But as a result, the household in Camnipol was small. Its gardens were insignificant, and it hardly commanded more land than it took to place the house. Even the kitchens and stables were small, as if added as an afterthought. The house belonged to the commander of the Imperial Navy. Jorey Kalliam resided there now as the new Lord Marshal, with his brother Vicarian and his mother, Clara. Other estates in the city might boast more wealth and more beautiful grounds, but none had the military power of the empire in so concentrated a form. Except, of course, for the Kingspire.
“It seems like we do this every day.” Vicarian’s voice came from Jorey’s private study. The tone was on the knife edge between amused and annoyed, as it so often was with her boys. “You panic, you come to me, and I talk sense into you. We settle matters, and then as soon as I walk out of the room, you start working yourself back into a lather.”
“I go back to look at the numbers again,” Jorey said, his tone almost of apology. “They are frightening damned numbers, for what that’s worth.”
“They don’t matter. We didn’t win the wars on the back of numbers. Antea is chosen of the goddess. We’re going to win.”
“With exhausted men, a season’s planting that’s relying on the labor of recently captured slaves, and twice as much land to hold as we had a year ago, it seems that we’ve put upon the kindness of the goddess plenty long enough.”
“You don’t understand,” Vicarian said. “She will not let us lose.”
In the half dozen steps from the middle of the staircase to its end, Clara felt her body change as she adopted her role. Her chin rose and a polite smile took its accustomed place upon her lips. Decades she had not felt only minutes before settled on her like a shawl made from dust. She was the mother of grown men now, a widow, and—though her precise status would give etiquette masters belly knots—a woman of the court. She stepped into Jorey’s study with an arched eyebrow.
“I can’t help noticing that my boys are shouting at each other again,” she said, teasing. “Surely we can solve the complex problems of the empire in a civil tone of voice.”
Vicarian rose from his divan, smiling. Ever since he’d returned from the new temple within the Kingspire, his priestly robes included the swatch of red and the eightfold sigil, and there was a brightness in his eyes that reminded Clara of men taken by fever. It saddened her to see it, but she pretended it wasn’t there. He was lost to her now, but she could pretend he would return one day.
“It’s Jorey, Mother,” Vicarian said. “He’s seen the power of the goddess time after time, but he has a doubter’s heart. Come. Help me fix him.”
Vicarian took her hand and kissed her cheek. His flesh seemed warmer than the fire muttering in the grate could account for.
“I don’t believe I’ve had authority over Jorey’s heart for some time,” Clara said. “Though it is sometimes pleasant to pretend otherwise. What seems to be the trouble?”
“It’s the war,” Jorey said, as a farmer might have said, It’s the crops. “Ternigan’s death leaves everything in a muddle.”
Clara smiled. That her plot against Ternigan had borne fruit almost compensated for the fact that it had put Jorey in the old Lord Marshal’s place. Before that, she’d sent anonymous letters out, reporting on the plans and ambitions of the regent to his enemies as best she could from her diminished position. So far as she could see, it had been as effective as flinging pebbles into the Division. Tempting Ternigan into treason with forged letters and false promises had deprived the army of one of its most experienced minds, she was glad to hear. That it left her still uncertain how to unseat Geder Palliako and his spider priests without unmaking the empire as a whole could only be expected. You can’t make a rug from a single knot, as her mother used to say.
“The muddle being?” Clara asked.
“Most of the army sitting in the freezing mud outside Kiaria has been fighting for at least a year,” Jorey said. “Some of them haven’t seen rest since before Asterilhold. I have to go take command of the siege—”
“Which we should have done a week ago,” Vicarian said.
“—but I don’t know what to do with them. On one hand, putting a holding force outside Kiaria invites the Timzinae to try to break out. On the other, Father always said wars were won and lost over cookfires, and when I look at the supply reports, pushing on seems like begging the army to break.”
“They won’t break,” Vicarian said. “The goddess won’t let us lose. Look at all of the things that we shouldn’t have won already. The battle at Seref Bridge? Father should have lost that. Would have, if he hadn’t had the priests. And when the Timzinae turned him against the throne, he also went against the goddess, and he lost. How many people said we might—might—take Nus by winter. And we took Nus, Inentai, Suddapal, and we’re camped outside Kiaria. We wouldn’t have stopped Feldin Maas without Geder bringing Minister Basrahip from the temple. According to your numbers, we should have lost already half a dozen times over, and we didn’t. And we won’t. I keep telling you that.”
“And after you’ve said it five or six times, it even starts seeming plausible,” Jorey said. “But I sleep on it, and in the morning—”
“My lords,” the steward said. He was a Dartinae, and the glow of his eyes made his expression difficult to read. It seemed to Clara that he was excited. Or frightened. “The Lord Regent has arrived.”
Clara and her sons went silent. The man could as well have announced that the Division had closed. It would have been as plausible.
“The Lord Regent is in the south,” Jorey said. “Geder wrote that he was going to Suddapal. To get here from there, he’d have had to ride almost straight through.”
“I’ve put him in the western withdrawing room,” the steward said with a bow.
A cold dread moved down Clara’s spine. There were stories, of course, of Geder Palliako’s uncanny abilities. That the spirits of the dead rose up to march alongside the armies of Antea. That King Simeon pushed open his tomb to consult with the regent. To listen to all the tales, Geder Palliako was more than a cunning man. Of course, there were also stories that her fallen husband, Dawson, had been the puppet of foreigners and Timzinae, so there was only so much credence such things could bear. Still, as she walked arm in arm with Jorey, her mind was plagued by a sense of dark miracles just beyond her sight. Perhaps Geder was in Suddapal and Camnipol both. Perhaps distance had ceased to have meaning for him.
Or perhaps he’d simply ridden straight through.
Clara had known half a dozen aspects of Geder Palliako, from the awkward boy lost in the complexity of court etiquette to the frenzied executioner of her own husband, slaughtered before her eyes. He had stood over her as half-demonic judge and by her side as an ally against armed foes. He was a violent and unpredictable man, and she feared and opposed him as she would a wildfire or a plague.
The thin, ill-looking being on the divan looked up at them as they stepped in the room. His hair was lank and unwashed. His eyes were puffy and red. He rose to his feet slowly, as if in pain. When he spoke, his voice was thick with tears.
“Jorey. I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go,” the Lord Regent of Imperial Antea said. “I don’t have anyone I can talk to. So I came here. I’m sorry if I’m getting in the way.”