Geder wished the man had just died of the pox instead. Or the city had been hit by plague. If it were plague, Basrahip wouldn’t have to go. The goddess could do anything. Surely she could manage a little plague.
Basrahip held out his great hand, and Geder clasped it. He felt like a child shaking hands with a grown man. It was easy for him to forget how really large Basrahip was.
“When you’re done, come back,” Geder said, trying to make the words sound like the Lord Regent of Antea commanding his loyal servant and not Lehrer Palliako’s little boy whining for his nurse. “The empire needs you here.”
“Your empire is in her sight,” Basrahip said. “Listen to my voice, Prince Geder. You are the agent of her peace. She knows what glories you are capable of, and you shall not fail.”
In truth, the season was calmer and quieter than in previous years, if only because there were fewer people present. But there were still feasts and balls and luncheons. Men still dueled over questions of honor, and their mothers and wives and sisters still patched things over afterward. It looked the same as it had before, and if it felt different, it was likely only that there was so much new that needed to be thought of. The year before, the management of Nus and Inentai and Suddapal hadn’t been at issue. The year before that, Kaltfel and Asinport had been the great cities of another country. So while Camnipol alone was a quieter, calmer place, the Kingspire was not. He spent most of his days in his private study with reports and letters from the protectors of the empire’s newest cities and towns. There was still the grand audience to prepare for, and he’d already postponed it once.
And so there were whole days sometimes when he didn’t think of Cithrin. And then, like the sudden pain of on old wound, he would. For a moment, he would remember himself as he’d been, tripping idiotically into the streets of Suddapal expecting to find a lover’s embrace waiting for him. Being stupid enough to think Cithrin loved him. That anyone would. He saw himself with the wide, delighted grin of an idiot, his fat buffoon’s arms spread to nothing and no one. And the emptiness of the bank’s compound and the pity in Fallon Broot’s eyes. Fallon Broot, whom Geder had ordered specifically to give privilege to Cithrin and her people. No amount of vengeance, no triumph or victory would ever wash away the bright pain of that day. It would stain his life forever, because he had believed.
That was the worst of it. Even more than the betrayal, there was the sheer, superhuman stupidity of thinking that someone like Cithrin could have feelings for someone who looked like him. His power and position, certainly. They’d been of use to her. But he had convinced himself—genuinely convinced himself—that she’d taken him in love. That the touch of their bodies had been something as real to her as it had been to him. Cithrin was beautiful and intelligent, and he was the heir to a third-tier holding like Rivenhalm who’d blundered into power and then thought he belonged there. And he was fat. Worse than fat, pudgy. That one night when she’d opened herself to him—
And then the memory shifted and became a thing of longing so deep and vast it would have filled oceans. And all of it poisoned by humiliation.
“Are you all right?” Aster asked.
Geder coughed, looking around the study as if he were seeing it for the first time. Essian’s latest report from Lyoneia was still in hand. He didn’t know how long he’d been staring at it without seeing the words. The Southling locals have reported two men something over a year ago and a document known as the Silas map. He put the papers down.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You were grunting.”
“Was I? I didn’t notice. Probably just too long in this damned uncomfortable chair.”
“You should move, then,” Aster said. “Father used to take things to his rooms at the bottom of the spire all the time. He liked it down there.”
“Maybe that is a good idea,” Geder said, stretching. “Very, very good idea. You’re a smart boy.”
“Your standards are low,” Aster said with a half-smile. “Doesn’t take much to say you should change things if you’re uncomfortable.”
“It’s the simple things that carry, though.” He stood up. The study was a mess. Piles of papers, reports, letters. The tax ledgers and farm reports of the south reaches. The unglamorous work of running the world. He didn’t enjoy it, but it had to be done. Aster, at his own desk, was working through a poetry exercise his tutor had set him. It struck Geder again how much older the boy looked. How much older he’d become. How much work there was still to be done before Aster took the Severed Throne and ruled over Antea. More than Antea. The world. He didn’t realize that he intended to speak until the words were already coming out.
“You’ll be better, you know. When all this is yours? You’ll be better than I am. I didn’t train for any of this. I barely spent time in court when I was young. You’ve seen all of this. Not just what I’ve done, but your father, when he was alive. It won’t be bad.”
Aster nodded without looking up. His lips pressed thin. Geder waited, unsure whether he should just leave or be patient and let the boy answer in his own time.
“You spend all day in here,” Aster said.
“There’s a lot of work to be done,” Geder said. “A lot of changes have come, and there’re decisions to be made. I’m the only one who can make them, for now.”
“Why?” Aster asked, still not looking up. “You have men who serve you. You have more men serving you than anyone else in the world, probably.”
“But I’m the one the goddess chose. I don’t know why she did, but she did. So this is what I have to carry. And if I do enough of it now, there won’t be as much for you to shoulder. When the time comes.”
Aster turned his head at last, smiling but diffident. He nodded. His jaw was stronger than Geder remembered it being.
“Do you want to come out and spar a bit?” Geder asked. “We haven’t done that in a while. And it would work the kinks out of my back.”
“I should finish this,” Aster said.
“Yes. Of course. You should. All right, I’ll just head down to that fountain for a while. Take these with me.”
In the corridor, his personal guard fell in behind him as he took the great sweeping staircases down toward the ground level, the gardens, the fountain. All around him, the Kingspire buzzed with activity. Not only his own servants, but the brown-robed priests who made the tower their own home now. Men passed through the halls on errands that supported the empire and the crown and the temple. Geder felt like he was the first among servants. In truth, he was looking forward to the day when he could retire to his own estate somewhere and let it all carry on without him.