“So we won’t discuss it. Only keep your eye on them. You’ll see what I saw.”
Geder rose and the hall grew quiet. King Lechan met Geder’s scowl with equanimity.
“I’m Geder Palliako, Lord Regent of Antea. Lechan of Asterilhold, you are before me now as prisoner and enemy.”
“I am,” the king said. He had the actor’s trick of speaking in a conversational voice, only loudly enough that it carried to the farthest ends of the hall.
“I have only one question before I pass judgment upon you,” Palliako said. “Were you aware of the plot within your court to see Prince Aster dead in hopes of placing a man loyal to Asterilhold on the Severed Throne.”
“I was,” Lechan said calmly. “I claim sole authorship and responsibility for the plan. The intention was born with me. The men in my court who took part did so only out of love for me and loyalty to my words and commands. Most were ignorant of my final design.”
Palliako looked as though someone had struck him on the back of the head. When he shot a glance at Basrahip, Dawson tapped Skestinin’s knee. The huge priest shook his head. No. Geder licked his lips, obviously confounded. Dawson understood, of course. It was Lechan’s duty to protect his people as much as it was theirs to protect him. Battle and war were lost, and now Lechan would do all he could to eat the sins of his people and carry the retribution to the grave with him. Dawson felt a surge of respect toward this man, his enemy. If Simeon had had half the spine of Lechan, what a world he and Dawson could have made.
Geder’s face was growing darker than a stormcloud. When he spoke again, his words were clipped, narrow, and rich with anger.
“All right,” he said. “If that’s how you want it, that’s how we’ll have it. Lechan of Asterilhold, for your crimes against Antea, I declare your life and your kingdom forfeit to the Severed Throne.”
Lechan didn’t move. His face was calm. Geder raised a hand, and the call went for the executioner. The man who came out wore the white, faceless mask. He bowed to Geder and again to Aster, then drew his sword and walked to the prisoner.
The crowd gasped when the blow struck, and then they cheered. The chorus of voices raised in joy and bloodlust was like a waterfall. It deafened. Dawson watched in silence as one enemy of his kingdom bled dry at the feet of another. The claiming of responsibility had been a noble gesture, he thought, but doomed. Palliako’s wrath wouldn’t be restrained by it. If he chose to spill every drop of noble blood in Asterilhold, he would do it. There was no one left to stop him.
The guard tapped his shoulder, and Dawson realized it wasn’t the first time he’d been told to stand. He rose to his feet and began the walk back toward his cell. Skestinin walked at his side, his gaze cast low. The halls of the Kingspire seemed different now. Smaller, darker. It wasn’t that they had changed—the structures were all just as they had been since the day they’d been built. But it also wasn’t the Kingspire any longer.
As they walked out into the open air, Dawson looked to his left, craning his neck to see the dueling grounds, and beyond that the Division, and beyond that the buildings and mansions, one of which had been his. The wind was picking up, pressing a warm hand against him. It smelled of rain. He paused, looking for clouds on the horizon, and the guards shoved him.
His cell seemed larger now that he was its only occupant.
“Well,” Skestinin said.
“Thank you for that,” Dawson said. “And give my family my regards.”
“I will.”
Skestinin hesitated, desperate to leave and unable to. Dawson lifted his eyebrows.
“About Barriath,” Skestinin said. “He’s a good man. I’ve been proud to have him. But as things are… I’ve asked him to step down, and I’d rather you got word of it from me. It’s not wise right now to have a Kalliam commanding swords or ships. Not good for him and not good for the court.”
The anger came fast and clean.
“Are you going to have your daughter step down from her marriage?” Dawson said.
Skestinin’s contrition blinked out as if it had never been there.
“Might if I could,” he said. “I don’t agree with what you did, Dawson, but you’ll face your judgment and take the consequences. My Sabiha didn’t have the choice. They said she was a slut. Now they’re going to say she’s a traitor too.”
“But she isn’t,” Dawson said. “Truth isn’t what other people say. Sabiha isn’t a traitor, and she isn’t a slut. If she doesn’t know that without someone telling her, you’ve done a poor job as a father.”
For a moment, Skestinin didn’t answer. His expression was incredulous, fading slowly to disgust. Or worse, pity.
“You don’t change, Kalliam.”
“No,” Dawson said. “I don’t.”
Geder
Geder stalked through the halls of the Kingspire. He had expected that the death of King Lechan would leave him feeling better. Relieved, perhaps. Victorious, certainly. Instead, he felt grumpy. He’d thought that returning to his bed and his place in the Kingspire would be more of a homecoming, the end to his time in exile. If anything, he felt less at home now than he had before.
When he’d been his own man, back before King Simeon had died, there had been days spent in his library, immersed in a translation, his mind utterly focused. He would forget to eat. He would forget to rest. Everything in him would come to a single point, a perfect kind of clarity. And when, as inevitably happened, something broke the trance, he would discover that he was hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and in the ragged edge of pissing himself. And even when all his bodily needs had been satisfied, he would still feel displaced, still reaching for that next word or phrase, the nuance that best captured what he thought the original author had intended. Everything around him—walls, chairs, people— could seem unreal.
The Kingspire, and in truth all of Camnipol, felt odd and unstructured. Out of joint. His mind and memory were aimed behind him, at a dusty, stinking ruin. Days in darkness with nothing to do but play simple puzzle games by the light of a candle and talk to a part-Cinnae banker. Cithrin bel Sarcour. Part of him was still there, with her, in that darkness. All the rest was distraction.
Geder knew he was the most powerful man in Camnipol, in Antea, quite possibly in the world. He could command the death of kings. The men who had mocked him once lived in fear of him now. It was everything he’d wanted. Everything he’d hoped for. Only now, he found, he wanted more. He wanted to wake in the morning and dress himself. He wanted to sit in his library and read until he slept. He wanted to sit and talk with Aster, or with Cithrin. He wanted to feel her body against his again.
And why not? Why couldn’t he have these things? And more than that, why shouldn’t he?
The chief valet was an older man with powder-pale skin and a fringe of hair around an ages-peckled pate. He answered to Geder’s summons immediately, bowing his way across the chamber.
“You called for me, Lord Regent?” he said.
Geder felt the unease in his belly and tried to put it aside.
“I don’t… I’ve decided I don’t want to be dressed anymore. I don’t need people to put my clothes on me or bathe me or trim my toenails. I’ve done all of that myself for years, and I managed.”
“The dignity of the regency, my lord, like the dignity of a king, is not—”
“I didn’t call you here to be lectured,” Geder said. “You’re here so that I could tell you something. I don’t want people to come dress me in the morning. Bring the clothes, draw the bath, and get out. Do you understand that? I want my privacy, and I’ll take it.”
“Yes, Lord Regent,” the older man said, his lips pressed together in disappointment and disapproval. “As you see fit.”