The King's Blood

by Daniel Abraham

  “My Lord Geder,” Basrahip said. His rockslide of a voice echoed a little.

  “Morning,” Geder said. “I was just… I was just doing nothing very useful or important. Is everything all right?”

  “My fellows and I have heard things that trouble me, Prince Geder.”

  “Lord Regent.”

  “Lord Regent. I am worried that there may be some unrest. Those who love deceit too much and fear the justice of the goddess feel her presence, and they do not repent.” Basrahip leaned closer, and his voice fell to a whisper. “You must be aware. The world looks bright and blameless, but there is danger in it.”

  A cold dread tightened his shoulders. He hunched in toward the priest.

  “What should we do?” Geder asked. Basrahip smiled.

  “Come with me,” he said. “And let us bring your guardsmen.”

  The room was an old ballroom, not used in living memory. The light was bad, and the floor was worn to splinters and blocks. Tiers of benches rose steeply up on three sides like a theater, the last bench so high it almost touched the vaulted roof. Standing along that top row were the priests of the goddess. Twenty of them at least. They had blades at their sides and crossbows in their hands. Geder heard one of his personal guard gasp. Basrahip motioned for Geder to stop, then walked to the center of the first tier of benches. He motioned Geder to come stand by his side. The personal guard arrayed themselves unobtrusively against the wall, but Geder could see their eyes shifting around the room.

  Basrahip pointed to the man farthest to the left.

  “You, my friend. Step forward, please.”

  The guard didn’t move.

  “It’s all right,” Geder said. “Do what he asks.”

  The man came out to stand in the center of the room. In the gloom, he looked like a player about to deliver a speech. Geder had never really considered the guards as people before. This man looked to be in his fourth decade, with a pale scar that ran along his jaw on the left. Geder wondered what his name was.

  “Have you conspired to harm Lord Geder?” Basrahip asked.

  “No,” the guardsman said in a sharp voice.

  Basrahip nodded. “Please step back, my friend. You beside him, step forward.”

  One by one, the priest called each of the guards forward and asked the same question. At the end, he clapped Geder on the shoulder and grinned.

  “These men can be trusted,” the priest said. “Keep them close. And I will do all I can to be close by at all times. Until we find the extent of the threat against you, you must be wary and clever.”

  “I’m sure it’s going to be fine,” Geder said, but he wasn’t.

  “It will,” Basrahip said. “But there will be some times of danger also. Your Righteous Servant will protect you.”

  It was less comforting than it should have been. He went to the revel as he had planned, but with a growing sense of threat. Aster was there, sitting at the high table in regal array, but with his eyes traveling to the dueling yard where the boys of the great houses were battling with chalked practice swords; caught between the man he wasn’t yet and the boy he could never entirely be. Geder sat at his side and gestured toward the playing boys.

  “You should,” he said. “It’s in Kalliam’s honor.”

  “It’s just playing,” Aster said, feigning contempt.

  “I think it isn’t,” Geder said. “Those boys are going to be the men you lead one day. You’d be wise to get to know them now. I mean…”

  Basrahip, sitting behind him, nodded. It would be safe. Safe enough. Aster licked his lips and glanced at the boys. One of the oldest was showing the smaller ones how to twist the practice sword across his wrist and catch it overhand.

  “You’re right,” Aster said with a little nod. “Thank you, Geder.”

  “But Aster? Be… be careful.”

  “I will,” the boy said.

  Geder sat back in his chair, his hands worrying at the tablecloth. The entertainers went through their common paces. The servants brought him a dozen different platters of food. The singers extemporized praises of Dawson Kalliam. Geder found himself enjoying none of it. When Kalliam arrived—unfortunately alone, as both Clara Kalliam and Sabiha were feeling unwell, and Dawson had left Jorey to watch their conditions—Geder let himself relax a degree, but the memory of Basrahip questioning his guards stood at the back of his mind like an unwelcome guest. He could no more turn his unease aside than he could will himself to fly.

  After the meal, the revel moved on, the hours between midday and the feast proper filled with games of sport and chance. It was like watching a small tourney. The great houses all came, sat in their boxes, and gossiped. They were like a flock of peacocks, strutting for one another’s benefit, and Kalliam’s thinly veiled contempt mirrored Geder’s frame of mind.

  The jousting came and went, then the melee, then a series of show duels more fanciful than any real combat could be. Kalliam acted as judge, and his awards held the sharp wit he was known for. Sir Minin Laat was awarded a special prize in the melee for the most artful falling down. The joust between Lord Ternigan and his nephew Oster was declared a draw “to avoid dividing the family’s loyalties any further.” The jests were sharp, the laughter they called forth had an edge of cruelty, and Geder began to feel calmer. Whatever dangers Basrahip might have feared, they failed to appear.

  The feast itself was held an hour before sundown in the largest hall of the Kingspire. Chandeliers of oil lamps and cut crystal filled the air with a soft, almost shadowless light and the heat of a smith’s forge. The room was built in the shape of an X with the high table in the center on a massive turntable that revolved twice an hour. Dawson, Aster, and Basrahip sat nearest him, his personal guard kneeling at the ready behind. Lord Ternigan and his son sat to Basrahip’s right looking pleased and amiable. Canl Daskellin and his daughter Sanna sat to Kalliam’s right, farther from Geder. The woman kept catching his eye, and he didn’t know whether to smile at her or look away. In the heat of the summer, all court fashion tended toward lighter clothing, and the sheath of silk Sanna Daskellin wore made him wish she was sitting closer and that she hadn’t come at all both at the same time.

  “I’ve some people I’d like you to meet, Lord Regent,” Daskellin said as the table made its slow revolution. “I came too late to help with the war, but my conversations in North-coast were very interesting. I’d go so far as to say that the whole world’s interest is on you these days.”

  “I don’t see why,” Geder said. “I mean, the war wasn’t my choosing. That lies at Lechan’s feet. And winning so handily was all Dawson and Basrahip.”

  “Minister Basrahip?” Daskellin said, shooting a glance at Dawson. The elder Kalliam’s face was ice and stone. Chagrin flashed through Geder’s heart as he saw the insult he’d unintentionally delivered.

  “As spiritual guide and comfort,” Geder said, the words coming too quickly, bumping into one another on his lips. “The victory was Kalliam’s.”

  The urge to go on, to complain about his failed orders of execution, pressed at him, but he held back. There was time for that conversation later. He’d need to call a larger council for that, and no doubt Daskellin and Kalliam would have more than enough time to talk over how best to go about assuring Antea’s permanent safety from its enemies then.

  “I see you brought your banker,” Kalliam said. Geder was confused for a moment, then realized that the comment had been meant for Daskellin. “I’m surprised that you’d include him in a revel in my name.”

  “Really?” Daskellin replied. His voice was as warm as before, but there was something underneath it. It was like watching the afternoon’s duels all over again, except with words and subtle meanings in place of blades. “And here I thought the two of you had parted on good terms. He certainly gave the impression that his time at Osterling Fells was pleasant enough.”

  “I didn’t cut his hands off,” Dawson said.

  “He didn’t lie to you,” Daskellin said.r />
  Basrahip’s calm, enigmatic smile and deceptively sleepy eyes gave no reaction to anything the men said. Geder wondered what it would be like to hear the truth and deceptions in what the men said, and whether it would make the conversation clearer or more obscure.

  “Who are we talking about?” Geder asked.

  “Paerin Clark,” Daskellin said. “He’s the son-in-law of Komme Medean of the Medean bank. He’s very powerful, though not from noble blood.”

  “That is what they will write on your tomb, old friend,” Dawson said. “His friends were powerful, though not from noble blood.”

  “Have I done something to offend you, Kalliam?” Daskellin asked.

  Geder shot a glance at Aster and Basrahip. The boy seemed frightened by the animosity between the two men, but the priest was quiescent. Dawson’s face was dark with blood, but then he pressed his lips thin and shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I’m feeling a bit anxious this evening. Nothing to do with you. All apologies.”

  “At least we didn’t need to break your revel for a formal duel.”

  “No,” Dawson said. “Not for that.”

  “Perhaps I could meet this banker?” Geder asked, grasping for something to turn the subject of the conversation. “Which one is he?”

  Daskellin pointed out a pale man in green velvet sitting between an enormously fat man in the formal clothing of a Borjan knight and a remarkably thin woman so fair-haired as to be almost white. Cinnae, but also not. Daskellin’s gaze followed his.

  “She’s Cithrin bel Sarcour. Magistra of their branch in Porte Oliva,” he said. “Very new to the bank, and apparently something of a wild talent.”

  “Why are they here?” Geder asked, and then when he heard how the words sounded, “I mean, they’re welcome of course, but are they on some business in Antea?”

  “They’re come to meet you,” Daskellin said. “As have the Duchess of Longhearth, and the Dukes of Whitestone and Wodford. I think you should consider—”

  But what he thought Geder should consider was lost in a sudden shouting from behind them. Geder craned around in his chair. At the end of the vast room’s southern leg, something was happening. Men in boiled leather were marching into the hall. They had swords drawn. As Geder watched, one of the palace guards marched up to demand explanation. When they cut him down, the screaming began.

  “Prince Geder!” Basrahip shouted. Geder didn’t remember rising to his feet, and when the great priest shoved him hard enough to drop him to his knees, the only thing he felt at first was confusion. He turned, tried to stand, and the image confused him. A dark, spreading stain marked Basrahip’s left arm just above the elbow. The priest’s face was twisted in pain, and on the other side of him Dawson Kalliam stood, a bloody dagger in his hand. A woman was screaming, but Geder didn’t know where. Dawson flinched as if stung, dropping his blade, and Geder’s personal guard swarmed toward him.

  “To me!” Dawson shouted as he leaped over the high table. “He’s over here! To me!”

  “No, wait,” Geder said. “Stop. Something’s wrong.”

  Basrahip’s hand took him by the arm, four wide fingers almost filling the full distance between shoulder and elbow.

  “We must go, Lord Geder. We must go now. Come.”

  Something crawled across Geder’s skin. A tiny black spider drenched in the priest’s blood, tiny feet leaving a trail of red as it scrambled. Geder pulled his hand back with a shout, but Basrahip was already pushing toward the east, bullying him along like a child. The revelers were on their feet, the mass of bodies surging forward and back. The crash of a table overturning came from behind him, and shattering glass, and the clash of steel against steel.

  They reached the far door and Basrahip forced his way through, bellowing like an animal in pain. The tiny spider or another one like it bit Geder at the soft flesh inside his elbow. He cried out, slapping at it, and Basrahip lost his grip.

  “Come, Prince Geder! Come quickly!” the priest shouted, and Geder was about to follow when a terrible thought came to him like icewater running through his heart.

  “Aster!” he shouted. “Where’s Aster?”

  “Come to me, Prince Geder!”

  “I have to… Wait for me. I’ll be right back.”

  Geder ran back into the chaos of the bloody revel. The violence had spread. To his left, a wide arc of blood spattered the wall. To his right three of his guardsmen were surrounding two of the attackers, but two more enemy were pelting toward them, bloodied blades at the ready. Geder jumped over the body of a middle-aged man, unsure whether he was alive or dead. His focus was set on the high table, and Aster cowering under it. Geder ran as he hadn’t in months. When he regained the high table, he barely had the breath left to speak. He pulled Aster from his crouch, yanking the prince by the arm as Basrahip had to him not a minute before.

  “What’s happening?” Aster cried.

  “You’ll be fine,” Geder said, asserting it as if certainty of tone could make it true. “But you can’t stay here. You have to come with me.”

  Only when he rose, the path east was blocked. A dozen attackers were overwhelming what was left of his personal guard. And in the center of the attackers, Dawson Kalliam hewed alongside the enemy with a sword in his awkward left hand. As Geder gaped, Kalliam caught sight of him.

  “There! He’s at the high table.”

  Geder turned north and bolted. The hall was less than half full now, men and women fleeing into the Kingspire shrieking. Geder’s heart was going so fast that he thought it might begin a beat before the last one was finished, seize up, and kill him on the spot. An old man in servant’s dress saw him running with the prince. For a terrible moment, Geder saw the fear in the man’s face, and then determination. The servant scooped up a soup ladle, brandishing it like a mace.

  “For Aster and Antea!” the old man screamed as he charged the swordsmen pursuing them. Geder didn’t pause to watch the man die.

  The corridors outside the feast hall were a stampede inside a slaughterhouse. People were running in all directions, dodging each other, turning, fleeing without any sign of knowing where they could flee to. And Geder was as lost as any of them. Basrahip could be anywhere by now.

  “You’re the Lord Regent,” a voice beside him said. The pale woman. The banker. Her gown was ripped at the sleeve and something dark but not blood spattered her snowy skin. Soup, maybe. “What in hell are you doing? It’s a coup. You have to get away.”

  “I don’t know where to go,” he said. “They could be anyplace. I don’t know where’s safe.”

  The woman stared at him, and he thought there was a moment of bright madness in her eyes. She grinned, perfect pearl teeth in pale gums.

  “I do,” she said.

  Cithrin

  F

  ollowing the Lord Regent when the knives came out had been more a matter of instinct than judgment. She certainly hadn’t meant to save him or the boy prince. She’d only wanted to see what happened. But when at last she’d caught up with him, the man standing in the corridor outside the hall with the boy on one hand and eyes as round as coins, he’d said he didn’t know where would be safe.

  Her first thought was It’s your damned city. Think of something.

  Her second thought was Yellow House by Autumn Bridge.

  Escaping the Kingspire itself was easy. She had the prince, and the prince had all the knowledge that young boys acquire of shorter routes and secret ways. The Kingspire had always been his home, and once she had tasked him with finding the way out to darkness and night, the hardest part was keeping pace.

  Outside, men were shouting and torches flared all through the gardens and along the gates. They made their way, careful but swift. Around a long hedge and then over a wall and into the street beyond. As she helped the Lord Regent crawl over the rough stone, Cithrin wondered how many times Prince Aster had used this route to escape his tutors.

  In the gloom of the night street, Cithrin paused. T
he shouting was both louder and more distant, the riot of swords and voices still rising. The prince wore a robe of white sewn with threads of gold and a ceremonial crown. His sleeves were sewn with pearls, and gems studded his cuffs. He’d stand out in the darkness like a candleflame. The Lord Regent was somewhat better. His garnet-colored tunic wouldn’t grab the torchlight. He was a round-faced man, not much older than her true age. His build said he’d been strong not long ago, but was well on his way back to soft.

  “We’ll get to the Division,” Cithrin said. “And then move south to the Autumn Bridge. I think the house we’re looking for is on the far side, but I’m not sure of that.”

  “What if they’re holding the bridge?” the Lord Regent asked in a high, tight voice.

  “We have enough trouble right now,” Cithrin said. “Let’s not borrow more.”

  They set out, trotting through the dim streets. Once, when a half dozen horsemen pelted down the road, Cithrin had to haul them all into the shadows of a great marble statue of a Firstblood man putting the sword to a particularly bestial-looking Yemmu woman. Another time, the square she’d hoped to cross was filled with men shouting at each other and brandishing swords. They hadn’t come to blows yet, but she heard the violence in the timbre of their voices. Cithrin pulled the prince by the hand, and the Lord Regent followed them both down into the darkness, searching for another path.

  Cithrin felt the fear, breathed it, but it seemed almost to be happening to some other woman. Her footsteps didn’t falter, her decisions were swift and unhesitating. The men and women who saw them only looked confused, not alarmed. They were running ahead of the violence like a seabird out-pacing a wave. Even if they were seen now, the citizens of Camnipol didn’t know what it meant, a man, a woman, and a child all dressed in the clothing of wealth and running through the night. They tacked through the dark and treacherous sea of alleyways and courtyards, aiming—she hoped—for the bridge she’d been pointed to once, and in daylight.