The King's Blood

by Daniel Abraham

  Ternigan cleared his throat, and Geder nodded toward him. The conversation was open now until such time as Geder closed it. Dawson wondered whether the boy understood that. Surely he had a protocol servant, but what the new regent remembered was an open question.

  “There must be a real settling of blame,” Ternigan said. “Asterilhold has a long tradition of coddling its own.”

  “Of course it does,” Bannien said. “What kind of king sides with foreigners against his own lords? Lechan hasn’t sat that throne so long by inviting strife in his own court.”

  “If I may,” Ashford said, “he hasn’t done it by inviting invasion and war either. It’s not in the interests of Asterilhold to take the field any more than it is for Antea. This wouldn’t be a little gentleman’s skirmish on some tradable soil. You want the conspirators. Stay within your borders, and the king will deliver them to justice. But if you violate the sovereignty of Asterilhold, it changes the aspect of things.”

  “Wait,” Lord Skestinin said. “You said deliver to justice. Whose justice are we talking of here?”

  Ashford nodded and raised a finger.

  “We cannot turn the nobility of Asterilhold over to an outside court for judgment,” he said, and the table erupted, voices riding at once, each trying to shout over the other. The only ones who remained silent were Dawson himself and Geder. Palliako’s brows were furrowed, his mouth set in an angry scowl. He wasn’t listening to the others, which was just as well as the audience was descending rapidly into bedlam.

  Tell them to be quiet, Dawson thought at the boy. Make them see order.

  But instead, Palliako pressed his hands to the table and rested his chin on them. Dawson, disgust filling his throat, shouted.

  “Are we schoolboys? Is this what we’ve come to? Squabbling and barking and calling names? My king isn’t cold in the crypt, and we’re descending to melee?” His voice sounded like a storm, the force of it rattling his throat. “Ashford, stop trying to sell us something. Say what terms King Lechan wants.”

  “Don’t,” Geder said. He hadn’t raised his chin from the table, so when he spoke, his head bobbed slightly like a toy sailboat on a pond. “I don’t really care what the terms are. Not yet.”

  “Lord Regent?” Ashford said.

  Geder sat up.

  “We must know terms,” Ternigan began, but Palliako shut him down with a glance.

  “Lord Ashford. Was the plot against Aster known to you?”

  “No,” Ashford said.

  Geder’s gaze flicked away and then back. As Dawson watched, Palliako went pale and then flushed. Geder’s breath was coming faster now, like he’d been running a race. Dawson tried to see what had caused the change in his boy’s demeanor, but all he saw was the guards at their attention and the priest at his prayers.

  “Was it known to King Lechan?”

  “No.”

  Dawson saw it this time. It was a small thing, almost invisible, but as soon as the word left Lord Ashford’s lips, the priest shook his broad head. No. Dawson felt the air leave him.

  The Lord Regent of Antea was looking to a foreign priest for direction.

  When Geder spoke again, his voice was ice and outrage, and Dawson barely heard it.

  “You’ve just lied to me twice, Lord Ambassador. If you do it again, I’m sending your hands back to Asterilhold in their own box. Do you understand me?”

  For the first time since Dawson had met the man, the ambassador from Asterilhold was dumbfounded. His mouth worked like a puppet’s but no words came out. Geder, on the other hand, had found his voice and wasn’t about to give it up.

  “You’ve forgotten who you’re talking to. I’m the man who knows the truth of this. No one else stopped Maas. I did. Me.”

  Ashford was licking his lips now, as if his mouth had suddenly gone dry.

  “Lord Palliako…”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” Geder said. “Do you think I’ll sit here and smile and shake your hand and promise peace while you try and kill my friends?”

  “I don’t know what you’ve heard,” Ashford said, battling to regain his composure, “or where you’ve heard it from.”

  “You see now, that’s truth,” Geder said.

  “But I assure you—I swear to you—Asterilhold had no designs on the young prince’s life.”

  Again, the flicker of eyes, and the priest’s subtle refusal. Dawson wanted to leap to his feet but he seemed rooted in his chair. Geder seemed to calm, but his heavy-lidded eyes were dark and merciless. When he spoke, his voice was almost conversational.

  “You don’t get to laugh at me.” He turned to the captain of his guards. “Take Lord Ashford into custody. I want the executioner to have his hands off by nightfall and ready to send back to Asterilhold.”

  The guard’s calm façade only broke for a moment, and then he saluted. Ashford was on his feet, all etiquette forgotten.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he shouted. “Who in hell do you think you are? This isn’t how this works! I’m ambassador.”

  The guard captain put a hand on Ashford’s shoulder.

  “You have to come with me now, my lord.”

  “You cannot do this!” Ashford shouted. Fear fueled the words.

  “I can,” Geder said.

  Ashford fought, but not for long. When the door had closed behind him, the high men of Antea looked at each other. For a long time, no one spoke.

  “My lords,” Geder Palliako, Lord Regent of Imperial Antea said, “we are at war.”

  D

  awson sat on his couch, the leather creaking under him. Jorey and Barriath were in chairs opposite him, and his favorite hunting dog whined at his knee, forcing her damp nose under his palm.

  “He was right before,” Barriath said. “About Feldin Maas. He was right. He knows things. Maybe… maybe he isn’t wrong. Jorey? You served with him.”

  “I did,” Jorey said, and the dread in the words was enough.

  “We can’t have done this,” Dawson said. “I can’t believe we’ve done this.”

  “It isn’t all us,” Barriath said. “If Palliako’s right—”

  “I don’t mean the war. I don’t even mean violating the sanctity of the ambassador. The man was a disrespectful, pompous ass. I don’t mean any of that.”

  “Then what, Father?” Jorey asked.

  In Dawson’s memory, the huge priest’s head moved, a finger’s width one way, and then the other, as Palliako watched. There was no doubt in his mind. The priest had been telling Palliako what to do, and Geder had done it. Simeon had died, and they had given the Severed Throne to a religious zealot who wasn’t even a subject of the crown. The thought nauseated him. If he’d woken in the morning to find the seas had floated into the air and the fish flying where the birds had been, it wouldn’t have been more upsetting than this. Everything was out of joint. The proper order of the kingdom was shattered.

  “We have to make this right,” he said. “We have to fix this.”

  A scratch came at the door, and it opened a handspan. A frightened-looking footman leaned in.

  “There’s a guest, my lords,” he said.

  “I’m not receiving them,” Dawson said.

  “It’s Lord Regent Palliako, my lord,” the footman said.

  Dawson tried to catch his breath.

  “Show… show him in.”

  “Should we go?” Barriath asked.

  “No,” Dawson said, though the proper answer was likely yes. He wanted his family with him.

  Geder came in still wearing the same red velvet, though the golden circlet was gone. He looked as he had before, a small man with a tendency toward weight. Uncertain smile, apologetic before he had anything to apologize for.

  “Lord Kalliam,” he said. “Thank you for seeing me. Jorey. Barriath. Good to see you both too. I hope Sabiha’s well?”

  “She’s fine, Lord Regent,” Jorey said, and Palliako waved it away.

  “Please. Geder. You can always call me Geder. We
’re friends.”

  “All right,” Jorey said.

  Palliako sat, and Dawson realized he and his boys hadn’t risen. They should have.

  “I’ve come to ask a favor,” Palliako said. “You see, I served under Ternigan? And of course Alan Klin, and the others, served under him. Everything about Vanai was badly done. My part too, though I don’t like to say it, could probably have been done better.”

  You are a traitor to your crown and the memory of my friend, Dawson thought.

  “Anyway, the short of it is, I don’t trust him. You and your family have always been kind to me. You’ve been my patron, so to speak, when I really didn’t know my way around court. So now that I’m in need of a Lord Marshal, on the one hand it makes sense to appoint Ternigan, only because he’s got the experience most recently. But I would rather it be you.”

  Dawson sat forward, his head swimming.

  Palliako had betrayed his crown and kingdom, had given the reins of power to a goatherd, begun a war with Asteril-hold that was doomed to slaughter hundreds or thousands on both sides of the border, and now he had come to deliver control of the army into Dawson’s hands. And he was presenting it as asking a favor.

  It took Dawson almost a full minute to find the words.

  “Lord Regent, I would be honored.”

  Marcus

  S

  ometime, centuries before, someone had built a low wall along the top of the rise. In the moonlight, the scattered rocks reminded Marcus of knucklebones. He knelt, one hand on the dew-slick grass. In the cove below him, three ships rested at anchor. Shallow-bottomed with paired masts. Faster and more maneuverable than the round-bellied trade ships that they hunted. One showed a mark on the side where she’d been struck not too many weeks before, the new timber of the patch bright and unweathered.

  On the sand, a cookfire still burned, its orange glow the only warmth in the spring night. From where they stood, Marcus counted a dozen structures—more than tents, less than huts—scattered just above the tide line. A wellestablished camp, then. That was good. A half dozen stretchedleather boats rested near the water.

  Yardem Hane grunted softly and pointed a wide hand to the east. A tree a hundred feet or so from the water towered up toward the sky. A glimmer, moonlight on metal, less than a third of the way to its tip showed where the sentry perched. Marcus pointed out at the ships. High in the rigging of the one nearest the shore, another dark figure.

  Yardem held up two fingers, wide brows rising in question. Two watchers?

  Marcus shook his head, holding up a third finger. One more.

  The pair sat still in the shadows made darker by the spray of fallen stone. The moon shifted slowly in its arc. The movement was subtle. A single branch on the distant tree that moved in the breeze more slowly. Marcus pointed. Yardem flicked an ear silently; he wore no earrings when they were scouting. Marcus looked over the cove one last time, cataloging it as best he could. They faded back down the rise, into the shadows. They walked north, and then west. They didn’t speak until they’d traveled twice as far as their low voices would carry.

  “How many do you make out?” Marcus asked.

  Yardem spat thoughtfully.

  “Not more than seventy, sir,” he said.

  “That’s my count too.”

  The path was hardly more than a deer trail. Thin spaces in the trees. It wouldn’t be many weeks before the leaves of summer choked the path, but tonight their steps were muffled by well-rotted litter and a spring’s soft moss. The moon was no more than a scattering of pale dapples in the darkness under the leaves.

  “We could go back to the city,” Yardem said. “Raise a hundred men. Maybe a ship.”

  “You think Pyk would pay out the coin?”

  “Could borrow it from someone.”

  In the brush, a small animal skittered, fleeing before them as if they were a fire.

  “The one farthest from shore was riding lower than the others,” Marcus said.

  “Was.”

  “We come in with a ship, they’ll see us. It’ll be empty water by the time we’re there.”

  Yardem was quiet apart from a small grunt when his head bumped against a low branch. Marcus kept his eyes on the darkness, not really seeing. His legs shifted and moved easily. His mind gnawed at the puzzle.

  “If they see us coming on land,” he said, “they haul out boats and wave to us from the sea. We trap them on land in a fair fight with the men we have now, they have numbers and territory on us. We wait to get more sword-and-bows, and they may have moved on.”

  “Difficult, sir.”

  “Ideas?”

  “Hire on for an honest war.”

  Marcus chuckled sourly.

  His company was camped dark, but the sound of their voices and the smells of their food traveled in the darkness. He had fifty men of several races—otterpelted Kurtadam, black-chitined Timzinae, Firstblood. Even half a dozen bronzes-caled Jasuru hired on at the last minute when their contract as house guards fell through. It made for more tension in the camp, but the usual racial slurs were absent. They were Kurtadam and Timzinae and Jasuru, not clickers and roaches and pennies. And no one said a bad word about the Firstblood when it was a Firstblood who’d decide who dug the latrines.

  And, to the point, the mixture gave Marcus options.

  Ahariel Akkabrian had been one of the first guards when the Porte Oliva branch of the Medean bank had been a highstakes gamble with all odds against. His pelt was going grey, especially around his mouth and back, but the beads woven into it were silver instead of glass. He sat up on his cot as Marcus ducked into the tent. His eyes were bleary with sleep, but his voice was crisp.

  “Captain Wester, sir. Yardem.”

  “Sorry to wake you,” Yardem said.

  “Ahariel,” Marcus said. “How long could you swim in the sea?”

  “Me, you mean, sir? Or someone like me?”

  “Kurtadam.”

  “Long as you’d like.”

  “No boasting. It’s not summer. The water’s cold. How long?”

  Ahariel yawned deeply and shook his head, setting the beads to clicking.

  “The dragons built us for water, Captain. The only people who can swim longer and colder than we can are the Drowned, and they can’t fight for shit.”

  Marcus closed his eyes, seeing the moonlit cove again. The ships at anchor, the shelters, the hide boats. The coals of the fire glowing. He had eleven Kurtadam, Ahariel included. If he sent them into the water, that left a bit over thirty. Against twice that number. Marcus bit his lip and looked up at his second in command. In the light of the single candle, Yardem looked placid. Marcus cleared his throat.

  “The day you throw me in a ditch and take control of the company?”

  “Not today, sir,” Yardem said.

  “Afraid you’d say that. Only one thing to do then. Ahariel? You’re going to need some knives.”

  M

  arcus rode to the west, shield slung on his back and sword at his side. The sun rose behind him, pushing his shadow out ahead like a gigantic version of himself. To his left, the sea was as bright as beaten gold. The sentry tree was just in sight. The poor bastard on duty would be squinting into the brightness. The danger, of course, being that he wouldn’t look at all. If Marcus managed an actual surprise attack, they were doomed. He had the uncomfortable sense that God’s sense of humor went along lines very much like that.

  “Spread out,” he called back down the line. “Broken file. We want to look bigger than we are.”

  The call came back, voice after voice repeating the order. Timing was going to matter a great deal. The land looked different in the sunlight. The cove wasn’t as distant as it had seemed in the night. Marcus sat high in his saddle.

  “Come on,” he murmured. “See us. Look over here and see us. We’re right here.”

  A shiver along a wide branch. The leaves sent back light brighter than gold. A horn blared.

  “That was it,” Yardem ru
mbled.

  “Was,” Marcus said. He pictured the little shelters, the sailors scuttling for their belongings, for their boats. He counted ten silent breaths, then pulled his shield to the front and drew his sword.

  “Sound the charge,” he said. “Let’s get this done.”

  When they rounded the bend that led into the cove, a ragged volley of arrows met them. Marcus shouted, and his soldiers picked up the call. From the far end of the strip of sand, ten archers stood ground, loosing arrows and preparing to jump into the last hide boat and take to the safety of the water, the ships, and the sea. The other boats were already away, rowing fast toward the ships and loaded with enough men to defeat Marcus’s force.

  The first boat was a dozen yards from shore and already sinking.

  In the bright water, hidden by the glare of the sun, nearly a dozen Kurtadam with long knives put new holes in the boats.

  Marcus pulled up, waving to his own archers to take the shoreline while the Jasuru charged the enemy and their boat, howling like mad animals. A few figures appeared on the ships, staring out at the spectacle on shore and in the tide-pool. The first boat vanished. The second was staying more nearly afloat as the men in it bailed frantically with helmets and hands. They weren’t rowing, though. It wouldn’t get them any farther.

  Marcus lifted his hand and his archers raised bows.

  “Surrender now and you won’t be harmed!” he shouted over the surf. “Or flee and be killed. Your choice.”

  In the surf, one of the sailors started kicking for the ships. Marcus pointed at him with his sword. It took three volleys before he stopped. As if on cue, the black bobbing heads of Ahariel and the other Kurtadam appeared in a rough line between the sinking boats and the ships. As Marcus watched, the swimming Kurtadam lifted their knives above the water, like the ocean growing teeth.