I will earn these, he thought, but even if he had shouted it, no one would have heard.
After the official audience, Dawson suffered through hours more of his official duties. The surrender of the prisoners, which took some extra time as he needed to impress on the gaolers that King Lechan especially was being surrendered only for holding, and that he remained under Dawson’s personal protection. Then he ordered the disband, freeing his men to return to their homes and families and ending his tenure as Lord Marshal.
He tried to avoid being in a room with Palliako and the priest, but form required at least a private glass of wine. The private audience was in a small garden near the dueling grounds. Prince Aster greeted him formally, and then excused himself to go play with a handful of other boys born of noble houses. Palliako and Minister Basrahip sat at a table of lacquered rosewood, servants rushing to them with cooled wine and fruit. Dawson bowed to the regent and took his seat, but his gaze was on the personal guard. Ten of them. Ten blades set to protect Palliako at all times. They would be difficult to overcome, but not by any means impossible…
“I hope your journey back wasn’t too arduous,” Geder said. “I hear you left Fallon Broot as Protector of Asterilhold?”
“I did, Lord Regent.”
“Now there’s a man whose fortunes have changed in the last years,” Geder burbled. “You know I met him on the Vanai campaign?”
Dawson drank from his glass. The wine was excellent. Simeon had always cared about his drink. Now Palliako was getting the benefit of that.
“I believe I had heard that, my lord,” Dawson said.
“Well, it’s bad fortune for him that he’ll be missing your revel. I still remember what you did for me. After Vanai. I’ve been looking forward to returning the favor. It will be amazing. Honestly, I think people will be talking about this for a generation.”
Dawson permitted himself a smile.
“I hope that you are right,” he said.
“I was sorry to hear that you didn’t have Basrahip’s priests help with the battle at Kaltfel. They were useful taking the bridge, weren’t they?”
“I didn’t believe their help was required at Kaltfel,” Dawson said. “And I thought it would be better for morale if the victory were unquestionably Antea’s.”
“Oh, that’s silly,” Geder said with a wave of his hand. “Everyone knows they’re on our side. I mean, they weren’t out driving down the enemy’s confidence over some private feud they had with them.”
“I suppose not,” Dawson said, fighting not to stare his anger at the priest. “But for the sake of form, if nothing else.”
“And once all this is over, I’d like to talk with you about how to manage the transition with Asterilhold. I’ve been reading the histories, and I don’t find any single good model for this. I mean, I know it helps that we both used to answer to the High Kings.” Geder sighed. “I wish my orders had gotten to you a day earlier. This would all be so much easier. I mean, when you’re at war, death’s to be expected. Now that they’ve surrendered, things will be more difficult.”
“They can’t be slaughtered wholesale,” Dawson said.
“But we can’t just leave them,” Geder said. “It doesn’t make sense to have half a victory. If you don’t destroy your enemies utterly, aren’t you just asking for another fight later when they’ve regained their strength? If you want peace—real peace—I think you have to conquer, don’t you?”
“We need justice, not petty revenge.” There was more bite in the words than he’d intended. “Forgive my saying so, my lord.”
“Oh, no. Please. Speak your mind. You’re one of the only men in this city I trust.”
Dawson leaned forward in his seat.
“We are noblemen, my lord,” Dawson said, choosing his words. “Our role in the world is to protect and preserve order. The houses of Asterilhold have Antean blood, many of them, but even if they did not, we share a history with them. What they have done against us must be answered, and answered between equals.”
“Oh, I absolutely agree,” Geder said with a rattling nod that meant he hadn’t understood at all. The priest had his eyes half closed, but seemed to be listening to him carefully all the same. A twist of anger floated up from Dawson’s heart.
“The world has an order,” Dawson said. “My men are loyal to me, and I am loyal to the throne, and the throne is loyal to the system of the world. We are who we are, Palliako, because we have been born better. When a low man crosses me, I execute him. When a highborn man, a man of quality, crosses me, then there is the dueling field. If I were to wantonly spill noble blood on behalf of a pig keeper, even if the nobleman were of a different kingdom and the pig keeper my own vassal, it would be an abomination.”
“Let me think about that. Of course, we are more or less equals, aren’t we?” Geder said. “We’re nobles, they’re nobles. And we’ve done all this because they were scheming against Aster, who’s the highest blood in the land. We did it for him.”
We’ve done it for your foreign zealots, Dawson thought.
“I suppose so,” he said, and the priest made a small sound in his throat, like a boy who’d caught sight of a curious animal.
“You seem troubled, Lord,” the priest said, sitting forward. His gaze was on Dawson. “Is something else bothering you?”
You are a goatherd, and you have no right to question me.
“Nothing,” Dawson said, and the priest smiled.
Seeing Clara again was like putting a burned hand in cool water. Everyone else, from the footmen to Jorey, were made of smiles and pleasure and congratulation. Dawson felt as though he were living in a dream where he was in a burning ballroom and no one else could see the flames. Clara looked at him once and put her arms around him like a mother comforting her child.
Most of the evening they lay together in her bed, his head in her lap when she sat or sharing her pillow when she lay down. The world with its idiotic gaudiness and mindless cheers—face paint on a tainted woman—faded for a time while she told him of all the small domestic crises he had missed during the brief, decisive war. One of the maids had married and left the house. A cistern had sprung a leak and had to be drained before it could be repaired. Sabiha was settling into the household, but Elisia was being difficult. She’d had a letter from the holding at Osterling Fells that the new kennels were going nicely, and would be complete before winter.
The scent of her bed and the sound of finches at the window mixed with her familiar touch, and he found himself relaxing in a way he hadn’t in weeks.
“Canl Daskellin’s due back soon,” she said.
“Where’s he been?”
“Northcoast,” Clara said. “Apparently he went out to get allies against Asterilhold, and he’s bringing them back just in time for the victory. I don’t believe anyone expected it all to be over so quickly.”
“It isn’t over,” Dawson said. “Not really.”
“Well, of course things will be a bit thin at the harvest,” Clara said. “But next year…”
Dawson took her hand and rolled back, looking at the ceiling.
“Next year will be a different place, love,” he said.
Clara sat up, frowning. He ran his fingertips along the curve of her arm.
“Is there something I should know?” she asked.
“No. Only perhaps it would be best if you and Jorey and Sabiha went back to the holding for a bit. Now that we’ve got two baronies to look over, the boys will need to know better how to run the place. And there’s no one better to show them than you.”
Her face closed.
“There’s something more coming,” she said. “What’s happened? What are you going to do?”
“You can’t ask me that, love,” Dawson said. “I’ll be too tempted to tell you. And it’s better for now if I carry this one alone.”
“Dawson—”
“I didn’t win this war. And Palliako is a monster, but he didn’t order it. There’s rot at the
heart of the empire, and I am doing what honor demands. There’s risk to it, but there’s not an alternative.”
Clara looked at him for what seemed an hour, her eyes shifting back and forth, searching for something in his expression.
“You’re moving against Palliako’s priests,” she said.
“I am doing what honor and duty demand,” Dawson said. “Don’t ask me more than that.”
She stood, her hands clasped before her.
“If Jorey and I leave, it will be remarked,” she said. “It’s a very odd time for the wife of a war hero to leave. If I stay, what will I need to be prepared for? Will this come to violence?”
“It will.”
Clara let out her breath and closed her eyes. It was something she had done as long as he’d known her. He could remember her as a girl barely come to womanhood lowering her eyelids just so, making her exhalation that was not quite a sigh. Perhaps all those previous moments had been rehearsal for this one. He rose from the bed and took her hand.
“I have no choice, dear. I’ve seen what is stalking our kingdom. If it isn’t stopped, it won’t be Antea anymore. It may keep the same forms, it may even be made up by the same people, but the kingdom will be gone, and there will be something debased where it was. I will do anything I have to in order to see the nation safe.”
“All right,” Clara said. “You do that. And I will see to the family.”
He kissed her gently on the forehead. And then on the lips. And then she pressed him back to the bed, and they forgot the world together for a time.
The last time Dawson had walked into the darkness of the ruins under Camnipol—the abandoned archways and hall-ways darker than midnight—the huntsman Vincen Coe had been at his side. Going alone now, he found himself missing the young man’s company. He’d been a quiet man, but loyal and fierce. He didn’t understand why Clara had taken her sudden dislike to him. Perhaps in the winter when he returned to Osterling Fells the two would have the chance to mend whatever breach had separated them.
Rats scurried ahead of his lantern’s light, sharp claws stirring up ancient dust. Once, all this had been the city. These stones had seen daylight and known the voices of street vendors. The rubble Dawson picked his way around had stood as a tall column celebrating some victory now long forgotten. The deeper he went, the more collapse had taken the ruins, and the fewer paths there were to follow. Still, he was fairly sure he knew the way.
The first glimmer of light, far ahead, filled him with hope and dread both. Hope, because he had found the meeting place he’d sought. Dread for the same reason.
Four men sat round a fallen slab of granite. Sir Alan Klin, but also Estin Cersillian, Odderd Mastellin, and Mirkus Shoat. A knight, a count, and two earls, pressed down in the darkness. He wondered whether Shoat, Cersillian, and Mastellin had been part of Klin’s conspiracy from the start. Maas might have had other allies Dawson had never uncovered. He sat down on a lump of stone, considering the men who had turned to Asterilhold and against Simeon. A year ago, they had been on opposite sides. Now fortune had united them.
“I’m pleased to see you were able to gather so many like-minded friends,” Dawson said.
“This helped, my lord,” Klin said, pushing the execution order across the slab to him. “Some people in court are still close with their families across the border.”
Dawson picked up the page and folded it into his wallet.
“What are we going to do?” Shoat asked, his voice high and tight.
“What needs doing,” a voice said from the shadows. Dawson rose as Lord Bannien, Duke of Estinford, stepped into the light. His face was calm and steady, sandy hair over black eyes. “I took your letters, Kalliam. And I spoke to my son. I have been forced to the same conclusions. Antea has been taken over by foreign sorcerers.”
“Your son told you, then,” Dawson said. “About what happened at the bridge.”
“He did,” Lord Bannien said. “And I am with you. But we must move quickly. If word of this comes out, it’s worth all of our lives.”
“How many men can you bring?” Dawson asked.
“Twenty that I trust utterly for the event itself. A hundred once the die is cast.”
Shoat promised seven, Cersillian and Mastellin ten each, and then the full resources of their houses, for another seventy men.
“I can give twelve for the first attack,” Klin said. “Including myself. But only if we’re agreed that Palliako dies.”
Dawson looked around the ruined space and nodded.
“In three days, Palliako will be staging a revel in my name,” Dawson said. “Celebrating the capture of Asteril-hold. I don’t know this, but I suspect that he means to execute King Lechan at that time. The men can gather at my house. If they arrive in my livery and announce themselves as my honor guard, they can come into the grand hall during the feast. We end Palliako where he sits.”
“I don’t want to start a civil war,” Mastellin said.
“We won’t,” Dawson said. “Once the deed’s done we will all surrender ourselves to Prince Aster. We must not allow any question that we have done this in service to the crown.”
“That relies a great deal on a very young boy’s judgment,” Shoat said. “If he decides to call retribution, we’ll all find ourselves in a small place.”
“If you were planning to avoid risk, you’ve come to the wrong table,” Dawson said. “And if we all die in the effort, it will be a small price against the reclamation of the throne. We kill the traitor and support the king. There is no other path.”
“Agreed,” Bannien said, slapping his palm against the stone. “But killing Palliako’s only striking the sword arm. There is another issue.”
“Of course,” Dawson said. “The priests. They must be rounded up and killed. And the temple will burn.”
Cithrin
Cithrin had never been so far north in her life. Many of the small details, she knew from the stories and descriptions that Magister Imaniel had given her, but the images she’d built from the words didn’t often match the reality. She knew that the northern coasts were dotted with stone fisher-men’s huts, but in her mind they had been square, solid buildings, like the ones in Vanai only grown small. The mossy, earthen lumps strewn over the grey-green shores looked less like buildings than something that had grown up out of the land itself. She knew to expect the great, soaring lizards that lived on the stone islands and ate fish, but she had imagined them as small dragons instead of the awkward, batlike things they were. And then there were other things, unexpected and strangely wonderful. The days were even longer here, the sun hardly seeming to give over to night before the dawn began to threaten. The winters would reverse that, with the darkness and the cold swelling up to take back their due. And once the sea voyage was done, and their boat safely in its dock at Estinport, Cithrin stepped onto the earth of Imperial Antea.
She had rarely thought of land having its own personality, but as they made their way to great Camnipol, she saw the differences in the world. All her life had been spent near the shores of the Inner Sea. She had traveled through mountains and across the hills to the east of Porte Oliva. She had seen the forests north of the Free Cities. But for most part, those lands had been one thing or else another. Here, everything mixed, hard stone beside rich green meadow beside thick trees. Rich farmland lined the roads, the long, thin fields marked by fences built of rough black stone. The mountains here curved softly toward the sky, like a hill that had been left to rise too long before it was baked. Compared to the Free Cities or even Birancour, Antea seemed sure of itself. Old and staid and eternal. It was the most beautiful landscape she had ever seen, and she wanted to love it. But she didn’t.
Camnipol rose on the southern horizon, still three days away. Coming from the north, it looked like a shallow hill, spiked and gnarled with bare trees and brush. Smoke rose from it like the fires of a massive army. She knew that the city was reputed to be beautiful, and perhaps as she grew closer it wou
ld become so. From here, it was not.
“You notice the way the group splits?” Paerin Clark asked her, breaking her chain of thought.
They were sitting near the cookfire. It was too warm to need the flames for warmth, but the cheerfulness of the light and the routines of long habit brought them there. She followed his gaze to another fire on the far side of the road. A bright silk tent glowed from within. Of the two dozen men and women put together by King Tracian and Komme Medean to take the pulses of Imperial Antea, only five were noblemen, and they kept to themselves. Canl Daskellin, who had broken bread with his fingers at Komme Medean’s table, was among them.
“Highborn on one side, merchant class on the other,” Cithrin said.
“It always goes like that,” the man said. He handed her a bowl. Black beans shining bright as insects and covered with a grey sauce that looked terrible and tasted like the finest cook in Birancour had made it fresh. “Do you ever wonder why that is?”
“No, I don’t,” Cithrin said. “It’s because we all know that the idea of noble blood is a sham.”
Across the fire from them, one of the other merchants chuckled. Cithrin felt a blush rising in her cheeks, but Paerin took a mouthful of his own meal and nodded her on.
“You only have to enforce boundaries where they’re being imposed,” she said. “Think about the races. It’s been hundreds, maybe thousands of generations since the dragons made the last of us. In all that time, you would think all of the thirteen races would have blended into one, but they haven’t. We’re all more or less what we would have been if the Dragon Emperor were still in the sky. There are real barriers between Jasuru and Yemmu and Cinnae. They don’t need to be enforced. They just are.”
“To clarify, though. You’re between races.”
“And has that made Cinnae and Firstblood one thing? No. But nobility? People have become knights and earls and counts through force of arms or by buying their way in. And even the highest families have a few unwelcome members living among the poor and despised. The dirty secret of nobility is that it’s another way of saying power. We may tell other stories, but when we do, it’s because we’re building fences where there aren’t any.”
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