“It is,” Sabiha said. “Have you heard from Jorey?”
“Just the usual. Reports from the field. Dry stuff. Nothing personal. You?”
“I had one letter after Porte Oliva fell. He seemed… happy’s a strong word. He seemed well. He was glad his mother came.”
“They’re going to make fun of him for that when he gets back,” Geder said.
“If he wins, the jokes will be gentle,” Sabiha said, an edge in her voice. “And if he loses, they’ll mock him for more than that. It’s the joy of court that everything you do is available for the casual judgment of others.”
“I suppose I don’t see that from where I am,” Geder said. “No one but Aster confides in me. Or makes jokes. I’m not complaining, you understand. It’s just I wasn’t really part of court before Basrahip and the priests came, and after that it was so little time before I was named Lord Regent. I don’t know what court life is really like. All my time I’ve been either below it or above it.”
“I’ve been in the thick,” Sabiha said. “It’s only people. Cruel and kind, and often both in the same evening.”
Annalise blurped in agreement. Geder made a clicking noise with his tongue against his teeth that fascinated her, and she tried to grab for his lips. Sabiha gasped and pushed her hand between them. For a moment, he thought he saw something like fear in her. As if she was afraid that he might get angry with the babe if it tugged at him too hard and dash her to the floor. But perhaps that was only his imagination. Sabiha knew him better than that. Or he hoped she did.
“After this, it should all be over,” he said, embarrassed by the words as he said them. I’m going to save the world. I’d never hurt your baby. Obvious, thin, and whining.
“That’s good,” she said. “I’m ready for whatever comes after.”
“A world truly at peace,” he said. “Not that I think it will all come right at once. There’ll still be some work to be done. Ruling. All that.”
“I’ll take a world that’s half on fire if it brings Jorey home,” she said. “That’s uncharitable, I know, but it’s the truth. I just want him back before she starts walking and doesn’t want to be held anymore.”
“Would it be all right,” Geder asked, “if I gave her one of my secrets? Just to keep before I go.”
“Of course,” Sabiha said.
The baby looked up into Geder’s eyes, suddenly and comically solemn. Her thick fingers opened and closed. Geder leaned carefully over her until the thin scruff of hair tickled his lips. He could feel the soft place as a tiny warmth. He closed his eyes.
He whispered, softly enough that not even Sabiha could hear him, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Cithrin
King Tracian’s face was red and beginning to peel. Marcus Wester, sitting at Cithrin’s right side, looked much the same. It was as if they’d both sat out too long in the summer sun without shade. Komme Medean was at her left, his weathered face solemn as if they were at a funeral. And beyond him, Kit. The four of them together on one side of the table, and the king across from them and sitting in a slightly higher chair. On the pale white tablecloth, a single vivid drop of blood. And from it, dancing crazily, a tiny black body with eight frantic legs.
The point made, Marcus crushed the spider with a stone.
“You’re… one of them,” King Tracian said.
“I am, yes,” Kit said. “I believe, though, that my actions and history will speak for my benign intentions.”
“It’s truth,” Marcus said. “Kit’s been the driving force behind stopping these bastards since before the rest of us knew they were more than the latest fashion in Antean political cults.”
King Tracian put his head in his hands, peeking out between the fingers. The gesture didn’t seem intended to be comic, however it looked, and Cithrin didn’t laugh.
“The power of having someone like that,” he said. “To just say things and have them be true.”
“Have them be believed, rather,” Kit said. “Please forgive me, Majesty, but I find these differences are quite important to me. More so, perhaps, than the average person. What we do does not create truth. In my experience, only the world can do that.”
“And the dragon…”
“Yes,” Marcus said. “It seems that it started that long ago. Inys says he is part of the cause of it. And, we’re hoping, part of the solution for it too. But the point here that you should be taking back to your private chambers is that if we hadn’t come here, you’d be marching your army off to Kaltfel right now, ready to fly your banner and die to a man. You’d be at war.”
Cithrin glanced over at Komme. The old banker’s face didn’t seem to have moved at all. He might almost have been carved from wood. She kept her own expression smooth and calm, giving away as little as she could.
“So this isn’t Antea’s Lord Regent,” Tracian said. “Geder Palliako isn’t the danger we’re facing. It’s these… these priests that command him.”
“No,” Cithrin said. “It’s Geder. But it isn’t only him. The shape that all this has taken, the shape it still takes, began in him. You’re right that it won’t end with him, though. It will spread the way it almost did here. It may have already.”
“You see,” Kit said, leaning forward and gesturing with both hands, “as distance grows, the chance for… not even misunderstanding. For differences of opinion, then. They grow. And when all sides are certain—unshakably certain—there can be no reconciliation. Only death for one side or the other, inevitably. And I fear that will be true for every division, however small. I believe that, unchecked, men like myself will set the world into an eternal battle of all against all, with no hope of peace. It is, as Inys tells us, what we were made to do.”
“So, much like the normal course of history,” Marcus said sourly, “but without the restful times between.”
Cithrin folded her hands together and kicked him under the table. They could be cynical and despairing afterwards when they were safely back at the holding company and drunk. This was not the time.
Under the red of the burn, King Tracian looked green. “Komme?”
“Majesty,” the old banker said.
“What in the name of all that’s holy have you brought into my court?” the king demanded, his voice harsh with anger. No, not anger. Fear. Cithrin made a private note of that, even as she dreaded the answer. Komme bowed his head and heaved a sigh.
“I’ve brought you the only hope you’ve got,” Komme said at last. “We have to stand up to this, old friend. You know I don’t like working out in the world where everyone can see it. But being quiet and hoping the storm passes south of us won’t work this time. The girl brought you the gold to defend the nation because chances are you’re going to need it. Nothing she said to you was false. Cithrin bel Sarcour is more than the voice of my branch in Porte Oliva. I don’t say this lightly. She’s a genius. There hasn’t been a mind like hers for seeing the systems of the world in all my life.”
“You trust her, then?” the king asked.
“Absolutely,” Komme said with a firm nod, and Kit pressed his lips a degree tighter to cover a smile. It was all right. Cithrin knew it was a lie. All that mattered was that the king didn’t.
“All right, then,” Tracian said. “You think this war can be won?”
It was the question she’d been waiting for. The one she’d known from the moment the summons came she would answer. She thought of all the words she’d practiced, let her breath out, and pulled up her neck the way the players had taught her to. In truth, there might have been no one in the world better prepared to seem one thing and be another than her.
“No, it can’t be won. Not as a war, with soldiers on the field. The more we try that, the more they manage what they were made for. Violence. Dislocation. Chaos. What we can do is drive them out of business.”