The Widow's House Page 4

He shifted on his pillow, cracking his eyes for a glimpse of the real world. The light in the window was brighter now, but still had the paleness of dawn. He closed his eyes again. With his real hands stuffed unmoving in the warm pocket underneath his pillow, he imagined reaching down to her. Caressing her cheek. She looked back up at him, leaning forward. He caught a glimpse of her small, perfect breasts, and even in the privacy of his own mind, he looked away. To imagine her body was too much. Too close. The wound was too raw there, even for pretending. But his imagination had shifted toward that, and now she had her hand on his knee. His thigh.

  “I’ve never loved anyone,” Geder said through tears of his own. Real ones now. “You were the only one, ever. I’ve never loved anyone.”

  I would do anything to erase the pain I’ve caused you. Tell me. Tell me what you want, and I will give it to you, if only you’ll forgive me.

  “You don’t have to do anything. Of course I’ll forgive you,” Geder said, as she slid up into his lap. The pale silks were gone now, and the arousal growing in his flesh brought with it a wave of humiliation so profound that his fantasy broke against it like a wave against stone. He was the Lord Regent of Imperial Antea, and he turned his face to his pillow and sobbed.

  A gentle knock came from the door, followed by a young man’s tentative voice. “Geder? Are you awake?”

  Geder bit his lips, forcing the tears back, and wiped his eyes quickly on the edge of the blanket. “Aster?” he called, forcing pleasure into his voice. “You’ve finally come home. Come in, come in. I’m just… a little cold or something. Tired. Come in.”

  The prince and future king stepped into Geder’s bedchamber. He was thin and tall, his face darkened by days on the hunt. If he seemed not perfectly comfortable in his skin, it was as much his age as the situation of the moment.

  “You’re… sick?” Aster said. His voice held a tightness that didn’t conceal his fear so much as show that he wished it concealed. He had seen his mother die when he was a child and his father wither and fail. All of Antea would one day be his, and it was easy to forget that he was an orphan put in Geder’s care. Geder had agreed to be the steward not only of the Severed Throne, but also of a boy’s passage to manhood. He saw himself for a moment as Aster did: red-eyed, wasted by travel and despair, tangled in blankets and his night clothes. Of course he would think Geder ill. Of course the prospect would call up other ghosts. It shouldn’t have happened this way. To make up for it, Geder made himself bounce up out of bed.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I rode too hard from Suddapal, and I stayed up too late reading last night. Now I’m nothing but a big sleepyhead. Get me breakfast and coffee, and I’ll take on the world.”

  Geder spread his arms wide and gave a comic roar. Aster smiled, the fear at bay again. For now at least. That was good enough. Hold away the fear and pain long enough, and perhaps Aster would grow out of it. And really, what else was there to do about it? If there was a magic for erasing the cruelties of the world, Geder had never found it.

  “Well. Good,” Aster said.

  “How went the hunt? I assume it’s finished and everyone’s stopping at their holdings again before the court season starts?”

  “Caot’s come to the city,” Aster said. “And Daskellin left his holdings early for something.”

  “The war. Nothing to be concerned about. I’m meeting with him later.”

  “Minister Basrahip?” Aster asked as Geder walked to his dressing room. There had been a time that servants and guards had been on hand to strip him and wash him and dress him, treat him like a baby and laugh down their sleeves at his belly. Now he dressed himself. Power had some compensations.

  “He’s come with me,” Geder said, pulling off his nightshirt. “He went up to the temple to… commune with the goddess, I suppose.”

  Geder pulled off his night clothes and stepped quickly into his undergarments. The cool air made him feel his nakedness more clearly, and he pulled on the robes he’d been wearing the night before from the pool of cloth he’d left them in before going to bed. They were wrinkled and had a bit of brown sauce on the cuff, but he could have the servants bring him something better before going out of the private rooms.

  “I think I didn’t do him any favors when I put the temple so high in the Kingspire,” Geder called as he tied his stays. “I was thinking it would be safer and exalted, but it’s a damn lot of stairs.”

  “He doesn’t complain,” Aster said. “And when the sky doors are open, the view’s like being on top of a mountain.”

  Geder stepped back out to the bedchamber, smiling. He hadn’t made himself smile in weeks. Not since the day he’d ridden into Suddapal. There was no one in the world who could have coaxed him to feign happiness except Aster, and the pretense carried perhaps a thin version of the truth with it. His gaiety was a loose scab on a festered cut, but it was in place for now. And if he wasn’t whole, he was able to pretend he was. That had to be enough.

  “Come! Let’s get a good table, make those lazy bastards in the kitchen send us a platter of something decent, and you can tell me all the gossip I missed. Who took honors in the last hunt?”

  For three hours, they lingered over the breakfast table. Aster told tales of the King’s Hunt—who had taken what honors, the incident of the singer who’d celebrated the victories of Lord Ternigan only to find out the former Lord Marshal had been killed for a traitor the week before, and even a surprisingly bawdy story about a young cousin of Lord Faskellan and her handmaiden that left both of them giggling and half ashamed. The winter world of the King’s Hunt was done now. The lords and ladies of the court would return to Camnipol shortly, and the work and glamour of the court season would begin. Some of the stories of the winter would persist, others would be forgotten, and the more serious blood sport of the war would once again take precedence. They didn’t speak of it directly, but Geder knew that his exposure of Ternigan’s duplicity and treason had been the scandal of the hunt. If it went as the destruction of his previous enemies had, his prestige in the court would only increase. And the story of what Cithrin had done to him would be common knowledge as well.

  To his surprise, Geder was almost glad that they would all know how he’d been hurt. Sitting over the ruins of their eggs and oats, laughing over the image of a young noblewoman trying to disentangle herself from her servant girl, Geder had no way to speak about the pain he’d carried since the betrayal. Aster was too young, and he had loved Cithrin too. Had missed her company. Geder wanted to shield the boy from as much of that hurt as he could, and once there were men of the court about again, there would be opportunities to commiserate.

  He could already picture himself being strong and stoic. If he practiced it enough, it might even start to be true. And he remembered the relief of telling Jorey. His best friend, his oldest companion, and the only one that Geder really trusted. There wouldn’t be anyone in court as good as that to speak with. It would have been too much to ask for.

  And, once the day had passed its midpoint, it was to Jorey Kalliam that Geder went.

  The council chamber seemed bare and austere. The formed-earth maps that showed the rise of mountains with miniature hills Geder could step over and lakes and seas with basins of blue glass beads had been passed over in favor of charts and papers. This was not a conversation about tactics, but strategy. Jorey stood at the table, his expression focused and serious as a man twice his age. Canl Daskellin sat beside him. Geder had expected only those two, but Lord Skestinin—Jorey’s wife’s father and commander of the fleet—sat at Daskellin’s side, and Minister Basrahip smiled placidly at the table’s foot, his gaze on the window grate, as if such considerations were beneath him. Lord Mecelli was still on the long, slow road back from the field, touring the captured cities and towns of Elassae and Sarakal. Geder wasn’t looking forward to the man’s return.

  “Lord Regent,” Daskellin said, rising as Geder entered. Skestinin also took his feet. Geder waved them back down.

 
“No need for formalities,” he said. “We’ve all known each other long enough to dispense with that, I think.”

  “As you wish, Lord Regent,” Skestinin said.

  “Where do we stand?” Geder asked. The men were silent, each seeming to look to the others to speak first. Geder chuckled. “What is it? Is there a problem?”

  “I’m worried,” Jorey said. “The problem is that I’m worried.”

  “Don’t be,” Geder said. “I know this is your first large command, but—”

  “Not about that, actually,” Jorey said. “We have several issues we need to address, and from the reports I’ve had from Elassae…”

  “I don’t understand,” Geder said, folding his arms.

  “Lord Regent,” Canl Daskellin, Baron of Watermarch, said. “The army is exhausted, and it is stretched thin. These are the same men who three years ago were expected to defend and expand Antea. Now they are defending Antea, Asterilhold, Sarakal, and the vast majority of Elassae. They’ve faced Feldin Maas’s treason and Dawson Kalliam’s revolt.”

  Geder glanced over at Jorey, but the new Lord Marshal didn’t flinch at the mention of his father’s name. That was good. Geder was still afraid that Jorey would blame himself for the elder Kalliam’s failures.

  “And now a winter siege at Kiaria and the betrayal of yet another commander,” Daskellin continued. “Last summer, we thought they would get as far as Nus and perhaps a bit more. Instead, they took Nus and Inentai and Suddapal.”

  “And,” Jorey said. The word hung in the air for a moment as he unfurled a wide parchment scroll. “Here are the dragon’s roads that we control. It seems to me the greatest threat we’re facing now comes from the east. The Keshet has no leaders to speak of, but they’ve got more nomadic princes than we have pigeons in the Division. Inentai’s been the easternmost city of Sarakal for a hundred years, but before that it was the westernmost outpost of the Keshet. There will be raids, and the local forces that used to stave them off are dead or broken, because of us.”

  “Also the traditional families of Sarakal had ties of marriage and blood with some of the houses of Borja,” Daskellin said, pointing to the map. “The siege at Kiaria isn’t complete, and we have a very long, poorly defended border along the eastern edge of the empire. To the west… the Free Cities are walking on glass and hoping we don’t think of them. All the kingdoms along the Outer Sea have been friendly at best and quiet at worst. Narinisle, Northcoast, Herez, Princip C’Annaldé, Cabral. They’re well armed, well reinforced. They have relatively few Timzinae, and they wish us no ill.”

  “What makes sense,” Jorey said, an apology in his tone, “is to rest any men who aren’t actively in the siege in Inentai. Rotate them out to Kiaria once they have their strength back. Once Kiaria falls, we’ll have broken the Timzinae plot against Antea. We’ll have won.”

  Minister Basrahip cleared his throat and turned to Geder. His smile remained mused. “Fight where you will. The goddess will protect you.”

  “It’s not loss that I’m worried about,” Jorey said, a bit sharply. “It’s the price of winning.”

  Geder looked at the map, scowling. There was a time when he had seen maps as something almost holy: here was the world translated into a form that could fit on a table or in a room. Now he had to struggle to see it as more than ink on parchment. Everything his advisors said could be true, and it wouldn’t matter. Not really.

  “What about Birancour?” he said.

  “It would be very, very difficult to field an army there,” Jorey said, and the words had the careful precision of practice. Jorey knew what Geder wanted. It was what he was straining against. “The south route would mean marching through the Free Cities and either the pass at Bellin or south along the coast where there aren’t any dragon’s roads. The north path means going through the full length of Northcoast.”

  “King Tracian won’t pick a fight with us,” Daskellin said, “but he won’t let us march an army through his country any more than we’d let him through ours.”

  Geder put his fingertip on the map, on the southern coast of Birancour where the mountain range ended. A black smudge of ink represented Porte Oliva. His throat thickened and he had to fight to keep his voice from trembling. I am the Lord Regent and the hero of Antea, he thought. I get to demand this.

  “She’s there,” he said. “So that’s where we’re going. The goddess is with us. We’ll win. It’ll be all right.”

  Jorey nodded. He had to have known. When he met Geder’s gaze he looked old. Tired. It was like he’d already spent his season in the field. “We’ll want to send the fleet from Nus. We can blockade Sara-sur-Mar, Porte Silena, and Porte Oliva. We can strangle their ports without having to march through anyone else’s cities. The queen of Birancour’s an old woman. She won’t want the trouble. When she sues for peace, we can turn her into a friend and have her turn any enemy forces in her territory over to us. And this Callon Cane in Herez? Putting the fleet so close to him will likely put him to flight too.”

  Geder looked down at the map. Cithrin sneered. Did you think I hadn’t considered this? All of this? You can’t reach me here. I’m safe from you, and there is nothing you can do about it, you sad, sick little child. Geder’s fist clenched without his willing it, crumpling the parchment in his fingers. Lord Skestinin’s voice was low and reassuring.

  “With the capture of Suddapal and the ships in her port, we have a modest fleet already in the Inner Sea. The roundships are ready to go and reinforce them at your word. We can keep the trade ships from Narinisle from reaching port. That alone will make the locals ready to tie the bitch up by her thumbs.”

  “If we can rest the men,” Jorey said, “just for a few weeks—”

  “We have to go to Porte Oliva,” Geder said. “There isn’t anyplace else.”

  Jorey nodded as if he’d understood. And maybe he really had.

  “I’ll bring her to you,” he said, then coughed out a single, mirthless chuckle. “Granted, I don’t know quite how, but I’ll find a way, and I will bring her to you. If that’s your command.”

  “Do you promise?” Geder asked.

  “I promise,” Jorey said. “But once I do, will you let the men rest?”

  “Of course,” Geder said. “Lord Skestinin? As Lord Regent of Antea and on the advice of the Lord Marshal, you will prepare the fleet to blockade the ports of Birancour until such time as Cithrin bel Sarcour is handed over to us for her crimes against the empire.”

  “Yes, Lord Regent,” Skestinin said.

  “Lord Marshal,” Geder said, “You will take command of the troops in Elassae and lead them to Porte Oliva by whatever path you think best.”

  “Yes, Lord Regent,” Jorey said. And then a moment later, “I will do the best I can.”

  In Geder’s mind, Cithrin lifted an eyebrow. Her smile was cruel and cold, and contempt flowed off of her like cold radiating from ice. She put her palm to her mouth, her shoulders trembling with merriment, and Geder felt the answering rage rising in his throat.

  You don’t get to laugh at me.

  Clara

  Clara sat perfectly still by the fire, her shoulders aching with the tension of fear held rigidly in check. On the divan, her son and daughter took a mild kind of pleasure in stripping her already fragile sense of safety to its bones.

  “I had fish for dinner last night,” Elisia said.

  The winter months had been kind to her. The cheeks that had lost the plumpness of youth were at least not gaunt, and there was a rosiness to her cheeks that spoke of something more than rouge.

  “No,” Vicarian said. “You didn’t.”

  Elisia snorted and raised her hands in an amused despair. “So what did I have, then? If your goddess sees my mind so well, tell me that.”

  “That’s not how it works,” he said, scooping another small pickle from the tray between them and popping it into his mouth. Chewing it didn’t keep him from speaking. “I can’t see your mind. All she can tell me is whether wha
t you’ve said is truth or a lie.”

  Clara lifted her pipe to her lips, sucking in the smoke. Her mind raced, cataloging all that she could remember saying since Vicarian had come back from his initiation. She had known from his voice that the rites had taken her from him. Understanding now the depths and implications of that transformation felt like waking of a morning to find a viper under her pillow. What had she said, and when had Vicarian known she was not speaking truth? Had some petty act of deceit exposed her plots? Had her long court life protected her by making deflection and careful wording as natural to her as breath? She honestly didn’t know, and her only evidence was that she hadn’t yet been hauled before Geder’s secret tribunal…

  Her heart went cold. The secret tribunal, where the high priest was always in attendance. Geder would know every lie spoken. And this had been going on since… since his return from the Keshet at least. Her knees trembled and her stomach clenched until the bite of sweetbread she’d eaten when first she’d taken her place by the fire seemed as indigestible as a stone.

  “Well that hardly seems useful to me,” Elisia said. “What’s the good of knowing that someone’s lying if you can’t find out what the truth is? Do you remember that cunning man we saw at court who could tell your future? Now that was something useful.”

  “That was a cheap fraud, sister,” Vicarian said. “He had Sorran Shoat feeding him information in code all the way through the evening.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Elisia said. And then, “Was she really?”

  “What about you, Mother?” Vicarian said. “Care to try?”

  “Absolutely not,” Clara said.

  “Why not?” Vicarian smiled, but he also seemed a bit hurt. As if he were a boy who had brought some vile insect to his nurse only to be told he had to put it out and wash his hands. Despite herself, Clara felt a tug of guilt, and then more deeply of sorrow. She could still recall quite clearly what it had been like to have the newborn Vicarian placed upon her breast. It wasn’t much harder to conjure who he had been as a boy, sneaking out with Barriath to ride their father’s horses and play with his hunting dogs. He’d been such a beautiful, joyful child. To see him eaten by monstrosity was more than she should have to bear. “Because,” she said gently, “I was raised to believe stealing secrets was rude, dear. And so were you.”