“I’m not proposing anything.”
“No?” A long green spiral of skin fell to the floor, pale flesh clinging to one side. “Because it sounds as if you were accusing the Lord Regent of treason against the crown.”
“I’m not calling for a coup. I don’t want anyone’s head on a pike. Or at least not anybody important. If we whipped all Palliako’s cultists out of the city with chains, I can’t say I’d mind.”
“Still…”
“I know what I saw, Canl. You’d have seen it too if you’d watched. He goes everywhere with that pet priest. And what do we know about them and their spider goddess? We moved too quickly. We let the panic over Maas and the relief at his failure stampede us.”
“First time that’s happened in history,” Daskellin said dryly. “We’ve had bad regencies and we’ve had bad kings. We’ve had decent kings with bad advisors and kings who ruled half drunk from a whorehouse while their advisors saw to it that the kingdom didn’t burn down. Speaking as Special Ambassador to Northcoast, I’m not pleased that we’re cutting ambassadors into small bits, but apart from that, I don’t see the difference.”
“I do,” Dawson said. “Those were our bad kings. Our bad advisors. They were Antean. This time we’ve given ourselves into the power of foreigners.”
Daskellin’s silence sounded like agreement. When he spoke, his voice was low and thoughtful.
“Are you thinking that we’re in someone else’s war?”
“I didn’t say that,” Dawson said, plucking the flesh off his chicken with his fingers. At home or at a feast, he would never have done so, but this was war, and he was on campaign. “I’m saying that if Palliako does owe his loyalty to these people, we’re just as badly off as if Maas had put his cousin from Asterilhold on our throne.”
“I have the feeling that you’re asking something of me. I’m not sure what it is.”
“I want you to sound them out. Not everyone, but the men Palliako brought to respectability. Broot and Veren. Men like that. Find out if they’re loyal to Palliako.”
“Of course they are,” Daskellin said. “We all are. You are. We’re here marching and drilling instead of being at court. That’s the sign of loyalty.”
Dawson shook his head.
“I’ve come because the Lord Regent commanded it,” he said. “Not for Geder Palliako.”
Daskellin laughed, and for a moment the crickets stopped their songs. He cut a slice from the apple and popped it into his mouth before pointing the blade at Dawson.
“You’re making very fine distinctions. You should watch that or you’ll turn into a politician.”
“Don’t be rude,” Dawson said. “There’s nothing to be done until the war’s finished, one way or the other. But as long as I am Lord Marshal, it’s my duty to cultivate the loyalty of the high houses. And when we’ve finished with Asterilhold, those priests have to be dealt with.”
Canl Daskellin sighed.
“You’re a difficult man to conspire with, Dawson. The last time we did this, it didn’t go well.”
Dawson frowned, and then a slow, joyless smile spread across his lips.
“Now I think you’re asking something of me,” he said.
“My youngest. Sanna. She’s taken a liking to the Lord Regent. Once we purge these cultist friends of his, I was thinking your boy Jorey might hold a ball. Make some introductions.”
The words You want me as your daughter’s procurer? came to Dawson’s tongue, but he took another bite of chicken, and they stayed there.
“Sanna seems a lovely girl,” Dawson said. “Whatever happens, I’d be pleased to help her in any way I can.”
“Spoken like a diplomat,” Daskellin said. Dawson frowned, but didn’t reply. He would accept insult. For now, anyway. There was time. If he failed at Seref Bridge, there might be nothing but time. And blood and battles. Daskellin seemed to lose himself in the slow-rising smoke from the brazier. His dark brows were troubled.
“One question for you,” he said. “Do you think it’s true? Do you think that King Lechan knew. That he approved?”
“I don’t know.”
“But do you think?”
“Yes.”
Daskellin nodded.
“I do too,” he said. “So for now, at least, your conspiracy of foreign priests is in the right.”
The morning smelled of wildflowers. Rain had fallen in the night, wetting the ground, and the morning sun had heated it. Mist hovered no higher than a walking man’s knees. The scouts had come to Dawson at first light, and so he was prepared for the sight. The river curved up from the south in a carved canyon of earth and stone. It ran high with the night’s rain, white spray rising almost to the pale strip of jade that spanned it. On the far shore, the keep was as round as a drum, as high as three men, and made from grey stone and mortar the color of old blood. On the Antean shore—his shore—the building was square and made of chalk-white brick. The arrow slits looked down on the dragon’s road as it entered the keep and as it left. The merlons were narrow, with barely enough room for an archer to stand and fire and step back.
The banners of Asterilhold flew over both keeps, but they were few. Three stood on the white keep, limp and dark with dew and damp. Two others claimed the farther side. Behind Dawson, twenty knights from fifteen houses. Bannien and Broot, Corenhall and Osterling Fells, the houses and holdings of Antea. Fifteen banners to their five. Four hundred men to whatever lurked behind those arrow slits.
Jorey rode up beside him. The boy’s face was pale and closed. He had a wife at home now. Dawson remembered the first fight he’d ridden into when he knew he’d be leaving a widow behind. It changed things.
“They’re split,” Jorey said. “Why are they split?”
“In hopes of holding both sides,” Dawson said. “If they put all their men on our soil and we beat them back, they come to the far keep in disarray. If they put all their men in the far keep, they lose safe passage over the river.”
“They’ll pull back now, though,” Jorey said. “They’re fortified, but we’ve numbers. They have to know that. If they make a stand together on the farther side, they stand a chance, at least. Splitting their own forces is madness.”
“It’s bravery,” Dawson said. “Those three banners? They’re not there to win the battle. They’re there to hold us back until reinforcements come.”
“We can overrun the far keep,” Jorey said. “With the men we have, we will take it.”
“Perhaps not with the men we have after the white keep’s ours, though. And if their reinforcements come, not at all.” Dawson turned in his saddle, his eyes on his squire. “Sound formation. We haven’t got time.”
They took the field, archers and swordsmen, pikemen and the small siege tower, its ram a log with its head dipped in bronze and long enough for three men to take each side. Dawson had seen midwinter festivals that had put more wood in the grate. But these were not castles, only river keeps, and the small ram was what they had to work with.
His army took formation. There was only one task left before the world turned to steel and blood. He called for Fallon Broot. The man trotted over, his comic mustache flopping up and down with the gait of his mount.
“Lord Broot,” Dawson said. “Will you take the honors?”
“Pleased to, Lord Marshal,” he said, and to his credit, he sounded as though he actually was. Broot took the caller’s horn from Dawson’s squire and rode out toward the pale brick keep. When he judged himself just out of arrow’s range, Broot stopped and lifted the horn to his mouth. Dawson strained to hear.
“In the name of King Aster, and of Lord Regent Palliako, and in the name of the Severed Throne, do you yield?”