Putting Jorey’s strategy together hadn’t been quick. They’d talked over sending someone else in his place in hopes the enemy might think the Lord Marshal was commanding another—possibly larger—force nearby. They’d talked about abandoning the parley and falling back to Bellin. They’d even talked about trying to ambush the enemy commander and hold him hostage, because that was an idea every inexperienced commander reached for one time or another. Usually, they had an advisor to talk their hands out of the fire on that, and this time it had been Marcus.
The plan instead came to this: Jorey would go, with Marcus in borrowed armor acting as one of his customary three guards. That way Marcus could hear the full parley, possibly pick up on some nuance of strategy or tactic Jorey might have overlooked. Once the parley was ended, Marcus would offer up his best suggestions. After that, the action grew hazy. The idea of taking Kit as another of the guard was considered, but Vincen Coe took his place at the last minute as Marcus deemed the risk too great.
Given how quickly the plan fell to bits, it had been a wise choice.
The guards, when they ducked into the tent, were Timzinae. Knowing now that Inys had created them specifically as warriors against the spiders, Marcus could see the black chitinous scales that covered their bodies as armor. Their double-lidded eyes were empty of everything but hate. The way they stood made it clear that even breathing the same air as a Firstblood was an indignity. Or that was how it seemed until their commander came in and took his seat across from Jorey. He was a Firstblood himself, and more than that.
The years had been kind to Karol Dannien. A bit more softness around the jowls, and his knife-cut hair had gone the white-grey of clouds on the horizon. His eyes were as clear and sharp as when their companies had fought together at Lôdi and against each other in Hallskar. Marcus could only hope that he’d changed enough that the other mercenary didn’t place him.
“Lord Marshal Jorey Kalliam, yeah?” Karol said.
“I am,” Jorey replied. “I take it you’re commander of the Timzinae army?”
“No such thing,” Karol said, his voice buzzing with anger. “Timzinae’s a race of people. This here’s the collected force of the nation of Elassae. Got plenty of Timzinae folks in it. Got plenty that aren’t.”
“As you say. But you are their commander.”
“Karol Dannien. Lately in the employ of the fivefold city of Suddapal. We pried the last of you little shits out of it a month ago.” Karol’s smile could have cut meat. “So tell me how it is, Lord Marshal, you’re saying how you’re the one in charge when you’ve got Marcus twice-damned Wester standing behind you?”
Jorey glanced back at him, and Marcus sighed. “Karol. Been a while. How’s Sarrith?”
“She quit a few years back,” Karol said. “Went to Herez. Last I heard she was raising up two nephews and a niece her brother left behind when a fever took him. Cep Bailan took her place.” Marcus hoisted an eyebrow, and Dannien sighed. “I know. He’s a good man in a fight, though.”
“Your force, your decision,” Marcus said.
“Damned right. So what in all hell happened to you? Last I heard, you were on our side.”
“Still am,” Marcus said. “Just which side’s ours got complicated.”
“This ragtag bunch out on the road looking to join up, go burn some Antean farms on our way to sack Camnipol?”
“No,” Jorey said. “We won’t let that happen.”
“Well, Marcus,” Dannien said. “The puppy here’s saying we’re not on the same side after all.”
Marcus sighed. “You know these poor bastards weren’t behind any of what happened. They’re doing what they’re told because they’re loyal. Or because it seemed easier to strap on a sword than die in prison for defying their lords. We can march out onto a field and see who can kill how many of the other side if you want. Then if you win, you can go make sword-shaped holes in a bunch of farmers and tradesmen who couldn’t have stopped any of this either. That’s going make things better?”
“If the war’s not the soldiers, then who? The lords? All right, then. Hand over everyone you have there with noble blood or title. We’ll just kill them, and only put the rest in chains.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Marcus said.
“Had a hint. How about these priests? Got any of those?”
“I’ve got the same one who went to Suddapal and helped get the word out what we’re really fighting against. And no, you can’t have him either. Don’t be an ass about it.”
“And what should I be?”
“You know damned well that Cithrin and her bank stood against all of this from the start. Well, turns out they weren’t the only ones. There are good people in Antea who’ve been working against Palliako and his priests. We’re on our way up to rein this in. Only I can’t do it if I’ve got to crack your ass the other way before I go.”
“Rein it in how, exactly?”
“Not going to talk about that,” Marcus said. Mostly because I haven’t worked it out, he didn’t add.
Karol Dannien leaned back in his chair. His eyes were so cold they would have put a skin on water. “You hear about the children?”
“What children?” Jorey asked, but Marcus could hear in his voice the boy already knew.
“Suddapal rose, yeah? We popped out of Kiaria, sent Fallon Broot and his bunch swimming south for Lyoneia without a boat. Took back what was ours to start with. Palliako threw the hostages into the Division. Right now, while we’re being polite to one another, there’s hundreds of children who… how’d you call it? Weren’t behind any of what happened? Hundreds of kids that weren’t behind any of it either, rotting and feeding worms at the bottom of the biggest ditch in Antea.”
Jorey closed his eyes, pressed his knuckle to his lip. Funny how close horror and exasperation could run together. Marcus felt it too. Of course Geder had done the thing. Anything to make it all worse.
“Hadn’t heard that,” Marcus said. “Not much pleased now that I have.”
“Well that’s big of you,” Dannien said. “So let’s review, yeah? You’re marching the same Antean soldiers, some of them, that pulled these children away from their families and shoved them up north to die. You’ve got one of these mind-breaking spider priests in your pocket who you won’t hear of handing over. And what you want of me is I go back and tell these men and the ghosts of their babies that we ought to stand aside and let you pass by. Did I get that right?”
One of the Timzinae guards shifted his weight. Marcus paused a long moment to see if an attack would follow, but the man thought better of it.
“It sounded more convincing before you said it that way, I’ll give you that,” Marcus said. “But let’s say your side too. We pick a place and fight. Some of your men die. Some of Kalliam’s men die. Maybe you and I live through it, maybe we don’t. Whoever wins… what? Gets to brag about it? No dead child comes back. No wrong thing that’s happened gets undone. A bunch of angry, confused assholes hack each other to death in a field or else they don’t. Now tell me why my way’s worse?”
“We’ll make Antea an example to anyone else who pretends to empire,” Dannien said, biting each word as it passed his lips. “And there will be justice for their atrocities.”
“There’ll be more atrocities, at least. And it’ll be you doing them this time. So that’s a change,” Marcus said. “Not sure you’re made better than Palliako by going second.”
God smiled, he thought. I’m sounding like Cithrin now.
“There has to be a reckoning, Wester,” Dannien said.
“You’re right. There does,” Marcus said. “But this ain’t it.”
In the silence, the breeze made the leather tent sides thrum in their frames. A bird called out three sharp and rising notes, like a trumpet calling the charge. Marcus felt his weight centered between his feet, his hands soft but ready. He hadn’t been aware of preparing for violence, but here he was. Prepared. The odd thing was, his mind felt clearer and more his
own than it had in months. Some things resisted being forgotten.
“You don’t stand a chance,” Dannien said.
“That’s what they said in Northcoast,” Marcus replied.
“No other way?”
Marcus felt his plans slipping into place already. How many men he had, and what supplies. Where Karol stood on the plain and the mountain above it. The dragon’s roads and the merely human dirt tracks and the deer trails and streams. He saw what he’d need to do later, and it shaped what he had to do now. Hopefully Jorey Kalliam wouldn’t take offense.
“No other way,” Marcus said. “If it’s a fight you need, Karol, I’ll hand it to you. And then I’ll beat you fair. Afterward, we can talk about justice and reckonings while we wait for Suddapal to pay your ransom.”
Karol Dannien stood. The rage made his face darker. His neck was almost purple with it. “You always were a prick.”
He left, the Timzinae guards trotting to keep up. Marcus leaned against the table, glanced at Jorey Kalliam, then away. The boy had the shocked look of someone who’d just taken an unexpected blow. “Sorry about that. Overstepped myself.”
“Not sure I’d have done better,” Jorey said.
“Still. It wasn’t mine to decide, and… well, I may have decided.”
Vincen spoke for the first time since they’d come. His voice was steady and deep. “What are our chances of winning through?”
Marcus shifted, looking through the seams of the frame where the daylight glinted through. He wanted to be sure none of Dannien’s soldiers were near enough to hear, and even then, he spoke low. “They’ve got more men, and better rested. They’ve got position on us, and given all we had to leave behind, we can assume they’re better armed. They know about what the spiders can do, though I don’t think Kit would be willing to use that power to help kill people. It’s a problem for him.”
“What do we have?” Jorey asked, and his voice was solid as stone. He had some promise.
“You’ve got the hero of Wodford and Gradis,” Marcus said, tapping himself on the chest. “So in a fair fight, you’re fucked.”
Geder
The thaw hadn’t reached Camnipol, but the court had returned. The first group tacitly fleeing the strife in the east was joined by the more traditional grandees who’d spent their winter in the King’s Hunt. Cyr Emming had presided over the hunt itself, relying on his position as Geder’s advisor even more than on the dignity of his titles. Now that he’d come back, he seemed pleased to continue being the social center of the court. Geder was pleased to let him. Despite that, not all balls and feasts could be avoided.
Since the wars began, Camnipol had seen a great influx of wealth from the conquered. Asterilhold and Sarakal and Elassae had all given up their treasuries and the adornments of their temples along with their land and freedom. Emming’s grand ball was lavish beyond anything Geder had ever seen. Distilled wine poured out of statues of gold and pearl, spilling as much onto the floor as into the cups. Slaves sat in contorted, uncomfortable positions to act as living chairs and divans for the high families of the court. The food was rich and greasy, meats and butters and cakes thick as jelly. After two seasons of starving, Geder didn’t have the belly for it.
The silk banners that hung from Emming’s vaulted ceiling listed the names of conquered cities. Suddapal and Inentai were among them. And the guests… court fashion was famed for changing year by year, and now was no different. Some few still wore the oversize black leather that Geder himself had made popular, but more had adopted the newer look based, it seemed, on feathers and bone. Sanna Daskellin in particular wore a gown fashioned from ravens’ feathers and a cape of tiny bird bones sewn together with dark thread. She clattered when she moved.
Braziers in the shape of Timzinae bodies bent in pain stood among the guests, the light from their fires licking out of their mouths and eyeholes. The smoke they gave off smelled of incense and burning sap. Reed instruments and viols filled the air with exotic music inspired by the new lands under Antean stewardship and the Kesheti rhythms associated in the court’s collective mind with the goddess.
His own chair stood on an elevated dais so that he could look out over it all. The whirl of bodies and darkness, smoke and gold and gaiety. Geder stayed as long as he could stand it, making small conversations with men and women, many of whom were newer at court than himself. Tiar Sanninen, newly Baron of Eccolund. Salvian Cersillian, cousin of the former Earl of Masonhalm, and her daughters. Lady Broot, whose every word and gesture was hoping for happy news of her family in Elassae. Happy words that Geder didn’t have to offer.
Everything about the court made it seem a fabric of excess and fear. The laughter, too wild. The joy, too desperate. It was as though the court in general had caught a fever and was pretending that it hadn’t. The buzz of desperation and despair this seemed designed to drown out… well, perhaps that was only Geder’s own.
He made his curt excuses to Emming, handed back his half-finished flagon of wine, and called for his carriage. Aster was there somewhere. Dancing, most likely, with the girls of his cohort. Well, he was the prince. He could do that. Should, even. Someone should wring a drop of being carefree out of the world.
The streets of Camnipol in twilight were oddly beautiful and quiet after the too-lush feasting rooms. The air smelled clean and clear and like the presentiment of rain. There were few trees outside the gardens of the great houses, but here and there splashes of green ivy spilled up grey stone walls, their leaves defying the cold. Hardy, thick-bodied finches had joined the sparrows and crows of the winter. Geder leaned out the window of his carriage as it rattled toward the Kingspire and let the breeze of his passage cool his face. The banner of the goddess fluttered high above, draped from the doors of the temple. Lights flickered up there as well. Basrahip and his priests, performing their rites or eating rice from simple bowls or simply sitting together. Geder didn’t know. If the trek up those stairs weren’t quite so awful, he might have joined them. Instead, he took comfort where he had before. His library.
The books perfumed the desk with dust and sweet paste. The light of a dozen candles warmed the leather-bound volumes and parchment scrolls, the codices and maps and fragile paper sewn together with twine. Geder’s stomach gurgled and shifted with the unaccustomed too-rich food of Emming’s feast, but he didn’t call for water or a cunning man. It would have meant talking to someone, and even ordering a servant to do his bidding was more energy than he could manage just now. He was ill, after all, whatever the cunning men said.
He sat on a large chair, the light spilling over his shoulder and onto the pages of a third-age history of Far Syramys by a likely mythical Dartinae poet who went by the name Stone.
Among the civilized lands, Far Syramys is a conjuration of the possible, the birthplace of soft dreams and harsh mysteries. What we hope and wish and spin from fantasy, we place there. In Far Syramys, we say, the women walk naked and unashamed through the parks, their sex available to any who ask. In Far Syramys, cunning men have deepened their arts until the cures for all diseases are known, though the price of cure is sometimes obscure and terrible. In Far Syramys, the forges make steel that will never lose its edge; the farms, pomegranates that will sustain a man for a week with only a handful of pips; the looms, cloth so fine and beautiful that the wearer of their silk will disappear from mortal sight.
Among the rough and uncivilized hills of the true Far Syramys, there are indeed great and hidden cities. There are indeed women and men of surpassing beauty. The Haunadam and Raushadam make their homes there, with bodies and minds as unlike the others of the thirteen races as an apple is from a walnut. But Far Syramys’s dreams of itself are nothing like our dreams of it, and the traveler who dares it should be warned of all that has happened there before.
Geder fell into the words like he was falling asleep. Or else waking up to some other life. He imagined himself in the court of the Grand Agha, sitting on the floor and drinking tea with poets and hu
nters. Or trekking through great caverns beneath Sai where the waters ran yellow and red, and drinking them was death. Or seeing the Uron Tortoise wandering the northern desert with a city of thousands riding unnoticed on its vast shell. He longed for it all, even as he knew that in practice, it would all be awkward, tiring, and uncomfortable if it was even real. But then it wasn’t really those places that left him empty and hungry and rich with need. It was the Geder Palliako who could take joy in them. That better version of himself who belonged there.
When the Kurtadam servant girl appeared at the door, her eyes wide and the pelt on her face twisted into a grimace by her anxiety, Geder was almost happy to be interrupted. Not quite, but almost.
“L-lord Regent? My lord?” she said, her voice high and piping.
“Yes?”
“I apologize, my lord, but there’s—” she choked on the words. Her hands balled in fists and she looked down, her mouth pressed tight. His heart went out to her. Poor thing was so sure she was going to be in trouble.
“It’s all right,” he said, his voice gentle. “I don’t bite. Least not often. What’s the issue?”
When she spoke, her voice was smoother, calmer. Still rich with fear, but not throttled by it. “The Baron of Watermarch has come, my lord. He asks your urgent presence.”
Geder closed the book and laid it aside. “Show him in, then,” he said. “And let this be a lesson to you… what was your name?”
“I’m Chanda, my lord.”
“Let this be a lesson to you, Chanda,” he said solemnly. “We all have to do shit we don’t enjoy.”
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