.
Sometime during her years in Vanai, she must have heard the name. The syllables had a familiarity without detail, like a name from history or myth. Drakis Stormcrow. The Risen Guard. Aesa, Princess of Swords.
Paerin Clark.
Cithrin plucked at her skirt, keeping the lines of it neat and straight. Her heart pounded against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her belly was a solid knot that veered between cramping and nausea. She wanted something to drink. Something powerful that would loosen her muscles, calm her, give her courage. Instead she held herself the way Master Kit had taught her, her shoulders low and back, her spine loose, and prayed that she looked like a woman in full possession of her powers instead of a half-grown girl in her mother’s clothes.
The mild-looking man sat at her desk, in her rooms, with his legs crossed and his fingers laced across his knee. His hairline was receding. His shoulders were narrow. He could have been anybody. He could have been no one. His notebook lay open on the table, a steel pen across it, but he didn’t write notes. Not even ciphered ones. He asked his questions gently, and smiled when she spoke. His Northcoast accent was soft at the corners. Where other men’s words hissed, his shushed.
“Magister Imaniel had no part in this, then?”
“No, none,” Cithrin said. “The intention was solely that we should take the bank’s Vanai assets to Carse. As far as Magister Imaniel knew, we were doing just that. If the snows hadn’t come early to the pass at Bellin, we would have followed that plan.”
“And the decision to divert to the south?”
“That was Captain Wester’s.”
“Tell me more about that.”
No voices came from below them. Captain Wester and the guards were gone, sent out of the house by Clark. A dozen sword-and-bows that he’d brought with him had taken their place. The silence seemed wrong. Eerie. The rain pattered against the windows like a thousand tiny fingers poking at her, and the thunder muttered ominously in the distance. Cithrin recounted everything she could in the detail she could manage. Being intercepted by the Antean forces, smuggling the cart into Porte Oliva, hiding in the salt quarter.
“And only Captain Wester and his Tralgu were acting as guard at this point?”
“I don’t know that I’d call Yardem ‘his Tralgu.’ ”
“They were the only two guards?”
“Yes,” Cithrin said.
“Thank you.”
She told about the attack by Opal, about Marcus’s fears of leaving the city and his fears of staying. She was careful, when she described forging the documents, to keep her tone calm and matter-of-fact. Magister Imaniel had always said that appearing guilty gave them the impression there was something to feel guilty for. When she admitted to filing false papers with the governor of Porte Oliva, the auditor didn’t comment or even change expression. Once she was past the history of founding her false branch of the bank and began to outline her investments, loans, consignments, and commissions, she felt herself starting to relax.
She talked for the greater part of the evening. Her voice grew hoarse, and her back began to ache from sitting too long in one position. If Paerin suffered the same, he didn’t show it.
“How much did Captin Wester advise you on these strategies?”
“He didn’t,” Cithrin said. “He didn’t try, and I didn’t ask him to.”
“Why not?”
“He’s not a banker. I gave him a budget that I thought was appropriate for the protection of the gold we kept here and for the moving of any substantial amounts within the city, but that’s all.”
“I see. Well. Thank you, Mistress bel Sarcour. That was the most interesting story I’ve heard in some time. I assume all the books and records are here?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve also taken a room at a cafe by the Grand Market, but all of those records have been brought here.”
“Excellent.”
“I would also like to make a suggestion? If I may.”
Paerin Clark raised his eyebrows. Cithrin took a deep breath.
“Due to circumstances,” she said, “I have been identified closely with the bank here in the city. With the branch being so recently established, I think it wouldn’t be in anybody’s interest to change that. Once you’ve completed your audit, I hope you’ll consider keeping me on as the public face of the branch.”
Clark took up his pen and closed the still-unmarked notebook.
“I think you have misunderstood the situation,” he said. “This… let’s call it misadventure… has embarrassed the Medean bank in general and Komme Medean in particular. It has disrupted negotiations in Herez and Northcoast, and taken resources, myself included, away from some profoundly important situations. From what you’ve told me, I expect you’ve been taken in by a mercenary captain for reasons I haven’t fathomed yet. But I am very, very good at what I do. If there’s anything here you haven’t told me, I will find it. I’m going to spend as long as it takes to review every transaction you’ve made. I already have three men going through the city asking about your activity. If there’s anything that’s not in these books, I’ll find that too. And public gaol in Porte Oliva is far from the worst thing that can happen from here.
“Now, before I get started, I have one last question. I will ask you this only once. If you tell me the truth, I am in a position to see you’re treated mercifully. If you lie, I can make your life unbearable. You understand?”
She should have been frightened. That was what Clark intended, certainly. Instead, an odd peace flowed into her. He was bullying her. He was condescending to her. He was underestimating her. And so her last reservations were laid to rest. The man was an ass, and anything she did to him would be justified.
“I understand,” she said. She saw him hesitate, hearing something in her voice he hadn’t expected. She smiled. “What was your question?”
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked
That I’m going to beat you, Cithrin thought. That I am going to win.
“If you have any questions, Master Clark, I am at your disposal,” Cithrin said. “But my numbers balance.”
For the next week, she lived in exile, sitting in the cafe or walking through the city streets during the days, sleeping at night at an inn not far from her bank. The auditor called upon her daily with lists of questions and clarifications: Why was the rate of interest specified in this contract, but not in another? Why was a particular sum withdrawn from the bank’s reserves, and when would it be returned? Why was this loan accepted when another apparently of greater merit was refused? Cithrin sat in her rooms- hers, dammit-and allowed herself to be subjected to the examination. She knew every answer, and after a few days, it became something of a game to watch Clark try to catch her out. He was smart, and he knew his business. She even found herself respecting him. He had been doing this work since Cithrin was a hardly more than a child.
But then, so had she.
The ships left for Narinisle. They carried pressed oil, wine, cotton cloth, and the dreams and hopes of the merchant houses of Porte Oliva. But they didn’t carry any agreements of capital from the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, because the audit was still progressing. Next year, maybe.
Cithrin stood on the seawall and watched the ships depart, towed out past the dangers of the bay, and then sails rising up and filling like spring flowers in bloom. She stood silently until they faded into the grey between sea and sky, and then she watched the haze. Seagulls called and turned in the wide air, complaining or celebrating. At her side, Captain Wester crossed his arms.
“Another one came to the cafe this morning,” he said. “Your brewer lady and her son.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Yardem talked with them. He said the same as the others. The audit’s normal for a new branch, and please to go along with whatever the man asks. She wasn’t happy. Wanted to talk with you. Didn’t like it when he said that the two of you comparing notes would only make the auditor’s job harder. Accused Yardem of accusing her of something.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Cithrin said. “I’d stop this all if I could.”
“I know.”
Cithrin pulled her cloak closer around her and turned away from the limitless sea back toward the city. Her city. She wasn’t sure when it had become hers.
“With luck, we’ll be back to normal before long.”
He fell in at her side. She couldn’t say if she matched his stride or if he matched hers.
“You still have the option of walking away,” he said. “I can go get the key back. You can reclaim the box from the governor’s palace. It wouldn’t be so bad. Carse is a decent enough city. Even if there is trouble with the succession, you’d be safe there. No one tries to put Carse under siege. Give it a year, take your money. You could do anything.”
“I couldn’t do this,” Cithrin said.
“Fair point.”
They walked down long, whitewashed steps and along the wall toward the salt quarter. Somewhere along the way, they passed the spot where Opal had died, but she didn’t recognize it and she didn’t ask. A small wire-haired dog trotted by, yipped at them, and sped away when Marcus pretended to reach down for a rock to throw.
“Notice you haven’t been drinking,” he said.
I would drown a small child for a bottle of wine, Cithrin thought, but I am going to need my wits, and there won’t be any warning.
“I don’t miss it,” she said.
“You haven’t been sleeping.”
“Don’t miss that either.”
The inn that had become their home while the bank itself remained under occupation sat at the corner of two of the larger of Porte Oliva’s narrow streets. Its white walls and wooden roof looked cold under the low clouds. As they came near, a man stepped out of the doorway. She saw Marcus become alert without changing his stride. She felt a low burning in her throat.
The man came toward them. One of Paerin Clark’s guards.
“He wants to see me?” Cithrin asked.
“Same as always, miss,” the guard said. “I think he’s finished up.”
Cithrin took a deep breath. The time had come.
“May I bring the captain along?”
“Don’t see why not.”
The walk back to the bank was short, but Cithrin felt every step of it. It occurred to her that the dress she was wearing was the first she’d bought when she came to Porte Oliva, the one she’d invented Hallskari salt dyes for in exchange for a five-coin reduction. The dress of a truly dangerous woman. She tried to take it as a good omen.
A Kurtadam boy walked by selling paper funnels with honeyed almonds, and Cithrin stopped to buy one. She popped two in her mouth, gave one to Marcus. Paerin’s guard waited, and she tipped the paper toward him. Smiling, he took two. So he was willing to accept gifts from her. That meant he was either a cold bastard to the bone, or the news from the auditor was good. No, she thought, it meant the guard believed it was good.
For twenty days, she had been denied her room. Walking back up the stairs, she was prepared to choke down outrage, but when she reached the top, everything was precisely as it had been. Paerin Clark might have been a ghost for all the trace he left of himself.
The man sat at her desk. He was writing now, the illegible symbols of cipher coming from the nib of his pen without need of a code book. He nodded to Cithrin and then to Marcus, finished the line of script, and turned to them.
“Mistress bel Sarcour,” he said. “I had one last question for you. I hope you don’t mind.”
His tone had changed markedly. She could hear the respect in it. That was fair. She’d earned it.
“Of course.”
“I’m fairly sure I’ve guessed the answer, but there’s a sum placed aside in the most recent books. Six hundred twelve weight of silver?”
“The quarter’s profit for the holding company,” she said.
“Yes,” the auditor said. “That’s what I thought. Please, have a seat both of you.”
Marcus gave her the stool, choosing to stand behind her.
“I have to say, I am impressed with all this. Magister Imaniel trained you very, very well. We have, of course, suffered some loss. But in the main, the contracts you’ve made seem sound. The city fleet project was, I think, ill-advised, but since they refused your offer we don’t have to concern ourselves with that.”
Cithrin wondered what it was about the fleet that the auditor found problematic, but he was still speaking.
“I am making my report to the holding company now. My primary finding is that what you have done here was honestly intended to be in the interests of the bank as a whole. We are, unfortunately, obligated to a length of contract in Porte Oliva that doesn’t match what we’d like, but I know you were doing the best you could. And while some aspects of your behavior were certainly outside the law, I see no advantage to seeking any legal redress.”
“He means we got away with it?” Marcus asked.
“He does,” Cithrin said.
“Good to know.”
Paerin tapped his fingertips against the top of the desk, the deep lines of a frown marking his high forehead.
“I don’t want to be forward, and I can’t, of course, make any guarantees,” he said, “but there may be a position for a woman with your talents in Carse. I would need to discuss it with Komme Medean and some of the other directors. But if you would like to make a career as a banker, I think you could find a start there.”
You still have the option of walking away, Marcus had said less than hour earlier. She still did. It was time to burn that hope.
“I would prefer to have a start here,” Cithrin said. “Have you considered my proposal?”
Paerin Clark looked at her blankly. Then, embarrassed for her, he nodded.
“Yes, that. No. We will be putting a recognized member of the bank in charge of the branch until it can be dissolved. Keeping you in your present position isn’t possible.”
Marcus chuckled.
“Does it make me a bad man that I was hoping he would say that?” he asked.
Cithrin ignored him. When she spoke, she sat straight and looked the auditor in the eye.
“You’ve overlooked something, sir. There’s a record book from Vanai that isn’t among these. It’s an old one, though. It doesn’t touch directly on your audit.”
Paerin Clark shifted his chair to face her. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“It is the book that records my status as ward of the bank,” Cithrin said. “It shows my legal age, and the date upon which I can begin to sign legally binding contracts. That would be next summer.”
“I don’t see how that-”
Cithrin gestured to the books, the piles of paper and parchment, the entire mechanism of her bank.
“None of these contracts is legal,” she said. “I am not legally permitted to enter into any agreement. I’m ten months too young.”
Paerin Clark’s expression was the same bland smile he’d worn the first day he’d come. It might only have been her imagination that he was a shade paler. Cithin swallowed to loosen the knot in her throat.
“If the information in that book becomes public,” she said, “the bank will have to resort to direct appeal to the governor to either enforce the contracts anyway or reclaim the sums that were given out. I’ve met the governor, and I think that he is unlikely to take money away from his citizens to give to a bank that’s in a hurry to abandon his city.”
“And the book in question is where?” Paerin Clark asked.
“In a strongbox deposited with the governor under my name privately and separately from the bank. And the key to the box is in the keeping of a man with no incentive to see the bank succeed here. If I tell him what it unlocks, you can burn all these papers to light your cookfires.”
“You’re bluffing. If this comes out, you’re guilty of forgery, theft. Misrepresentation. You’ll be in gaol for the rest of your life, and all we’ll lose is money.”
“I can get her out of here,” Marcus said. “A city’s complement of queensmen half incapacitated from laughing at you? I can get her out of Birancour and in a decent house by midwinter.”
“We are the Medean bank,” Paerin Clark said. “You can’t outrun us.”
“I’m Marcus Wester. I’ve killed kings, and I’m lousy at bluffing. Threaten her again, and-”
“Stop it, both of you,” Cithrin said. “Here’s my offer. Keep the branch as it is, but install a notary from the holding company. We say it’s to help with the workload. I’m the face and voice, but the notary oversees all the agreements.”
“And when I refuse?”
She wanted a drink. She wanted a warm bed and man’s arms around her. She wanted to know for certain that she was doing the right thing.
“I burn this branch to the ground,” she said.
The world balanced on the edge of a blade. The auditor closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair. Ah well, Cithrin thought. Life as a fugitive wasn’t so bad last winter. At least this time I can wear my own clothes. Paerin Clark opened his eyes.
“You sign nothing,” he said. “All agreements are signed by the notary and the notary alone. Negotiations don’t happen without the notary present. If you’re overruled, you accept it. Control rests with the holding company. You’re a figurehead. Nothing more.”
“I can live with that,” she said. And also, unspoken: Until I can change it, I can live with that.
“And you return the missing book with evidence of your age to me. Before I leave the city.”
“No,” Marcus said. “She gives you that, she’s got no purchase. You could go back on everything, and she’d have nothing.”
“She’ll have to trust me.”
Cithrin swallowed. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to sing.
She nodded. Paerin Clark was still for a long moment, then he picked up the papers he’d been writing, sighed, and ripped them into small squares.
“It seems I have a somewhat different report to write,” he said, smiling wryly. “Congratulations on your new bank, Magistra.”
Abraham, Daniel
The Dragon’s Path
Geder
The funeral rites of Phelia Maas were somewhat overshadowed by the execution of her husband. Geder, given the choice, had opted for the execution, as had the majority of the great names at court. King Simeon’s throne sat on a raised dais. Aster sat beside him in a smaller chair of the same design. King and prince both wore black ermine. Then there was the broad expanse of the chamber, Feldin Maas kneeling in its center. His ankles and wrists were bound with wire, and even from the gallery behind the woven rope, Geder could see the bruises on the man’s legs and the long black scabs across his back. Ten executioners stood in a rough circle around the prisoner. Their masks were steel and made to look like snarling animals, and their blades were dull and rusted.
A single drum beat out its dry call. It was the only sound apart from some idiot whispering at the back the crowd. Geder tried to ignore the people and focus on the spectacle. Even though he’d arrived late, the assembled nobles had made room for him, so he had an excellent view just at the edge of the gallery. Dawson Kalliam and his two sons stood next to him. Geder was wearing his black leather cloak from Vanai, but the cut of it was all wrong now. His body had changed shape over the summer, and it hung loose on him. He wished he’d thought to get it recut. Everyone who wasn’t watching Feldin Maas die seemed to be looking at him.
King Simeon, gray in the face and severe, lifted his arm. The drum went silent. The mass of people in all three levels of the gallery took in their breath. Even the idiot at the back stopped talking.
“You have the courtesy of a final statement, traitor,” the king said.
Feldin Maas shook his head slowly. No.
The king’s arm fell. The executioners moved in, each man sinking the point of his blade hard into the man’s flesh. Geder had been led to believe that the blades were fairly dull, and the force each of the killers used reinforced the idea. Maas cried out once, but only once. When the executioners stood back, he lay in a spreading pool of blood, the ten blades sticking out of his body. The assembly around him let its breath out with a sound like wind through trees.
King Simeon stood. Behind him, Prince Aster looked like a statue of himself carved from pale stone. Geder wondered what it would be like for a boy just past his ninth naming day to know that a grown man had been plotting to kill him and then watch the man die brutally.
“This is the right and proper fate of all who swear false loyalty to the Severed Throne,” he said. “Let all who stand witness to this justice carry forth the word that all traitors to Antea will suffer and all will die.”
The applause and shouts of approval burst forth all around. Geder joined in, and Dawson Kalliam leaned close to him, shouting to be heard.
“This is yours too, Palliako.”
It was a kinder way of putting it than he’d used before the ceremony started. Then he’d said, You’ve given Simeon a spine at last.
The drum began again, and king and prince turned and walked out in solemn procession. Servants dressed in red came to carry out the body. Maas was to be displayed, swords still in place, for seventeen days. What was left after that would be thrown into the Division with the kitchen scraps and sewage, and anyone who tried to pull it out for a more respectful burial would be hung. Somewhere behind Geder, hidden by the nobles of Antea, the doors opened. With the king gone and the ceremony finished, conversation rose to a deafening roar. Geder couldn’t make out what anyone was saying over the noise of everyone else, so he just followed the subtle movement of the crowd and made his way out.
In the great halls of the Kingspire, the nobility of Antea broke into a hundred small groups. Dispersed, the din of the talk was less deafening if not particularly more comprehensible. He saw people pretending not to look at him, and he had some idea what they were saying: Palliako claims he was wandering the Keshet, but he came back knowing all about the plot on Prince Aster and burning Vanai was all part of his plan and I told you his bringing loyal soldiers back just before the mercenaries tried to take the city was no coincidence. He walked through the hall slowly, bathing in it.
“Sir Palliako. A word.”
Curtin Issandrian and Alan Klin walked up to him looking like bookends in the library of the damned. Geder smiled. Curtin Issandrian put out his hand.
“I’ve come to thank you, sir. I owe you a great debt.”
“You do?” Geder asked, leaving the man’s hand floating in the air between them.
“If it weren’t for you, I would still be in alliance with a secret traitor to the crown,” Issandrian said. “Feldin Maas was a friend, and I let that friendship blind me to his nature. Today has been a terrible day for me, but it has been necessary. And I thank you for it.”
Geder wished Basrahip had been there, just to know if Issandrian were what he pretended to be. Another time, though. There were months and years still to come when he and his Righteous Servant could ferret out every secret in the court. A little magnanimity now wouldn’t hurt anyone. He took Issandrian’s hand.
“You’re a good man, Geder Palliako,” Issandrian said, speaking just loudly enough to be overheard. “Antea is fortunate to have you.”
“Thank you, Lord Issandrian,” Geder said, matching him. “It is a strong man who can admit he was misguided. I respect you for it.”
They dropped hands, and Alan Klin came forward, his own hand extended. Geder grinned and took it, pulling the man close.
“Sir Klin!” he said, grinning. “It’s been too long.”
“It has. It truly has.”
“Do you remember that night on the march to Vanai when I got drunk and burned that essay I showed you?”
“Yes. Yes, I do,” Klin said, laughing as if they were sharing a nostalgic moment.
Geder laughed too, and then let the amusement drain from his face.
“So do I.”
He dropped Klin’s hand, turned, and walked away feeling like the ground itself was rising to meet his footsteps. Outside, the day was blue skies and chill winter wind. His father stood near the steps that led down to the carriages, watching the chaos of horses, wood, and wheels. He held a pipe in his hand, but there seemed to be no fire in it.
“So did the political process come to its logical end?” Lerer asked.
“Didn’t you watch?”
“I’m too old for blood sports. If the thing needs doing, then do it, but don’t make a theater piece out of it.”
“But the king has to make an example, doesn’t he? He’s trying to keep Asterilhold from interfering with us,” Geder said. He felt hurt that his father hadn’t watched Maas die. “They were going to kill Prince Aster.”
“I suppose,” Lerer said. “Still. I’ll be damned pleased to be home, get the stink of Camnipol off my skin. We’ve been away from Rivenhalm too long.”
If we are to understand the freedom of humanity, we must first understand its enslavement. The root of all races-even the Firstblood-exists in the reign of dragons, and the end of that reign must by necessity mark the beginning of a peculiarly human history. It is not an exaggeration to say that the last breath of the last dragon was the first moment of the age of humanity in all its variety. But like all freedom, it was bounded and defined by that which came before. Our knowledge of the Dragon Empire is imperfect at best, but I contend that the discovery of the cave-palaces beneath Takynpal gives us our best view into what I have chosen to call the Age of Formation.
Geder flipped ahead, rereading pages he had translated before. The paper was brown with age, and fragile. He disliked handling it for fear that the pages would crack and flake away in his fingertips, but he needed to get as close to the original texts as he could. It seemed to him that there had to be something-some word or phrase that could have been translated in more than one way-that would mention the existence and history of the goddess.
The door of his sitting room swung open and Basrahip came in. He still wore his robes from the temple in the mountains, but he’d accepted a pair of leather-soled boots for walking on the cobbled streets of Camnipol. Among the rich red tapestries and soft upholstered chairs of the Palliako room in Camnipol, he looked entirely out of place. A desert weed in an arrangement of roses. He smiled at Geder and bowed.
“Been walking again?” Geder said.
“I knew tales of the great cities of the world, but nothing I had imagined could be so grand and so corrupt,” the priest said. “A child not more than seven summers old lied to me. And for no reason.”
“What did he say?”
The huge priest lumbered to a chair just across from Geder and lowered himself into it, the wood creaking under him as he spoke.
“That he could tell my future for three copper coins. He knew it was untrue. A child.”
“He was a beggar,” Geder said. “Of course they’re trying to cheat you. They need the money for food. I think you should be careful where you walk, though. There are parts of the city that aren’t safe. Especially after dark.”
“You live in an age of darkness, my friend. But this city will be beautiful beyond measure when it is pure.”
“Have you been to the temple?”
“I have,” Basrahip said. “It is a beautiful building. I am looking forward to the day when I can make it my own.”
“The paperwork shouldn’t take long. Before the close of court, certainly, and that’s less than a week now. But there’s not much to do in Camnipol over the winter months.”
“I have tasks enough.”
“So I’ve been reading,” Geder said, “and there’s something bothering me.”
“Yes?”
“The goddess is eternal. She was there at the birth of the dragons. She was there all through the Dragon Empire, but the only references I see to the Righteous Servant or the Sinir Kushku come at the very end, during the final war. And then they talk about it as if Morade created it, the way Asteril made the Timzinae or Vailoth made the Drowned. I just don’t understand how that can be right.”
“Perhaps then it cannot,” the priest said. “You should put less trust in written words, my friend. They are the stone eggs of lies. Here. I will show you. Read something from your book there.”
Geder flipped the pages, fingertips shifting across the words until he found a passage that was easily rendered.
“It was the fourth century of the Dragon Vailoth’s rule when these policies changed.”
“Is that true?” the priest asked him. “Is it untrue? Do you mean what you say? No, old friend. It’s neither. Your voice carries nothing. They are only words you repeat emptily. To write a thing down is to kill it. Only in the living voice can the truth be known. My brothers and I have listened to one another, passing the voice of the goddess down from generation to generation, and with every new speaking from the start, we have known what we heard to be true. These books you have? They are ink on paper. Objects. Soulless. You would be wiser not to put your faith in them.”
“Oh,” Geder said. “That’s… I’d never looked at things that way. Does that-?”
“Geder?”
Lerer Palliako stood in the doorway. His tunic was the blue and gray of House Palliako, formally cut with silver buttons on the sleeve. His hand clutched the doorway, as if he needed it to keep himself steady.
“What’s the matter, Father?”
“We have a visitor. You should come with me.”
Geder rose to his feet, alarm tightening his skin. Basrahip looked from the doorway to Geder and back.
“Stay here,” Geder said. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
Lerer walked in silence through the halls. The servants, usually buzzing through the rooms like bees in a meadow, were gone. At the door to the private meeting chamber, he stopped. For a moment, Geder thought he would speak, but instead he shook his head, opened the door, and stepped in.
The private chamber had been designed for comfort. Candles glowed from polished silver sconces, doubling their light and filling the room with the scents of honey and heat. A fire grate sat unlit and soot-blackened in its corner. Light spilled from the western window, and the pale silk chairs caught it, seeming almost to glow. A boy in a grey tunic looked up at him solemnly, and Geder felt he should have recognized the face. On the far wall, a huge painting the size of a standing man showed a green-scaled dragon towering above figures representing the thirteen races of man. And looking up at the painting, King Simeon.
The king turned.
Lerer bowed and said, “Your Majesty.” Geder bowed a moment later, quickly and with the sense of trying to catch up. The boy was the prince. Prince Aster and King Simeon.
“I am pleased to meet you at last, Geder Palliako,” the king said. Geder took the use of his given name as permission to stand.
“I… Um, thank you. It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Majesty.”
“You are aware that tradition calls for the prince to be taken in by a house of the highest reputation and nobility. A family that will swear to protect him should the need arise.”
“Ah,” Geder said. “Yes?”
“I have come to ask you to fill this role.”
“My father, you mean? Our house?”
“It’s not me he wants,” Lerer said. “It’s you.”
“I… I don’t know how to raise a boy. All respect, Your Majesty. I wouldn’t have the first idea what to do.”
“Keep him safe,” the king said. His voice didn’t sound commanding. It didn’t sound formal. It sounded like a man on the edge of begging or prayer. “Just keep him safe.”
“Right now everyone in court loves you or fears you, my boy,” Lerer said. “Half of them are saying you’re the first hero Antea’s seen in a generation, and the other half won’t mention you for fear of drawing your attention. I’m not sure it’s a good reason to take the title of protector.”
“I’m not doing it,” Geder said. “I’m no one’s protector. It’d be you, Father. You’re the Viscount of Rivenhalm.”
“But you are the Baron of Ebbinbaugh,” King Simeon said.
“Ebbinbaugh?” Geder said.
“Someone has to take Maas’s holdings,” Lerer said. “Seems that’s you.”
“Well,” Geder said, a grin spreading across his lips. “Well.”
Prince Aster rose and walked to Geder. He wasn’t a large boy. Geder had always thought he was taller. He had the gray eyes and serious face of the dead queen, but his father’s jaw.
“I owe you my life, Lord Palliako,” the boy said. The cadence of his voice made the phrases sound rehearsed. “I would be pleased to have you as my protector, and swear that I should do honor to you as your ward.”
“Do you want to?” Geder asked. The boy’s formal expression faltered. Tears appeared, glistening in his eyes.
“They say I can’t stay with Da anymore,” he said.
Geder felt himself starting to tear up as well.
“I lost my mother when I was young too,” he said. “Maybe I could be like an uncle? Or an older brother.”
“I don’t have any brothers,” Aster said.
“See? Neither do I,” Geder said. Aster tried to smile. “We’d probably need to visit your father a lot, though. And mine. God, am I going to have my own holding? Father, I’m going to have my own holding.”
“You will,” Lerer said. “I think his majesty didn’t want to be the only one in the room losing a son.”
Geder barely heard him. This morning, he’d been a hero. Now he had a barony of his own and a place in court that men fought and sometimes died to get. Sir Alan Klin would soil himself when he heard that he’d made an enemy of Prince Aster’s protector.
“Thank you, Your Majesty. I accept this duty and honor, and I’ll make sure Aster’s kept safe. I swear it.”
The king was weeping, tears streaking down his cheeks, but his voice didn’t waver when he spoke.
“I put my trust in you, Lord Palliako. I will… I will make the announcement at the close of court. I’ll see you’re seated appropriately for your new station. This is a brighter day for the kingdom. And I thank you for that.”
Geder bowed. He wanted to run out in the streets, capering and singing. He wanted to go brag to all of his friends, starting with Jorey Kalliam and…
“Can I borrow the prince?” Geder asked. “Just for a few minutes? There’s someone I want him to meet.”
In the sitting room, Basrahip had moved to Geder’s chair. The huge hands turned the pages slowly, the broad face twisted with disdain. Geder cleared his throat. The priest looked up, his eyes shifting from Geder to the prince standing at his side.
“Basrahip, high priest of the goddess, may I introduce my new ward Prince Aster. Prince Aster, this is Basrahip.”
The prince walked forward, stopped the appropriate distance away, and bowed his small head. He looked like a kitten greeting a bull.
“I am very pleased to meet you, sir,” the prince said.
Basrahip smiled.
“No,” he said, softly. “You aren’t. But give it time, young prince. Give it time.”