She nodded.
“My family doesn’t know where I am,” she said.
“Should we send word, my lady?”
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
“As you see fit.”
He leaned close and kissed her once gently on the temple. He hesitated for a moment the way she would have if she’d been a man and she’d wanted to kiss a woman’s mouth. She shifted her eyes to his, and he stood.
“I’m old enough to be your mother,” she said.
“My mother’s considerably older than you, my lady,” he said.
“Why are you doing all this?”
“Because you’ve let me,” he said. “Sleep now. We’ll talk later.”
The door closed behind him, and Clara lay in the dim and stinking gloom.
“Well,” she said to no one, and didn’t finish the thought.
Geder
L ord Palliako, the letter said, I am very sorry to have been called away on such short notice, but word has come from the holding company that requires my immediate presence. Thank you very much for the offer of your hospitality and your company during my time in Camnipol. It has been a singular experience, and one I will recall fondly. The challenges of governing a nation as great as your own must take precedence over matters like small personal correspondence, but I will be paying close attention to the news from Antea.
The chop was Cithrin bel Sarcour.
He’d read the words a thousand times already, and he expected he’d read them a thousand more. He could hear her voice as if the paper itself had soaked it in. The softness in her throat. The slight melancholy in her inflection of fondly. He had read love notes before, but usually in the form of poetry or song. To cast it as business correspondence was both odd and exactly what he would have expected of a banker.
He’d been worried after the execution of Dawson, that he’d offended her, either in the way the execution had taken place or from the way he’d reacted after. He’d often heard that killing a man was an upsetting thing, especially the first time, but he’d nearly been sick in front of the whole court. It hadn’t been in keeping with his dignity, but he’d do better next time. And anyway, she seemed to have forgiven him if there was anything to be forgiven.
As he reached the door, he tucked the letter in his pocket. The voices of men so rough and grating by comparison to the woman he’d conjured leaked through the door. Geder motioned to his personal guard that they should wait for him to precede them, then pushed his way through into the meeting room. Basrahip followed on his heels and before the guard. That wasn’t a matter of etiquette so much as the habit that they had all formed.
Maps littered the table, four and five layers thick in places. Canl Daskellin and Fallon Broot stood over the mess, scowling and angry-looking.
“Gentlemen,” Geder said. “I take it we’ve made no particular headway.”
“Asterilhold, in practice,” Daskellin said, “is posing several problems we hadn’t anticipated.”
“You’re damn near out of noble families,” Broot said. “There were only about forty to start, and that’s counting the eastern Bannien group as their own that just happen to have the same name. The ones we lost in Kalliam’s rebellion, that’s down to thirty-four, thirty-five.”
“Broot wants to redraw the map of Antea while we’re about it.”
“Doesn’t make sense for a man to have two holdings on different sides of the river. How are you to oversee them both? Spend half the winter one place? Only see a holding every second year? It’s just sense to expand the existing baronies.”
“These aren’t just dots on a map, Broot. These are places. My family has lived on its holding for ten generations. My grandfathers are all buried there. It’s not as if we can switch that to some field in the middle of Asterilhold and call it the same.”
Geder raised his eyebrows. This wasn’t the part of being regent he was best at, but they were right. It would need to be addressed.
“And there’s the problem of the cities,” Broot said, pointing an accusing finger toward the blotches of Kaltfel and Asinport. “We can’t make them part of a barony and check in on them once a year. We could try it, but they’ll revolt by spring and we’ll be right back where we were when the whole damned thing started.”
“There will be no revolt,” Basrahip said.
“Easy for you to say, Minister,” Broot said. “All respect, but you’ve never run a city. They’re worse than children.”
“They have the temple of the goddess within them,” Basrahip said. “The Righteous Servant will keep them true.”
Daskellin and Broot shared a glance. Daskellin looked away first.
“We did just have war in the streets for the best part of the summer,” Daskellin said.
“Yes,” Basrahip said, his smile broad. “The city was tested and purified, and note, Prince Daskellin, that we are here, and the enemy is slain.”
“Speaking of slaying enemies,” Broot said. “There is a third option, but it does mean abandoning the wholesale slaughter of the noble classes of Asterilhold.”
“And means less reward for the people who stayed with the crown,” Daskellin said.
“It’s not a reward if you can’t manage it, Canl. If you would stop thinking with your purse and see sense, you’d know that.”
“Stop!” Geder shouted, and the two men went silent and abashed. “There’s a third option. What is it?”
One of the maps slid to the floor, pooling in great loops and folds. Broot tugged on his mustache.
“We could keep Asterilhold under its own rule. Take men from their best stock, let ’em swear fealty to the Severed Throne. Not all that many. Just five or six to… well, to replace the ones we lost. As it were. Even if they weren’t on our side before, it doesn’t take a wise man to see where the power is now.”
Geder stepped to the table and plucked one of the maps to the center where he could see the whole place at once. Asterilhold was much smaller than Antea, and with the marshes and mountains in the south, less of it was arable than a part of Antea the same size. Apart from the two great cities, it wasn’t even a particularly great conquest.
“Have we started killing the noblemen yet?” Geder asked.
“No, my lord,” Daskellin said. “Kalliam’s insurrection threw the plans badly behind schedule.”
“Hold off, then. I think I have an idea.”
The ballroom where Basrahip had questioned the personal guard hadn’t been used for dancing in some years. The boards were warped and uneven. The chandelier, though clean, was rusting at the joints. Geder walked through the space, his eyes narrow, seeing not what was before him, but what could be. Basrahip stood by the doorway, hands folded. If the big priest had an opinion, he didn’t say it.
“The thing we did here,” Geder said, nodding up at the steep tiered benches. “We could do that again, couldn’t we?”
“If you like, Prince Geder, we could.”
Geder stepped up two, three, four tiers, then turned, looking down at Basrahip and the ballroom floor from a height. The perspective made even Basrahip seem small. Geder felt a little bubble of pleasure rising in him. It reminded him of finding a new book on a subject he enjoyed.
“Not with the guards,” Geder said. “With the nobles of Asterilhold. We bring them here and question them. The guilty, we throw off a bridge, and the innocent we reward with lands and titles and control over their homeland, only with fealty to the Severed Throne. All the problems go away, yes?”
Basraship stepped forward.
“It can be done, my lord.”
“Good,” Geder said.
“May I suggest, my prince?”
“Yes? What?”
“We would not need to wait for the men of Asterilhold to arrive before we made some use of this plan.”
It took a week to remake the room into something of the appropriate dignity. The walls, Geder stained black. The benches on the sides of the room, he left in place, but his car
penters removed most of the ones in the front, using the same wood to construct something almost like a magistrate’s desk, only built higher. The sweet smell of their sawdust leaked out through the halls and grounds of the Kingspire. The rusted chandelier, Geder left in place, in part because it was thickcast iron and in part because it would have taken the smiths another week to replace it with something better, and he was impatient.
When the remade chamber was complete, he brought Basrahip to it like he was presenting a present to a child.
“I hope you like it,” he said. “I have the sense that we’ll be spending quite a bit of time in here over the next year or so. The guardsmen stand on the benches to either side, you see? Rising up like that? And then I’ll sit up there, and you can be down here near me, but where you can hear the prisoner talking better.”
“The prisoner?”
“Or whoever,” Geder said, waving the question away.
“It is majestic, my lord,” Basrahip said. “But?”
The priest nodded to the back wall.
“There is no banner,” Basrahip said. “I would put the symbol of your house there on the right, and the sigil of the goddess there to the left. For balance.”
“Brilliant!” Geder said. “We can do that. But… before that, I was wondering if you’d like to try it. In practice, I mean. Just to see whether the design works as well as I think it does.”
“If you wish. I am here as your servant.”
Geder arranged it all as carefully as a party. Which guards, with what arms and armor. The lighting of the candles. Everything. And then, when it was all as he’d hoped it would be, he sent out the guard into the city. Four hours later, they returned with the prisoner in hand.
Geder looked down from his heights. Barriath Kalliam looked small and frightened.
“My lord,” Geder said.
“Lord Regent.”
“Thank you for joining me. I apologize for the unpleasantness of your arrival.”
“Think nothing of it,” Barriath said, he looked from side to side, taking in the armed men arrayed at his flanks. “I may not be as formally dressed as the occasion calls for.”
“I hear that you have left your brother’s house,” Geder said. “Is that true?”
Barriath shrugged.
“It wasn’t what we wanted, so no. I’m not there any longer.”
Geder shifted his eyes, and Basrahip nodded. It wasn’t as easy to see, though. The angle wasn’t quite right for it. He’d need to think about that.
“You had a falling-out with Jorey.”
“Wouldn’t go that far,” Barriath said. The priest hesitated, and then nodded, but Geder realized he didn’t know what that meant. It might be true that Barriath wouldn’t go that far, but that wasn’t the question he’d wanted answered. Below him, Barriath seemed less awed and humbled than amused.
“Are you loyal to me?”
“Excuse me, Lord?”
“Your brother renounced Lord Kalliam. You didn’t say the words. I’m asking now, are you loyal to me?”
“I’m a proud servant of the Severed Throne and I always have been,” Barriath said, throwing the words out like a challenge. Basrahip nodded. Yes. Geder felt a surprising bite of disappointment. Still, it was what he’d brought the man here to find out.
Only no. It wasn’t.
“Are you loyal to me?” Geder asked.
“You’re the Lord Regent,” Barriath said. Yes. And yet.
“Are you loyal to me?”
Barriath shrugged, looking up at Geder the way a lumberjack might size up the tree he wanted to fell.
“I am,” he said. No.
Geder chuckled.
“I am not a man easily fooled,” he said.
“If you say so, my lord.”
“You’ve lied to me. The last man that did that I cut his hands off. I have an offer for you. If it weren’t for my friendship with your brother, I wouldn’t offer this much. I am going to ask you the same question again. If you tell me that you are loyal to me and you are telling the truth, I will make you lord of Asinport and head of the fleet that was Asteril-hold’s. Tell me that you are loyal and lie, you will die where you stand. Or admit your disloyalty, and I will only send you into exile. You have my word on that.”
“I don’t understand,” Barriath said. “Is this some kind of trick?”
“You know my terms,” Geder said. “Now. For the last time. Are you loyal to me?”
Barriath was silent, his arms folded and his face bent in a scowl. He stretched his neck first one way and then the other. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and conversational.
“No,” he said. “You’re a small-hearted, small-minded prick and any man with a real love of Antea would want your head on a pike.”
“As I thought. You are exiled from Antea and all its holdings beginning now and lasting until your death. Any man who finds you on Antean soil may kill you and bring your head to me for what reward I see fit.”
“All right,” Barriath said. “Wasn’t as if I had much worth staying here for. We done, then, Lord Regent?”
“Captain? See him out,” Geder said. “And put him on a cart for whatever border he chooses.”
“Sir!” the guard captain said, and marched forward to lead Barriath Kalliam away forever. As the doors closed behind them, Geder allowed himself a wide smile.
“Oh,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
That night, Geder sat in the royal apartments talking with Aster about the issues and questions that surrounded the problem of Asterilhold. The decisions were, of course, Geder’s, but since Aster would be inheriting the aftermath of whatever mistakes he made, it only seemed right to have him at least present during the deliberations. Basrahip wandered around behind them, drinking a cup of the foul-smelling tea that he liked.
“So assuming we can find five true-hearted men in Asterilhold,” Geder said, “I think we can hold everything more or less the way it was, only unified under the Severed Throne.”
Aster nodded, paused.
“What about Osterling Fells?” he asked.
“Well,” Geder said. “I’ve been thinking about that. I’m tempted to hold it for Jorey. Wait, wait. Hear me out. We can’t just turn around and give it back. I don’t want everyone thinking that they can assault the throne and their families won’t suffer for it. But he did renounce Dawson and he meant it. It was true. Wasn’t it?”
“The words he spoke were true,” Basrahip said.
“So I imagined that once you came of age, one of the first things you could do was restore him. Make things right again. It’s symbolic.”
“It’s a thought,” Aster said.
Basrahip cleared his throat.
“Forgive me my intrusion, Lord Prince,” the priest said.
“Do you mean him or me?” Geder said. “I’m lord, he’s prince.”
“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.
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