“Come back,” the Jasuru said. “I’ll show you what we have.”
The smith’s yard went back farther than Marcus had expected, opening into a private courtyard with the forges off to one side. A pair of women were hauling out double handfuls of bright metal and arranging it on the paving stones. Marcus looked back into the shadows. All Pyre’s apprentices seemed to be women. The men, he assumed, had all been pressed into the army, and he wondered what would happen when they came back and tried to retake their places by the fires. The women stacking the weapons looked broad enough across the shoulder he wouldn’t have wanted to pick fights.
“This is what the Lord Regent was asking after,” Pyre said. “We’ve got a half dozen of these ready to put on carts if the army had a need, and we can make more. Take time, though.”
Marcus walked slowly around the metal. It was like a ballista, but built on a base that could shift and turn, tracking the vast body of a dragon through the sky. The bolts were light, but barbed as a fishhook, with a small pulley built into the shaft. The line that it carried out with it was finer than yarn and laid out to tug back on the bolt as little as possible, then tied to a braided cord. He imagined firing up into the dragon’s wings and belly and then trying to pull the line through enough to drag the great bastard out of the sky before it turned the weapon and everyone using it into slag and ashes. If he hadn’t seen the scars from it on Inys’s flanks, he’d have thought it wasn’t possible.
“Six of them is all?” Marcus said.
“All the rest went out,” the smith said. “They’re beautiful, but they aren’t fast work.”
“Fair enough,” Marcus said.
The smith crossed his arms and glanced nervously from Yardem to Marcus and back. “Should I put them on carts?”
Marcus shook his head. Honnen Pyre was asking if the dragon was likely to attack the army. That was his fear: the Timzinae and the dragon joining forces to destroy Camnipol. If Marcus told him to have the things delivered to the Kingspire, what would he make of that? And what were the chances that he’d keep his speculation to himself? If the priesthood found there was a secret shipment of weapons designed to slaughter Inys being installed around their temple, would that tip Cithrin’s hand or reassure them?
“Have them ready to move,” Marcus said. “We’ll send word where to take them when the time comes.”
Pyre nodded sharply and motioned to his apprentices. Marcus and Yardem made their way back to the street. Their rooms were halfway across the city from here, and Marcus’s feet felt sore. When they crossed the oiled and arching wood of the Silver Bridge, Yardem turned toward the courtyard of a taproom there without having to ask Marcus whether he wanted to stop.
The building was three levels tall, each narrower than the one below, with benches and tables on each. The walls were an unlikely yellow that caught the sunlight and made the whole place seem more cheerful. Beyond, the Division gaped, a canyon that was also a city. A Firstblood boy with black skin and hair brought them cider and took their coin. It was decent enough drink, but the pleasure of just sitting still was better than the best alcohol. At least for the time being.
“We’re going to need to a way to move through the Kingspire without drawing notice.”
“There are servants there,” Yardem said.
“We can’t use them. The more people we involve, the more likely someone’s going to step wrong.”
“I meant we could hire on,” Yardem said.
“Oh,” Marcus said. “Yes, there’s that.”
“Only?”
“It’s nothing. Just sits wrong to be a servant in Geder Palliako’s house.”
“Could see it as playing the role,” the Tralgu said.
“I’m too old to start worrying about dignity. You think Cary and the other players will be able to pass too?”
“Imagine so,” Yardem said. “They’ve done worse before now. But I can’t see them crewing the weapons to kill a dragon.”
“They won’t need to kill him. We just have to hold him in place until the locals can join the fray. This whole thing would be simpler if we could actually bring Karol Dannien into it on our side. There’s a perfectly capable army not a full day’s ride from here, and I can’t put it to use.”
“Life’s rich irony, sir.”
Philosophically, Marcus spat. “It strike you as odd that we’re looking to bring about peace in the world by killing a great bunch of people?”
“Think the peace part’s supposed to come after, sir.”
“That’s always the story. Ten more, a hundred more, a thousand more corpses, and we’ll be free.”
On the street, someone shouted. Another voice shouted back, and the people paused, shifting to the side to let a carriage ride past with the banner of the goddess jouncing at its side. It clattered onto the Silver Bridge and out across the abyss.
“More priests arriving,” Yardem said.
“Ah,” Marcus replied, dryly, “I guess that means we’re doing well.”
Geder
When it was over, Geder decided for the hundredth time. When Basrahip and the other priests were burned bones and ashes, then he’d kiss Cithrin.
It would be a moment of shared joy, after all. And it wasn’t as if she’d never kissed him before. They’d done much more. And there wouldn’t be a better time to bring her back to him. He’d have proven himself. He’d have saved the world. He’d be a hero. And in the wake of that, he would put his arm around her waist and pull her close to him, and…
It was so strange knowing she was close. That he could, if he chose, go to her anytime he wanted to, and there she would be. All his day’s work took on the feeling of dreams. He attended the wedding of Perrien Veren and Sanna Daskellin, sitting on a chair set aside for his own honor while the priest intoned a version of the rites, but Cithrin was in the city. He sat the long hours of the grand audience, listening to complaint and petition while it was really Basrahip that stood in judgment, and the hours didn’t bother him because he was borne up by his secret. And the promise of the time very soon when he’d proved himself to her.
Even apart from Cithrin’s presence, there were other little and unexpected joys. Basrahip, for example. From the moment he’d delivered his message, Geder had made a point of avoiding the great priest as much as he could. It had begun simply enough as an effort to keep his newfound secrets secret. But with every meeting he cut short, with every meal he ate away from the great bastard’s company, Geder saw something more than curiosity rising in the priest. There was a need there, a longing to know what it was that had been revealed to Geder. For the first time, Geder had power over the priest. It wasn’t Basrahip’s world any longer. His connection to his imaginary goddess had been undermined, and in a way that put him at Geder’s feet for once. And Geder’s mind was clear now. Clear and cool as river water. He’d hardly had any more moments of killing rage like the one in the Great Bear, and the few he’d had were justified.
There was a pleasure, he thought, that came from being outside a group. Looking back, he saw that he’d always really been like that. Before his journey to the Sinir Kushku, he’d been excluded from the charmed circle of Alan Klin and Feldin Maas and Curtin Issandrian. It had ached for him only because he’d wanted so badly to be accepted, not because belonging gave him anything worth having. The moments of authentic pleasure he’d had in his life had all come from being apart. Reading alone in Vanai, for instance. Or the dark days after Dawson Kalliam’s insurrection, hiding with Aster and Cithrin, being protected by her friends who—through that—became his own. He’d always been at his best when he was his own man. Funny that it had taken him so long to understand it. He had been—still was—the Lord Regent of the greatest empire in the world. His commands, life and death. And what made him happiest in the whole time he could remember was that Cithrin was here, and Cary and Hornet and Mikel. Jorey’s mother and the bank’s mercenaries. And among them, with them, him. It was as if Lord Regent Geder Palliako had ceased to be, and he was only playing the part now.