The death of the king, the naming of Lord Regent, a successful war, and a scarring insurrection. Imperial Antea had suffered a terrible year. And the coming spring might be no easier.
Namen Flor’s lands sat nestled in a valley in the southeast of the empire, not far from the border with Sarakal. The great city of Kavinpol lay to the west with its river docks and warehouses. In summer, the the rich soil of Flor was fed by two rivers, and the grain and fruit that came from that one holding would feed an army for a season. The holding itself rose like a mountain in the plain, granite and basalt hauled overland from the mountains to the south and combined into a building almost as tall as the kingspire in Camnipol. The dragon’s road ran through the heart of the structure, though at the moment ice and snow buried the eternal jade, so that it might have been any road at all until they had passed through the wide gates and under the overhanging shelter.
The cold had set Geder’s nose running, and his earlobes hurt like something bitten. He gave his horse to the groom and hurried to the quarters Sir Flor had set aside for his use. And especially the tub. It was beaten copper half as deep as a man standing, and the water that fed into it from the stone dragon’s mouth steamed and smelled of sandalwood. And best of all, the room that housed it was small. As Lord Regent, custom had it that his personal guard and body servants would be always in attendance. He hated it, and while he’d won the battle against the body servants, he hadn’t quite had it in him yet to keep the guardsmen out when he bathed. After Dawson Kalliam’s attempt on his life, Geder actually found the guards reassuring in a way. But here the private bath could be protected from without, and Geder’s nakedness wouldn’t be on display even to those whose duty it was to defend his life.
While he let the warm water ease the aching muscles in his back and thighs, he watched the lamp flame shift and steady and shift again. He let himself imagine what it would have been like to have a certain part-Cinnae banker woman sitting across from him, her flesh as bare as his own, her pale skin glowing in the light. When his body began to react to the thought, he made himself turn to other matters.
From without, the King’s Hunt had always struck Geder as merely a vehicle for court intrigue. King Simeon would travel the realm, gracing his friends and allies with his presence, killing a few animals, and having a lot of feasts. It had looked like one of the sort of parties Geder was bad at, only stretched out over the course of weeks and punctuated by feats of manly athletics, half-drunken poetry contests, and extemporaneous speeches. Only when he’d become Lord Regent and the empire was his to command did he begin to see how the hunt was also a tool of convenience.
Not all men of court came to Camnipol. Not all facts of a landscape could be captured on a map. The hunt might seem to wander through the lands and holdings of the empire, but the path he followed was as set and certain as the dragon’s roads themselves. It was not chance that had brought him here, but necessity.
He rose from the water, dried himself, and put on his undergarments before signaling to the body servants that they could enter to finish dressing him. He would have been as happy staying the rest of the day in the warmth and solitude, but the feast was coming, and now that he’d spent some time in the forests near Flor, it was time to attend to the matter that had actually brought him there.
He found Basrahip and Aster sitting together in a withdrawing room. The walls were papered in red velvet and the lamps burned with the rich scent of whale oil. The priest’s voice rolled and thundered like thunder from a distant storm. The young prince in his silk and cloth-of-gold sat looking up into the face of the massive brown-clad priest like an allegory of youth at the feet of wisdom. Geder stopped in the doorway to listen.
“Seeing that the world had fallen from his hands, Morade, in his death, was possessed by the sick pride of his kind. He released a terrible weapon. For three years, the world burned. Every forest fell to ash. Every city crumbled. The thirteen races of humanity took refuge where they could, preserving the animals in pens and the fish in clay pots against the day when they might be freed to fill the world again.”
“Three years?” Aster said, awe in his voice.
“Yes, young prince. For three years, all was laid waste. And so the freedom of humanity was born in ashes and in starvation. Only the Timzinae, favored of the dragons, kept the old ways alive, sacrificing children of the other races to the memory of the Dragon Empire. All others remade themselves, replanting the forests and rebuilding the cities. And without the guidance of the goddess, all lost their way, as the goddess had known they would. She kept aside the temple in the mountains in the lands of the Sinir that are holy to her, that we could prepare for the day when a great man would come and we would know it was time to reenter the world.”
“That was Geder, wasn’t it?” Aster said.
“It was,” Basrahip said, with a broad, gentle smile.
“Speaking of which,” Geder said, stepping into the room. Aster turned to him. He looked stronger, healthier since they’d taken to the hunt. Geder would still see moments of sorrow in the boy, but they were growing fewer and fewer. Whenever Geder worried about it, he reminded himself that Aster had lost his father not a full year ago, and that even the most resilient child would mourn a parent for much longer than that.
“Prince Geder,” Basrahip said, levering himself to his feet.
“Lord Regent,” Geder said. “Aster’s a prince. I’m Lord Regent.”
“Of course,” Basrahip said, as he always did. The correction would never take.
“Is everything all right?” Aster said.
“Yes, fine,” Geder said. “But I need to borrow Basrahip for a time. Before the feast starts.”
“Of course, Prince Geder,” Basrahip said with a bow. When Geder rolled his eyes, Aster chuckled.
Geder and Basrahip walked together down the long hallways. Here, in the heart of the holdfast, the ceilings rose up higher than four men one atop the other, and a clever series of holes admitted the falling sunlight without letting the warmth of the braziers escape. The color of the light was enough to tell Geder that the winter night would be on them soon. Servants and guards went before and came behind, creating a mobile privacy for him and Basrahip.
“That can’t be right, can it?” Geder said.
Basrahip raised querying eyebrows.
“The three-year fire,” Geder explained. “A fire that went on that long would have left a layer of ash all over the world. And there are cities that stood where they are now since before the dragons fell.”
“If it must be, it must be,” Basrahip said. “But the fire years are truth.”
“But there are forests in Northcoast that have trees older than that. Not many, maybe, but I read an essay about how you can tell the age of a tree by the number of rings, and it said the largest of the redwoods in Northcoast—”
Basrahip shook his bull-wide head.
“You put too much faith in empty words. No forests live that were not planted after the fire years. All animals that live were sheltered by humanity in the fire years. If you say that the world must be built upon ash, then look for it, and you will find it. Or if you do not, you must find for yourself what became of it. But the fire is true.”
“It’s just in all the histories I’ve read—even the ones written within a generation or two of the fall—no one’s ever mentioned a catastrophe like that. You’d think they would have. I mean, the utter destruction of everything’s not the sort of thing I’d leave out if I were writing a history.”
Basrahip waved the words away with a massive palm.
“Words on paper are not even lies. They are empty. The voice that speaks them is your own, and you mean nothing when you say them except that here on this page are these words. It the least important thing that there is. From the time before the dragons, my priesthood have been the keepers of truth. All truth. You know that no one can lie to the goddess.”
“Well, yes,” Geder said, feeling abashed. “Of course I kn
ow that. I mean, you’ve proved it over and over, haven’t you?”
“And you know that her truth cannot be long denied.”
“I’ve seen that too,” Geder agreed.
“With every generation, the priests of the goddess have passed on the true tale of the world in voices that cannot be denied to acolytes who would hear any falsehood. What are your books and scroll to this? The living voice has carried what I say across the ages. Your library was all created by a hand, not a voice. Tell me this. Will you say all books are true?”
“Well, no. Of course not. There are some essays I’ve read that were clearly—”
“And would you say that you can know perfectly which are true and which not?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean they’re useless. I mean, most of them, you can assume are—”
Basrahip stopped, took Geder by the shoulders, and looked deeply into his eyes.
“I ask you this, Prince Geder. If I gave you a meal that you knew was poisoned in part, and also you knew that you could not know where the poison lay, would it be wisdom to eat?”
“Of course not,” Geder said.
“So it is with books,” Basrahip said. “Listen to my voice, my friend. The goddess is there, and she will not lead you astray.”
Namen Flor looked like a reed. His thin body rose up from his feet to a tall, broad face and hair the color of wheat that he wore close-cropped. He stood as Geder entered the candle-bright private chamber. If he was nervous, his voice did not betray it.
“I was told you wished to speak with me, Lord Regent?”
“Yes, I did. Please, sit. No need to be formal. You know Minister Basrahip, don’t you?”
Sir Flor bent his head in a gesture carefully between nod and bow. Physical diplomacy. Geder lowered himself to a divan upholstered in green silk and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Basrahip took a place on the far wall, smiling absently and looking at at the fire dancing in the grate. Flor turned from one to the other, then sat across from Geder and ignored the priest. Geder glanced at Basrahip, and the priest nodded once. He was ready.
“Are you loyal to me, Sir Flor?”
The reedy man seemed to expect the question, because he answered at once.
“Of course, Lord Palliako.”
Basrahip nodded. It was truth, but Geder held up a finger.
“I don’t mean to the throne or to Antea in the abstract. Are you loyal to me?”
Flor frowned.
“Forgive me, my lord, but I don’t see the difference. You are Lord Regent. Being loyal to Antea is being loyal to you.”
Another nod. Well, it wasn’t as good as raw personal devotion, but it would do.
“I have need of your discretion, Sir Flor. How are your spring crops?”
“Not yet sown. I imagine they will be breaking the ground for the first lettuces in a month or so.”
“I would like you to convert your fields to spring wheat. And whichever lands you can spare that are least productive, I will need to borrow from you for the season.”
Flor blinked, then shrugged.
“Of course, my lord. May I ask why?”
Geder leaned back. The truth was, he enjoyed this part. Knowing something another man wanted to know was a kind of power. Maybe the best kind.
“Antea is in perilous times,” Geder said. “The impression abroad is that the trials of the war and the insurrection have weakened us. That we may be vulnerable. As long as the world thinks we are weak, we will be in danger.”
“Yes, I have heard that concern spoken,” Flor said. “And I admit I am concerned that it may in part be true. The forces need to keep Asterilhold from rising—”
“It will not rise,” Basrahip said. “There are temples to the goddess in both its great cities. It will follow Prince Geder.”
“You have heard that Dawson Kalliam was advised by Timzinae?” Geder said. “That before he began his conspiracy, he met with a dozen Timzinae men?”
“I’d heard rumors.”
“It’s common knowledge,” Geder said with a wave of his hand. “Sarakal and Elassae are the nations under the control of Timzinae leaders. The enemies of the empire expect our attention to be in the north and west. That our border with Sarakal will be lightly defended, and weak. They are mistaken. I require your spare field to build a temporary encampment for an army. And the wheat as bread for men and fodder for horses.”
Flor’s face went pale, picturing the expense and the burden to his lands a free garrison would bring. To the man’s credit, he raised no objection.
“For how long will we be hosting the army?”
“Not long. Two weeks, maybe three. However long the Lord Marshal decides it’s needed. Then they’ll be off.”
“To keep the border?”
“To cross it,” Geder said.
Cithrin bel Sarcour, Voice of the Medean Bank in Porte Oliva
Cithrin stood at the boat’s prow. The sea stretched out before her in the early morning light, white and pink and blue as if it had been remade from mother-of-pearl. The air was thick with the scent of brine and tar, the creak of wood and rope. She wore a black wool cloak wrapped tight, its hood raised to cover her straw-white hair. She held her chin high, her gaze soft. To the captain or one of the sailors or one of her own guard, she would appear to be a woman at the height of her power, occupied in the privacy of her thoughts. In truth, she’d drunk too much the night before, and her head felt like a sparrow had built a nest in her skull.
On the horizon, the land was little more than a thickening of the water. From the time she had left Birancour, it had remained the same, a darkness to port. Once they had passed into the Inner Sea, it would have been in theory faster to lose sight of the shore, strike out from the straits that divided the Free Cities from Lyoneia, and make a short blue-water transit to Elassae and Suddapal. But speed was not everything, and even on the relatively gentle waters, winter storms could rise, and the option of finding shelter in a cove or harbor was not to be dismissed lightly. There had been troubles along the way: one of the sailors had slipped from the mast and broken his leg so badly that he’d been lost in a fever since; for two long days they had run from dark-sailed pirates before the thieves gave up the chase; and Roach had been nauseated for so long that the dark chitinous plates of his arms had begun to bend and crack as the flesh beneath them thinned away. On some day, indistinguishable from the ones before and behind it, they had sailed past Newport and the ruins of Vanai where her childhood lay in ashes. And the nearer they drew to the five cities of Suddapal, the more the anxious knot in her belly grew, and the harder it became to sleep. The anxiety built day after day, hour upon hour.
Until now.
The calls of the sailors changed. The ship shifted under her feet. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the dark line of land thickened and took on shape. Hills and valleys, and then the more regular forms of buildings. And then reaching out to her like a thousand fingers, the piers with their forest of masts. Suddapal, the fivefold capital city of Elassae, and home of the farthest-flung branch of the Medean bank.
“We’ll have you to land by midday, Magistra,” the captain, an old Firstblood man with a patchy white beard said. “There’ll be the matter of the last part of the payment to consider?”
Cithrin smiled.
“As soon as we’re in port, Captain,” she said.
“Might as well now,” he said. “We’ve time.”
“Policy,” she said, as if the word explained and excused everything. She turned back toward the growing city and wished she’d had less wine in the night.
Her agreement with Komme Medean had called for a year’s apprenticeship, and they had agreed before she left on the long winter journey south from Carse that Suddapal would be the best place. Komme Medean’s letters would have reached Magistra Isadau weeks before, but Cithrin had no way to know what the woman would think of the arrangement. Any greeting could be waiting for her on the docks. Or even a refusal.
The
sailors scrambled behind her, and the little ship turned its nose to the shore. The noise of the sails as they caught the breeze deafened. A guide boat raced out to meet them, hardly more than a canoe with three Timzinae youths hauling on red-dyed oars. Timzinae had been as common as Firstblood in Vanai, and the young men’s dark bodies and shining scales comforted her.
“Magistra,” Yardem Hane said from just behind her. She turned, craning her head up toward the Tralgu’s broad dog-like face. His expression was impassive, but the tall, mobile ears were canted forward, toward the shore. “We’ve packed the chest.”
“And last payment?”
Yardem patted his hip where his leather wallet hung from his belt, the sound of coins hardly carrying over the din. “I’ll take care of it. Enen and Roach will see to the rest.”
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