It all made Geder very nervous. It wasn’t that he didn’t expect the victory to come. Every day brought more couriers and reports, and the news was consistent: Kalliam and the armies were advancing steadily toward Kaltfel. The enemy was demoralized and falling back. The priests of the spider goddess seemed to be a very real help. Morale in the ranks was high, and three enemy commanders had already offered private surrender and been taken prisoner. Geder had the impression from Dawson Kalliam’s letter that there might be some friction between him and the priests, but it didn’t seem to be affecting anything. And the man could be a little prickly sometimes, so likely that wasn’t a problem.
No, the thing that bothered Geder most was catching glimpses of bright costumes and servants cutting bright paper into bits small enough to throw. He understood that there would be celebrations when the war ended and that people would have to prepare. The city was like the taut bud of some lavish flower, only waiting for the right moment. And still, to assume a victory that hadn’t actually happened seemed like courting bad luck. And as much as the half-hidden costumes and half-made gaudy bothered him, the sober discussions of how to proceed once Asterilhold was crushed bothered him more.
“Once Lechan sues for peace,” Emmer Faskellan said, lacing his fingers across his wide belly, “I believe we have established that the Seref Bridge must be permanently under our control. That’s the absolute very least.”
“And reparations,” Gospey Allintot said. “We’ve lost most of the planting season, and it’s not fair that our women and children should go hungry. And we’ve lost good men whose widows and children will need to be supported.”
It was a discussion that had clearly been going on in the rooms of the Great Bear, now translated into Geder’s meeting chambers, a grander venue for the old conversation. The walls here were draped with silk and tapestries from Far Syramys and fine golden chains from Pût, the floor covered with Southling-woven carpets from one of the small nations in the interior of Lyoneia. The table around which they all sat was a single piece of carved basalt from Borja; representations of the thirteen races of humanity made up the legs, all supporting the tabletop-wide stylized crown. Furniture as political sculpture. The air was perfumed with a musky Hallskari incense that made Geder think of rich food and ripe fruit.
Geder’s personal guard stood in the corners of the room, armed and impassive, and Basrahip sat at a small table by the doorway where Geder could see him. The priest was only apparently meditating, his not quite closed eyes glittering under their lids.
It wasn’t the most formal of councils, as many of the most important and powerful men in Antea were presently in the field. This was a gathering of sons and grandfathers and secretaries. Men who’d fought the war from their chairs, and were happy now to congratulate each other on how well they’d done. The only ones present who’d been in the field at all were Gospey Allintot, still recovering from an arrow in the meat of his arm, and Jorey Kalliam, just come with the reports from his father. The army had reached Kaltfel. The final siege was under way.
“If I may?” Jorey said slowly. “What are we trying to achieve? I mean if we want to cripple Asterilhold for a generation, it’s easy enough to do that. But is that what we want?”
“Well, they have to be punished,” Emmer Faskellan said. “My cousin died from their scheming. Died in the streets of Camnipol!”
“That’s what I mean,” Jorey said. “Are we trying to punish them and then go back to the way things were before? Are we trying to take control of Asterilhold? They wanted to unify the nations. Do we?”
“I see what you’re thinking,” Allintot said.
“I don’t,” said Geder. It wasn’t something he would have admitted usually, but this was Jorey.
“Taking the bridge, for example,” Jorey said. “That helps us win the next war if there is one. Maybe it makes one less likely because they’d be afraid of losing. But they didn’t want a war in the first place. Asterilhold was acting with people in our own court. There aren’t any reparations we can demand that will keep that from happening again.”
The group was quiet for a moment.
“Hostages?” Geder said. “We could take hostages. Raise their children. If there was ever any sign of conspiracy, we’d have someone here at hand.”
“I was thinking something more permanent,” Jorey said. “Lechan has two sons and a daughter. If the sons abdicate their rights to the throne and the daughter weds Prince Aster, he’ll become heir to Asterilhold’s throne.”
“This did all start as a drive for unification,” Emmer Faskellan said thoughtfully. “Perhaps it’s inevitable. If that’s true, it would be best if we were the ones to set the terms. They’ll want something done at once, of course. Waiting until Aster’s of age and Lechan dies is too long.”
“You’ve all given me things to think about,” Geder said quickly. He had a sense of where the conversation was heading. “But if you’ll excuse me, I’m called elsewhere.”
A small chorus of Yes, of course and Thank you, Lord Regent rolled through the air as Geder rose and made his private exit. The guards followed him through the narrow passages reserved for the men who sat on thrones and the blades that guarded them. Even Basrahip would have to leave by the normal door and rejoin him elsewhere.
It was just the sort of thing that Geder had imagined he would enjoy, one of the unnumbered small privileges of power that he’d gained with the regency. In practice, it felt oppressive. Being the most powerful man in Imperial Antea meant being busy all the time, being constrained by form and etiquette, and carrying the world on his shoulders. He would never again be able to ride out through the streets whenever he saw fit. And never, ever alone. He had traded poking through the old scriptorums for this small corridor that only he and his guards could use, and the exchange seemed less attractive than it had before he’d made it.
The private corridor widened into the royal apartments. High windows looked out over the Division and the spreading land beyond, filling the vaulted ceilings and tall air with light and just a hint of the woodsmoke of the city. These were the rooms where King Simeon had lived. The queen had died in one of the wood-paneled bedrooms. Aster had taken some of his first steps in the candlelit hallway Geder walked through. It was where Aster had grown up. When the boy had become Geder’s ward, Aster had expected to be leaving these walls for years, not months, and now he was back. It was and would always be more Aster’s home than his own.
Geder knew from experience that it might be some time before the meeting he’d left spiraled to its true, if unofficial, close. Basrahip would stay there, and if the others picked and chose their words carefully, knowing that Geder’s right hand was still with them, they didn’t know how much the priest could still divine from the mixture of truth and lies. And a few minutes—an hour or two—entirely his own was welcome in a way that made his joints ache a little.
He heard Aster’s voice reciting lines, and then the tutor— an ancient Cinnae man so frail-looking that he seemed always on the edge of collapse. Geder followed their voices to the study and hung in the shadows of the doorway for a moment.