in peacetime is always more reliable and regular. And stabilizing.”
“Have you thought about opening a branch here?” Geder asked.
For the first time, Paerin Clark seemed at a loss.