“I don’t know why I feel this way,” Aster forced out between sobs. “The war. And you calling all the priests back. And spending all your time away. I know everything will be all right, but I can’t feel it. I can’t feel it that way.”
Geder shushed the prince gently, and rocked him back and forth the way he remembered his own father rocking him.
“It’s my fault,” Geder said. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault. I thought it would be easier for you not to know, and I was wrong. And I’m sorry. This was my fault.”
“I don’t understand,” Aster said. A life’s burden of longing fell in the last word, and Geder kissed the boy’s temple.
“Come with me,” he said, “and you will.”
Watching the reunion of Cithrin and Aster was like getting to live his own moment over again. The boy’s shock and confusion and then Cary and the others sweeping him up in their arms, grinning and laughing and telling Aster how much he’d grown and changed. Aster’s smile was more the blank look of a man stunned than actual joy until Master Kit led him to the garden to explain.
In the withdrawing room with its screens and lemon candles, Cithrin looked like a picture of herself painted by an artist who loved her. She wore her white-pale hair braided back and a thin summer dress with loops of silver at the shoulders that caught the warm light of the sunlight and remade it. The murmur of voices—the apostate priest and the crown prince of Antea—drifted in on the evening’s breeze. His father came in briefly and then made a pointed show of being needed elsewhere and left them alone again.
Geder couldn’t tell if the silence between them was comfortable or charged. He wished more than he’d ever wished anything that he knew Cithrin’s mind. A summer beetle tapped against the screen, trying to reach the candle flames, then gave up and buzzed away into the afternoon sun.
“I wanted to…” he began, and then found he didn’t know what he was going to say next.
Cithrin shifted to look at him. In truth she looked older than he remembered her. Her Cinnae blood meant she would always be unnaturally thin, unnaturally pale. He could trace the veins beneath her skin. Her smile seemed genuine, though. Encouraging, but the way she’d have encouraged Aster. To speak, perhaps. Not more than that. When the time came to do what he’d promised himself he would do, pull her close to him, enfold her in his arms, kiss her again as he had once before, it was going to take more courage than anything he’d ever done. He could feel himself balking at it even now. He found himself breathing shallowly and made a point of not glancing at her breasts. He wasn’t going to embarrass himself. He wouldn’t do that.
Through main force of will, he kept his voice from shaking. “I wanted this, you know.”
“This?” she said, the smallest lilt making the word glide a little.
“All this,” Geder said. “I wanted to be someplace nice, with you. Where we weren’t worried that someone was going to try and kill us at any moment. With a little breeze and the smell of flowers. Aster somewhere we could hear him. That’s silly, isn’t it? Like having a little family. I’m Lord Regent of Antea. I could have anything I want, but this… this is nice.”
“It is,” Cithrin said.
“I was thinking of kissing you,” he said, “but I was afraid you’d laugh at me.”
The air in the room seemed to go solid. Nothing moved. He looked down at the floor. Someone had tracked in lumps of mud and grass. He might have doen it. He couldn’t be sure. The brightness and excitement faltered in him, and settled into a kind of peace. He’d said it. It was done. He’d jumped off the bridge, and there was no taking it back now. Either he’d fall or he’d fly.
He glanced up at her. Her gaze was on him, her face expressionless. The candles danced in the pale blue of her eyes, sparks living inside ice.
“It’s stupid, I know,” he said. “But there it is. Every time I think of it, I remember coming to Suddapal thinking you’d be there. Rushing through the streets like an idiot. And then…” He pressed his lips together, as if the pressure could keep the memory at bay. Humiliation shifted in his heart like a snake in darkness. He gestured vaguely, trying to explain something to her, show something to her.
Her voice, when it came, was perfectly calm. “Do you think about the people you’ve killed?”
Geder blinked, thrown off by the change of subject. “Who? You mean Dawson?”
“Dawson Kalliam,” Cithrin said. “The others who fought with him. Lord Ternigan. The people of the court who weren’t loyal enough. The men and women in Elassae and Vanai. Sarakal. Birancour. The hostage children. All of the thousands who would be alive if things had gone a little differently. Do you think of them?”
For a moment, he saw the little Timzinae girl in his memory. The one he’d had called back from the edge. And the silhouette of a woman against the flames of a burning city. “I do sometimes,” he said, and sighed. “I don’t like to, but I do. Why do you ask?”
“I have never laughed at you.”
Outside, Aster said something and Kit responded. A bell rang from somewhere deeper in the house, and a man’s voice called out. The door slave, most likely. Geder couldn’t look away from her. So many nights, all he’d thought about was her mouth, her body, the look in her perfect eyes. His heart felt full and heavy with her presence, like it was the only real thing there was about him.
“Thank you,” he said softly, and she nodded. Footsteps hurried toward them from the house. Geder didn’t know if he wanted them to turn aside or hurry to him. The moment was perfect and painful and too rich to stand for long. When the knock came at the door, Geder looked deep into Cithrin’s perfect eyes and said Come in as if the words meant I love you.
His father entered the room, his eyes bright with excitement. He held a scrap of paper in his hand, yellow and black in the light of the candles. “There’s a message come, my boy,” Lehrer said. “From the Kingspire. A message.”
Geder rose as his father pressed the paper into his hand. The script was Basrahip’s. He recognized the shapes of the letters even before he read the words. It said a great deal about where Geder and Basrahip had been and what they had become that the priest used these dead words he so much despised to seek Geder out.
“They’ve arrived,” he said. “The last of the priests have come to the temple. Basrahip wants to know when I want them to gather so that I can share my revelations.” Cithrin made a small noise at the back of her throat and closed her eyes. It might have been joy or fear or something of both. He tucked the paper into his belt. “What should I tell him?”
“Tomorrow, midday,” Cithrin said. “That will give us time to arrange everything we need.”
“Tomorrow then,” Geder said with a sharp nod. I will kiss you tomorrow.
Cithrin
The day moved quickly and quietly as a rat in a dining hall. Marcus brought the actors out to the gardens, drilling each of them in turn, Yardem at his side. Geder, thankfully, went back to the Kingspire to make a full night of preparations there. As many of the servants and guards as could be sent away from the great structure would be. Even the royal guards were to be stationed outside the royal quarter, their backs to the Kingspire ready to fend off some imagined attack from the streets. And Geder had taken Aster with him, which cut Cithrin’s heart a little. Seeing the boy, she’d realized she’d missed him. Or if not quite him, at least the thought of him. In a better world, she’d have known Aster more.