Issandrian shook his head. Somewhere in the world of the dead, Dawson turned his head away. Poor ghost.
“It may be time,” Clara said, “to revisit the idea of a farmer’s council.”
Geder
Geder slept through the night and woke rested in the morning. He lay in the wide bed, looking up at his ceiling, the blankets a nest around him and over him. Outside his room, servants went about their morning routines. The sounds of voices were like music just at the edge of his hearing. Outside, a bird sang and another answered it. His belly growled, pleasantly empty, and he stretched his arms above his head until his muscles felt tight enough to sing if someone took a viol’s bow and struck them.
He smiled without having a particular thing he was smiling about. Only everything at once. A servant rapped gently at the door, brought in a washstand and fresh cloth, then retreated, careful not to speak or look at the Lord Regent in repose. Geder stretched again, sighed, and hauled himself up from bed. He washed himself in privacy, chose his own clothing for the day, and prepared himself.
The euphoria wouldn’t last forever. He knew himself well enough to know that at least. Just now, not feeling ill was enough to make him feel well. The buzzing, cottony sensation of a mind at war with itself had gone, and he felt clearer than water in a fountain. All the joy in his body just now came from that. The rage—and oh, there was rage—lay below it. Rage and humiliation and the overwhelming conviction that the men who’d misled him were going to suffer. There were only two ways this story could go. The world would either remember him as the greatest dupe in history, or it would tell the story of what a terrible mistake it had been to cross Geder Palliako. He’d been Lord Regent long enough to know how it felt to put his enemies on their knees, and it felt very, very good. He was looking forward to it.
And then there was Cithrin. She was there, in his city. In his house, even if it wasn’t the one he’d lived in most. Her face was as beautiful as he’d remembered. When she’d touched his hand, it had been like his skin was in a cunning man’s fire—bright and alive and unburning. All the fantasies he’d had about her—her mocking laugh, her mewling and naked shame—paled when they were faced with the actual woman. She’d come to him, to help him. And together they’d do what needed to be done and save the world. He was already imagining sitting with her after it was over, taking her hand again, pressing it to his chest. He’d tell her that he understood now why she’d fled Suddapal, that he forgave her.
What had happened between them during the insurrection had been between a man and a woman of equal dignity. It had felt almost like that again when they’d seen each other now, and likely would be even more so at the meeting of the conspiracy tonight. And once Basrahip and his lackeys were done with and Aster took the throne—
“Lord Geder?”
“Not yet,” Geder snapped, and returned to pulling on his clothes. “I’m not ready yet. Give me time.”
The workings of the Kingspire—the functions, in fact, of the whole empire—seemed clearer to him now. The effort it had required to look at the maps of the war and see victory in them only became clear now that he was able to stop. That he could trace his fingers along the paths the armies had taken and would take, count up the numbers of the men he’d sent out and the reports of the dead, and not be forced into finding one particular message in them was like being released from prison. The empire was crumbling, and that was a terrible danger that had to be addressed. But he saw it now, and the truth alone gave him peace.
It did not, however, make him want to spend more time at the Kingspire.
The late-morning light slanted down out of a bright sky. Blue arced above the city, unbroken by clouds. Camnipol shifted along its streets and bridges, the commerce of human activity rushing through it like blood through veins. The birds of winter were still there, but with them, brighter ones. Finches among the sparrows. Robins with the crows. Geder watched out the carriage window as he ate dried apples and boiled oats.
There was a beauty in Camnipol he felt he hadn’t seen for some time. The city bore its ages well, the ruins of what had come before making the foundation of all that had come after and above it. The curving streets with their dark cobbles felt familiar and dignified. The Tralgu beggar at the corner singing in his low and broken voice was ignored by the passersby, but his song was part of the grandeur of the empire. The occasional unfortunate wind that brought up a curl of the rot and shit in the chaos at the base of the Division was a part of the city, part of what made it unlike anyplace else in the world. And the Kingspire, with the red banner he’d been tricked into placing there.
But more than that, there were the city’s fresh wounds. The compounds of the families who’d risen in revolt against him had been torn down or burned or given to loyalists from Asterilhold or lesser families promoted by Geder’s favor. The lane he passed now had once been travelled by Mirkus Shoat and Estin Cersillian, whose houses were broken now for rising against Geder and the throne. There was still a plaque at the Great Bear in honor of a poetry contest won by Lord Bannien, Duke of Estinfort, in deference either to his wit with a rhyme or the power and wealth he’d commanded. All of which were only memory now. Camnipol, like the world, was drawn in scars and violence, and for the most part beautiful despite that.
Geder pressed at the thought of those fallen houses like he was scratching at a wound. Technically, he was responsible for those dead. However much he had been made the puppet of Basrahip and the so-called goddess, he had been the one to give the final commands that ended the men whose grandeur he’d once admired. He tried to feel guilt for their deaths, but had to make do with a kind of peace. Almost forgiveness. He saw now that they had been as much tools of the conspiracy as he had been himself, and in a sense, it put them all on the same side now. He wished there were some way that they could know it. He’d been their enemy once—even their executioner—but he would avenge them now. He couldn’t imagine they’d be anything but grateful for that.
The Great Bear was empty. With so many gone to war and so early in the season, it would have been nearly so anyway, but Geder had made his wishes clear. The rooms were vacant, what servants there were kept away in their corridors and kitchens until he called for them. With Canl Daskellin in the field and Mecelli retired to his holding, only Cyr Emming, the last of his inner councilors, waited at the wide oaken table. His war room. Not the miniature maps built of glass and dirt in the Kingspire. Nothing so near to the temple as that. He’d chosen his own space now, and this—this, where the great minds of the kingdom had come together for generations—was his. The old man’s face broke into a smile when Geder walked in, but it was a smile that meant nothing. There had been a time when Geder might have cared.
“What news?” Geder demanded.
“Reports are… ah… still coming in, Lord Geder. It seems certain that Nus has in fact been taken up in the death throes of the enemy. The unrest hasn’t spread further.”
Because it isn’t unrest, Geder thought. It’s a military campaign reorganizing after a conquest. He leaned on the table and squinted down at the maps, making what sense he could of the marks and scratchings.
“How likely is it that they’ll come to Kavinpol before the end of the season?”
Emming laughed, then, when Geder didn’t follow suit, sobered. “Cross into Antea proper? It can’t happen, my lord. This is the poison of the dragons being purged from the world. There was never any poison here to begin with inside Antea. No, I expect Nus and Inentai will return to order before the summer is done.”