The moment balanced on the edge of a blade. It was true, she’d come all this way, and for this. To speak to the man at the center of the great labyrinth of power and gold and win him over to her. She’d imagined the delicate conversation of a courtier, the half-playful and half-serious questions that Magister Imaniel had raised her with. She’d imagined herself impressing the man slowly over the course of hours or days. And now, instead, she stood before a mostly naked, sick man, as the central question lay out on the floor between them like a broken toy.
The moment stretched, and Cithrin felt her opportunity slipping just beyond her reach. She was embarrassing herself in front of the very man she’d meant to impress. And then, from the back of her mind, an old voice whispered. Cary, the actress who’d helped Cithrin play the part of a banker, of a woman full-grown and at the height of her power. The woman you’re pretending at, her imagined Cary whispered, what would she say?
Cithrin raised her courage and her chin.
“I’ve come to tell you your notary has the soul of a field mouse and the tact of a landslide. And after that, I want to charm you into giving me more of your money and greater freedom to use it,” Cithrin said. Her voice a little hard and buzzing at the edges. “How’m I doing so far?”
The room was silent. Even the cunning man stopped his chanting. And then Komme Medean, soul and spirit of the Medean bank, barked out a laugh, and Cithrin let herself breathe again.
“Bring her a chair, and pass me those reports,” he said. She put the sealed books into his hand. He was a bigger man than he’d seemed at first. He broke the seals and opened the ledgers, reading the ciphered text as easily as if it had been simple letters. “All right, Magistra. Let’s see how you’re doing. So far.”
Geder
As a boy, even a young man, Geder had imagined what it would be like to be king. His daydreams had seemed perfectly benign at the time. If he were king, men like Sir Alan Klin would be called to heel. If he were king, he would see that the libraries of Camnipol—of all Antea and its holdings—were well stocked and maintained. If he were king he would command any woman he wanted to his bed, and no one would laugh at him or reject him or comment on the size of his belly. They had been the sort of fantasies a young man could have safely, without any threat that they might one day come true.
Except, of course, that they had.
Now he woke in the mornings with a dozen servants already standing around his bed. There was the ritual humiliation of being bathed and dressed. He understood that it was all meant as a show of dignity. The Lord Regent of Antea was not a man who put on his own clothing, who shaved his own chin, who laced his own boots. He submitted to being helped up from his bed, to having his night clothes taken from him and standing naked for that terrible moment until other men’s hands pulled fresh undergarments over his body. He could not bathe without his body servants attending him. Or perhaps he could, but it would have meant ordering them away, and ordering them away would have been admitting that it bothered him to have them see him undressed. And once he admitted that it bothered him, then every time it had happened up until now became shameful in retrospect.
He should have refused the very first time, but he hadn’t known then, and now it was too late. He was trapped by what had come before into enduring what was inevitably going to come next.
As to the idea of asking a woman to bed with him, he’d have died first. There was no doubt—none—that at least one servant would be discreetly in earshot the whole time. Even if he’d known how to bring up the subject to a woman, the idea that he would be putting on a display for the help was intolerable.
Once he’d gotten through the worst of it, though, the breakfast was always brilliant, and the mornings until midday he spent in the personal library reading ancient books and working on his translations. Or else he would visit Aster and they’d mock his tutors together. Usually his awareness of the great cloud of servants would diminish over time until they almost seemed to be there for their own reasons, and Geder stopped feeling quite so much onstage.
The Kingspire itself seemed constantly implausible. Dur ing his time in court, Geder had been to a few of its great halls, but living in it he began to see the place less as a build ing and more like a great insects’ mound like something out of Southling fairy tales. The walls were only apparently solid. Most were crisscrossed with servants’ passages and hidden ways. A thin, dingy hallway might loop through the basements only to open into a vast private bathhouse with indigo tiles and heated water steaming down in a waterfall. There were listener’s holes everywhere—under benches, hidden inside archways—where an eavesdropper might be placed.
There was even an entire chamber that was built as a massive dumbwaiter and ready to haul the king and his guests up to the greatest heights of the spire without the trouble of being carried up stairs to get there. All the air was perfumed. All the conservatories stood ready with musicians to play at the king’s command, or in Geder’s case, the regent’s. He constantly felt as though he was living inside someone else’s idea of who he should be, and it left him feeling a bit tentative. Unless, of course, Basrahip was with him. The priest was a steadying presence.
“Little change, Lord Regent,” Lord Daskellin said as he stepped across the war chamber.
Wider than a dueling field, the floor of the room had been covered in soil and sod all formed and shaped to match the geography of Asterilhold and western Antea. Geder’s working desk stood near the wall where Camnipol would have been. The promontory on which the city stood was a little step down. The mountains dividing Asterilhold from the Dry Wastes came up almost to his knees. The northern coast was bordered by tiny blue beads poured out until the false sea met the walls like running into the edge of the world.
Canl Daskellin stepped across the fields of Asterilhold, over the great knot of armies playing stop-me-stop-you in the marshes of the south, then the Siyat and the arrayed army crouched around the Seref Bridge. The only changes since the day before were the positions of the ships on the sea of beads, and really only four of those were significant.
“Good morning, my lord,” Basrahip said.
“Minister,” Daskellin replied, and both men seemed pleased to leave the conversation there.
“I haven’t had word from Lord Kalliam,” Geder said. “Something could have happened in the south, still.”
“Could,” Daskellin said, and his tone finished the sentence. Something could have happened, but it hadn’t.
Geder hated the vague apology in his own voice, but Canl Daskellin had been King Simeon’s Protector of Northport, among other things. Growing up, men like Daskellin and Bannien, Issandrian and Maas had been the great lights of the court. Now that Geder was Lord Regent, Daskellin paid court, and still Geder always had the feeling of being the junior when the man was in the room. That he had recalled Daskellin from the field and was prepared to command him again now only made the awkwardness more profound.
“I was thinking,” Geder said, rising from his desk, walking gently to avoid crushing his own forces camped near the Seref, “that we could build a second bridge. I read an essay about Koort Mahbi, the third Regos of Borja? He had a moving bridge designed with little boats on the supports. The way he did it, his army could push the bridge out over a river, and then move across it, and pull it up on the other side. There and then gone again. If we made one like that we could go to the river over here.” He touched the ground where the Siyat curved. “We wouldn’t be near a good road, but even overland, I don’t think we’d be more than three days from Kaltfel.”
“It’s a thought,” Daskellin said. “There’s still the problem of getting enough men onto the far side. If Kalliam had managed to get us both sides of the Seref, there would have been a protected place for the troops to gather. A movable bridge like that? If it’s not wide enough to bring a large number of men across at once, a couple of dozen bowmen could kill our full army a few men at a time.”
“But Kalliam says
they can’t move in the marshlands,” Geder said.
“And he’s right. The reason Asterilhold and Antea split when the High Kings died was that river, the runoff from the mountains, and the mud between the two.”
Geder cleared his throat.
“That’s why I want you to go to Northcoast.” Daskellin looked up at him now. Geder wasn’t sure, but he thought there was a hint of pleasure in the man’s expression. “The gap between the mountain ranges there and there is hilly and it’s got about a thousand little holdfasts and garrisons, but if King Tracian were to move a force to his border, Asterilhold would have to draw men back from the south to keep them from invading, yes?”
Daskellin paced the room to the fields of Ellis and looked back. He stroked his chin.
“It’s possible, yes,” he said.
Geder glanced over to Basrahip, who nodded. A small, relieved smile drew Geder’s lips wider.
“He doesn’t actually have to invade, even,” Geder said. “If he’s just there looking as if he might…”
“Have you told the Lord Marshal about this idea?”
“Ah. No. Why? Should I?”
Daskellin shrugged.
“Dawson doesn’t like involving other kingdoms in Antean affairs. I think he finds having allies undignified. But yes, I have friends and contacts in Northcoast. Not all of them are in the court. I’m not sure what the situation is there, but I can find out. Where’s Bannien?”
“Lord Bannien’s holding Anninfort,” Geder said. “Kalliam thought there was too much chance of a fresh rebellion. His sons are with the larger army. When can you be on your way?”
“As soon as you’d like.”
“Tomorrow, then,” Geder said. “I’ve sent to Lord Skestinin. He’ll have a ship ready to take you, provided Asinport hasn’t broken the blockade. But Skestinin doesn’t think it will have.”
“I will do my best,” Daskellin said, with a small, crisp bow. He hesitated. “I don’t mean to be rude. But may I ask something about the southern front?”
“Yes?”
“I’d heard that Alan Klin was in the field. At the front, in fact. Quite far in the front.”
Geder shrugged.
“We’re hoping to lure the enemy out of position,” he said. “And I thought giving Klin the opportunity to regain some part of his honor seemed kind. Don’t you think?”
“Of course, Lord Regent,” Daskellin said with another bow. “I understand.”
After the door had closed behind him, Geder turned to the priest.
“Well?”
Basrahip cocked his head.
“My prince?”
“Was it true?”
“Yes, he understood,” the priest said calmly.
“What did he understand?”
“He didn’t say, my prince.”
“Does he approve?”
“He didn’t say,” Basrahip repeated and showed Geder his palms as if offering him the empty air cupped there. “The living voice carries what it carries. If you wish to know these things, ask him. And then we will know.”
Geder paced over to the small model of Kaltfel and squatted down. It was such a short distance. He could step to Kalliam’s command from there. He had the deep urge to step on the model, flatten the offending walls and street and towers. Grind them into the dirt. If only he could do the same to the real city. He became aware of a deep sound. Basrahip, laughing.
“What?” Geder said.
“Lord Prince—”
“I’m regent,” Geder said, peevishly. “Regent’s better than prince.”
“Lord Regent,” Basrahip said. “My friend. Your people are strange. They want to do something out there in the world, and so they lock you up in here, with little toys.”
The priest rose from the table and walked across to the Seref Bridge, sitting cross-legged before it. He picked up the figure of the horseman that represented Dannick and pretended to address himself to it.
“Why do you fight, little soldier? Mm? What do you hope to win? What does your heart tell you?” He pretended to listen. Or maybe he did, and pretended to hear. He looked up at Geder with merry eyes. “He doesn’t say.”
“Well, it isn’t as if I could go out and be in the middle of it myself,” Geder said. “I have to see it all, somehow. This is how I can keep track of everything. I mean, all I need to do to see that the supply lines are getting too long in the south is look there. I can see it.”
“No, you cannot. Nothing here is real. You see that this toy is so far from that toy, and not closer. And from that you think there is something to be learned. Here, look.”
Basrahip reached over and pushed one of the southern armies forward.
“Now your supplies come quick when they’re needed, yes?”
“No!” Geder said. “You can’t just move something and make it happen.”
“No, you can’t,” Basrahip said. “It is empty. It is a sign without a soul. And the orders and reports they send you. Words on paper. Empty. How do you hope to win battles between men using paper and toys?”
“Do you have a better idea?” Geder asked. He meant it as a sarcasm, as of course you don’t, but part of him wanted— wanted badly—for the huge man to say yes.
“Yes,” Basrahip said. “Wait. This bridge—not this little toy, but the bridge you all speak of. This bridge to end your war. May I give it to you? Will you accept it from me?”
“I don’t… I don’t know what you mean.”
Basrahip rose to his knees and then his feet. The soil of the false battlefield stained his knees, and he brushed at it with a wide palm. His voice was calm.
“Let me send three of my priests to this place, and allow me twenty days. Then bring your armies and we will open this way and end your war. Let me do this for you, yes?”
“Yes,” Geder said. “If you can do that, then yes.”
The first time—the only time before—that Geder had been given command over something, it had been Vanai and it had been as a cruel joke. He still didn’t know what machinations had left some faction of the court hoping to lose control of Vanai by putting the idiotic, unprepared Geder Palliako in charge of it. Now that he had the kingdom, he had the allegiance and support of everyone. The intrigue politics of the court would never end, but the great minds answered to him now, and his cause was the victory of the kingdom over its enemies. No one could want him to fail without also being a traitor.
It changed everything. Even the men who had laughed at him, who had looked upon him as a sad joke, feared him now. Even they helped him when he demanded it.
He sat that night at a feast held by Sir Gospey Allintot. There had been a time not very long ago when Allintot had been if not his enemy then certainly not his friend. And now his full household was bent double for Geder’s honor.
Basrahip sat at his side as the hall filled with Allintot’s guests. Lady Oesteroth, wearing her husband’s dagger to show that he was in the field for the crown. Jorey Kalliam and his new bride. Sir Emund Serrinian, Earl of Whiteford. And coming in late and last to the high table, the Viscount of Rivenhalm, Lehrer Palliako. Geder’s father.
Geder went to him, tugging him toward the front. His father looked out over the crowd, squinting.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever been at the high table,” his father said. “Traveling above my circles these days, m’boy. Above mine.”
“I think if your son’s regent, that makes you part of the high circles,” Geder said, laughing a little nervously.
His father clapped him on the shoulder and nodded, but didn’t say anything more. The meal was lavish—candied pork with onions, winter-bred pheasant basted with its own fat, lark’s tongue and blackberries—and all of it served on plates of silver and gold. A cunning man came out as entertainment, calling the names of angels and spirits until a ghostly light filled his eyes and his palms became bright as candles. Geder watched it all, his delight cooled by his father’s quiet eyes and unfinished food. When the cunning man
’s show was finished, his used and prostrate form hauled off by servants amid laugh ter and delight, Geder leaned close to his father.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“No,” Lehrer said. “No, my boy. Everything’s fine.”
He didn’t need Basrahip’s gift to know it wasn’t true.
“Come walk with me,” Geder said.
They were alone, except that of course they weren’t. The regent’s guards and body servants followed along at a distance as Geder and his father walked down the long, black-paved path to Allintot’s courtyard. The carriages and palanquins waited in the fading sunlight, ready to whisk away whatever noble blood wanted to go elsewhere. None of them would move so much as an inch while Geder remained at the feast. If he stayed until the dawn, each of them would too. The thought was strange and hilarious, and it made Geder want to try it, just to see the great men and ladies of the court trying to stay awake and pretending to enjoy themselves as the night grew longer beneath them.
His father found a bench and sat on it. Geder sat at his side.
“It’s quite a lot in not much time, isn’t it?” his father said. “My son, the Lord Regent. Who would have thought it, eh? It’s an honor. It’s… yes.”
“I wish Mother’d lived to see it.”
“Oh, oh yes. Yes, she’d have had something to say about it all, wouldn’t she? She was a firebrand, your mother. Hell of a woman.”
A cricket sang. The first one that Geder remembered hearing all season. A sudden powerful sadness rushed up in his chest, and with it a sense of grievance. He had done everything he could. He’d come as near to kingship as any man could who wasn’t chosen by blood. He’d saved Aster and protected Camnipol. He’d won, and still his father seemed distant. Disappointed.
“What’s the matter?” Geder said, more harshly than he’d meant to.
“Nothing. Nothing, it’s just the war. You know. All that fighting last year. All that unease. And now this, and… I don’t know. I was never meant for court life. All these people used to ignore me, and suddenly they pretend to care what I make of it all.”
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