The King's Blood (54 page)

Paerin’s barely audible exhalation made it clear he was to take the lead. Cithrin sat on her hands.

“The situation in Antea has been unsettled,” Paerin said. “They’ve had two insurrections, the most recent of which led to a protracted battle and the collapse of several noble houses. They’ve conducted a particularly effective war against a traditional enemy. They’ve lost a king to the same ailment of the blood that took his father and which will, we must assume, eventually kill their next king as well.”

His voice and demeanor changed when he spoke like this, and Cithrin watched him, fascinated. He spoke firmly without aggression. His gestures were controlled but flowing. She was certain that the delivery would have been precisely the same if he’d been talking to a man like the king before him or the lowest servant in his house. They had moved beyond class and status, if only for a moment, and they were in the realm where Paerin Clark was the master.

“Palliako has an uncanny talent for mythologizing himself. But ultimately, his personality is unimportant. There are constraints on him that he won’t be able to avoid or to adjust to quickly.”

“Tell me,” the king said.

“He’s lost most of a harvest in two kingdoms,” Paerin said. “If he hadn’t made the war with Asterilhold a matter of conquest, he’d have fewer starving people next spring. But now they’re his, and they’re
all
his. He’s weakened his own support among the noble classes. He wasn’t precisely one of them to begin with. That his own Lord Marshal led an attack against him and did it in the name of the prince shows just how much work he has to do, just to get up to being an effective leader.

“He is open in ways that King Simeon wasn’t. There’s been the suggestion of a branch bank in Camnipol, which I think worth looking at seriously.”

Paerin folded his fingers together, and the king unconsciously mirrored him.

“Antea isn’t going to collapse, but it isn’t going to be stable either. I’d guess we were looking at five, maybe six years before Palliako poses any threat to trade or to his neighbors. I think he has a long memory, though. Anyone who crosses him while he’s weak will answer for it when he’s strong. Aster is still too young to judge, and by the time he takes the throne, the situation will have changed again.”

“In brief, then, Antea’s a colorful show with blood and thunder but no real threat,” the king said.

“Exactly,” Paerin said.

“You’re wrong,” Cithrin said. “All apologies, but that’s wrong.”

Komme scowled.

“You have a different analysis, that’s fine. But Paerin’s been my man in Antea for almost a decade. He knows the country. How it works.”

“Has he had the Lord Regent between his legs? Because I have. I’ve seen who he is when no one’s looking, and
nothing
you’ve just said applies to that man.”

King Tracian’s eyebrows rose and Paerin Clark coughed in a way that didn’t mean he had a tickle in his throat. Cithrin ignored him.

“You’re treating Geder like he’s political or religious. Like he’s the kind of man who runs kingdoms. He’s not that.”

“Perhaps the magistra will enlighten me about the kind of man he is,” the king said.

“He’s… he’s sweet and he’s lonesome and violent and he’s monstrously thin-skinned.” Cithrin paused, looking for the words that would explain what she’d seen in Geder Palliako. “He’s a bad loan.”

Komme Medean grunted as if struck by a sudden pain. Paerin looked somber.

“I don’t understand,” the king said. “Have you given him money?”

“No,” Cithrin said. “And I wouldn’t. There are things you see when you’ve made a mistake. You don’t always, but often, and they mean that the money’s gone. You have a man who takes his payment and then starts to spend like he’s rich. He looks at the money and he sees the coins, not the payments he’s making to have them. He spends as if it was his money and there would be more. That’s Geder. He’s one of those boys who needed a mother in order to grow up and didn’t get one. Now he has power and no restraint. He’ll spend coin. He’ll spend lives.

And there’s no one to stop him. He’s drawing from the biggest coffer outside of Far Syramys. “And when things go wrong, a bad loan denies it. Everything is someone else’s fault. Antea is already looking for who to blame when the starving starts. I’ve heard it in the taprooms. And it won’t be Geder.”

Cithrin sat back. She found she was out of breath. That was interesting.

“Komme?” the king said.

“It’s a valid perspective,” Komme Medean said. “But I’m not sure what we’d do with it.”

A soft knock interrupted them, and a servant came in bearing silver cups of cold water. No one spoke until he left.

“Magistra,” the king said. “If I were to agree to your reading of the text, what would you recommend?”

Cithrin considered. War wasn’t something she knew about. It wasn’t something she studied. And yet her opinion was asked, and after the line about lying down with Geder, it seemed late to be demure.

“I would recommend gathering forces together now. Don’t act against him, but make your predictions about where he’ll go and share them discreetly with allies. If the predictions start to come true, you’ll seem like the one who knew what trades to make before the ships arrived, and everyone will want to know what you knew.”

“I have friends in Sarakal,” Komme said. “Not business, but friends and with connections. I could send letters discussing things. At least we could see what people are saying near that border.”

“We could make closer relations with Antea,” the king suggested. “Your delegation was informal. If I put together a party. If I went myself.”

“Don’t do that,” Cithrin said. “If he feels betrayed, he’ll bite you harder than if you were an enemy from the start.”

“No offense,” the king said. “That might put you in an uncomfortable position.”

“That occurred to me,” Cithrin said.

Around the table, they were all silent. The air of confidence and reassurance was gone as if it had never been. Cithrin drank her cup of water, enjoying the cool of it, and the faint taste of lemon.

“Is there anything that can be done?” the king asked.

“Watch. Wait. Hope he overreaches himself early on and badly,” Cithrin said. “The best you can say about Geder is he’s the sort of man who makes good enemies.”

Clara

O

ver the days that followed, Clara was slowly convinced that in a way—in many ways—she’d died with Dawson on that terrible floor in front of all their friends and relations. She couldn’t watch the violence, but she’d heard it. The sounds of it might have been worse than the actual seeing. But perhaps not. Everything that happened afterward made more sense to her if she thought of herself as dead when it happened. Walking from the Kingspire, widow of only a few minutes with no one she knew speaking to her. None of the women she’d known all her life to say a kind word. The only one who had touched her, offered comfort, had been the thin, pale merchant girl whose name she’d forgotten as soon as it had been said.

She’d been in a daze, lost even to her own mind. Doing the things that her body felt needed to be done. Visiting old friends and enemies. Well, that was what a ghost did, wasn’t it? It made perfect sense, seen in that light.

The pain that came after Vincen Coe’s reappearance wasn’t the pangs of death, then. Those were done. These were the pains of being reborn, and much like the first time, they were terrible. She woke in the middle of the night weeping until she couldn’t breathe. If she called out for him, Vincen would come and sit at the foot of her bed, but she tried not to call. There was nothing for him to do there except lose sleep. And eventually the seizure faded and she slept her normal sleep.

She found herself expecting to see Dawson. Especially, she found herself trying to think how she would explain being there in her night clothes with the family huntsman sitting beside her in nothing but his hose. And then she would correct herself. She would never explain herself to Dawson because he was dead. And then she’d weep for a bit and move on with her day. It wasn’t strength that kept her going on; it was a lack of options.

“You going out again today, ma’am,” the house woman said. Her name was Abatha Coe as it turned out. One of apparently several dozen cousins that the Coe clan had spread throughout Antea. Before Abatha, Clara hadn’t really considered whether Vincen had a family. He was a servant, and apparently she’d thought that servants sprang out of the walls when you wanted one and left again when they got pregnant. Looking back, she hoped she hadn’t been too much the noble lady.

“Yes, I am.”

“Back for lunch?”

“I doubt it. I’ll be walking nearly to the Kingspire, and I don’t think I can manage that without something fortifying while I’m there.”

“Apples just come in,” Abatha said. “Go all right with cheese.”

It had taken Clara three days to realize that this was not only an offer, but the only offer that Abatha was likely to make. This time, she didn’t say
That sounds lovely
or
Really
don’t bother about me
. If she had, the conversation would simply have ended, and her without apples or cheese.

“Thank you,” she said. It was safe because it didn’t require a response and it was good for her because her ghost-self still thought she should be polite.

She wore a grey mourning dress and her hair wrapped in a cloth, and she walked with the air of a woman who knew where she was going. Down the narrow, shit-stinking street to the broader but still nameless way that would eventually give way near the Prisoner’s Span. In all the years she’d lived in Camnipol, she’d almost never crossed the Prisoner’s Span, and she didn’t care for it much now. The groaning and wailing from the cages hanging beneath it upset her, and once she was upset it could be difficult to stop. She’d been weak and wailing on a bridge once already. It was quite enough.

But it was the quickest path, and now that there were no carriages or litters or palanquins, the number of steps began to matter.

Vincen was about today too. Looking for work, he said. She felt oddly guilty about that. She was supposed to provide for him, not the other way around. He was her servant, only of course he wasn’t. And she couldn’t very well ask Jorey to give her money for his support. It would have felt too much like having her son support her lover, which was ridiculous because Coe had kissed her exactly once, and that was a lifetime ago. But even she had to admit that between his constant, gentle, dog-loyal presence, her own painful, slow remaking of herself, and the fact that he was an undeniably beautiful man, it was growing somewhat less ridiculous.

She reached the far side of the Prisoner’s Span and looked back. It was much shorter looking at than actually crossing. She took one of the apples. It was red and ripe and she knew that she shouldn’t eat it now, because she’d only be hungry on her way back and not have it. The first bite was tart and sweet and lovely. The second was too.

Her first stop was a baker’s that made its trade at the point where another dozen steps would have made it too unfashionable to go to. It was literally the last place one of her old friends would look for her. Ogene Faskellan was a distant sort of cousin at best, but she was hopeless when it came to knitting and Clara had always been sure to change the activity when she was with the party so that she never had to. Small kindnesses, it turned out, paid large returns.

“Clara, you look wonderful,” Ogene said, rising from the little table. “Please, let me get you something. A little to eat.”

“No,” Clara said. “You’re doing far too much for me already. I don’t want to feel any more a charity than I am.”

“A bite of this?” Ogene asked, holding up a plate with soft white pastry and a red cream that smelled of strawberries.

“Just a bite,” she said, “and tell me, have you heard from Elisia?”

The air in the bakery smelled of cinnamon and sugar, and Clara spent her last coin on a cup of lemon tea that tasted sharp and wonderful. For the better part of an hour, Clara took what news she could of her children. Jorey and Sabiha were fighting, which was to be expected given how hard the season had been. With luck they would get through it. It didn’t help that Barriath had vanished one day for places unknown. Ogene had heard that a letter had come to a woman of his acquaintance in Estinport from him, and that the courier had spoken with the accents of Cabral. Elisia was still away with her husband and his family, waiting until the shame of ever having been a Kalliam faded. The good news was that Vicarian’s position within the priesthood had been secured permanently. He was being sent to Kavinpol, which wasn’t his first choice, but regardless, he would not suffer worse for being his father’s son. It was a small victory, and she savored it more than the strawberry cream.

When, too soon, Ogene had to leave, Clara kissed her cheek and hugged her, mindful to do it in the bakery and not on the street where someone might see. Ogene’s reputation had to be safeguarded as well. It was the world they lived in.

After that, it was north toward Lord Skestinin’s little house, dodging carts whose wide wooden wheels tossed up the muck of the street and the dogs who would follow her for half a mile, sniffing at her in hopes that she would share her food with them. She’d remind them that they didn’t like apples, then she’d try and the dog would look reproachful and hurt, and then think how funny it was and that she’d have to tell Dawson, and then she’d weep for a while and go on.

She worried how Jorey would do over the winter. He’d have to go to Estinport. He couldn’t come to Osterling Fells. Poor Jorey, being saved by the girl he’d been saving. It all went back to Vanai, of course, and the guilt of having killed all those people at Palliako’s request.

She slowed as she reached the better part of the city. The ones she knew. There was a temptation to make an extra stop, drop in on someone she used to know, if only to see how they received her. It might only have been her imagination or a reflection of her particular life and place that the high courts of Camnipol were looking more anxious than they had even during the war. There was a pinched look to people’s faces, and more often, she was seeing the wirehaired priests in their brown robes walking among the black cloaks that Palliako appeared to have made into a permanent fashion. Sparrows and crows, Dawson had called them. Every now and then he had managed a truly memorable phrase.