“Lord Regent,” he said, making a fast, birdlike bow. “I’m sorry to interrupt your triumph, but there’s news. From the south.”
“What is it?” Geder said. Aster stepped into the alcove’s mouth, shutting the four of them off from the rest of the fraternity.
Daskellin’s lips pressed thin as a drawn line. “The siege at Kiaria, Lord Palliako. It broke.”
“Well, about time,” Geder said. “I was starting to think the Timzinae’d be holding those walls until the end of the world, eh?”
Daskellin’s confusion passed quickly, replaced by chagrin. “No, my lord. We didn’t win. They broke the siege. Fallon Broot led a counterattack, but it failed. We don’t know if he was captured or killed. The city… Suddapal is no longer under our control.”
Geder heard the words, but couldn’t understand them. Daskellin could as well have said The pigeons have all voted to become crabs. It would have made as much sense. “No,” Geder said. “We put a temple in Suddapal. Once we put a temple there, it can’t fall.” He turned to Basrahip. The wide face was the perfect image of concern and sorrow. “It can’t fall. Can it?”
“It cannot be lost,” Basrahip said, “but even what is not lost can be made to suffer terribly. The blow has been struck, and even though we do not see it, the world knows. Feels within its blood and its flesh. Death throes can be violent and dangerous, even as the final end comes.”
“Oh,” Geder said. Just hours—less than hours—before, they’d been talking about how it was all already ended. How Aster was safe and all the good that Geder had managed for him, and now he couldn’t meet the boy’s eyes for fear of seeing the disappointment in them. Everything he’d said in the carriage came back like a weight. He felt as if he’d swept open the curtains to reveal a grand ball in Aster’s honor and revealed a bunch of panicked servants still setting up the tables. He felt the humiliation like putting his hand in a fire.
“The problem is not only there, my lord,” Daskellin was saying. “Mecelli has written from Inentai. The raids have grown more intense, and there are suggestions that the traditional families have regrouped in the towns of Borja. They may have been coordinating with the enemy in Elassae. He reports that letters like the ones in Asterilhold have begun appearing. And, my lord? There is the question of the farms.”
Geder shook his head, anger flaring in his throat. Daskellin was one of the great men of Antea. Advisor to the crown since before Simeon was king. You’d think he could come out with something more useful than “the question of the farms.” What question? Was he just leaving the phrase out there to make Geder ask? Or was there something so obvious that he should have known what the man meant, and they were all laughing at him on the inside for not knowing?
Geder scowled at Daskellin so fiercely his cheeks ached, and shrugged. Are you planning to explain that?
“Half the farms in the southeast are being manned by war slaves,” Daskellin said. “Timzinae war slaves. It won’t be possible to keep word of the troubles in Suddapal from reaching them. And if they should revolt, we don’t have enough swords to send, even with your army home.”
“And?”
“And… we have the prison,” Daskellin said.
A thrill of horror cut through Geder’s foul mood. Of course they had the prison. He’d had it built when the invasion began. Housing for Timzinae children taken as guarantee of their parents’ good behavior. Only now the parents in Suddapal had misbehaved, and if the farm slaves saw that Suddapal could rise without consequences, trouble would spread like fire. The understanding of what he would have to do sank in his gut, and with it, anger and resentment for the people—not the people, the Timzinae—who’d put him in this position. But Daskellin, for all his stammering and talking past the point, was right. The thing had to be done.
“Identify all the hostages with parents working the farms,” Geder said. “Pull one out of every ten as witnesses. The others, keep them locked in their cells. The ones with parents in Elassae, throw off the Prisoner’s Span. When it’s done, send the witnesses to the farms under guard and let them tell what they saw.”
“My lord,” Daskellin said, “they’re children.”
“I know what they are!” Geder said, more loudly than he’d meant. “Do you think I like doing this? Do you think it’s something I take pleasure in? It’s not!” All around, the conversations went quiet. The eyes of the court turned toward them. Toward him. Geder lifted his chin, his rage giving him confidence. “This isn’t a choice we made. They knew what would happen. They made the decision. They made us do this. If the roaches can’t be bothered to love their children, I don’t see why we should.”
Entr’acte: Borja
The Low Palace at Tauendak looked down over the river port. The High Palace faced the sea. On the dragon’s road that wound into the city from the east, there were no palaces, no compounds of the rich or powerful, only the defense walls. The first was in stone and as tall as two men, the second twice the height and girded by plates of iron. The wars of the Keshet might sweep north into Borja, but those waves broke against the walls of Tauendak. There were even songs about it.
Ships might come to the seaport from as near as the cities and towns of Hallskar or as far as Cabral and Lyoneia. The river trade was all from Inentai, or had been before the Anteans ate the city. Since then, there hadn’t been many barges at the river port.
Within, the city was broad and flat. Seen from above, Tauendak looked like an exercise in cross-hatching done by some great and godlike artist. Roads ran north to south at the bases of the flat-roofed buildings, caught most of the day in some level of shadow and darkness. Bridges spanned east to west above them, their railings painted yellow. And every few blocks the wide circle of a ramp let oxcarts rise up or sink down. Temples rose above all, red brass and blue tile.
The people of the city were of the Eastern Triad: Jasuru, Yemmu, Tralgu. Timzinae were welcomed, especially those related by marriage to the traditional families that ruled Borja and Sarakal. Dartinae, Haaverkin, and Firstblood were permitted in the city, but barred from certain kinds of trade. Southlings were called Eyeholes, and walked the streets with guards, if at all. Mostly they stayed away. And the Drowned… Well, what could anyone do about the Drowned? They washed through the bay and out again. No one fished for them or sold their flesh at market, because it was ritually unclean, though whether that was because they were another race of humanity or because they were filthier than fish was a matter of some debate.
Damond Gias had been born at the cunning man’s house three streets south of the Red Temple twenty-six years before. As a Jasuru, he had lived in his uncle’s compound, carrying weights of grain and beans and ore from the caravanserai in the east of the city to the ports, carrying weights of fish and rope back to the caravanserai. His cousins and brothers and sisters lived with him until they married. He himself had no interest in women, and the lovers he took among the men of the city had no interest in raising children, so the question of marriage never came up for him. And so it was natural enough that, when the representative of the Regos came and called upon his uncle to give one of the family over in service to the city for ten years, Damond had been picked.