“I’ve never loved anyone,” Geder said through tears of his own. Real ones now. “You were the only one, ever. I’ve never loved anyone.”
I would do anything to erase the pain I’ve caused you. Tell me. Tell me what you want, and I will give it to you, if only you’ll forgive me.
“You don’t have to do anything. Of course I’ll forgive you,” Geder said, as she slid up into his lap. The pale silks were gone now, and the arousal growing in his flesh brought with it a wave of humiliation so profound that his fantasy broke against it like a wave against stone. He was the Lord Regent of Imperial Antea, and he turned his face to his pillow and sobbed.
A gentle knock came from the door, followed by a young man’s tentative voice. “Geder? Are you awake?”
Geder bit his lips, forcing the tears back, and wiped his eyes quickly on the edge of the blanket. “Aster?” he called, forcing pleasure into his voice. “You’ve finally come home. Come in, come in. I’m just… a little cold or something. Tired. Come in.”
The prince and future king stepped into Geder’s bedchamber. He was thin and tall, his face darkened by days on the hunt. If he seemed not perfectly comfortable in his skin, it was as much his age as the situation of the moment.
“You’re… sick?” Aster said. His voice held a tightness that didn’t conceal his fear so much as show that he wished it concealed. He had seen his mother die when he was a child and his father wither and fail. All of Antea would one day be his, and it was easy to forget that he was an orphan put in Geder’s care. Geder had agreed to be the steward not only of the Severed Throne, but also of a boy’s passage to manhood. He saw himself for a moment as Aster did: red-eyed, wasted by travel and despair, tangled in blankets and his night clothes. Of course he would think Geder ill. Of course the prospect would call up other ghosts. It shouldn’t have happened this way. To make up for it, Geder made himself bounce up out of bed.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I rode too hard from Suddapal, and I stayed up too late reading last night. Now I’m nothing but a big sleepyhead. Get me breakfast and coffee, and I’ll take on the world.”
Geder spread his arms wide and gave a comic roar. Aster smiled, the fear at bay again. For now at least. That was good enough. Hold away the fear and pain long enough, and perhaps Aster would grow out of it. And really, what else was there to do about it? If there was a magic for erasing the cruelties of the world, Geder had never found it.
“Well. Good,” Aster said.
“How went the hunt? I assume it’s finished and everyone’s stopping at their holdings again before the court season starts?”
“Caot’s come to the city,” Aster said. “And Daskellin left his holdings early for something.”
“The war. Nothing to be concerned about. I’m meeting with him later.”
“Minister Basrahip?” Aster asked as Geder walked to his dressing room. There had been a time that servants and guards had been on hand to strip him and wash him and dress him, treat him like a baby and laugh down their sleeves at his belly. Now he dressed himself. Power had some compensations.
“He’s come with me,” Geder said, pulling off his nightshirt. “He went up to the temple to… commune with the goddess, I suppose.”
Geder pulled off his night clothes and stepped quickly into his undergarments. The cool air made him feel his nakedness more clearly, and he pulled on the robes he’d been wearing the night before from the pool of cloth he’d left them in before going to bed. They were wrinkled and had a bit of brown sauce on the cuff, but he could have the servants bring him something better before going out of the private rooms.
“I think I didn’t do him any favors when I put the temple so high in the Kingspire,” Geder called as he tied his stays. “I was thinking it would be safer and exalted, but it’s a damn lot of stairs.”
“He doesn’t complain,” Aster said. “And when the sky doors are open, the view’s like being on top of a mountain.”
Geder stepped back out to the bedchamber, smiling. He hadn’t made himself smile in weeks. Not since the day he’d ridden into Suddapal. There was no one in the world who could have coaxed him to feign happiness except Aster, and the pretense carried perhaps a thin version of the truth with it. His gaiety was a loose scab on a festered cut, but it was in place for now. And if he wasn’t whole, he was able to pretend he was. That had to be enough.
“Come! Let’s get a good table, make those lazy bastards in the kitchen send us a platter of something decent, and you can tell me all the gossip I missed. Who took honors in the last hunt?”
For three hours, they lingered over the breakfast table. Aster told tales of the King’s Hunt—who had taken what honors, the incident of the singer who’d celebrated the victories of Lord Ternigan only to find out the former Lord Marshal had been killed for a traitor the week before, and even a surprisingly bawdy story about a young cousin of Lord Faskellan and her handmaiden that left both of them giggling and half ashamed. The winter world of the King’s Hunt was done now. The lords and ladies of the court would return to Camnipol shortly, and the work and glamour of the court season would begin. Some of the stories of the winter would persist, others would be forgotten, and the more serious blood sport of the war would once again take precedence. They didn’t speak of it directly, but Geder knew that his exposure of Ternigan’s duplicity and treason had been the scandal of the hunt. If it went as the destruction of his previous enemies had, his prestige in the court would only increase. And the story of what Cithrin had done to him would be common knowledge as well.
To his surprise, Geder was almost glad that they would all know how he’d been hurt. Sitting over the ruins of their eggs and oats, laughing over the image of a young noblewoman trying to disentangle herself from her servant girl, Geder had no way to speak about the pain he’d carried since the betrayal. Aster was too young, and he had loved Cithrin too. Had missed her company. Geder wanted to shield the boy from as much of that hurt as he could, and once there were men of the court about again, there would be opportunities to commiserate.
He could already picture himself being strong and stoic. If he practiced it enough, it might even start to be true. And he remembered the relief of telling Jorey. His best friend, his oldest companion, and the only one that Geder really trusted. There wouldn’t be anyone in court as good as that to speak with. It would have been too much to ask for.
And, once the day had passed its midpoint, it was to Jorey Kalliam that Geder went.
The council chamber seemed bare and austere. The formed-earth maps that showed the rise of mountains with miniature hills Geder could step over and lakes and seas with basins of blue glass beads had been passed over in favor of charts and papers. This was not a conversation about tactics, but strategy. Jorey stood at the table, his expression focused and serious as a man twice his age. Canl Daskellin sat beside him. Geder had expected only those two, but Lord Skestinin—Jorey’s wife’s father and commander of the fleet—sat at Daskellin’s side, and Minister Basrahip smiled placidly at the table’s foot, his gaze on the window grate, as if such considerations were beneath him. Lord Mecelli was still on the long, slow road back from the field, touring the captured cities and towns of Elassae and Sarakal. Geder wasn’t looking forward to the man’s return.