“That was my thought as well, but I wanted to consult with you.”
“Yes, of course,” Geder said. “Whatever we need to do.”
“And if it becomes clear that we can’t hold Suddapal, my lord?”
A strange dread washed over Geder, carried by the memory of a woman’s silhouette against the flames of a burning city. Vanai, boarded tight and lit to keep it from ever falling into enemy hands again. That was the question Daskellin was asking. If Broot couldn’t hold back the Timzinae, would Suddapal burn? The answer should have been obvious. Geder had set precedent. This was war, after all. There was no room for sentiment. We burn it. If we can’t hold Suddapal, we burn it and everyone in it.
“We’ll decide that if we need to,” Geder said. “Not something we have to worry about today. Broot’s good. He’ll beat them. He’s very good.”
“If you say so, Lord Regent.”
Geder nodded to himself more than the man beside him. Perhaps it was just the unpleasant weather and the uneasing dreams, but he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was all coming apart at the seams. The empire, the war. Even the goddess. In his mind, Cithrin smirked at him, pleased with herself. And why shouldn’t she be?
She was winning.
Clara
I’ve taken worse beatings from my cousins back at Osterling Fells,” Vincen said from behind her.
The square between the Governor’s Palace and the cathedral had been emptied and the platforms razed. The icons and trappings of half a dozen cults and mysteries, detritus of a century of political and religious fashion, had been hauled out of the cathedral and burned. In all, it had taken the better part of a week, and the ceremony of rededication was set to begin at dawn, followed by demonstrations of loyalty by the newest subjects of the Severed Throne. Clara sat on the highest dais in a gown of sea-green silk taken from someone. Vincen played the role of her personal guard and servant, standing behind her. All around them, the surviving great men and women of Porte Oliva sat on the ground in rags. Their humiliation was, after all, part of the celebration.
“They had blades,” Clara said, pretending to consider the cathedral. In truth, given the morning mist, the glare of the torches, and her own imperfect eyesight, the building was little more than an indigo shadow below a dark blue sky. When she spoke, she kept her lips as near motionless as she could. Vincen, she presumed, would do the same.
“They didn’t use them,” Vincen said.
“They would have.”
“Maybe, but they didn’t.”
“One had a knife drawn.”
Vincen cleared his throat. A fanfare sounded, and the men and women of Porte Oliva knelt. Jorey emerged from the Governor’s Palace, flanked by guards with bare blades. Clara watched him, but she could not help but see the fear and hatred of those he passed. For them, he was the conqueror of the city, the general who had brought them all low. Hundreds—perhaps thousands—of people in the city went to sleep at night wishing him dead or worse than dead. She wondered whether they would have had they known how little he’d wanted to come here. He was the puppet of necessity, as much as any of them. And almost against her will, it occurred to her how proud Dawson would have been of him.
She glanced up at Vincen. His face was carefully empty, but his eyes slid down toward her and a faint, complicit smile touched his lips. She breathed in deeply and returned her gaze to her approaching son.
“If we ever get back to Osterling Fells, Vincen?”
“Yes.”
“Remind me to have your cousins whipped.”
Clara rose as Jorey came to sit beside her on the dais. His guards arrayed themselves with Vincen. The sky had grown a shade lighter. The cathedral had begun to take on some detail. The darkness of the great doorway, the dragon’s jade figures worked into the stone. Two cunning men stepped up, both Firstbloods, and apparently trained together, because when they lifted their fists to the sky, a wide white radiance filled the square. The burning torches seemed to dim, and the world all around grew darker. The cathedral’s door swung open, and Vicarian stepped out. He’d traded his plain brown robes for a near-perfect white. His hair was pulled back, and his smile as he walked forward was beatific. Clara felt a knot in her throat.
She expected the thing that had been her son to come to a dais of his own, to rise up and declare the greatness of Antea from a great height. Perhaps with cunning men pouring fire and blood from the air. Instead, he looked around at the kneeling masses with a vast amusement. When he spoke, his voice carried through the space without seeming to shout.
“This is a hard day for many of you, but I’ve come to tell you that it is also a very, very good one. Today the goddess has come to Porte Oliva. Now, I know that isn’t something that many of you can celebrate. Not yet. When the goddess came to Camnipol, I was less than delighted myself, so I know how you feel.”
Vicarian stepped forward, walking among the kneeling and debased like a tutor lecturing to an overlarge collection of students. As a demonstration of personal courage, it took Clara’s breath away. Any of these people might have a small blade hidden on their persons. Any of them might be desperate enough to kill the priest who had desecrated their temple, even though the punishment was death. They might all have been sheep and flowers for all the fear Vicarian showed.
“Many of you have suffered terrible losses. I understand that too. When the goddess first came to us in Antea, I lost my father. The lies of low men had taken too much of him. When the truth came to burn those lies away, it was too much for him. I loved my father. I still do. I miss him. And if I could turn away from the goddess and have him back, I would not do it. That’s hard to understand now, but it will come clearer for you. For all of you. You have passed through terrible darkness and storm, and you may feel that you’ve lost. You haven’t lost. You have been ill, and I am here as the voice of the goddess to tell you that all will be well.”
Clara leaned to Jorey, putting her hand on his arm.
“This is a bit different than the way Basrahip presents himself.”
“He’s not here,” Jorey said with a smile. “It’s exactly what Vicarian’s like.”
For the better part of an hour, Vicarian paced among the citizens of the fallen city, explaining that the goddess was here to save the world. That all lies were clear to her, and that her voice as spoken through the mouths of her priests carried the truth with them that would shatter the false and reclaim those lost to the illusions of the world. Clara watched the people kneeling all around the square. The blankness of resentment and anger was not gone, but it was lessened. A few tried tentative, uncertain smiles. They heard his voice, but they didn’t believe. Not yet.
They would.
In the end, the dawn broke, the fiery disk of sunlight burning away the last of the mist. The cathedral stood revealed, a great red banner with the pale eightfold sigil in its center announcing to the world that only one deity was welcome here and that her claim was absolute.
Afterward, Clara walked with Jorey back across the square and into the wide halls of the Governor’s Palace, Vincen taking his discreet place behind Jorey’s guard. They had been in the rooms so briefly, it was strange that they had become familiar. After so long following the army, sleeping in a new place every night, seeing the same rooms even twice lent a sense of permanence Clara hadn’t foreseen. A breakfast of eggs and fish waited in the garden at the palace’s center. Stone walls rose all around them, giving a sense of isolation and protection without going so far as to feel like a gaol. As she let a servant girl pour fresh coffee for her, Clara wondered about the people who had designed the palace, and the people who had lived in it. What they would make of her presence here.