The King's Blood Read online

  “Yes, actually,” he said. “But the climate of court didn’t seem open to the idea.”

  “I think you should,” Geder said. “Camnipol’s the center of the world. Antea’s the greatest empire there is. Seems silly that you shouldn’t be here. More trade, right?”

  “You heard the part about not lending to nobles?” Daskellin said, and Geder waved the comment away.

  “Lend to other people,” he said. “Then they’ll have enough money on hand that we can tax them.”

  “Well, if that’s something we should consider,” the banker said, “perhaps we can talk about the challenges facing Antea in the coming years, and how we might be able to help.”

  The meeting went longer than Geder had intended, the conversation ranging from the division of Asterilhold into new baronies and holdings under the control of Antean noble houses to the possibility of buying up grain supplies from Sarakal to ease the coming harvest to the new Antean border with Northcoast and the changing diplomatic position with King Tracian. In truth, Geder didn’t care deeply about any of it, but Paerin Clark knew Cithrin, and so Geder wanted the man to think well of him.

  When at last the meeting ended, Geder made his farewells and walked back to his private rooms, Basrahip at his side.

  “So?” Geder asked. “What do you think of him?”

  “He means the things that he says,” Basrahip answered, “but he chooses what he says very carefully. He is a wise man, but not holy. We will be careful of him.”

  “Good idea,” Geder said. “I agree.”

  “There is another matter.”

  “Kalliam,” Geder said.

  “No. With him, nothing need be said. All his roads have ended. But in his fear of the coming justice, he made the servants of the goddess his targets. His hatred of us has taken its toll. We have lost many, my lord. With the new temples you are sworn to build in these cities that fall before you, I must ask that more of my brethren are permitted to join us.”

  “How many more?”

  “I would send for ten cohorts of ten,” Basrahip said.

  “A hundred?” Geder said. “Is that all? Of course you can. If it’s a question of seeing them with food and shelter, I can send a hundred servants away tonight and not miss them tomorrow. In fact, why not take Kalliam’s mansion? I mean, it won’t be enough space, I don’t think, but there’s a poetry in it.”

  They paused at a small fountain, water pouring over the shoulders of an ancient king and flowing down the half-sized noblemen and women at his feet, and then a miniature horde of carved-stone peasants. Political philosophy as decoration.

  “I am grateful to you, Prince Geder.”

  “You don’t need to be. I couldn’t do any of this with-out you.”

  T

  he fear came with night. He couldn’t think why that would be. Darkness had been the best part of all that had come before, but now when the sun failed, Geder found the face of Dawson Kalliam coming to him. The flash of the blade. The blood on Basrahip’s hand.

  Sitting in his library now, his personal guard discreetly at a distance, he knew he was in no danger. But he hadn’t seen danger in Kalliam’s revel either. If there was one thing to learn, it was that danger came at any time and from any quarter. He fought the darkness with light. Lamps and lanterns and candles glowed in among the papers and piles of books, pressing back the night.

  His own collection, product of a lifetime’s gathering, wasn’t so much as a quarter of what stood in the royal archive, but the archive reflected the tastes and opinions of any number of scholars. It had all the genres in some degree— poetry, moral tales, histories—but speculative essay, his own particular favorite, was thin. And besides that, there was a comfort in reading again what he already read, and he was here for comfort.

  The pillow essays traced back to the reign of the second Queen Esteya and addressed everything from points of court politics and rivalries between people whose names were now otherwise forgotten to speculations on the sexuality of the various races. The dialect was simple enough to follow, especially since he was used to translating from other languages. When he’d read it before, it had been a guilty pleasure. Titillating and embarrassing. What he knew of women and their bodies had, for the most part, come from this book and others like it.

  It is the nature of women or any race except the Firstblood to be attracted to men most like the original forms of man. The Jasuru find most pleasing men with the thinner scales of colors more near to flesh. Southling women, apart from those given over to being their pod’s breeding stock who need not concern us here, choose men with smaller, lighter eyes. Women of the Yemmu will, given the option, provide themselves to males of slighter frame and more upright stance. Indeed the races would, in time, fade back into a single form if it were not for the masculine drive to explore carnally the exotic.

  The scandals of Robbe Sastillin are the classic example. Here was a man of noble frame and blood, a man with real possibilities and prospects in the court who took a series of Cinnae girls to his bed. It debased him and ruined the girls, but in the moment each was acting from the base impulse natural to them.

  Geder put a fingertip on the passage, leaning back in his chair. It didn’t seem plausible to him. Not for the first time, he wished that Basrahip and the goddess could speak to the truth of written words as well as those that were spoken.

  Was it true? he wondered. Would a woman of one of the crafted races be drawn to a Firstblood man simply because of his race? Had Cithrin bel Sarcour chosen him because he was himself, or because he was Lord Regent, or because he was a Firstblood? Was there any way to tease apart the logic that had brought them to that singular moment in the darkness? He wondered what Basrahip would tell him if he could bring her to speak of it in the priest’s presence. Not that he ever would, but it was hard not to speculate.

  He wondered whether she was thinking of him.

  Aster’s voice startled him.

  “Here you are.”

  Geder clapped the book closed and turned to the prince. Aster looked older now. As if the days underground had sharpened his cheeks. Geder wondered if that was normal. He would have guessed that children grew to adults imperceptibly, each day’s change too small to see, each week too small, each month. The changes may be clear if seen year by year by year, but maybe that was wrong. Maybe people stayed just the same for long stretches of time, and then shifted suddenly, becoming someone different than they’d been. Or not different, but older. More mature. More themselves.

  “Yes,” Geder said. “I was reading. It’s a long day, and I thought…”

  Aster nodded. His face might not have changed shape. It might only have been the solemnity of his expression that had changed, though why their time with Cithrin would have done that and the death of King Simeon hadn’t… Or maybe it was one thing coming as it did after another.

  That was certainly how Geder felt about himself.

  “You haven’t done anything about Kalliam yet.”

  “I know,” Geder said. “I mean, I have. I’ve given his estate to Basrahip. For priests. That’s something. I did something.”

  Aster sat on the table, his legs swinging under it. His silence was reproach enough.

  “It’s Jorey,” Geder said. “Dawson’s his father. I can’t execute my friend’s father.”

  “Are you certain he’s your friend?”

  Geder looked out toward the gardens, but the light had turned the glass to a dark mirror and all he could make out was himself and his books. Piles and piles of words that were neither truth nor lies.

  “No,” he said. “And I know that I could just ask, and Basrahip would tell me. But I don’t want to. Because what if he isn’t? What if it all runs so deep that I don’t have anyone left? No, don’t. I know it makes sense to do the thing. I know I’d be better off knowing. Only, I could read a book first. Or talk with one of Cithrin’s bank people. Or anything, really. In any given hour, I can find something I’d rather do than kn
ow.”

  “Why aren’t you angry at him?”

  “Jorey?”

  “Dawson. The father. He tried to kill you.”

  “I know. And I should be. Maybe I am, just… I mean, it’s not like he laughed at me. He takes me seriously enough to think I’m worth killing. It’s just that I liked him. I did. And I wish he liked me too.”

  “I don’t think he does,” Aster said.

  Geder laughed.

  “I think you’re right. I’ll do what needs doing. And I won’t die. I promise.”

  Geder wondered whether this was what it was to have a son. He didn’t think so. It was too much like having a friend, and father and sons were something—many things—but not that. Perhaps it was that they both knew what it was to lose someone important. Or that they were the two men in Antea so wrapped in power and privilege that it isolated them.

  “What are you going to do?” Aster asked.

  “I’ll see him punished,” Geder said. “I’ll see all of it stopped. Whoever it is. And I’ll see that this never happens again. Agreed?”

  Aster considered silently for a moment, then nodded. Geder put his book on the table, stood, and blew the first candle out. Aster joined him, snuffing each wick until darkness and a breath of smoke was all that was left of the library.

  “So,” Geder said as they walked out, man and boy side by side, together but not touching, “I know nothing would be possible so long as I’m Lord Regent. But once I’m done with my watch and the throne’s yours? How bad do you think the scandal would be if I married a banker?”

  Cithrin

  C

  ithrin walked through the charred ruins of the inn. It was dreamlike. Strange. She’d stood there not a month before and heard Smit’s voice again. When she had, the stone walls of the inn had been as strong and permanent as mountains. Now soot stained them, and the roof had fallen in where the supporting timbers had burned out. It seemed unlikely that this was the same place. Or even the same city. Perhaps it wasn’t.

  “I went through it all as best I could, Magistra,” the woman said. She was Firstblood, thicker than Cithrin. Darkerskinned with ruddy cheeks and dark smudges of exhaustion and loss under her eyes. “I found what I could, but it was little. They took a good bit before they burned it, and the fire took the rest, most part.”

  “Show me,” Cithrin said.

  The little courtyard was laid out in squares now. A bit over two dozen of them. At a guess, they were the men and women who’d paid for the woman’s hospitality and been overtaken. The woman stopped at a square of blackened cloth.

  “This was in about the right place, Magistra,” she said. “It was in the corner away from the worst of it. There’s a few things might be worth keeping.”

  Cithrin squatted down. Everything smelled of smoke and ash. Yes, here was the green dress she’d brought from Carse. Here was a thin silver necklace, the links fused. If this had been in the corner farthest from the fire, it had still been a kiln. The notebook she’d kept had burned along all its edges, but the center pages had only yellowed and curled. When she flipped through them, the reek of smoke was over-whelming. She tossed it aside. The blue silk cloak, ruined. The wool, ruined. A ring of gold and gems that wasn’t hers she put aside for the innkeeper to either find its right finger or keep for herself.

  Moving the ruined scraps of cloth, her fingers touched something hard and solid as stone. She pulled the dragon’s tooth free. It was perfectly white. The complicated roots looked like a sculpture of water. Amid all the human destruction, the dragon’s tooth stood untouched. She wasn’t sure whether she found the idea reassuring or eerie, but either way, the tooth was hers. She slipped it into her pocket.

  Another man came, and the innkeeper went to speak with him. Not another guest of the ruined house, but a tax assessor come to negotiate. The small people might suffer their tragedies, but the taxmen had bought the rights to collect, and if they couldn’t make back the contract, their own children would go wanting. And so it all went on, endless and merciless and unyielding.

  Cithrin stepped out to the street. The necklace she could sell as silver. The tooth was as uselessly beautiful as it had ever been. Everything else was a loss.

  The tailor’s shop was across a wide courtyard from the bathhouse where Cithrin had spent a full day after rising up out of the bolt-hole. She’d washed in the wide copper tubs, scrubbing her hair until it stood wide and unruly as a dandelion puff. She’d scraped herself with the wooden slats until her skin was pink as a newborn mouse. And still, when she’d walked out to the street, she’d felt the grit at her scalp and smelled the cat piss on her skin. In the end, she’d been forced to conclude it was all an illusion of habit, and she’d best just pour on the rosewater and wait for the feeling to fade. But in leaving, she’d seen the tailor’s and made note of it.

  Part of what made the place stand out was that the proprietor was Dartinae. Camnipol was a Firstblood city, and while there were a few people here and there of many of the races, to see a Dartinae with a business of his own was strange enough to make Cithrin well inclined toward him even before she went in.

  “Yes, miss,” he said as she stepped in from the street. “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so,” she said. “I am here from Porte Oliva, and my entire wardrobe has been reduced to ash. I’m going to need several pieces and I’m in a bit of a rush.”

  It was, she knew, the unsubtle merchant signal that she was willing to pay a little more coin if he was willing to give her a little more of his attention. It worked as she knew it would. He took her measurements with string and wax, making small notations in a system she’d never seen, and then bringing out samples of his work. She commissioned two dresses formal enough to stand before a king, or in this case Lord Regent. It was odd to think of dressing formally to attend Geder, but that was the world now. They weren’t living like beggars and refugees, so she couldn’t dress like one.

  She’d also need something warm and sturdy for the journey back to Carse, but for those she’d check the rag shops and talk with Cary about where the company was getting its costumes. Maybe she could even commission something very simple from Hornet. He had a decent eye as a costumer, and despite the riches from Aster’s clothes, a theater company was never so well off that it would turn away the coin.

  “And perhaps a cloak, miss?” the Dartinae said, holding up what seemed a massive expanse of sewn black leather. “It is the fashion.”

  On whim, she tried it. It felt like she was swimming in a night-black sea and looked like she was being eaten by shadows. She shook her head and handed it back.

  “Just the others, thank you.”

  “You’re sure?” The tailor’s eyes glowed a bit brighter. “It is the fashion.”

  When she found her way back to Lord Daskellin’s mansion, Paerin Clark was waiting with an odd expression. The baron had been kind enough to offer lodging to the members of the Medean bank in no small part because of the extraordinary circumstances and his role in bringing them to the city. The understood message being that their welcome shouldn’t be taken as precedent. Daskellin was, after all, a Baron of Antea. They might break bread in a peasant dining room in Carse, but this was Camnipol and his home. There were standards and boundaries. For instance, she went in by the side doors.

  She walked up the wide stone stairs, her eyebrows raised in query. Paerin’s smile was calm, disarming, and so practiced that she was sure he was unaware of it.

  “I’ve just come from meeting with the Lord Regent,” he said, opening the door for her.

  “Yes?”

  “He is in an astoundingly companionable frame of mind,” Paerin said. “He suggested that the Medean bank might consider opening a branch in Camnipol.”

  “Really,” she said, stepping into the hallway. The rooms they’d been given were the largest in the servants’ quarters, and reaching them meant walking through the kitchen. “That doesn’t seem likely, does it?”

  “I wouldn’t
have thought so. But I also wouldn’t have expected to be asked. And not only that, but he seemed very reluctant to have me leave. We talked for easily twice the time allotted for the audience. I almost had the sense he was working from some other agenda.”

  Cithrin laughed low in her throat.

  “And what sort of agenda would that be?” she asked.

  “That was what I wanted to ask you. You’ve become the bank expert of Geder Palliako. Why would he want a branch of the bank?”

  Cithrin paused by a thin black doorway so unobtrusive it apologized for itself. Outside the servants’ door, the voices of young women of the court floated like birdsong, beautiful and rich and essentially empty of meaning.

  “I can’t say for certain,” she said, “but I would guess that he was hoping I might be set to watch over it.”

  “Really now,” Paerin Clark said. “And you wouldn’t have put that thought in his mind, would you? I only ask because your interest in running a branch is fairly well known.”

  “I don’t want just any branch,” Cithrin said. “I want mine. If you offered me Camnipol… well, I might accept, but you’d have to pay me a great deal more.”

  “His idea, then.”

  “His.”

  “That’s quite interesting too. Is there anything you’d like to add to your official report?”

  “No,” Cithrin said. “There isn’t.”

  “Where are your loyalties?” he asked. His tone of voice was precisely the same, but she could sense that the question was deeper, and she thought for a long moment before she answered.

  “I don’t know. I think we’re in the process of finding that out, you and I. Don’t you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” he said. “Oh. And there’s a letter come from dare I call it your branch. From a Yardem Hane? Nothing critical I don’t think. Only that Captain Wester resigned. This Hane person was his second, and he’s stepped in the role.”

  “What?”