“Ran away last time,” Dannien said.
Ignoring Aster was a calculated rudeness. Taking offense was the first step down a path they didn’t want, so Marcus chuckled. “Wouldn’t count on it again. It’s not a trick that works twice.”
“Be drinking on it the rest of the season, though. Karol Dannien, the man who made Marcus Wester sneak away in the night.” Despite himself, Marcus tensed. Dannien smiled and turned to Aster. “So, are we here for terms of surrender?”
“This isn’t a surrender,” Cithrin said. “Your enemy’s already conquered. We’ve come to bring the happy news and offer you our help as allies. You know who I am, yes?”
“I do,” Dannien said grudgingly. “And I’m as surprised to see you on the other side of this as I was to see Wester. Figured he’d got his head folded by these priests, now maybe you have too.”
“They’re dead,” Emming said. “We killed them all. We killed them. Prince Aster and the others here. Our nation has been through a nightmare. Nightmare!”
Cithrin hid her annoyance well. Not perfectly, but well. “It’s true. The spider priests were an artifact of the dragons, built to make war between—”
“I know,” Dannien said. “I read the letters. I’ve been getting updated from the council and your Magistra Isadau damn near since I went on this campaign.”
“Then you know this wasn’t Antea’s fault,” Cithrin said.
“That I do not,” Dannien said. Cep Bailan wheezed and leaned forward, his head on the table. Dannien kicked him, and he sat back up. “So how’s about you tell me the whole story of how Antea could slaughter thousands, burn villages to the ground, put free men and women in slave collars, and throw babies off bridges, and still have clean hands.”
It wasn’t the best reception they could have hoped for, but it wasn’t the worst. Cithrin leaned forward, her chin high the way Kit and Cary had taught her once, years ago. She spoke clearly, cleanly, without flourishes or rhetoric. She laid out the story like she was a scout bringing a report. Every time Emming tried to insert himself, she cut him back.
Through Geder Palliako, the priests had taken root in Camnipol, subjugating it long before Antea’s aggressions in the east. The priests had spread lies and fear, and those who’d stood against them had been killed or exiled. Camnipol had been as much under a conqueror’s thumb as Nus or Inentai or Suddapal. The forces that had resisted it had been met with ruthless slaughter, not the least of them Dawson Kalliam, who had been the first to stand against Palliako and his priests.
But it was over now, the priests destroyed, Palliako dead, and Aster—the rightful king—returned to the throne. The way she told it, Dannien and his men had been in alliance with Aster even as they invaded his lands, only they hadn’t known it.
It was a vast simplification, and like all of its sort, it erased what Cithrin wanted gone. Geder had been working with her as well at the end, but no call to point that up. Evil, false rulers were easier to understand. The children thrown to their deaths hadn’t been ordered so by the priests. The slaves whipped and abused on Antean farms hadn’t suffered because of Basrahip, but because of the instinctive cruelty of people in power over those they controlled. Her story ignored generations of Antean wars in the Free Cities, the suppressed revolt of Anninfort, the whole long history of battle and conquest, blood and fire and sword that was human history even without the dragons to spur them into it. To hear Cithrin speak, war had been created by Morade and hidden in a box that Geder opened. It felt to Marcus like a lie. But a necessary one.
“So that’s it?” Dannien said when she finished. “Tyrant’s dead, rightful king’s on the throne, and now all’s made right in the land? That how it’s supposed to work?”
“You can come back to the city with us,” Emming said. “Send your emissary or come yourself. You can see it’s all true.”
“What do I care if your tower won’t stand up?” Dannien said. “I’ve been walking for a lot of weeks now with people who’ve lost homes and family. Who didn’t do anything but be born to the wrong race. And if you think for half a minute there won’t be a reckoning for what’s happened, you’re mad and stupid too. Even you, Magistra.”
“There will be,” Cithrin said. “There will be a reckoning. There has to be. But it will be in coin and land. Trades, treaties. Compensations. Not blood. There’ll be no reckoning in blood. Here.” She took the little golden cask from under her chair and put it on the table for Dannien to take. “It’s letters to every farmhold in Antea. It frees every Timzinae slave, whether they were taken in the war or indentured before then. All of them.”
“Really?” Dannien said. “Going to feed me my own food next? I can free anyone I see fit and put any farmers that disagree in with the pig slop. What do I need your word for to do it?”
“It’s a gesture,” Cithrin said.
Cep Bailan, recovered from the heat, grinned. He had an ugly grin. “I know another gesture. Wanna see it?”
“Fuck’s sake, Karol,” Marcus said. “They’re trying to end this.”
“So they don’t get their own noses bloodied,” Dannien snapped. “Let ’em see what losing a war feels like, and maybe they won’t be so damned fast to start the next one.”
“Didn’t slow you down,” Cithrin said, and the frustration and contempt in her voice were like a slap. Dannien stood up. This wasn’t going well, and Cithrin wasn’t done. “Elassae learned a lot about war and how much good it does, but you’re still here turning aside the opportunity to stop it. Why should they learn something from being hurt? You didn’t.”
“Elassae didn’t start this, and you don’t get to tell me when to end it. If I want to kick Antea’s balls until I’m bored with doing it, that’s mine to choose. I’ll go back to camp now,” Dannien said, his voice low and dangerous. “And I’ll confer with my men. If we decide to accept your surrender, I’ll let you know. Meantime, you guarantee the safety of all the hostages. All of them. Tomorrow, maybe we’ll talk.”
Cithrin nodded crisply, Emming less so. When Aster spoke, it surprised them all.
“No,” the boy said. “You take them. I won’t make them go back to Camnipol. They need their parents, and their parents need them. I didn’t bring them as hostages.”
“Ah,” Dannien said, suddenly on the wrong foot. “All right, then.”
Aster rose to face the mercenary captain. His eyes were clear and his voice stronger than Marcus had expected it to be. He was maybe a third of Dannien’s mass, and damned little of it muscle. He hardly looked older than the Timzinae children in the carts. Marcus felt his gut clench and had to fight the urge to push the boy king back, to put himself between Aster and the enemy soldiers.
“This is my fault,” Aster said, “because this is my kingdom. When my father died, I was too young and too weak to rule. I should have protected Antea. And Elassae as well. I didn’t, but I’m older now. And I’m stronger. If the council feels that there has to be more blood, say so. You can kill as many of us as you need to make it right. Give me a number, and I’ll bring them to you. I only ask that you start with me.”
Cep Bailan shrugged and put a hand on the hilt of his sword, but Dannien was the one who mattered, and he shifted his weight, confused.
Aster said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to stop this sooner.”