I won’t hear it,” King Simeon said. The months hadn’t been kind to him. His skin was greyer than it had been, his lips an unhealthy blue. Sweat beaded his brow though the room wasn’t particularly warm. “God, Dawson. Listen to yourself. You’re back from exile for one day- one -and already you’re back at it.”
“If Clara’s right and Maas is plotting against Aster’s life-”
Simeon slapped his palm to the table. The meeting chamber echoed with it, and the silence that followed was broken only by the songs of finches and the babbling of the fountain outside the windows. The guards around the back wall remained impassive as always, their armor the black and gold of the city, their swords sheathed at their hips. Dawson wondered what they would have said, had they been asked. Someone must be able to talk sense to Simeon, though it clearly wasn’t him.
“If I’d listened to your advice,” the king said, “Issandrian would be leading a popular revolt against me right now. Instead, he was here yesterday, bending his knee, asking my forgiveness and swearing on his life that the mercenary riot wasn’t his plan or doing.”
“If it wasn’t his, it was someone’s,” Dawson said.
“I am your king, Baron Osterling. I am perfectly capable of guiding this kingdom safely.”
“Simeon, you are my friend,” Dawson said softly. “I know how you sound when you’re frightened to your bones. Can you put it off until next year?”
“Put what off?”
“Fostering your son. Naming his protector. The closing of the court is three weeks from now. Only say that the events of the season have distracted you from the decision. Take time.”
Simeon rose. He walked like an old man. Outside the window the leaves were still green, but less so than they had been. The summer was dying, and someday very soon the green would fade, red and gold taking the field. Beautiful colors, but still death.
“Maas has no reason to wish Aster ill,” Simeon said.
“He’s in contact with Asterilhold. He’s working with them-”
“You worked with Maccia to reinforce Vanai. Lord Daskellin danced with Northcoast. Lord Tremontair is keeping assignations with the ambassador from Borja, and Lord Arminnin spent more time in Hallskar than Antea last year. Shall I slaughter every nobleman with connections outside the kingdom? You wouldn’t live.” Simeon’s breath was fast and shallow. He leaned against the windowsill, steadying himself. “My father died when he was a year younger than I am now.”
“I remember.”
“Maas has allies. Everyone who loved Issandrian and Klin turned to him when they left.”
“Mine turned to Daskellin.”
“You don’t have allies, Dawson. You have enemies and admirers. You couldn’t even keep Palliako’s boy near you when he was the hero of the day. Lerer sent him off to the edge of the world rather than let him take another revel from you. Enemies and admirers.”
“Which are you, Majesty?”
“Both. Have been since you flirted that Cinnae girl away from me at the tourney when we were twelve.”
Dawson chuckled. The king’s smile was almost abashed, and then he was laughing too. Simeon came back and collapsed into his chair.
“I know you don’t approve,” he said. “But trust me that I’m doing the best I can. There are just so many things to balance, and I’m so tired. I am unbearably tired.”
“At least don’t give Aster to Maas. I don’t care if he is the most influential man at court just now. Find someone else.”
“Thank you for your advice, old friend.”
“Simeon-”
“No. Thank you. That’s all.”
In the antechamber, the servants gave Dawson back his sword and dagger. It seemed years since Simeon had insisted on the old formality of coming to private audience unarmed. This was how far they had all fallen. Dawson was still adjusting the buckle when he stepped outside. The air was warm, the sun heavy in the sky, but the breeze had an edge to it. The soft, pressing air of summer was gone. The seasons were changing again. Dawson turned away the footman’s assisting hand and climbed into his carriage.
“My lord?” the driver asked.
“The Great Bear,” Dawson said.
The whip cracked, and the carriage lurched off, leaving the blocky towers and martial gates of the Kingspire behind. He let himself lean back into the seat, the jolts and knocks sending jabs of pain up his spine. First the journey back from Osterling Fells and then the better half of the day waiting for his majesty to clear an audience for him had worn him down more than it once would have.
When he’d been a young man, he’d ridden from Osterling Fells to Camnipol, stopping only to trade horses, arrived just before the queen’s ball, and spent the whole evening until the dawn dancing. Mostly with Clara. It seemed like a story he’d heard told of someone else, except that he could still see the dress she’d worn and smell the perfume at the nape of her neck. He turned the memory aside before his wife’s younger incarnation aroused him. He wanted to walk upright when he reached the club, and while he was old, he wasn’t dead.
The Fraternity of the Great Bear rose up, its facade the black stone and gold leaf of the Undying City. Coaches and carriages were thick in the street, drivers pushing to position themselves where their particular masters would walk the fewest steps from carriage to door. The air stank of the fresh horse droppings being ground to paste under a hundred hooves. Dawson toyed with the idea of getting out here and walking in just to escape, but it was beneath his station, so he made do with abusing the driver for his slowness and incompetence. By the time the footmen of the club hurried out with a step for him, he almost felt better.
Within, the club was a fabric woven from pipe smoke, heat, and music ignored in favor of conversation. Dawson gave his jacket to a servant girl who bowed and scurried away. When he entered the great hall, half a dozen men turned toward him, applauding his return with varying degrees of pleasure and sarcasm. Enemies and admirers. Dawson cut a bow that could be read as acknowledgment or insult depending on who it was given to, scooped up a cut crystal glass of fortified wine, and stalked to the smaller halls on the left.
A wide, round table sat in the center of one hall, a dozen men around it, many of them talking at once. In among the press of bodies and wit, Issandrian’s long hair and Sir Klin’s artless face. Issandrian caught sight of him and stood. He nodded to Dawson rather than bow. It might only have been a trick of the light, but the man seemed lessened. As if his exile had actually humbled him. The others at his table began to grow quiet, becoming aware that something was happening around them even if they were too dim to know what. Dawson drew his dagger in a duelist’s salute, and Issandrian smiled in what might have been approval.
At the back of the hall were private meeting rooms, and the least of these was hardly larger than a carriage itself. The dark leather couches ate what little light the candles gave. Daskellin sat in a corner where he could see whoever entered. His back was to the wall, and his sword was undrawn, but near his hand.
“Well,” Dawson said, lowering himself to the couch opposite, “I see you’ve squandered everything we had in my absence.”
“Pleasure to see you too,” Canl Daskellin said.
“How do we go from successfully defending Camnipol from foreign blades to riding behind Feldin Maas? Can you answer that?”
“Do you want the long answer or the short?”
“Will the long be less annoying?”
Daskellin leaned forward.
“Maas has backing, and we don’t. I had it. Or I thought I did. Then a balance sheet changed or some such, and Clark lit out for Birancour.”
“It’s what you deserve for working with bankers.”
“It won’t happen again,” Daskellin said darkly.
It was as close to an apology as Dawson expected to get. He let the matter slide. Instead, he drained his glass, leaned to the door, and rapped against it until a serving girl appeared to refresh his glass.
“Where do we stand, then?” Dawson asked when she’d gone.
Daskellin shook his head, breath hissing out through his teeth.
“If it comes to the field, we can hold our own. There are enough landholders who still hate Asterilhold that it’s easy enough to rally them.”
“If Aster dies before he takes the throne?”
“Then we fervently pray his majesty’s royal scepter’s still in working order, because a new male heir is the best hope we have. I’ve had my genealogist look through the blood archives, and Simeon has a cousin in Asterilhold with a legitimate claim.”
“Legitimate?” Dawson asked, leaning forward.
“I’m afraid so, and you can’t guess this. He’s a supporter of the principle of a farmer’s council. We lose the quarter of our support with more sense that guts. The others rally around Oyer Verennin or possibly Umansin Tor, both of whom can also make a claim. Asterilhold backs its man with the help of the group Maas and Issandrian have gathered, we fight a civil war, and we lose.”
Daskellin clapped his hands once. The candle above him sputtered. In the halls of the club, a serving girl shouted and a man laughed. Dawson’s fortified wine tasted more bitter than it had when he started it, and he put the glass down.
“Could this have been the scheme all along?” Dawson asked. “Was Maas using Issandrian and Klin and all that hairwash about a farmer’s council just for this? We may have been aiming at the wrong target all this time.”
“Possibly,” Daskellin said. “Or it might have been a chance he saw and decided to take. We’d have to ask Feldin, and I suspect he might not tell us the truth.”
Dawson tapped the lip of his glass with a finger, the crystal chiming softly.
“We can’t let Aster die,” Dawson said.
“Everything dies. Men, cities, empires. Everything,” Daskellin said. “The timing’s the question.”
Dawson took his dinner with the family in the informal dining hall. Roast pork with apple, honeyed squash, and fresh bread with whole cloves of garlic baked into it. A cream linen cloth on the table. Ceramic dishes from Far Syramys and polished silver utensils. It could as well have been ashes served on scrap iron.
“Geder Palliako’s come back,” Jorey said.
“Really?” Clara said. “I don’t remember where he’d gone. Not to the south, certainly, with so many people having friends and family in Vanai. You can’t expect a decent reception when you’ve killed a person’s cousin or some such. Wouldn’t be realistic. Was he in Hallskar?”
“The Keshet,” Jorey said around a mouthful of apple. “Came back with a pet cunning man.”
“That’s nice for him,” Clara said. She rang for the serving girl, and then, frowning, “We don’t need to throw another revel for him, do we?”
“No,” Dawson said.
He knew, of course, what they were doing. Jorey bringing up odd, trivial subjects. Clara burbling on about them and turning everything into a question for him to answer. It was the strategy they always used in dark times to lift him up out of himself. Tonight, the burden was too heavy.
He’d considered killing Maas. It would be difficult, of course. A direct assault was impossible. In the first place, it was expected and so would be guarded against. In the second, failure meant an even greater sympathy for Maas in the court. The idea of challenging him to a duel and then allowing things to go wrong appealed to him. He and Maas had been on the dueling grounds often enough that it wouldn’t be an obvious convenience, and men slipped all the time. Blades went deeper than intended. He had to ignore the fact that Feldin was younger, stronger, and had lost their last duel only because Dawson was cleverer. The idea was still sweet.
“Fact is,” Barriath said as the serving girl came in, “this boat is sinking, and we’re bailing it out with a sieve.”
“Meaning what?” Jorey said.
“Simeon’s my king and I’ll put my life down at his word, the same as anyone,” Barriath said, “but he’s barely his own master anymore. Father stopped the Edford Charter madness, and now we’re looking at plots from Asterilhold. If we stop that, there will be another crisis after it, and another after that one.”
“I don’t think that’s appropriate talk for the dinner table, dear,” Clara said, accepting a fresh glass of watered wine from the servant.
“Ah, let him talk,” Dawson said. “It’s what we’re all thinking about anyway.”
“At least wait until the help is gone,” Clara said. “Or who knows what they’ll think of us in the small quarters.”
The servant girl left blushing. Clara watched the door close after her, then nodded to her eldest son.
“Antea needs a king,” Barriath said. “Instead it’s got a kindly uncle. I hate to be the one to bring the bad news, but it’s all through the navy. If it weren’t for Lord Skestinin encouraging the captains to lay on the lash and drop troublemakers for the fish, we’d have had a mutiny by now. At least one.”
“I can’t believe that,” Clara said. “Mutiny’s such a rude, shortsighted thing. I’m certain that our men in the king’s navy wouldn’t stoop so low.”
Barriath laughed.
“Mother, if you want truly inappropriate dinner conversation, I can tell you something about how low sailing men stoop.”
“But Simeon is the king and Aster’s still a boy,” Jorey said. It was, Dawson thought, a brave attempt to keep the subject from veering again. “You can’t expect them to be different people than they are.”
“I agree with you, my boy,” Dawson said. “I wish I didn’t.”
“Best thing,” Barriath said, “would be for Simeon to find a protector with a spine to watch over Aster, and then abdicate. A regency could last eight or ten years, and by the time Aster took the crown, the kingdom would be in order.”
Jorey snorted his derision, and Barriath’s face went hard.
“Spare me,” Jorey said. “A regent who could solve all the kingdom’s conflicts in a decade wouldn’t be likely to give up his regency. He’d be king.”
“You’re right,” Barriath said. “And that would be just terrible, would it?”
“That’s starting to sound awfully like the people we’re working against, brother.”
“If you two are going to start fighting, you can leave the table now,” Clara said. Barriath and Jorey looked at their plates, muttering variations on I’m sorry, Mother. Clara nodded to herself. “That’s better. Besides, it’s a waste of effort to argue about the problems you don’t have at the expense of the ones you do. We simply have to convince Simeon that poor Feldin really has gotten himself in too deep with those terrible Asterilhold people.”
“It isn’t as easy as that,” Dawson said.
“Certainly it is,” Clara said. “He’s certain to have letters, isn’t he? That’s what Phelia said. That he was always off at his meetings and letters.”
“I don’t think he’ll be writing to his foreign friends with detailed accounts of treason, Mother,” Barriath said. “Dear Lord Such-and-so, glad to hear you’ll help me slaughter the prince.”
“He wouldn’t have to say it, though. Not outright,” Jorey said. “If there was evidence he was corresponding with this cousin who’d lay claim to the throne, it might be enough.”
“You can always judge people by who they write to,” Clara said with satisfaction. “There’s the inconvenience of actually getting the letters, of course, but Phelia was so desperately pleased to see me last time, I can’t think it will be particularly difficult to arrange another invitation. Not that one can rely on that, of course, which is why I’ve sponsored that needlework master to come show us his stitching patterns. Embroidery seems simple just to look at, but the more complex work can be quite boggling. Which reminds me, Dawson dear, I’m going to require the back hall with the good light tomorrow. There will be about five of us, because after all it seemed a bit obvious to only bring Phelia. That won’t be a problem, will it?”
“What?” Dawson said.
“The back hall with the good light,” Clara said, turning her head to him and raising her eyebrows without actually looking up from cutting her meat. “Because really needlework can’t be done in gloom. It-”
“You’re cultivating Phelia Maas?”
“She lives with Feldin,” Clara said. “And with the close of court coming so soon, waiting seems unwise, don’t you think?”
There was a glitter in her eye and a dangerous angle at the corner of her mouth. Dawson found himself quite certain that his wife was enjoying herself. He found his mind dashing to keep up with hers. If Phelia could be convinced to allow access to the house for a few men…
“What are you doing, Mother?” Barriath asked.
“Saving the kingdom, dear,” she said. “Eat your squash. Don’t just move it around on the plate and pretend you’ve done anything. That never worked when you were a boy, I can’t imagine why you still try it.”
“He won’t believe us,” Dawson said. “After all the objections I’ve raised, Maas will claim forgery. But it might be enough to sway Simeon from giving Aster over.”
“More swaying from the king?” Barriath said. “Is that really what we need? Move him to decisive action, or stay back.”
“Someone else could take them,” Jorey said. “Someone who isn’t particularly allied with us or Maas.”
“What about the Palliako boy?” Clara said. “I know he seems a bit frivolous, but he and Jorey are on good terms and it isn’t as though he were part of your inner circle.”
Dawson ate a bite of pork, chewing slowly to give himself time to think. In truth, the meat wasn’t bad. Salt and sweet and something like pepper heat under it all. Quite good, in fact. He felt the smile spreading across his lips, becoming aware that it had been some time since he’d smiled.
“I don’t know about that,” Jorey said, but Dawson waved the words away.
“Palliako was useful ending the Vanai campaign. And he was here to stop the mercenary riot. He’s been an apt tool before,” Dawson said. “I can’t think why this time would be different.”
Abraham, Daniel
The Dragon’s Path
Geder
The banner spread out over the table, vermillion cloth flowing down to puddle on the floor. The dark eightfold sigil in the pale center had bent onto itself, so Geder leaned in and plucked it straight. Lerer stroked his chin, walking first close and then back and close again before stopping at his son’s shoulder.
“Among my people, this is the standard of your race,” Basrahip said. “The color is for the blood from which all races of mankind came.”
“And the compass rose in the middle there?” Lerer asked.
“That is the symbol of the goddess,” Basrahip said.
Lerer grunted. He walked forward again, touching the cloth with careful fingertips. Geder felt his own fingers twitch toward it, mirroring his father. Basrahip had told him how the priests harvested spider silk and learned to dye it. The banner represented the work of ten lifetimes, and running his hands over it had been like touching the wind.
“And you wanted to hang this at… ah… Rivenhalm?”
“No,” Geder said. “No, I was thinking it would be at the temple here in Camnipol.”
“Oh. That’s right,” Lerer said. “The temple.”
The road home from the hidden temple of the Sinir mountains had been a thousand times more pleasant than the journey out. At the end of each day, Basrahip would sit at the fire with him, listening to whatever anecdotes and tales Geder could remember, laughing at the funny ones, becoming pensive at the tragic. Even the servants, initially unable to hide their discomfort at the high priest’s company, calmed well before they reached the border between the Keshet and Sarakal. Somewhat to Geder’s surprise, Basrahip knew the rough track of their journey. The priest had explained that though the human world had remade itself, collapsed, and begun again countless times since the temple of the spider goddess had withdrawn from the world, the dragon’s roads hadn’t changed. He might not know where one country bordered another or even the path of a river as those things changed over time. The roads were eternal.
When they’d stopped in Inentai to rest the horses and reequip themselves, Basrahip had wandered the streets like a child, his mouth open in astonishment at every new building. It occurred to Geder at the time that in some fashion, he and the priest were not so dissimilar. Basrahip had lived a life with tales of the world, but never the world itself. Geder’s life had been much the same, only his personal, private temple had been built with books and carved out from his duties and obligations. And still, in comparison, Geder was a man of the world. He had seen Kurtadam and Timzinae, Cinnae and Tralgu. Basrahip had known only Firstblood, and in fact only those who looked like himself and the villagers nearest the temple. Seeing a Firstblood with dark skin or pale hair was as much a revelation to the priest as a new race.
Watching him move first tentatively and then with greater and greater sureness through the streets and roads, Geder had some vague understanding of what his own father had meant by the joy of watching a child discover the world. Geder had found himself noticing the things he’d overlooked and taken for granted only because they astounded his new friend and ally. When, at the trailing edge of summer, they reached Camnipol again, Geder was almost sorry to see the journey’s end.
Add to which, his father seemed oddly uncomfortable with his discoveries.
“I don’t suppose you’ve picked a site for this new temple? Lost goddess and all.”
“I was thinking someplace close to the Kingspire,” Geder said. “There’s the old weavers’ guild hall. It’s been empty for years. I’m sure they’d like someone to take it off their hands.”
Lerer grunted noncommittally. Basrahip began to refold the temple banner. Lerer nodded to the priest, put a hand on Geder’s elbow, and steered him gently out to the corridor, walking casually. Geder hardly noticed that his father was separating him from Basrahip. The dark stone ate the daylight, and the servants found themselves suddenly needed elsewhere.
“That essay,” his father said. “You’re still working on it?”
“No, not really. It’s outgrown itself. It was supposed to be about finding a likely area to be associated with Morade and the fall of the Dragon Empire. Now I’ve got the goddess and the history of the temple and everything. I’ve barely started making sense of it all. No point writing any more until I know what I’m writing about, eh? What about you? Is there any fresh news?”
“I was looking forward to that essay,” Lerer said, half to himself. When he looked up, he forced a smile. “I’m sure there’s fresh news every day, but so far I’ve been able to keep from hearing any of it. These bastards and their court games. I could live until the dragons come back and I still wouldn’t forgive what they did to you in Vanai.”
The word tightened Geder’s stomach. The lines at the corners of Lerer’s mouth were sorrow and anger etched in skin. Geder had the surreal urge to reach out his thumb and rub them smooth again.
“Nothing bad happened in Vanai,” Geder said. “I mean, yes, it burned. That wasn’t good. But it wasn’t as bad as it’s made out. It’s all right, I mean. In the end.”
Lerer’s gaze shifted from one of Geder’s eyes to the other, looking into him. Geder swallowed. He couldn’t think why his heart would be beating faster.
“In the end. As you say,” Lerer said. He clapped his hand on Geder’s shoulder. “It’s good you’re back.”
“I’m glad to be here,” Geder said, too quickly.
With a quiet cough to announce himself, the house steward stepped into the corridor.
“Forgive me, my lords, but Jorey Kalliam has arrived asking after Sir Geder.”
“Oh!” Geder said. “He hasn’t seen Basrahip yet. Where is he? You didn’t leave him in the courtyard, did you?”
Lerer’s hand dropped from Geder’s shoulder. Geder had the sense that he’d somehow said the wrong thing.
“His lordship is in the front room,” the steward said.
Jorey rose from the chair by the window as he came in. The season in the city had put some flesh back into the man’s face. Geder smiled, and the two of them stood looking at each other. Geder read his own uncertainty-should they clasp hands? embrace? make formal greeting?-in Jorey’s expression. When Geder laughed, Jorey, smiling sheepishly, did too.
“I see you’re back from the wild places,” Jorey said. “The travel agrees with you.”
“Does it? I think I just about wept when I could sleep in a real bed again. Going on campaign may be a string of discomfort and indignity, but at least I never worried about being killed by bandits.”
“There are worse things than a good, honest bandit. You were missed here,” Jorey said. “You heard what happened?”
“Exile all around,” Geder said, trying to affect a jaded tone. “I don’t know that I could have helped. I barely had any part except when we held the gate from closing.”
“That was the best part to have in the whole mess,” Jorey said.
“Probably so.”
“Well.”
The silence was awkward. Jorey sat again, and Geder walked forward. The front room, like all of the Palliako rooms in Camnipol, was small. The chairs were worked leather that time had stiffened and cracked, and the smell of dust never left the place. The sounds of hooves against stone and drivers berating one another came from the street. Jorey bit his lip.
“I’m here to ask a favor,” he said, and it sounded like a confession.
“We took Vanai together. We burned it together. We saved Camnipol,” Geder said. “You don’t have to ask favors of me. Just tell me what you need me to do.”
“That’s intended to make this easier, isn’t it? All right. My father believes he’s discovered a plot against Prince Aster.”
Geder crossed his arms.
“Does the king know?”
“The king is choosing not to know. And that’s where you come in. I think we can get evidence. Letters. But I’m afraid that if I take them to King Simeon, he’ll think they’re forged. I need someone else. Someone he trusts, or at least doesn’t distrust.”
“Of course,” Geder said. “Absolutely. Who is the traitor?”
“Baron of Ebbinbaugh,” Jorey said. “Feldin Maas.”
“Alan Klin’s ally?”
“And Curtin Issandrian’s, for that, yes. Maas’s wife is my mother’s cousin, which God knows doesn’t sound like much of a toehold, but it’s what we have to work with. She-the wife, I mean. Not my mother. She seems to know more than she’s saying. There’s no question she’s frightened. My mother has her at a needlework master’s knee as we speak in hopes of winning her confidence.”
“But she hasn’t confessed anything? Told you for certain what’s going on?”
“No, we’re still well in the realm of suspicions and fears. There’s no proof. But-”
Geder put up his hand, palm out.
“I have someone you should meet,” he said.
The last time Geder had been to the Kalliam mansion, it had been dressed for a revel in his honor. Without the flowers and streamers and crepe, the austerity and grandeur of the architecture came through. The servants in their livery had the rigid stance of a private guard. The glass in the windows sported no dust. The women’s voices that came from the back hall sounded genteel and proper, even without any individual word being audible. Basrahip sat on a stool in the corner. His broad shoulders and vaguely amused expression made him seem like a child revisiting a playhouse he’d outgrown. The austere cut and rough, colorless cloth of his robes marked him as not belonging to the court.
Jorey was sitting at a writing desk, fidgeting with pen and ink without actually writing anything. Geder paced behind a long damask-upholstered couch and wished he liked pipes. The occasion seemed to call for the gravity of smoke.
The choir of feminine voices grew louder, and the hard tapping of formal shoes came from the doorway, louder and then softer as they passed. They hadn’t come in. Geder moved toward the door, but Jorey waved him back.
“Mother will be seeing the others out,” he said. “She’ll be back in a moment.”
Geder nodded, and true to Jorey’s word, the footsteps returned, the voices reduced to a duet. When the women stepped into the room, Jorey rose to his feet. Basrahip followed suit a moment later. Geder had danced with the Baroness of Osterling Fells at his revel, but between the months and the whirl of drink and confusion that time had been, he wouldn’t have recognized her. He could see how her own features had influenced Jorey’s, especially around the eyes. Surprise touched her expression and vanished again, less than the flutter of a moth’s wing. Behind her, a sickly-looking woman with a pinched face and dark eyes had to be Phelia Maas.
“Oh, excuse me,” Clara Kalliam said. “I didn’t mean to intrude, dear.”
“Not at all, Mother. We were hoping you’d join us. You remember Geder Palliako?”
“How could I forget the man who held the eastern gate? I haven’t seen you at court this season, sir, but I understand you’ve been traveling. An expedition of some sort? Let me introduce my cousin Phelia.”
The dark-eyed woman came into the room and held her hand out to Geder. Her smile spoke of relief, as if she’d been dreading something that she thought she’d now avoided. Geder made his bow and saw Lady Kalliam’s eyebrows rise as she noticed the priest in the corner.
“Ladies,” Jorey said. “This is Basrahip. He’s a holy man Geder brought back from the Keshet.”
“Really?” Lady Kalliam said. “I hadn’t known you were collecting priests.”
“It came as a surprise to me too,” Geder said. “But please, won’t you ladies sit?”
According to his plan, Geder sat Phelia Maas on the couch with her back toward Basrahip and then took his own place across from her. Jorey resumed his place at the writing desk, and his mother took a chair near that happily didn’t block Geder’s view of the priest.
“Maas,” Geder said, as if recalling something. In truth, he’d planned precisely what to say. “I had an Alberith Maas serving under me in Vanai. A relation of yours?”
“Nephew,” Phelia said. “My husband’s nephew. Alberith has mentioned you often since his return.”
“You’re the Baroness of Ebbinbaugh, then?” Geder asked. “Sir Klin was my commander in the Vanai campaign. He and your husband are friends, yes?”
“Oh yes,” Phelia said with a smile. “Sir Klin is a dear, close friend of Feldin’s.”
Behind her, Basrahip gazed into the middle distance, his face impassive as if listening intently to something only he could hear. He shook his head once. No.
“There was a falling-out, though, wasn’t there? I’m sure I heard something like that,” Geder said, pretending a casual knowledge he didn’t have. The woman’s face went still, except for her eyes, which clicked from Geder to Lady Kalliam and back. There was fear in the way she held her hands and the corners of her mouth. Geder felt a slow, pleasant warmth growing in his chest. It was going to work. At his side, Jorey’s mother considered him with interest.
“I’m sure you misunderstood,” Phelia said. “Alan and Feldin are on excellent terms.”
No.
“I always liked Sir Klin,” Geder said for the simple pleasure of being able to lie to a woman who couldn’t lie to him. “I felt terrible when I heard he’d been blamed for the riot. Your husband didn’t suffer for that, I hope.”
“No, no, thank you. We were very fortunate.”
Yes.
“Sir Palliako,” Lady Kalliam said, “to what do we owe the pleasure of your company today?”
Geder looked at Jorey, then at Lady Kalliam. He’d meant to ask a few innocuous questions, get what insight he could, uncover what could be uncovered. He’d meant to move slowly. The way the woman held herself tighter and tighter, the fragility of her smile, and the scent of fear that came from her like the sweet from roses argued against. He couldn’t scare her so badly she left, but he could scare her badly. He smiled at Lady Kalliam.
“Well, the truth is I was hoping for an introduction to Baroness Ebbinbaugh here. I had some questions for her. I haven’t spent all the season traveling,” he said pleasantly. “I’ve been looking into the riot. Its roots. And its aftermath.”
The color had gone from Phelia Maas’s face. Her breath was fast and shallow, like a hand-caught sparrow about to die from fright.
“I can’t imagine what there is to look into,” she said, her voice thready and faint.
Geder found it was easier to smile kindly when he didn’t mean it. Outside, a wind chime was singing to itself in random, idiot percussion. Jorey and his mother had both gone perfectly still. Geder laced his fingers over his knee.
“I know everything, Lady Maas,” he said. “The prince. The riot. The Vanai campaign. The woman.”
“What woman?” she breathed.
He didn’t have the first idea what woman, but no doubt there was some woman involved somewhere. It didn’t matter.
“Say anything,” he said. “Pick any detail. Even things you don’t imagine anyone else could know, and I’ll tell you if they’re true.”
“Feldin isn’t involved in any of it,” she said. Geder didn’t even need to look at Basrahip.
“That isn’t true, Lady Maas. I know you’re frightened, but I’m here to help you and your family. I can do that. But I need to know I can trust you. You see? Tell me the truth. It doesn’t matter, because it’s all things I know already. Tell me how it started. Just that.”
“It was the ambassador from Asterilhold,” she said. “He came to Feldin a year ago.”
No.
“You’re lying to me, Baroness,” Geder said, very gently. “Try again.”
Phelia Maas shuddered. She seemed like a thing made of spun sugar, almost too delicate to support her own weight. She opened her mouth, closed it, swallowed.
“There was a man. He was going to be part of the farmer’s council.”
Yes.
“Yes. I know who you mean. Can you tell me his name?”
“Ucter Anninbaugh.”
No.
“That wasn’t his name. Can you tell me his name?”
“Ellis Newport.”
No.
“I can help you, Baroness. I may be the only man in Camnipol who can. Tell me his name.”
Her dead eyes met his.
“Torsen. Torsen Aestilmont.”
Yes.
“There,” Geder said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Do you understand now that you and your husband have no secrets from me?”
The woman nodded once. Her chin began to spasm, her cheeks flushed, and a heartbeat later she was bawling like a child. Jorey’s mother swooped to her side, putting an arm around her. Geder sat, watching. His heart was beating quickly, but his limbs were loose and relaxed. When he had denied Alan Klin the secret wealth of Vanai, he’d felt excited. Gleeful. When he’d come to the decision to burn Vanai, he’d felt righteous anger. Maybe even satisfaction. But he wasn’t sure that ever in his life before now-before this moment-he’d felt sated.
He rose and walked over to Jorey. The man’s eyes were wide. Impressed almost past the point of believing. Geder spread his hands. You see?
“How did you do that?” Jorey whispered. “How did you know?” There was awe in his voice.
Basrahip was fewer than three paces away. The bull-huge head was still bowed. The thick fingers bent around each other, hand clasping hand. Phelia Maas’s sobs were like a storm on the sea, and the murmured lullaby of promises and comfort from Lady Kalliam had barely thrown any oil on that water. Geder went to leaned so close his lips brushed the huge man’s ear.
“I will build all the temples you want, forever.”
Basrahip smiled.