“Tell me.”
“We drank a bit too much last night, lord. One of the new boys got a bit merry and… made a suggestion I found offensive. He repeated it, and I found myself moved to correct him.”
“He called you a catamite?”
“No, my lord.”
“What, then?”
In spring, before the start of the court season, the pond was clear as water from a stream. In autumn, after Dawson’s return from court, it could be as dark as tea. He’d rarely seen it in the height of summer, the green of the water building on the reflections of the trees to make something almost emerald. Half a dozen ducks made their way across the water, their wakes spreading out behind them. Dawson stood at the edge where the grass had the dampness of mud beneath it. Vincen Coe’s uncomfortable silence became more interesting with every passing breath.
“I could ask the others,” Dawson said. “They’ll tell me if you won’t.”
Vincen looked out over water to the distant mountains.
“He impugned the honor of Lady Kalliam, my lord. And made some speculations that…”
“Ah,” Dawson said. Sour rage haunted the back of his mouth. “Is he still here?”
“No, my lord. His brothers carried him back to his village last night.”
“Carried him?”
“I didn’t leave him in fit state to walk, sir.”
Dawson chuckled. Flies danced across the water before him.
“She’s going back to Camnipol,” Dawson said. “She has the idea that she can make peace with Maas.”
The young huntsman nodded once, but didn’t speak.
“Say it,” Dawson said.
“With permission, sir. That’s not wise. It’s hardest drawing blood the first time, and that’s already happened. It only gets easier.”
“I know it, but she’s determined.”
“Send me instead.”
“I’m sending you in addition,” Dawson said. “Jorey’s still in the city. He can give you a better picture of where things stand. You protected me when this all started. I need you to protect her now.”
The two men stood together. Voices came from behind them. The kennel master shouting to his apprentice. The laughter of the huntsmen. It all seemed to come from another world. One not so far in the past when things had been better and safer and still right.
“Nothing will hurt her, my lord,” Vincen Coe said. “Not while I live.”
Three days after Clara left, riding off in the open carriage that had brought them with Vincen Coe riding close behind, the unwelcome guest arrived.
The heat of the day had driven Dawson out of the holding proper and into the winter garden. Out of its season, it looked plain. The flowers that would offer up blooms of gold and vermillion in the falling days of the year looked like tough green weeds now. Three of his dogs lay panting in the heat, dark eyes closed and pink tongues lolling out. The glasshouse stood open. Closed, it would have been hotter than an oven. The garden slept, waiting for its time, and when that time came, it would transform itself.
By then, Clara would have returned. He had spent time away from her, of course. He had court business and the hunt. She had her circle and the management of the household. And yet when she left him behind, the solitude was harder to bear gracefully. He woke in the mornings wondering where she was. He lay down at night wishing she would walk in through the dressing room door, alive with news and insight and simple inane gossip. Between the two moments, he tried not to think of her, or of Feldin Maas, or the possibility of her being used somehow against him.
“Lord Kalliam.”
The servant was a young Dartinae girl, new to his service. Her eyes burned in the manner of her race.
“What is it?”
“A man’s come asking audience, my lord. Paerin Clark, sir.”
“Don’t know him,” Dawson said, but half a breath later, he did. The pale banker, agent of Northcoast, and seducer of Canl Daskellin. Dawson stood. At his feet, the dogs sat up, looking from him to the servant girl and back while they whined softly. “Is he alone?”
The girl’s eyes widened, suddenly anxious.
“He has a retinue, my lord. A driver and footmen. And I think his private man.”
“Where is he now?”
“In the lesser hall, my lord.”
“Tell him I’ll see him in a moment,” Dawson said. “Bring him ale and bread, put his men in the servants’ hall, and then get me my guard.”
The pale man looked up when the doors of the lesser hall swung open and stood when Dawson entered. That Dawson had four swordsmen in hunting leathers behind him didn’t so much as raise the man’s eyebrows. The bread on the plate before him had a single bite taken from it, the pewter ale tankard might not have been touched.
“Baron Osterling,” the banker said with a bow. “Thank you for seeing me. I apologize for arriving unannounced.”
“Are you running Canl Daskellin’s errands now, or he running yours?”
“I’m running his. The situation in the court is delicate. He wanted you informed, but he doesn’t trust couriers and some things he wouldn’t want written in his hand regardless.”
“And so he sends the puppet master of Northcoast?”
The banker paused. The faintest touch of color came to his skin, and the polite smile he always wore.
“My lord, without giving offense, there are one or two points it might be best if we clarified. I am a subject of Northcoast, but I am not a member of its court, and I am not here at the bidding of my king. I represent the Medean bank and only the Medean bank.”
“A spy without a kingdom, then. So much the worse.”
“I apologize, my lord,” the banker said. “I see I am not welcome. Please forgive the trespass.”
Paerin Clark bowed deeply and started toward the door, taking the court and Camnipol with him. Just because you don’t feel comfortable with it doesn’t mean it’s difficult, Clara said in his memory.
“Wait,” Dawson said, and took a deep breath. “Who’s wearing the prettiest dress at the twice-damned ball?”
“Excuse me?”
“You came for a reason,” Dawson said. “Don’t be such a coward you abandon it the first time someone barks at you. Sit. Tell me what you have to tell.”
Paerin Clark came and sat. His eyes seemed darker now, his face as blank as a man at cards.
“It isn’t you,” Dawson said, sitting across the table and ripping off a crust of the bread. “Not as a man. It’s what you are.”
“I’m the man Komme Medean sends when there’s a problem,” Paerin Clark said. “No more, no less.”
“You’re an agent of chaos,” Dawson said, softly, trying to pull the sting from the words. “You’re a man who makes poor men rich and rich men poor. Rank and order mean nothing to men like you, and they mean everything to men like me. It isn’t you I disdain. It’s only what you are.”
The banker laced his fingers across his knee.
“Will you hear my news, my lord? Despite what you think I am?”
“I will.”
For the better part of an hour, the banker spoke in a low voice, detailing the slow landslide that was happening in Camnipol. As Dawson had suspected, Simeon’s unwillingness to commit his son as the ward of any house came from the fear of making waves. The respect for his kingship was failing on all sides. Daskellin and his remaining allies offered what support they could, but even within the ranks of the faithful, unease was growing. Issandrian and Klin remained in exile, but Feldin Maas was everywhere in the city. It seemed as if the man never slept, and wherever he went, the story he told was the same: the attack of the show fighters had been rigged to throw disgrace on Curtin Issandrian in order that the prince not be sent to his house. The implication was that the convenient appearance of the soldiers from Vanai had been part of a great theater piece.
“Arranged by me,” Dawson said.
“Not you alone, but yes.”
“Lies, beginning to end,” Dawson said.
“Not everyone believes it. But some do.”