That night, they all dined on fresh chicken and a sweet mash made from sugar beets and rice. Ternigan had the captains he commanded compete in extemporaneous poetry praising Antea, the Severed Throne, Geder, and Prince Aster. The night was like something from the histories Geder had read of the great generations of the empire, a bit of the past with new life breathed into its nostrils. It was as if he’d taken all the romances of campaign life and made them real. The comradery, the joy, the bluff masculine competition. All of the things he’d hoped for and never found were his now. All evening, Basrahip and the other priests walked through the camps, speaking with the soldiers, laughing with them, cheering them, and near midnight the whole camp broke into song at once, literally singing Geder’s praises.
He went to bed drunk as much on the affection and loyalty of his men as on any sort of wine, and lay in the darkness grinning and satisfied. He let his mind wander, remembering the darkness of his mood the day he’d seen the city’s defenses. The thought was almost pleasant now, and he turned it in his mind like a glass marble held to the sun, watching it glitter and flash. He’d been so sure that he’d have to return humiliated. He imagined Aster looked up at him again, solid and encouraging even in defeat, and Geder was filled with a kind of love. Aster was such a good child. Geder felt the depth of his own good fortune in getting to deliver the prince a vastly expanded empire when the time finally came for his coronation. A world at peace. It would be a beautiful thing.
And then, after. When Geder was only the Baron of Ebbingbaugh again, he could return to his own life. His books, his holding. Perhaps a wife, or since Cithrin bel Sarcour wasn’t of noble blood, at least a consort. If she’d have him. Or he could travel. Aster could name him as a special ambassador to Birancour, and he’d have reason to visit her in Porte Oliva. He closed his eyes and conjured up the feeling of her body against him, the sound of her breath. He didn’t know he was falling asleep until a servant’s apologetic voice woke him.
Mesach Sau hadn’t slept. Fatigue showed in his clouded eyes and the droop of his shoulders. He hadn’t bothered with the formalities of parley, but walked directly to the camp, to the sentry. It was as if the old man didn’t particularly care whether he was brought before Geder or killed on the spot. As Geder arrived, Ternigan came trotting from his tent as well. Basrahip, serene and pleasant, was already there.
“I’ll do it,” Sau said, his voice breaking on the words. “Swear that you’ll spare my family, and I’ll open the fucking gates for you.”
Geder turned to Ternigan and swept a hand to indicate the weeping man, defeated even before the sack began.
“And that, Lord Marshal, is how it’s done,” Geder said. “Now. Bring me Inentai.”
Cithrin
Living in the midst of a family changed many of the small details of life. Privacy was often a matter of politeness and etiquette in a way that it wasn’t when she’d had rooms of her own. Bits and pieces of other lives seemed scattered through the halls like fresh rushes, and had Magistra Isadau and Maha, her cousin’s daughter, been speaking of matters of family or politics, even questions of finance and the running of the bank, Cithrin would not, she told herself, have eavesdropped. But instead, she walked down the wide polished granite hall bright with the light of morning, heard the voices of the older Timzinae woman and the girl, and picked out the words love and sex. Her journey to the kitchens suddenly became less immediate. Curiosity sharpened her ears and softened her footsteps and she edged closer to the office chambers.
“That too,” the magistra said. “But not only that.”
“But if you really love him, doesn’t that make it all right? Even if there is a baby from it?”
Maha’s voice was strong, but not confrontational. This wasn’t an argument, but a deposition. A discovery of the facts. Magistra Isadau’s laughter was low and rueful.
“I have loved many, many people,” she said, “and I’ve never meant the same thing by the word twice. Love is wonderful, but it doesn’t justify anything or make a bad choice wise. Everyone loves. Idiots love. Murderers love. Pick any atrocity you want, and someone will be able to justify it out of something they call love. Anything can wear love like a cloak.”
There was a pause, and then the girl’s voice again.
“I don’t understand. What does that mean?” Maha said. Cithrin felt a warm glow of gratitude for the child and the question. She didn’t understand it either.
“Love isn’t a word that means one thing,” the magistra said. Her voice was gentle. Almost coaxing. It was the voice of a woman trying to gentle an animal or call it out from under a table. “You love your father, but not the way you love this hypothetical boy. You love your brothers. You love that girl you spend all your nights with. Mian? You love Mian. Don’t you?”
“I do,” the girl said as if she were conceding a point to a magistrate.
“Someone may love their country or their gods. An idea or a vision of the world. Or because it can mean so many things, it’s possible to call something love that’s nothing to do with it. If the edict comes to march north into Sarakal, chances are it will say it is for the love of our brothers and cousins in the north. But it will be really be fear. Fear that the war will come here otherwise. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.”
“Love is noble,” the magistra said. “And so we wrap it around all the things we think perhaps aren’t so noble in hopes no one will see what they really are. Fear. Anger. Shame.”
“I’m not ashamed,” the girl said.
“You want this hypothetical boy. Don’t. Lie to your mother about it if you’d like, but not to me. He opens your body in ways you can’t control. He fills your mind in ways that disturb you and wash your best self away. You’re drunk with him. And so you want it to be love, just the way the generals want their fear of Antea to be love.”
“But …”
“I’m not telling you what decision you should make. God knows you have enough people to do that for you. But I am reminding you that you love a great many people you don’t want to take your dress off for. Longing isn’t love. Not any more than fear is.”
A discreet scratch interrupted, and then the sound of the office door sliding open.
“Courier come for you, Magistra,” a man’s voice said.
“Bring the reports here, then.”
“Can’t, ma’am. Courier says he can’t give ’em to anyone besides you or Miss Cithrin.”
In an instant, Cithrin was powerfully aware that she was standing in the bright corridor, bent like a child trying to overhear her parents. She turned, back the way she’d come, took a half dozen near-silent steps, and then turned again, collecting herself as if she were only now beginning her interrupted errand.
Maha came into the corridor. The brown, insectile scales that covered her face and neck, her hands and arms, were darker than Cithrin remembered. Perhaps it was how Timzinae blushed. She didn’t know.
Cithrin smiled, and the girl nodded back but didn’t speak. Cithrin strolled down the corridor, wondering what to do. On the one hand, she wanted to go back and see what the courier had brought; on the other, doing so without it being mentioned to her might lead the magistra to suspect she’d been spying. With a sigh, she went on to the kitchens as if she didn’t know anything that she wasn’t expected to.
In truth, Maha wasn’t much younger than Cithrin herself. She wondered what it would have been like to be first coming into herself with older women there to speak with. Her own mother was little more than a few fleeting impressions and entries in an old, yellowing ledger, but had she lived, she might have given Cithrin advice on questions of love and sex, men and hearts. In the kitchen, Cithrin exchanged banter with the cooking servants as they made her a bowl of stewed barley with butter and honey, but her mind was elsewhere. Even the rich sweetness of the first bite hardly registered.