Geder tried to imagine relieving himself where she could hear him, and his blush felt hot.
“Farther in would be better, don’t you think?”
“All right,” she said. “The first one who needs it picks the place.”
By the light of the single candle she unwrapped the cloth. There was enough food for several small meals: roasted chicken, raw carrots no thicker than her fingers, half a rabbit boiled in wine, hard rolls so stale they sounded hollow when she knocked them together. They sat together in the gloom. She drank wine with the certainty of long acquaintance, and Geder found himself pushing to keep up. When the last of the chicken was reduced to bones and gristle, they had just cracked the third wineskin’s neck, and from the way she held it, he was certain it would be empty before she slept.
Aster snored gently in his blankets and murmured to himself.
“He’s taking all this well,” Cithrin said, nodding toward the sleeping boy.
“He puts up a good front,” Geder said. “It’s been hard for him, though. He lost his mother young, and now his father. Add the weight of the crown.”
“It doesn’t seem fair that being born to the throne should make things so much harder,” she said. “You’d think power would have more to recommend it.”
“What? You don’t think things are going well?” he asked. She didn’t laugh for a moment, and he was relieved when she did.
“I assume this is an aberration for you, Lord Regent,” she said. “But you’ve grown up noble, just like the prince. You understand what he’s carrying.”
“I really don’t. I mean, I suppose I’m in the same place with him now, but I was very low before. He’s known from the time he could talk that he was destined for the throne. I’ve known I was going to have a tiny little holding in a valley with too many trees and not enough farmland.”
She tilted her head, considering him. The wine brought color to her cheeks. A stray lock of hair drifted onto her lips, and she blew it away.
“What happened, then?” she asked. “You’ve moved up in the world. You’re practically the king.”
“It’s a long, complicated story,” he said.
“You’re right,” she said. “We might run out of time.”
He began at the beginning. Rivenhalm, with its fast, small river and the library his father had built up. He remembered a little of his mother, and told what there was. His imaginings of Camnipol when he was young and it had been a magical city that his father spoke of, where noble lords and ladies danced and spoke wise things and dueled for love and honor. He laughed about it now, but it had seemed powerful and important at the time.
And then his first entry into the life of the court. His first campaign.
When he mentioned Vanai, she went still. It wasn’t that her expression closed so much as that it turned inward, became somber. Something in the back of his mind told him to stop, but the more quiet she grew, the more he wanted to pull her out, to make her laugh. The anxiety drove him on. He exaggerated his own failures and shortcomings for comic effect. Everyone else laughed at him, so maybe she could too, but she only nodded. He knew he had to change the topic before he got to the burning, but the tale and the wine had taken a life of their own and he listened to himself in growing horror as Ternigan took the city and named Alan Klin its protector. He told of his own role as petty enforcer of Klin’s will.
When he mentioned the caravan that was supposedly smuggling the wealth of Vanai, she roused a bit. When he told how he’d drawn the improbable range south of the dragon’s road, slogging through ice and mud with a troop of disloyal Timzinae soldiers, he had her full attention back. He even let himself confess—for the first time to anyone— that he’d found the treasure and let it go. Her expression of disbelief was almost comic.
“I know,” he said, shaking his head. “It was petty of me. And probably disloyal, but Klin was such a pompous… I don’t even know the word.”
She was looking at him as if she were seeing him for the first time, and her smile was like pouring water on a burn. He grinned and shrugged.
“I only took a bit,” he said. “Enough for some books when I got back to Vanai.”
“Of course you did,” she said and shook her head in amazement. The way she said it made it flattery, and he looked down, suddenly proud of his own daring. “You were there for the burning.”
Geder took a deep breath. The dread welled up in him. He ignored it well, but it was never far away.
“I was protector of the city,” he said.
Her face went very still.
“Was it your order, then?”
The truth was on the edge of his mind. It would have taken so little to say yes. But he wanted her to like him.
“No,” he said. “The command came from higher ranks. But I didn’t rise against it. I should have. It was a mistake. It was a terrible, terrible stupid mistake. Whoever did give the order, he can’t have understood what it meant. Not really. I still have nightmares about it sometimes. You… you knew Vanai?”
“I was raised there,” she said. “My parents were buried there, and the bank took me in. I lost everyone there.”
Geder’s belly felt hollow with fear, and he quietly thanked God that he’d chosen against the truth. Guilt washed over him like a wave.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured, looking away.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I loved them, but they didn’t love me. Cam, maybe. But Magister Imaniel didn’t love anyone, I don’t think. He wasn’t that kind of man. It hurt me when they died, but…”
“But?”
“But I don’t know who I’d be if they’d lived,” she said. She spoke with the clarity of being just drunk enough to know she had to try not to slur her words. “I missed them. And I mourned for them, I think. But I like who I am. What I do. I’m looking forward to everything. The things that happened to bring me here? I can’t judge them. Good. Bad. Who would I be if I’d had parents? Who would I be if I’d gone to Carse? If something terrible leads to something good, where does that leave you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, though he didn’t understand the part about going to Carse. She’d come from Carse, so she must have gone there at some point.
She put the wineskin to her mouth, tilting back her head. Her throat worked, once, twice, last. A tiny red trickle slipped from her lips, and she wiped it away with her sleeve. When she smiled, the expression was lazy and joyful, utterly out of place in the ruins of a city at war.
“I,” she said, putting the empty skin on the ground, “am drunk enough to sleep now.”
“Well, then. Good night, Magistra.”
She nodded an unsteady bow, but her eyes were bright and merry.
“Sleep well, Lord Regent. We’ll see who has to find a home for the piss pot,” she said, leaned forward with pursed lips, and blew out the candle.
The darkness was utter and absolute. Geder found a blanket by touch and curled himself into it. The welts on his arm were itching, but not badly. He heard her struggling with her own blanket, muttering small curses, shifting, cloth moving against cloth. Her breath was shallow and impatient, and then softer, deeper, fuller. She snored a little, the rattle high in her throat. Geder lay on the dirt, his own arm for a pillow. He heard the patter of soft cat feet, one of the previous owners drawn by the smell of the chicken. The frantic licking of a small, rough tongue. When he moved, the cat fled, and he was sorry that it had. He didn’t mind sharing what was left of the meal.
He hadn’t realized how much the tiny candle flame had warmed the little room, but the air was growing steadily colder. He willed himself to sleep, counting his breaths to himself the way he had when he was younger. Going through his body, forcing each muscle to relax, starting with his feet and ending with the top of his head. It grew colder, but he minded it less. Slowly, by inches, he felt his mind letting go, slipping apart into the quiet darkness. When she shifted against him, he only half noticed she was there.
His
last coherent thought was that he was sleeping beside a woman and it didn’t seem strange at all.
Dawson
The battle of Camnipol had raged for more than a week now, violence following violence, attack calling forth reprisal calling forth reprisal of its own. Twice now, someone had tried to open the gates, and both times they had been driven back. The city’s food supplies were growing shorter, the water in the cisterns lower. The high summer sun had joined the battle with the worst heat in years. It beat down from an implacable blue sky, turning all the roofs to a burning bronze, wilting the flowers, and driving men to madness.
Dawson stood on the rooftop of Alan Klin’s estate, his arms behind him, his chin jutting forward with a confidence he didn’t feel. His city was suffering. His nation was suffering. Asterilhold could have reassembled its army and stood outside the walls right now, and not only would Dawson not know it, it wouldn’t have made any difference. The siege they held themselves under was as vicious as any enemy could devise. It was like watching a beloved dog going slowly mad, biting itself to death while Dawson could only look on in horror and sorrow.
Behind him, Alan Klin cleared his throat. And Mirkus Shoat, never a man of particular originality, did as well. Dawson turned to his council. The patriots being mistaken for traitors. Estin Cersillian was dead, caught by a blade in the street. Odderd Mastellin looked small and sheeplike and weary. Only Lord Bannien lived and was not with them. He’d gone in the morning with a dozen men to salvage what he could of his mansion, burned in the night.
“We can’t keep this going,” Klin said.
“I know it.”
In the street below them, there should have been men and women, dogs and children. Servants should have been carrying their masters’ clothing back from the launderer. Horses should have pulled carts of turnips and carrots to the market square. Instead, men with swords walked in groups, wary-eyed. His men, Klin’s, Bannien’s. Aster’s banner flew over the house as well, a visible claim of loyalty that seemed to matter less and less with every passing day.
“If we have King Lechan,” Mastellin said, “we can lay claim to being the legitimate protectors of the throne. We’d hold the enemy of the crown as an enemy.”
“Are we sure no one’s killed him?” Mirkus Shoat asked. Klin’s laugh was low and nasty.
“We’re not sure anyone’s fed him,” he said. “He could be gone to the angels and not a dagger in sight.”
“Then we have to surrender,” Shoat said.
“Never to Palliako,” Dawson said. “If we lay down arms, it must be to the prince. Otherwise everything they say about us will be true.”
“I think you underestimate what they’re saying about us,” Klin said. “And it hardly matters. Until we find one or the other of them, we might as well give arms to Daskellin or Broot or whoever we find walking down the street. There’s no one we can surrender to that can guarantee our safety as far as from here to the gallows.”
“Why not?” Shoat demanded. “Those others could surrender to us.”
“But they won’t,” Klin said, his voice the melody of despair. “They’re winning.”
“What about the priests?” Dawson said. “Have we tracked any of them down?”
“A few,” Klin said. “Not all. The high priest especially can’t be found. We’ve rounded up six or seven of the bastards.”
“Where are they now?” Mastellin asked.
“Bottom of the Division,” he said. “We threw them off a bridge. I talked to one of them for a while first. They tell interesting stories.”
“I don’t care what pigs mean when they grunt,” Dawson said, but Klin went on as if he’d been silent.
“They say Palliako’s running the whole damned fight from a secret tower in the Kingspire. He’s supposed to have some kind of magical protection. When the blades hit him, they passed right through like he was mist.”
“It’s shit,” Dawson said. “The only thing my blade passed through was the priest.”
Klin shook his head. When he spoke again, his voice was harder.
“They say he planned all this. That it’s part of the purge he began with Feldin Maas, and only he knew how deep it really ran. They say the fighting now is all him putting a hot cloth on the wound so he can draw up the pus.” Klin looked around the rooftop. “We’re the pus, in case you missed the metaphor.”
In the street, someone shouted and half a dozen men drew blades and ran to the sound. Dawson wished his eyes could turn the corners and follow them instead of standing up where he could see so much more of the city, and still too little.
“You don’t believe it,” Dawson said.
“I don’t know,” Klin replied. “I didn’t, but even wild tales can have a grain of truth to them. Palliako knew we were coming.”
“He was suprised,” Dawson said.
“He didn’t know it was you, maybe,” Klin said. “But he does now. Maybe it was all built to see who was against him. It worked out that way, didn’t it?”
Sweat trickled down Dawson’s back and stuck his sleeves to his arms. The shouts in the streets below were growing louder, and the sound of steel against steel rang with them. Klin ignored that too.
“I don’t think he’s become some sort of master cunning man who turns to mist and knows the hearts of all his subjects. But some people do, Kalliam. Some people think that’s true.”
“There are always idiots,” Dawson said as a rough knot of melee pushed its way back round the corner and toward Klin’s courtyard. “And you’re one for talking to them. Damn it, they’ve come back. Sound the defense.”
“What’s the point?” Klin asked.
“That they don’t kill us,” Dawson said, speaking each word individually. Klin only smiled.
“Every man dies sometime,” he said. “At least it won’t be in that swamp.”
At last, the drums beat out the defense. The men at rest came out from behind Klin’s walls, pressing the attackers back to the barricades Dawson’s forces had made. He was going to have to pull back farther still. With Bannien gone, he had too few men to command all the streets around Klin’s estate. And God alone knew when Bannien would return.
And if.
* * *
The halls of Klin’s estate were frankly ugly. Like Issandrian and Maas and all of that cohort of young iconoclasts, the old aesthetics were lost on them. There were no clean lines here. No austerity or dignity or gravity. Nothing held the beauty of classic architecture. Instead, the doorframes were carved into small riots of form: monkeys lifting frogs, frogs with lions on their backs, lions pawing at stretch-winged herons who were also the lintel. The tapestries were gaudy, busy things that dripped fringe like a drool from a man with a bad tooth. No floor could be left alone. They had to be inlaid with different colors of stone and chips of stained glass.
Sitting in the withdrawing room, Clara was like a gem in a pile of stones. The bed that Klin had supplied took up the better part of the room, but she sat on it as if it were the most elegant silk divan. The interior of the house was viciously hot, and without even the advantage of the smoky breeze, so she had the shutters cracked open, the soft daylight on her needlework. The web of pink threads and yellow and green were growing together into a pattern he couldn’t yet make sense of. He’d always had the sense that she complicated the work intentionally, putting the thread together as a puzzle for her to resolve. In the end, it would be as if each step had been perfectly straightforward. Elegant.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said without looking up. “You’ll only make me feel guilty for distracting you.”
“And if I told you I was looking for Jorey?”
She smiled. Clara had always had the talent for looking pleased without denying that she felt weary.
“I’d ask why you weren’t looking in his room or the barracks.”
“I was going to,” Dawson said. “But I got distracted.”
She put down her work and patted the mattress at her side. It
was too soft, of course. Klin was a weak man at heart, and always had been.
“Tell me again,” Dawson said, “what happened when Phelia Maas died.”
“Well, you recall we were in the drawing room, you and Jorey and Geder and that very large religious friend of Geder’s. And poor Phelia was in a state of nerves. When Palliako began unveiling everything that had been going on with Feldin, the poor thing fell apart…”
She told it all again, as she had before. The pretended errand to Maas’s mansion, the priest’s insistence when challenged that they were there at the baron’s request. Then the letters that proved his conspiracy, and the discovery. Phelia’s death.
And after, when Vincen Coe had stood against the baron and his men in the corridor while Basrahip the goatherd priest hectored Maas into walking away. Dawson tried to picture it, and failed. He had fought Feldin Maas many times, and more than one of those had been with a blade. To go meekly. To drop his sword and turn away.
“They have some evil magic,” he said. “It breaks men. It broke Maas and the men in the keep at the Seref. And it’s breaking Klin. I can see it in him. He spoke to them, and it’s drowned the fire in him just the way it did for the others.”
“Are you sure it isn’t the fever and fighting that’s doing it?” Clara asked. “It doesn’t take magic to break someone’s spirit. The world can be enough.”
There was a truth in her words he didn’t want to acknowledge, but it was there, patient and implacable. The exhaustion pressing down on his shoulders drew from more than the battle dragging on. More than his frustration and fear. It was also grief. He had done his best for his kingdom. He had done his duty as he saw it, standing bulwark against the small, shortsighted men who would change it. If Simeon had lived only a few more years, enough to give Aster the throne without a regency…
Clara took his hand, and he tried to muster some hope.
“Skestinin’s got to be getting close by now,” he said. “Once he brings his men south, he’ll get the gates opened. We’re too evenly matched now, and he can tip the balance.”
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