The days that followed Geder’s return to Camnipol flowed around him like river water around a stone. Gatherings at the houses of the highest families in Antea filled his days, celebrations for his own victory in Vanai and for the coming anniversary of Prince Aster’s naming took the nights. Almost the day after his unexpected revel, he began seeing black leather cloaks the image of his own appearing among the brightly dyed fashions of the court. Men who had never bothered to cultivate a connection to House Palliako had begun calling on him. If his father seemed put off by the attention, that was understandable. Changes that came suddenly could feel catastrophic even when they were changes for the better.
The only things that would have made the ripening spring better would have been rooms within the city itself instead of night after night of heading out before the city gates closed and sleeping in his campaign tent and for the nightmares to stop.
“I don’t understand why I shouldn’t order the disband,” Geder said, spreading a spoonful of apple butter over his morning bread. “If I don’t do it soon, Lord Ternigan’s sure to.”
“He doesn’t dare,” Canl Daskellin, Baron of Watermarch, said. “Not until all the foreign swords and bows are safely out of Camnipol.”
“It’s a disgrace,” Marrisin Oesteroth, Earl of Magrifell, said, nodding. “Armed rabble in the streets of Camnipol. And hardly even a Firstblood among them. I don’t know what Curtin Issandrian was thinking, bringing the slave races. Next he’ll be honoring Price Aster with pigs and monkeys.”
Around them, the lesser gardens of House Daskellin glowed in the late morning sun. The golden blossoms of daffodils nodded in the breeze. To the east, the reconstructed stadium loomed, stories tall and painted white and red. The games for the prince were to start the next day, but the preliminary spectacles had been running for days-bear baiting, show fights, archery competition. And with them, a growing tension that reminded Geder of the still, heavy heat of the clear summer day before a storm night.
“Did you smell those Yemmu cunning men?” Odderd Faskellan, Viscount of Escheric and Warden of the White Tower, asked with a snort. “The stink coming off them made my eyes water from the platform. And the Southlings.”
The plain-faced man at Geder’s side-Paerin Clark, he was called, and with no other title given-drank from his cup as if to hide his expression, but the others around them nodded and grunted their agreement and disapproval.
“They fuck their own sisters,” Marrisin Oesteroth said and took a drink of cider. “It’s not their fault that they do. Dragons made them that way. Keep their bloodlines true, just like hunting dogs.”
“Really?” Geder asked. “I read an essay that said that was a myth started by the Idikki Fellowship after the second expulsion. Like Tralgu eating babies, or Dartinae poisoning wells.”
“You’re assuming Tralgu don’t eat babies,” Marrisin Oesteroth said with a laugh, and the others joined in. Including Geder.
The conversation turned to other matters of court: the increasing unrest in Sarakal, the foundering movement to create a farmer’s council, rumors of a second war of succession in Northcoast. Geder listened more than he spoke, but when he did, the men seemed to listen to him. That alone was as intoxicating as the cider. When the last of the food was carried away by the servants, Geder took his leave. There would be another gathering like this tomorrow, and another the day after that. And an informal ball that night, scheduled opposite a feast for King Simeon hosted by Sir Feldin Maas. Geder knew because Alberith Maas had asked grudging permission to attend the feast. Geder had allowed it. The court might be divided, but he assumed it always was. Given the number and quality of people at the gatherings he’d attended, he felt fairly sure that the half that had lifted him up into their number was both larger and more powerful. He could afford to be magnanimous.
The sun shone in the late morning sky, the warmth soaking into Geder’s cloak and leaving his body feeling soft and comfortable. He strolled through the black-cobbled streets, feeling almost as sure of himself as he had during his first days in Vanai. The lowborn man with a long dirty beard saw him coming and scuttled out of his way. A young woman with a beautiful tea-and-milk complexion smiled at him from her slave-drawn carriage. Geder smiled back and watched her turn to watch him as she was borne away. His jaw ached pleasantly from grinning.
The eastern gate of the city was wider than the southern, built beneath a great archway of worked stone that reached almost as high as the Kingspire itself. Horses’ hooves and carriage wheels clattered against the voices of small merchants. The air stank of manure, animals soiling the streets as quickly as prisoners of the petty court could scrape it up. Callers walked under rough wooden signs, announcing whatever news they were paid to repeat: a particular butcher had been soaking his meat in water and selling it by weight, an outbreak of the pox had been traced to a brothel in tanner’s row, a boy had been lost and a reward posted for his return. It was the gossip of any great city, and Geder enjoyed the sound of it without paying attention to the meaning of the words. Every syllable had been paid for, and it was safe to assume most were lies. Geder paused at a stand where a crag-faced Tralgu with a missing leg sold treats of candied lavender and honey stones. When Geder tossed him a coin, the scowling Tralgu caught it overhand, snatching it out of the air.
Outside the walls of Camnipol, the northern plains spread out to the horizon, the green of grass and scrub, but treeless. Anything big enough to burn as firewood had been stripped off the land generations before. What hills there were rose in gentle swells like waves on a calm sea. The camp was scattered just to the east in the shadow of the city. At Jorey Kalliam’s suggestion, Geder had given orders to keep it in order as a military group rather than letting the casual disorder of being home run its course. Despite sitting at Camnipol’s side, the camp had its perimeter, its sentries, its cookfires, and its acting commander. Fallon Broot, Baron of Suderling Heights, rolled toward him as he reentered the camp.
“What news?” Broot asked. “Word yet from Ternigan?”
“Not yet,” Geder said.
“All respect to the man, but there won’t be a good seat left in the stadium if he waits much longer.”
“We could appeal to King Simeon,” Geder said.
“Or you could give the order yourself,” Broot said, his deep-drooping mustache twitching.
“Wouldn’t presume,” Geder said.
Broot laughed once, almost a bark.
“Camp’s yours, then. I’ll retire, get a bit of rest. Maas is putting on a feast tonight, and it’s my turn for leave.”
“There’s also an informal ball,” Geder said with as much nonchalance as he could muster.
“No one wants to see me dance,” Broot said. As he walked away, Geder wondered which event the tea-and-milk girl would attend.
In his tent, his squire had cleaned away all the remnants of sleep, but left his books and the tools of translation where they were. Geder sat down at his field desk, picked up the cracked leather of the multiform essay he’d been wrestling with, and searched through the delicate, ancient pages until he found where he’d left off.
It was the discovery of these weapons in the Sinir mountains that allowed the allied forces of Hallskar and Sarakal to limit the interference of Borja, and eventually reclaim the lands ceded under the agreements five generations before. Despite this, there has been no concerted effort, either among the elected Hallskari kings or the traditional families of Sarakal, to explore further caches. The commonly held explanation for this unimaginable oversight was a superstitious fear of something within the valley. The unnamed scribe of Atian Abbey suggests that this might have been a pod of hibernating dragons placed by Drakis Stormcrow or the Dragon Morade’s righteous servant, but it seems most likely that it was instead that the plague season that followed the end of the Borjan expansion made all such exploration impossible, and the mountains themselves limited any expedition to the summer months, and foot traffic. This alone should justify a longer and more systematic examination of the footwear of ancient Hallskar, which I shall undertake in my next section.
Sinir mountains. Sinir. The word seemed very familiar, but he couldn’t quite recall where he’d seen it before. It was recently, though. It was something to do with the Righteous Servant, though. He was sure of that.
The legend that had begun as a pet project had grown to be something more interesting. In the dark hours of the morning after his dreams woke him, Geder would sit with his books, marking each reference and considering the finer points of his translations until the voice of the fire faded from his mind and he could sleep again.
His understanding of the weapon was far from clear, except that it had played a part in the final war of the dragons and involved a magic that separated truth and lies definitively. There were two comments about corruption or infection of blood, but what exactly that meant wasn’t clear. It might have been a reference to the rites and spells that Morade had worked in order to bring the Righteous Servant into being, or a description of its function, or a story put out by those who opposed Morade and who had outlived their enemy.
The location associated with the weapon’s use was unquestionably in the eastern mountains and wastes that bordered Hallskar, Borja, the Keshet, and Put. Granted, that left a huge swath of land, much of it near impenetrable. But by dating the references and consulting where the national and tribal borders had shifted through the ages, Geder thought he might be able to make a case as to the particular range associated with it. So, for instance, one book placed the Righteous Servant as east of the Keshet, but using an antiquated name. Another called it east of Borja, using a slightly more recent term. By comparing how the border between the two had changed in the intervening centuries, Geder could speculate a range no larger than four days’ ride from north to south. And now if there were a range within that called Indische, he might be able to put a finger on it.
For the first time in his life, he’d begun the outline of a speculative essay of his own on the subject. It seemed unlikely that the section on ancient Hallskari footwear was likely to be useful, but he wouldn’t know until he tried it, so with a deep sigh, Geder leaned on his elbows and began reading. The text wasn’t particularly well written, but he still found himself being drawn into the subject. The change in toe bridges as a guide to the racial makeup of the royal court was actually fascinating, given that at least six centuries of historical records had been systematically wiped out during the reign of Thiriskii-adan. The suggestion that there had been a period where Hallskar was ruled by the lamp-eyed Dartinae rather than Haavirkin was enough to raise Geder’s eyebrows. He found himself so caught up in the text that he didn’t notice the shouting until his squire burst into the tent.
“My lord,” the old Dartinae said. “In the city. Something’s happened.”
Geder looked up, and for a moment his mind kept along its track, judging what his squire might have looked like in the regal leather and gold of Hallskar. The din of voices and crashing metal worked its way into his awareness, and fear hit his blood like winter. Geder leapt up from his desk and ran out of the tent. His imagination already had smoke rising from the walls of Camnipol, the fire of Vanai already roaring his name. Daved Broot, son of Fallon, was running across the plain. Blood soaked his tunic scarlet.
“Someone help that man!” Geder screamed, his voice high and tight. “He’s hurt! Someone help him!”
But men were already streaming toward the wounded boy. Geder looked around, trying to find the battle. There was no smoke. No fire. But men were screaming, and nearby. Six men had reached Daved Broot, linked hands under him, and were carrying him back into camp, their arms as a gurney. Geder hurried to meet them. When the wounded man saw him, he reached out.
“Lord Palliako!”
“I’m here,” Geder said. The bearers paused.
“The gladiators. They’re taking the gate.”
“What?”
“The gladiators from the stadium. They’re at the gate. They’re trying to close it.”
It’s a riot, Geder thought. It’s a riot in the streets of Camnipol.
And then, a moment later: No. A coup.
“Get him to the cunning man,” Geder ordered the bearers. “And then get your blades. Call the formation! Formation!”
First in confusion, and then in disbelief and fear, the camp came to order. Geder’s squire scurried up with sword and armor in hand. Geder took the blade, then gave it back and reached for the armor.
“No time for that,” Fallon Broot said, appearing at his side. The man’s face was a storm cloud. “If they close the gates, we’ll be useless. Speed now, safety in hell.”
Geder swallowed. His knees were actually shaking. He heard himself calling the attack as if someone else were doing it, and then, sword in hand, he and Broot and a dozen of the veterans of Vanai were running across the grass field toward the eastern gate. Geder’s black leather cloak flapped about him like bat’s wings. His sword felt heavy and awkward, and when he reached the gates his breath was short and painful. And under the great eastern arch of the city, the gates were beginning to close.
“To me!” Geder shouted, and pushed himself forward. “Vanai to me!”
He and his men burst through the narrowing space between the gates like a handful of dried peas thrown against a window, first the fastest, then one or two more together, and then all of them in a lump. The square Geder had strolled through not two hours before was changed past recognition. Where there had been carts and carriages, bodies lay in the street. From the overturned table of honey stones and candied lavender, a line of Jasuru archers stood, their scales glittering gold. They loosed arrows, and the man to Geder’s left fell down screaming.
“Attack!” Geder shrilled. “Stop them! Attack!”
Geder’s men charged, heads down and voices raised. The archers fell back, and from the right, a group of Yemmu in banded steel and leather with huge two-handed swords lumbered toward them. With jaw tusks painted the color of blood, they were like something out of a nightmare. One raised his wide head and howled. There were words in the cry. Geder turned toward the retreating archers, then the advancing swordsmen, and back again.
A wide blade a yard long whirred toward him, and he danced back. The Yemmu was almost half again as tall as a Firstblood man, wide as a cart across the shoulders. Geder lifted his own blade in both hands, and the Yemmu grinned. With a groan, the Yemmu pulled his sword through the air, forcing Geder back again. To the left, a huge blade caught a gap in the armor of one of the Vanai men, spraying hot blood across Geder’s chest and face. Somewhere behind him, someone shrieked.
Geder’s opponent lifted his sword, preparing to bring it down like an axe. Geder raised his own blade, knowing as he did that he couldn’t even deflect the coming blow. Someone ran by him, slamming into the Yemmu soldier and making him stumble.
“Now, Geder!” Jorey shouted. “Cut him!”
Geder scuttled forward, swinging with his blade. The cut wasn’t deep, but it got through the leather armor. The Yemmu shouted, and Jorey jumped back. Geder swung again. He was trying for the thing’s belly where the armor was thin to let it twist, but the blow went low, dropping toward the thing’s thigh. The Yemmu put out its huge grey hand and shoved Geder back, but Jorey Kalliam’s blade cut down, drawing a gout of blood from its wrist. It howled, dropping its sword and grabbing at the wound to stanch the flow. Geder rushed in, hewing two, three, four, times at the Yemmu fighter’s knee like he was trying to cut down a sapling.
The Yemmu stumbled and fell, lifting its arms in surrender. Geder spun around.
The gates had stopped, neither fully open nor closed, and more of the Vanai soldiers were pouring through the gap. The Jasuru archers were nowhere to be seen, and four of the Yemmu had fallen, with half a dozen more locked in battle against a rising tide of Antean swords. Jorey Kalliam was bent over, breathing hard. Blood trickled from his mouth and stained his teeth, but he was smiling.
“Didn’t know what they were starting when they crossed us,” Jorey said through a foam of his own blood and saliva. Geder grinned.
Well,” Lerer Palliako said, leaning against the parapet of his balcony. “Well, well, well.”
“They actually took the southern gate,” Geder said. “Closed it and jammed the mechanism. We still can’t open it.”
Geder shrugged. The twilight was fading and stars coming out. The feasts and balls were all canceled by order of the throne. Blades and blood in the streets of Camnipol had the king’s guard patrolling the streets. King Simeon himself had gathered a select group of nobles in the Kingspire, and set a dusk-to-dawn curfew that meant anyone found in the darkened streets would be slaughtered without question or warning. The houses were being closed and barred, and a fire watch set on the walls of the city. The stadium that had been remade to house Prince Aster’s celebratory games instead had a dozen gladiators hung from makeshift gallows. Twice that number had been bound and dropped off bridges, their bodies unburied at the bottom of the Division.
The city’s shock and fear seemed to change the air itself. Everything seemed fragile, poised at some great catastrophe. Geder knew he should have been frightened too, but he was exhilarated. An armed revolt in the capital city, and he’d put it down. If he’d been celebrated for the burning of Vanai, he could hardly imagine the glory that would rain down on him now. He was half drunk with the idea of it.
“I also hear Lord Ternigan has ordered the disband,” his father said.
“The men were all desperate to defend their houses and families. If Lord Ternigan hadn’t, I likely would have.”
His father shook his head and sighed. From the window, they could see the Kingspire at the city’s edge, towering above Camnipol and therefore the world. Lights glittered in the windows like stars or the cookfires of an army. Lerer Palliako cracked his knuckles.
“Bad times,” he said. “Very bad times.”
“It won’t go on,” Geder said. “This ends it. There aren’t any more of the gladiators, and if there are, they’ll be hunted down. The city’s saved.”
“There’s whoever suborned them,” his father said. “Whoever arranged the attack. And the names I can put on that list are too powerful to die on a rope. I never spent time at court when I was a young man. I never made the connections and alliances. I wonder now if I should have. But it’s too late, I suppose.”
“Father,” Geder said, but Lerer coughed and held up a hand.
“The disband’s been called, son. You can go anywhere you’d like. Do anything. It might be wise if you were out of Camnipol for a time. Until this is all settled out.”
Unease cut through Geder’s euphoria for the first time since the fighting stopped. He looked around the night-soaked buildings and streets. Surely his father was jumping at shadows. There was nothing to be afraid of. They’d won. The coup had been stopped.
This coup. This time.
“I suppose there’s no harm in going home now,” Geder said. “I have an essay I’m thinking about that I think you’d find interesting. I’m tracking geographic references by time and comparing them with contemporary maps to-”
“Not Rivenhalm,” Lerer said.
Geder’s words trailed off.
“You should leave Antea,” his father said. “You’re too much a part of politics we don’t fully understand. First Vanai, and now this? For the season at least, you should go where they can’t reach you. Take a few servants. I’ll give you the money. You can find someplace quiet and out of the way. By autumn, perhaps, we’ll know better where things stand.”
“All right,” Geder said. He felt very small.
“And son? Don’t tell anybody where you’re going.”
Abraham, Daniel
The Dragon’s Path
Dawson
Simeon paced before them all. The king’s face was a mixture of hesitance and determination that Dawson had seen on hunting dogs unsure of how to get down a slope, aware that once they began there would be no stopping. Whatever counsel his old friend had taken in the long night, it hadn’t been with him. On the other hand, he was certain it hadn’t been with Curtin Issandrian either.
The audience chamber they sat in now wasn’t the usual. There were no tapestries or soft velvet cushions, the walls were bare brick. There were no rugs or cushions to support the bent knees of Simeon’s subjects. The king’s guard stood along the walls with swords and armor that could not be mistaken for merely decorative. Prince Aster sat on a silver throne behind his father. It was clear the boy had been crying.
Curtin Issandrian knelt across the aisle from Dawson, his face drawn and pale. Alan Klin was at his side. Canl Daskellin and Feldin Maas had both managed to avoid attention. Odderd Faskellin was dead of an arrow to the throat, and his killer already feeding the gallows flies. Geder Palliako, by all rights the hero of the hour for holding the southern gate, had already left the city. Dawson was alone.
Behind and above the three of them, the viewing galleries were packed. Every man of nobility sat on low, uncomfortable stools behind the length of woven rope that pretended to separate them from the formal audience. The women stood in the upper gallery, including, somewhere amid the press, Clara. The highest gallery was customarily reserved for the most honored lowborn subjects of the king and ambassadors from foreign courts. Today, it stood empty.
The king stopped pacing, and Dawson didn’t lift his head.
“This ends today,” Simeon said, his voice ringing out to the farthest corners of the chamber. “It ends now.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Dawson said, his voice carefully humble. A moment later, Issandrian and Klin echoed him.
“Antea will not follow the dragon’s path while I sit on the Severed Throne,” Simeon went on. “These petty intrigues and political games will not bring confusion and strife to the empire at the heart of the world. I swear my life to it, and as your lord, I expect and demand the same of each of you.”
This time when Dawson said, Yes, Your Majesty, Issandrian’s cabal spoke with him.
“Noble blood has been spilled on the streets of Camnipol. Foreign swords have been drawn on our streets,” the king went on. “It no longer matters whether the motives behind it were pure. There must be a reckoning.”
In the corner of his vision, Dawson thought he saw Alan Klin grow even more ashen.
“Do you have any statements before I pass judgment?” the king asked. “Lord Kalliam?”
“No, Your Majesty,” Dawson said. “I abide in loyalty to you and to the Severed Throne.”
“Lord Issandrian?”
“Your Majesty,” Curtin Issandrian said. His voice was shaking. “I wish to draw only two things to your attention. First, I beg that you consider that the violence yesterday may not have been the intention or plan of any man present. But if Your Majesty is adamant that punishment must be meted out, I ask that you spare my compatriot. The games for Prince Aster were my project, and mine alone. I would not have innocent men suffer simply because they know me.”
It was a pretty speech, Dawson thought. But ill-advised.
“My Lord Issandrian forgets that this is not the first violence that your disagreements with House Kalliam have spawned. If you would like to offer yourself up to be made an example of, I will consider it, but don’t think that anyone will find safety behind your skirts.”
“Majesty,” Issandrian said.
In the silence that followed, Dawson closed his eyes. His leg ached where his weight ground bone and skin into the stone floor, but he wouldn’t shift. Fidgeting would be beneath the dignity of the occasion.
“Dawson Kalliam, Baron of Osterling Fells,” King Simeon said. “I am doubling the duties owed by your holdings for the next five years. You are to absent yourself from the court and Camnipol for not less than half a year, nor are you permitted to raise soldiers or hire mercenaries without the express permission of the throne.”
Dawson didn’t speak, but deepened his bow. His heart was beating faster now, and he was careful not to show his anxiety.
“Curtin Issandrian, Baron of Corsa,” the king went on. “I reclaim all lands previously held by you south of the river Andriann, and dismiss you from your positions as Warden of Estinport and Protector of the East. I am doubling the duties owed by your holdings for the next five years, and you are to absent yourself from the court and Camnipol for not less than half a year, nor are you permitted to raise soldiers or mercenaries without the express permission of the throne.”
Dawson closed his eyes. He had to force himself not to shake his head. The disappointment sank in his belly like he’d swallowed a stone. The judgment against Klin would necessarily be equal or less. And indeed, King Simeon sent him into the same exile, increased his obligations, and stripped him of minor titles. Feldin Maas, wherever he was hiding, escaped without even that much.
When he called them to stand, Dawson looked up at his old friend. His king. Simeon’s face was flushed, his breath fast, his face still set in a furious scowl. Behind him, Price Aster’s chin was lifted as if in defiance. For a moment, Simeon looked into Dawson’s eyes. If there was a flicker in the king’s apparent outrage, it was the only acknowledgment Dawson would get. The king’s guard stood aside, and Simeon strode out, Aster following, and the galleries burst into a thunderous clamor of voices. Dawson looked across the aisle to where Issandrian and Klin huddled in conversation of their own. Klin looked stunned. Issandrian seemed sad, and Dawson wondered whether it was for the same reason he was.
“Lord Kalliam, sir?”
The captain of the king’s guard was a tall man, broad across the shoulders, with a pug face and apologetic, watery eyes. Dawson nodded to him.
“I’ll have to ask you to be outside the gates by sundown, my lord,” the man said.
“Is my household bound?”
“No, my lord. They can stay if they please.”
Dawson scratched at his aching knee. The captain stood for a moment in silent respect, then moved to Issandrian’s cabal to deliver, Dawson assumed, the same warning. He turned and walked out. The outer hall was black marble and worked silver. The midday sun glared through tall, unshuttered windows. Clara was there already, waiting for him with Vincen Coe behind her like her shadow. Jorey appeared at the hallway’s end walking toward them quickly. His boots rang on the stone floor.
“I thought that went quite well,” Clara said.
Dawson shook his head once.
“It was a travesty, dear,” he said. “It was the end of the empire.”
The carriage awaited them on the street, the team of horses snorting and impatient, as if the animals felt the changes in the city itself. A hundred others like it crowded the narrow streets, waiting for the assembled nobility of Antea to trickle out from the Kingspire. All of them made way for House Kalliam. A swift return to his home was the traditional last respect given an exile.
The rough cobbles rattled the carriage wheels. No one tried to speak. Dawson watched out the side window as the Kingspire vanished around a corner. They passed through the great square and into the streets of the city. Pigeons rose in great flocks, circled, and returned to earth. Then the Silver Bridge, and the great drop of the Division. Smoke rose from the forges and ovens.
A day ago, noble blood had spilled in these streets. Today, it looked the same as it always had, except to the few like himself who knew better.
At his private mansion, the servants brought out the steps as they always did. Dawson waved away the offered hands. The old Tralgu door servant greeted him solemnly. Within, the servants of the household were preparing the house. Tapestries were being taken down, furnishings draped against dust. His houndsman already had the dogs in their traveling cages; the animals whimpered their confusion and distress. Dawson knelt by them, pressing his hand against the bars to let the dogs smell him and lick at his fingers.
“I can stay on,” Jorey said.
“Do that,” Dawson said. “I won’t have time to put everything to rights before I leave.”
“Some of the servants have to stay, dear,” Clara said. “The gardens won’t survive without the gardeners to look after them. And the fountain in the rose court still needs repair.”
In the cage, the dog looked up at Dawson. Its huge brown eyes were soft and frightened. He reached through a finger and stroked its muzzle. A jaw strong enough to sever a fox’s spine with a bite leaned gently into him.
“Do what’s best, Clara,” he said. “I trust you.”
“Lord Kalliam?”
Vincen Coe gave a huntsman’s salute. Dawson brought himself to nod.
“Lord Daskellin’s come, my lord,” Coe said. “He’s in the western sitting room.”
Dawson drew himself to his feet. The dog whined as he walked away from it. There was nothing he could do. He had no more comfort to offer. In the sitting room, Canl Daskellin stood at the window, his hands clasped behind his back like a general overseeing the field of battle. His pipe smoke was sweet enough to cloy.
“Canl,” Dawson said. “If there’s anything you want of me, it had best be something quick. I don’t have time for a hand at cards.”
“I came to offer my sympathies and congratulations.”
“Congratulations? For what?”
“We’ve won,” Daskellin said, turning away from the window and striding into the room. “You played your hand brilliantly. You lured Issandrian into a thrust he couldn’t follow through, then cut his conspiracy down. Now he’s in disgrace. His inner circle is exiled. Stripped of lands and titles. There’s no saying who will take Prince Aster as ward, but it won’t be any of them. There won’t be a farmer’s council in our lifetimes. I’m sorry it came at a price to you, but I swear that your name will be praised as a hero while you’re gone.”
“What good’s winning battles when the war’s lost?” Dawson said. “Did you actually come here to celebrate, Daskellin? Or is this how you gloat?”
“Gloat?”
“Odderd Faskellin was a rabbit and a coward, but he had high blood. He died yesterday. In Camnipol, and by foreign hands. That hasn’t happened in centuries. And how did Simeon reply? Increased taxes. Petty exile. A few minor lands and titles shuffled about.”
Daskellin leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. Grey smoke spilled from his lips and nostrils.
“What would you have had him do?”
“Slaughter them all himself. Bind them, take sword in hand, and take their heads with his own hand,” Dawson said.
“It sounds like you’re missing Palliako already,” Canl said dryly. Dawson ignored him.
“An armed company in the streets? It’s treason against the throne, and to answer it with less than death is one step short of open surrender. He made himself a mask of fierceness, and all it did was point out how frightened he is. You should have seen it. Simeon strutting and raging and calling for an ending. It was like watching a shepherd boy trying to shout down wolves.”
“Frightened? Of whom?”
“The power backing Issandrian. He’s afraid of Asterilhold,” Dawson said, and then pointed an accusing finger at Daskellin himself. “And he’s afraid of Northcoast.”
The imitation of a smile bent Daskellin’s lips and he took his pipe from his mouth.
“I am not Northcoast, old friend,” he said. “And if consideration of the reactions of the other courts and kingdoms brought King Simeon to a place of greater mercy, that’s wisdom on his part.”
“That’s permission for every landholder in the kingdom to spread his loyalty as widely as he can,” Dawson said. “As long as answering to a duchess in Asterilhold or a bank in Northcoast makes us safer than standing by Antea, Simeon won’t have a court of his own. He wants to keep the kingdom off the dragon’s path so badly that he’s walking down it.”
Daskellin knelt by the fire grate, knocking the bowl of his pipe against the soot-stained brick. A rain of ashes fell from it.
“We disagree,” he said, “but there can be room for a little differences between allies. You’re right, of course, that even with Issandrian’s cabal hobbled, the danger to the kingdom hasn’t entirely passed. Whether you believe me or not, I’d thought to reassure you that I would keep working during your exile.”
“By selling us to the Medean bank?”
“By seeing that King Simeon has the support and loyalty he needs.”
“Spoken like a diplomat,” Dawson said.
Daskellin bristled, and then as Dawson watched, gathered his temper in. He tucked his pipe into his belt and stood. The smell of old smoke still hung in the room.
“It’s a dark day for you,” Canl said, “so I’m going to take that for what you said and ignore what you meant by it. Whatever you think, I didn’t come to gloat.”
The two stood for a moment, the silence between them stretching. Canl Daskellin made a rueful half-smile, then walked out, putting a hand on Dawson’s shoulder as he passed. Dawson listened to the footsteps draw away, drowning in the noise of his household being uprooted. He stood a moment longer, looking out the window without seeing the early summer trees beyond it. Without hearing the birds or the servants or the whining of dogs.
He turned away.
Dawson left in a single open carriage. He sat on the forward seat, looking back toward the city, Clara sat at his side. Vincen Coe on the bench beside the teamster. Carts with his belongings would come more slowly, but they would come. The path to Osterling Fells would carry them over the dragon’s roads for half a day, and the dragon’s jade under their wheels was smoother than the streets of Camnipol.
“There isn’t any chance of coming upon them, is there?” Clara asked.
“Who?”
“One of them,” Clara said. “Lord Issandrian or Lord Klin. Or Lord Maas. It would by entirely too awkward, I think. I mean really, what does one say? I can’t see inviting them to share a meal, but it would be rude not to. Do you think we should tell the driver to keep distance if he sees another carriage? If we can pretend not to have realized who they are, we can all keep to form. Unless it’s Maas. Phelia must be in ruins over this.”
Despite everything, Dawson smiled. He took his wife’s hand in his. Her fingers were thicker than when he’d first known her. His own, rougher. Time had changed them both in some ways, and in some ways left them untouched. From the first day of their marriage, before even, he’d known she saw a different world than he did. It was part of what he loved in her.
“I’m sure we won’t,” he said. “Issandrian and Klin won’t be taking this road, and there’s no reason for Maas to leave court. Not now.”
Clara sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“My poor man,” she said.
He craned his neck a bit, kissing the hair just above her ear, then put his arm around her shoulders.
“It won’t be so bad,” he said, trying to sound as if he believed it. “I missed the winter in Osterling Fells. This can make up for it. We’ll summer at home, run back to Camnipol for the closing of court, and then turn back for the winter.”
“Can we?” Clara said. “We could stay through the winter if you’d rather. We don’t have to make two trips.”
“No, love,” he said. “It’s not just to see the autumn pageant. I’ll want to see how things have played in court before winter anyway. It only seems like I’m indulging you. I’m really a selfish boor.”
Clara chuckled. A few miles later, she began snoring gently. Coe, noticing, handed down a wool blanket in silence, and Dawson covered Clara without rousing her. The sun sank behind them, reddening. Shadows spilled across the landscape, and the trilling, shrill birds of evening announced themselves.
Dawson was leaving the field of battle, but the fight would go on without him. Issandrian, Maas, Klin. They weren’t killed, nor had they acted alone. Maas and his allies in court would do everything in their power to see their names raised again to respectability. Daskellin would doubtless take the helm of Dawson’s own group, or at least that part of it that could stomach the bland little banker from Northcoast. Simeon would dance between the blades and tell himself there was a place at the middle where everything could balance, that peace could be kept if he only never made a stand.
A weak king might survive if he had a loyal court, but in casting Dawson out, Simeon had exiled the only man who had truly championed him. Nothing good could come now. The court was being led through an idiot’s dance, made up of men with their own agendas. Shortsighted, self-serving idiots.
It would take a miracle to redeem King Simeon now. The best hope of the kingdom was that Prince Aster be sent as ward of a family that could show him what kingship was better than the king himself. Dawson indulged himself for a moment in the fantasy of taking the prince under his own wing and teaching him what Simeon could not. Clara murmured in her sleep, pulling the blanket more tightly around her.
The sun dipped down to the horizon, the walls and towers of Camnipol obscured by the power of its fire. For a moment, Dawson imagined the light came from a great conflagration. Not the sunset, but Camnipol burning. It had the weight of prophecy.
Shortsighted, self-serving idiots. A burning city.
Dawson wondered, almost idly, where Geder Palliako had gotten to.