The Fraternity of the Great Bear rose up, its façade 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.”