To Clara, it meant the men who’d died the day the Kingspire broke. Vicarian, the other priests, and Lord Regent Geder Palliako.
Lehrer Palliako’s presence at the burning made the point without anyone’s having to speak. Aster was there too, his eyes red from tears or smoke. Clara sat with Jorey and Barriath, present as the mother of her sons. Her remaining sons. Sabiha and Lady Skestinin sat with her as well, and all of them wept, though not for Geder. And in the court, the grey rags of mourning were tied around the arms and throats of the representatives of all the great houses. But the sleeves beneath the armbands were green, the cloths that people used to dab away their tears had leaf-shaped embroidery, and no one had the unutterably poor taste to wear ossuary on their jackets. The currents of the court might not have found their channel yet, but if fashion was anything to judge from, Geder Palliako had fallen from grace with history.
Clara wished in her heart that she could feel some pang of sympathy for him. Already, he was being painted in the stories and gossip of the court as at best an incompetent and at worst a traitor. The man who’d delivered the nation to dark wizards and foolish wars. The worst steward the Severed Throne had suffered since Lord Sellandin, eight generations back, and likely worse than he’d been.
A priest in white robes chanted in the smoke of the pyre, calling on the traditional cult gods of Antea. After the rite was done, the fire under the empty structure still burning, Clara and the others murmured their respects and retired to a wide rose garden for a light meal. The blooms were long since gone from the bushes, of course, but the leaves were bright and lush and the thorns seemed somehow appropriate.
Clara walked confidently among the groups, aware that she was being observed. The coronation would take almost a week to trace its arc from its funereal beginning through the formal ascension of Aster to his father’s throne and then back down to celebrations and feasts. It wasn’t the most important series of court events of the year so much as of the generation. Alliances made and broken here would set the course of the empire for decades to come. Certainly for more then her own lifetime. Clara was curious to see which groups would be most open to her, which cool and polite, which unwelcoming.
Her expectation was that her association with the army and the bankers, the return from exile of Barriath, and the suspicion—well founded, it was true—that she’d somehow carried on Dawson’s vendetta against the spider priests after his failure would give her the whiff of brimstone that would keep all but the most adventurous from her company. She was prepared to be politely shunned.
She could hardly have been more mistaken.
“Is it true, my lady,” Lord Emming said, “this nonsense that Lord Issandrian’s spouting about the farmer’s council?”
Curtin Issandrian’s nod to her was a thing of subtle gratitude. As if she alone had engineered his return to polite society after the joint catastrophes of Feldin Maas’s conspiracy with Asterilhold and Geder’s rise to power.
“Excuse me, Lord Emming,” she said. “Which nonsense precisely?”
“Emming here was arguing that the farmers would have released the Timzinae slaves out of loyalty to the crown,” Issandrian said.
“We can’t begin to lower the dignity of the throne,” Emming said. “Especially now. Farmers? Your good husband was against it, I think.”
My good husband, Clara thought. God, how strange the world could be. Geder had become a lord of darkness, and Dawson’s name resurrected as a champion of virtue. How little any of it had to do with the truth.
“I’m surprised that you feel loyal servants of the crown lack dignity,” Clara said, smiling. “With all that’s happened, I think it’s clear that loyalty to the Severed Throne is the highest of virtues.”
Emming’s smile widened. His gaze flickered about as if to see who might have heard her words. “Well said, Lady Kalliam. Very well said.”
She nodded to Issandrian and then to Emming, then stepped away, her heart strangely light. Her opinion was being sought by the counselors of the throne, and in public? She paused for a cup of white wine and a bit of twice-baked bread with melted cheese on it. She sat alone on a stone bench that overlooked the milling group as she ate.
Jorey and Sabiha stood at the end of the garden, arm in arm, speaking with a group their own age. She had to remember not to think of them as children. All were adults now, married and with children of their own. Jorey had the too-thin look of a man still recovering from desperate illness, but his smile was warm, and when he glanced at Sabiha, it was with a tenderness that Clara could only see as a good omen. Barriath was there too, wearing a uniform of naval cut, though without any markings to show his rank or position. He stood with Canl Daskellin, whose hair had gone entirely white since King Simeon’s death. They were smiling, and if she was reading Barriath’s hand gestures rightly, he was telling the story of how he and his impromptu pirate navy had bested Lord Skestinin. Lord Skestinin, who even now was making his way back from Northcoast, no longer an honored guest of King Tracian. Or, more accurately, of the Medean bank.
Everyone, it seemed, was anxious now to have been against Geder Palliako all along. Or at least to appear to have been. She expected that over the course of the season, the tales of who had been conspiring to carry Dawson Kalliam’s legacy would spread and elaborate. It would be difficult to argue her away from the center of the story, though. Her and her boys. Her fallen house. Her husband. That little of it was true and what was hadn’t seemed at all as clean and clear at the time only meant it was history, she supposed. Playing the loyal traitor would be a fashion for a year or two, until the next thing came along. Or the people who despite everything still believed in the spider goddess felt safe enough to show themselves again.
Barriath laughed, shook Daskellin’s hand, and made his way over to her. Clara lifted a hand to him, and he kissed it as he sat at her side. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright.
“You’ve had some news,” she said.
“A bit,” Barriath said. “Just a bit.”
Barriath grinned at her, barely able to control himself but enjoying the chance to tease her curiosity. Clara lifted her brows and batted her eyelashes, a parody of a young coquette, and her son laughed. “Daskellin’s been in with Aster and Mecelli these last few days. Part of the coronation’s going to be a formal amnesty.”
“I’d hope so,” Clara said. “If there wasn’t an amnesty, half the men here would be honor-bound to kill you.”
“Not for me. For Father. This time next week, I’ll be Baron of Osterling Fells.”
Clara felt the air go out of her lungs. She put down the wine. “Barriath. That’s… that’s…” Wonderful. Absurd. Utterly confusing.
“We’ll have the holding by winter,” he said, “and the mansion here in the city. You won’t have to stay in that tiny place of Skestinin’s.”
“Or a boardinghouse,” Clara said, and her son laughed as if it were a joke. As if that weren’t something she’d done. A woman she had been. He went on, and she listened with half an ear. With the barony restored, Jorey would be expected to go to the priesthood, but with a military career already behind him and all the local cults in disarray after the disaster of the Righteous Servant, it seemed more likely he’d retire from service. At least until the next war came.