“My wife died when he was very young, you know,” Lehrer said, half to her and half to the cup of wine in his fist. “I raised him myself. Taught him to love books. Taught him to be a good boy. Did what I could. I never wanted him to go to court. They’re a bunch of self-righteous bastards, all of them. But it isn’t a favor to keep a young man from making friends. Connections in the court. I dreaded it from the day he left. The day. And when Dawson fucking Kalliam threw a triumph for him, I thought… you know, I thought perhaps I’d been wrong. Just because I’d failed at court, it didn’t mean my boy would. I was sure it would be all right. Only it wasn’t.”
Lehrer shook his head, and Cithrin could see Geder in it. Not the monstrous Geder, hacking a man to death with a dull sword because he’d chosen defiance even at the last. The lost and gentle Geder, the one who’d hidden with her in the darkness. But there were glimmers of that other too. Lehrer Palliako was, she thought, a man of deep resentments as well as deep affections. She wondered what his wife had been like when she was alive.
“And then these priests,” Lehrer said. “I went to him I don’t know how many times. I told him not to forget himself, not to let them change who he was. Who he is. When Simeon named him Lord Regent… I was proud. I won’t say I wasn’t. But I was also afraid.”
“You were right to be,” Cithrin said. “The spiders in their blood were made to sow chaos. To make war constant. Inevitable. They’ve lied to him, and it’s not his fault that he believed.”
“Exactly,” Lehrer said. “Exactly. It’s not his fault at all. It’s these priests and courtiers and politicians, isn’t it? They’re what led him astray. My poor little boy. Do you know, he used to try to save the water beetles? When he was young, he’d find water beetles down in the mud, and some were on their backs. He’d bring them back and try to nurse them back to being well. Gave them bits of leaf and fresh water and kept them warm. He’d cry when they died. He’s a good boy.”
Tears streaked the old man’s cheeks. Cithrin had the sense that he’d been waiting to say all this. All he hadn’t had was someone to listen. Someone who understood.
“Will you help me, then? Will you help me to help him?”
“I will,” Lehrer said. “You’ll stay with me. All of you. Geder has an estate in the city. No one will look for you there, and we can get him away from these bastards before they make it worse.”
“Your son is very angry with me,” Cithrin said.
“And Kalliam’s boy. Barriath. The one you brought. I know he is, but it will be fine. We’ll see to it. He’ll forgive you once he understands.” Lehrer reached out his hand tentatively, and Cithrin paused for only a moment before she took it. Lehrer smiled, tears welling again in his eyes. “You would have made a fine daughter. I’m sorry that this has all done what it’s done.”
“I am too,” she said, and let him go. The relief in her belly was like a drink of strong wine. It unknotted her, if only for the moment.
She’d done the first part. She’d gained the confidence of someone Geder loved. Now there was only finding the way to turn the younger Palliako against the priests whose power he relied on. And as difficult as that sounded, she had her path picked out. With every tale Lehrer spun, with every reminiscence about the innocent, kind young man Geder had been before the court corrupted him, she felt more certain she could manage it.
The priests had taken control of the empire, that was true. They were sowing chaos without even knowing that they had been designed for the task. They were the enemy that had to be defeated if there was ever to be hope of peace.
But fire could be fought with fire, violence with violence, and there had been no priests when Geder burned Vanai.
Entr’acte: Nus
The enemies of the goddess have already lost! None can stand against her power. You, her chosen, stand as proof of her grace and her power in the world.”
The priest lifted his hands in blessing, and Duris—along with everyone else in the cathedral—cheered. Their gathered voices echoed off the vaulted ceiling, until the whole building rang with them. A roar louder than a dragon, and more dangerous.
The central cathedral of Nus had been dedicated once to some local god who seemed from the carvings in the stone columns to have had a great deal to do with rose-covered shepherd’s crooks and a shallow bowl with a crack in it. Now, it belonged to the goddess. The red of the banners that hung behind the altar represented the blood of true humanity, untainted by the filthy powers of the dragons and their Timzinae agents. The pale circle in the center with its eightfold sigil, the purifying power of the goddess as it reached out across the world.
Not that Duris would have known that if he hadn’t been told. As the cathedral had once been the shrine of a crook-and-bowl god, Duris had once been a butcher’s apprentice of a little crossroads town that the locals called Little Count, about a morning’s walk south of Sevenpol, and was now a soldier of the empire and of the goddess.
When the roar faded, the priest lowered his hands. “There are many who will deny her. Many who will close their eyes to her light. Stripping away the lies of a lifetime—of hundreds of lifetimes, father and grandfather and on back to the fall of humanity at the claws of the dragons—is like tearing away the scab of an infected wound. Some will cling to their infection rather than accept the healing pain. These are the servants of the lie.”
“Kill them!” Duris and a hundred others shouted. “Kill anyone who stands against her!”
“They come to us now,” the priest said. “They come to kill us and steal back what the goddess has claimed.”
Everyone knew that, of course. The scouting parties had been keeping track of the movements of the enemy army since the fall of Inentai. But hearing it in the resonant voice of the priest gave it a weight and a dignity that taproom gossip didn’t carry. Duris felt the mixture of dread and exultation in his chest. When he closed his eyes and let the feelings rise up in him, it was like he’d climbed the highest tree in Little Count and was looking down on the roofs and yards far below.
“But,” the priest said, “they have already lost. The goddess is in the world, and her power cannot be denied. She is the living voice of the truth. Faith in her is stronger than arrows. Stronger than swords. Nothing in the world can remain unchanged before her!”
Duris rose, fists in the air. All around him, his compatriots and the converts from among the citizens of Nus stood too. Some—especially the locals—wept. Duris, who wasn’t a butcher’s boy any longer, grinned beatifically and felt the joy and power flow through him.
Nus, the Iron City, had been the first Timzinae stronghold to fall to her, and Duris had been there from the start. When the army had moved on, Duris and his cohorts Noll and Kipp and Sandin had all been picked to garrison the city. In all, there were three hundred Antean soldiers to hold a city of fifty thousand. Three hundred soldiers and half a dozen priests.
For the first few months, he’d struggled not to feel overwhelmed by the city. The grand square alone was larger than all Little Count put together. The salt quarter at Nus took up almost half the city. The port on the northern edge spread out past the great stone-and-metal walls and onto the water, becoming a complex tissue of docks and ships and boats that changed their configuration by the day, like alleyways in dreams. Then there were the archways tucked in among the streets. Long, lazy swoops of hollow dragon’s jade that rose up above the buildings and streets before arcing back down. In Little Count—even in Sevenpol—they would have been wonders to look up at in awe. In Nus, people hung laundry from them.