“No one yet has discussed the greatest problem with this glorious conquest.”
“You mean the harvest?”
“I mean the next war,” Basrahip said. “You have won, but at a cost. Everyone knows this. The great empire has grown, but it has lost men. It has lost time. It has become richer and weaker. There are no greater incitements to war than wealth and the appearance of weakness.”
Geder looked at the map again. It wasn’t something he’d considered, but the border between Asterilhold and Northcoast was not only wide, but accessible. Difficult to guard and patrol. He tapped at the page and traced the line between Kaltfel and Carse.
“No, my lord,” Basrahip said. He still found the idea of maps very amusing, it seemed. “Your battle is on the other side of your paper.”
“What? Sarakal?”
“Sarakal, the Free Cities. Elassae,” the priest said. “The home of the Timzinae. With your armies drawn north, they will see the empty, rich fields of your south and know that there are no men to defend them. You must make a land between the lands. A way to keep your kingdom safe while its strength regrows.”
“You think so?”
“You are the chosen of the goddess,” Basrahip said. “All those who hear your name will fear justice. You must be always on your guard. Always at the ready, both in the borders of your nation and the people in your streets and the corridors of your great house.”
“I suppose,” Geder said. “I suppose that does make sense.”
“But then we have another border to protect, don’t we?” Aster said. “If you take Sarakal, then what do you do about Borja? All the histories say Elassae’s vulnerable to the Keshet. There’s always the next war.”
“No, little prince,” Basrahip said. “The goddess is returning, and her justice means an end to all wars. All cities will live in her peace. This part that you face now is the most difficult. Many will hate and despise and fear you. But you will win through. Your servants are with you.”
After they took their evening meal, Geder debated going back to his room or staying up in the library. The books called to him, as they always did, but the day had been long and eventful, and as much as he regretted the loss, he thought it better to rest. Pleasure was for men with fewer responsibilities. And the books would be there when he had done his part, and could retire to a quiet life of scholarship, naps, and—was it too much to hope?—a little family of his own. A beautiful young woman beside him in the night and still in the morning. It was a thing he could develop a fondness for.
He hadn’t understood, when he became Lord Regent, how much would be asked of him. How much would be required. It gave him, he felt, a real respect for King Simeon and all the other kings of Antea before him. Basrahip had been right. Antea would look weak and vulnerable, and it was Geder’s place now to see that the kingdom was kept safe, whatever the cost.
Alone in his bed, by the light of a single candle, he took out Cithrin’s note. He wished she’d been able to stay. That she’d seen what he was planning and arranging for Aster. She cared about Aster. He knew that. He could tell that she’d be pleased with all the things he had in mind.
He pressed paper to his mouth, breathing in through his nose in hopes of catching some slight scent that was her. All he found was ink and paper, but the thought of her was enough. He placed the letter carefully by his bed and lay back. Sleep was far from him, but it didn’t bother him. His mind was full and awake and aware.
I will be paying close attention to news from Antea, she’d written. And what an amazing thing she would see.
He would bring peace to the world.
Cithrin
C
ithrin and Paerin Clark had left Camnipol like thieves in the night. Much of King Tracian’s party had escaped during the fighting, and those few that hadn’t might stay on past the departure of the Medean bank. Cithrin found she didn’t particularly care. With Asterilhold open, there was no call to ride north and take ship. Paerin used the money he had to buy a light cart and a fast, reliable team of horses, and they were off. She couldn’t help but remember leaving Vanai, it seemed a lifetime ago. In a way, it had been.
The plains of Asterilhold were in ruins where Kalliam’s army had passed. Grasslands had been churned to mud. Forests had been cut to the ground. The bones of the world were exposed here. The great wound was the aftermath of a short, successful war. Cithrin could hardly imagine what a longer one might have done.
Paerin Clark passed the hours with talk of finance and coinage, and Cithrin kept the pace he set. He told stories of how the Borjan kings had minted two separate currencies, one for trade and the other for tax, and that the two had been intentionally inconvertible. A man might accrue all the wealth the market could deliver and still not pay his taxes if that was in the interest of the Regos and his council. Cithrin told him about coming to Porte Oliva nearly penniless apart from the massive hoard of wealth she was smuggling and the creation of a fashion for Hallskari salt dyes out of a load of ruined cloth. The things they never spoke of as if by explicit consent were Antea, Camnipol, and what had happened during the long days of hiding.
Which wasn’t to say that they didn’t talk about Geder Palliako.
“So he never left the place?” Paerin Clark said. “You’re sure.”
“Fairly. I suppose he could have gone out while I was and gotten back before me, but he didn’t say it. Neither did Aster. And I don’t know why they’d have lied to me about it.”
“Well, maybe they didn’t,” he said. “It’s just that there were so many stories of people who saw him during the battle, it’s astonishing that there wouldn’t be one of them that was at least partially true.”
“People see what they want to see, I suppose,” she said. “I’d find the idea of a ruler skilled and dedicated enough to take to the streets in costume and defeat the enemies of the crown reassuring. Or terrifying. One or the other.”
“Hmm,” was Paerin’s only reply.
Approached from the east, Carse looked like a different city. The farmhouses and hamlets gave way slowly to larger buildings with more families living in each, and then suddenly the towers that had been on the horizon were all about them, reaching up toward the hazy white sky. And only a little bit beyond that, the cliff and the Thin Sea. She had spent so little time in Carse on her way out. The quest to undermine Pyk Usterhall seemed like something another woman had done. Her relief at being back in the great fortress of the holding company was like coming back to the house of a dear friend. Even a lover.
But it was nothing like home.
Lauro and Komme came to greet the cart. The older man’s gout was between flares, and he looked ten years younger without the lines of pain in his face. Chana was at the market, and Paerin left the cart to a servant so that he could go out to find her there. Magister Nison also appeared, friendly and laughing, and digging for every scrap of information and gossip he could.
A room had been set aside for Cithrin, and she walked up the stairs to it gratefully. It wasn’t large, but it was comfortable: a small bed, a writing desk, a lantern of glass and silver that managed to be both elegant and ornate. The rug was woven from reeds and felt surprisingly soft beneath her feet.
And beside the bed, a satchel made of red leather that she didn’t recognize. When she opened it, a double handful of papers came out, along with a small lacquer box with the image of a stork taking flight inlaid on the lid. Most of the papers were letters from Porte Oliva and Pyk. Cithrin read through them. The loan to a new brewer had gone south, and the stock and equipment sold at cost to the other brewer with whom they had partnered. The ultimate loss was minimal. Dar Cinlama, the explorer who had given Cithrin the dragon’s tooth that was still in her bags, had gone off into the Dry Wastes with a party of a hundred, and hadn’t come back. Either he’d found something of interest or something had found him of interest. The way it was written, she could hear the contempt in the Yemmu woman’s voice.
Certain belon
gings of Marcus Wester’s had been taken from the warehouse and sold. The proceeds were being held by Yardem Hane. Nothing else was on that letter. No explanation of why Marcus had left or where he’d gone that he couldn’t take his money with him. That was the first order of business when she got home, and no doubts.
The last report wasn’t from Porte Oliva at all, but from the holding company itself. It included records copied from Porte Oliva, and before that from Vanai. It was the complete accounting of the deposits her parents had put in the bank before they died, and how the money had been spent in the meantime. A depositor’s report in the name of Cithrin bel Sarcour.
The lacquer box was listed among the assets.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” Komme Medean said from the doorway. “Chana didn’t think you would, but I knew. I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“You’ve come of age. While you were in Camnipol hiding from God knows what with I frankly can’t believe who, you became a woman. Chana thought that something that important wouldn’t go unnoticed. I thought you’d already crossed that line in your own mind so long ago, it would matter very little to you.”
Cithrin opened the lacquer box. Inside was a necklace of white gold with pale emeralds just the color of her eyes. Cithrin found herself moved.
“I think your mother must have had coloring very much like your own,” Komme Medean said. “Would you like some help fastening it?”
“Please,” she said.
The old fingers were steady and sure. The necklace lay against her collarbone. It wasn’t the right length for the clothes she was wearing now, but the paler dress would leave it looking brilliant. She smiled and bowed her head.
“Thank you,” she said. “I couldn’t have asked for better parents than the bank has been.”
Komme Medean smiled.
“You’re a forger and an extortionist. From what I hear, you like wine entirely too much for your own good. And Pyk Usterhall thinks the part of your brain that measures risk was underfed when you were a babe. None of this has changed. Only one thing is different now than it was when you left.”
“Yes?”
“Yes,” Komme Medean said. “Now I can hold you to your contracts.”
“Does that mean I can stop being the playtoy magistra with Pyk pulling my strings?”
“You hate that, don’t you?” he said.
“I do.”
“No. You’re still too young. Too inexperienced. Four years, two of them in other branches where you can see an established magister. Then we can decide whether Porte Oliva is yours.”
“Two years, six months with a different branch,” she said. “I grew up in Vanai with Magister Imaniel. I’ve already seen a branch function from the inside.”
“Two years, one of them with a different branch. You can’t understand the whole cycle of a year until you’ve seen it start to finish.”
“Done.”
Komme Medean smiled.
“Well,” he said. “I think I’ve just bought myself two years, don’t you?”
D
espite Paerin’s comments about her being the new expert on Geder Palliako, Cithrin had been surprised to be included in the formal meeting. She’d assumed that she’d talk with Komme, Paerin, and Chana—possibly Magister Nison or Lauro—and then the information would be distilled and interpreted before it was presented to the king.
Instead, a massive carriage the green of summer leaves had arrived at the holding company. It bore the royal arms, but not the pennants of gold that would have meant King Tracian had come to them. She and Paerin were bundled up the step and into the dark luxury within, Komme following behind. When the driver set them in motion, the whole thing shook like a ship in a storm. By the time they arrived at the palace Cithrin was feeling hot and sweaty and less than well. A servant whose rank she couldn’t divine led them up a set of white marble stairs to a building the size of a decent-sized township. The king’s palace. From its door, she could see the sleeping dragon before the Grave of Dragons and the tower of the Council of Eventide. It was a beautiful city in its way.
What she liked about it most, she thought, was that there wasn’t a hell-deep pit in the middle of it.
The meeting room was a balancing act of bragging and understatement. The walls were hung with cloth dark enough that she had to look twice to see its quality. The chairs were all simply designed, but of rosewood and teak and upholstered with silk so soft she was worried that she’d split it when she sat. Taken as a whole it painted the portrait of a man who knew he was supposed to be grand without being tasteless, and hadn’t quite brought it off.
King Tracian was younger than she’d expected, though of course he hadn’t been the man Marcus had fought against. That had been Lady Tracian. Still, it was strange to see him appearing only a few years older than she was and think that if it hadn’t been for Marcus, this man wouldn’t be here at all. There would be a Springmere on the throne, and Cithrin would have gone through her life without Marcus Wester to protect her. And if Springmere hadn’t frightened himself into killing Marcus’s family …
Too big. It was all too big, the good and the evil too much mixed with each other. And in any case, King Tracian had given his permission for them to sit.
“You’re looking well, Komme,” the king said.
“Some days good, some bad,” Komme said with a shrug. “I hope your little problems are little too?”
“Much better,” the king said with a sour little smile that told Cithrin she was better not knowing what the reference was to. Komme’s smile was warm and apparently genuine, but she had the feeling it might always be.
“I’ve already heard quite a bit about our neighbors and cousins in Antea. This regent. How did we overlook him?”
“He wasn’t anyone until recently,” Komme said. “Minor house. Father of no importance.”
“Fortunes change quickly,” the king said, leaning forward. “What exactly have we found out?”
Paerin’s barely audible exhalation made it clear he was to take the lead. Cithrin sat on her hands.
“The situation in Antea has been unsettled,” Paerin said. “They’ve had two insurrections, the most recent of which led to a protracted battle and the collapse of several noble houses. They’ve conducted a particularly effective war against a traditional enemy. They’ve lost a king to the same ailment of the blood that took his father and which will, we must assume, eventually kill their next king as well.”
His voice and demeanor changed when he spoke like this, and Cithrin watched him, fascinated. He spoke firmly without aggression. His gestures were controlled but flowing. She was certain that the delivery would have been precisely the same if he’d been talking to a man like the king before him or the lowest servant in his house. They had moved beyond class and status, if only for a moment, and they were in the realm where Paerin Clark was the master.
“Palliako has an uncanny talent for mythologizing himself. But ultimately, his personality is unimportant. There are constraints on him that he won’t be able to avoid or to adjust to quickly.”
“Tell me,” the king said.
“He’s lost most of a harvest in two kingdoms,” Paerin said. “If he hadn’t made the war with Asterilhold a matter of conquest, he’d have fewer starving people next spring. But now they’re his, and they’re all his. He’s weakened his own support among the noble classes. He wasn’t precisely one of them to begin with. That his own Lord Marshal led an attack against him and did it in the name of the prince shows just how much work he has to do, just to get up to being an effective leader.
“He is open in ways that King Simeon wasn’t. There’s been the suggestion of a branch bank in Camnipol, which I think worth looking at seriously.”
Paerin folded his fingers together, and the king unconsciously mirrored him.
“Antea isn’t going to collapse, but it isn’t going to be stable either. I’d guess we were looking at five, maybe six years before Palliako poses
any threat to trade or to his neighbors. I think he has a long memory, though. Anyone who crosses him while he’s weak will answer for it when he’s strong. Aster is still too young to judge, and by the time he takes the throne, the situation will have changed again.”
“In brief, then, Antea’s a colorful show with blood and thunder but no real threat,” the king said.
“Exactly,” Paerin said.
“You’re wrong,” Cithrin said. “All apologies, but that’s wrong.”
Komme scowled.
“You have a different analysis, that’s fine. But Paerin’s been my man in Antea for almost a decade. He knows the country. How it works.”
“Has he had the Lord Regent between his legs? Because I have. I’ve seen who he is when no one’s looking, and nothing you’ve just said applies to that man.”
King Tracian’s eyebrows rose and Paerin Clark coughed in a way that didn’t mean he had a tickle in his throat. Cithrin ignored him.
“You’re treating Geder like he’s political or religious. Like he’s the kind of man who runs kingdoms. He’s not that.”
“Perhaps the magistra will enlighten me about the kind of man he is,” the king said.
“He’s… he’s sweet and he’s lonesome and violent and he’s monstrously thin-skinned.” Cithrin paused, looking for the words that would explain what she’d seen in Geder Palliako. “He’s a bad loan.”
Komme Medean grunted as if struck by a sudden pain. Paerin looked somber.
“I don’t understand,” the king said. “Have you given him money?”
“No,” Cithrin said. “And I wouldn’t. There are things you see when you’ve made a mistake. You don’t always, but often, and they mean that the money’s gone. You have a man who takes his payment and then starts to spend like he’s rich. He looks at the money and he sees the coins, not the payments he’s making to have them. He spends as if it was his money and there would be more. That’s Geder. He’s one of those boys who needed a mother in order to grow up and didn’t get one. Now he has power and no restraint. He’ll spend coin. He’ll spend lives.
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