The Spider's War (The Dagger and the Coin series) (35 page)

“Have them ready to move,” Marcus said. “We’ll send word where to take them when the time comes.”

Pyre nodded sharply and motioned to his apprentices. Marcus and Yardem made their way back to the street. Their rooms were halfway across the city from here, and Marcus’s feet felt sore. When they crossed the oiled and arching wood of the Silver Bridge, Yardem turned toward the courtyard of a taproom there without having to ask Marcus whether he wanted to stop.

The building was three levels tall, each narrower than the one below, with benches and tables on each. The walls were an unlikely yellow that caught the sunlight and made the whole place seem more cheerful. Beyond, the Division gaped, a canyon that was also a city. A Firstblood boy with black skin and hair brought them cider and took their coin.
It was decent enough drink, but the pleasure of just sitting still was better than the best alcohol. At least for the time being.

“We’re going to need to a way to move through the Kingspire without drawing notice.”

“There are servants there,” Yardem said.

“We can’t use them. The more people we involve, the more likely someone’s going to step wrong.”

“I meant we could hire on,” Yardem said.

“Oh,” Marcus said. “Yes, there’s that.”

“Only?”

“It’s nothing. Just sits wrong to be a servant in Geder Palliako’s house.”

“Could see it as playing the role,” the Tralgu said.

“I’m too old to start worrying about dignity. You think Cary and the other players will be able to pass too?”

“Imagine so,” Yardem said. “They’ve done worse before now. But I can’t see them crewing the weapons to kill a dragon.”

“They won’t need to kill him. We just have to hold him in place until the locals can join the fray. This whole thing would be simpler if we could actually bring Karol Dannien into it on our side. There’s a perfectly capable army not a full day’s ride from here, and I can’t put it to use.”

“Life’s rich irony, sir.”

Philosophically, Marcus spat. “It strike you as odd that we’re looking to bring about peace in the world by killing a great bunch of people?”

“Think the peace part’s supposed to come after, sir.”

“That’s always the story. Ten more, a hundred more, a thousand more corpses, and we’ll be free.”

On the street, someone shouted. Another voice shouted back, and the people paused, shifting to the side to let a
carriage ride past with the banner of the goddess jouncing at its side. It clattered onto the Silver Bridge and out across the abyss.

“More priests arriving,” Yardem said.

“Ah,” Marcus replied, dryly, “I guess that means we’re doing well.”

W
hen it was over, Geder decided for the hundredth time. When Basrahip and the other priests were burned bones and ashes,
then
he’d kiss Cithrin.

It would be a moment of shared joy, after all. And it wasn’t as if she’d never kissed him before. They’d done much more. And there wouldn’t be a better time to bring her back to him. He’d have proven himself. He’d have saved the world. He’d be a hero. And in the wake of that, he would put his arm around her waist and pull her close to him, and…

It was so strange knowing she was close. That he could, if he chose, go to her anytime he wanted to, and there she would be. All his day’s work took on the feeling of dreams. He attended the wedding of Perrien Veren and Sanna Daskellin, sitting on a chair set aside for his own honor while the priest intoned a version of the rites, but Cithrin was in the city. He sat the long hours of the grand audience, listening to complaint and petition while it was really Basrahip that stood in judgment, and the hours didn’t bother him because he was borne up by his secret. And the promise of the time very soon when he’d proved himself to her.

Even apart from Cithrin’s presence, there were other little and unexpected joys. Basrahip, for example. From the moment he’d delivered his message, Geder had made a point of avoiding the great priest as much as he could. It had begun
simply enough as an effort to keep his newfound secrets secret. But with every meeting he cut short, with every meal he ate away from the great bastard’s company, Geder saw something more than curiosity rising in the priest. There was a need there, a longing to know what it was that had been revealed to Geder. For the first time, Geder had power over the priest. It wasn’t Basrahip’s world any longer. His connection to his imaginary goddess had been undermined, and in a way that put him at Geder’s feet for once. And Geder’s mind was clear now. Clear and cool as river water. He’d hardly had any more moments of killing rage like the one in the Great Bear, and the few he’d had were justified.

There was a pleasure, he thought, that came from being outside a group. Looking back, he saw that he’d always really been like that. Before his journey to the Sinir Kushku, he’d been excluded from the charmed circle of Alan Klin and Feldin Maas and Curtin Issandrian. It had ached for him only because he’d wanted so badly to be accepted, not because belonging gave him anything worth having. The moments of authentic pleasure he’d had in his life had all come from being apart. Reading alone in Vanai, for instance. Or the dark days after Dawson Kalliam’s insurrection, hiding with Aster and Cithrin, being protected by her friends who—through that—became his own. He’d always been at his best when he was his own man. Funny that it had taken him so long to understand it. He had been—still was—the Lord Regent of the greatest empire in the world. His commands, life and death. And what made him happiest in the whole time he could remember was that Cithrin was here, and Cary and Hornet and Mikel. Jorey’s mother and the bank’s mercenaries. And among them, with
them
, him. It was as if Lord Regent Geder Palliako had ceased to be, and he was only playing the part now.

His real friends were with him at last, and he hadn’t even known how much he’d missed them until they appeared.

Marcus Wester, dressed in the bright tunic of a servant, walked across the kingdom, stepping carefully over the dragon’s road between Kavinpol and Camnipol, then looking to the south and the markers of Jorey Kalliam and Canl Daskellin and the approaching Timzinae army. The man’s expression was a strange combination of amusement and despair. Geder found himself trying to imitate it. The Tralgu—Yardem Hane—stood with his feet in the blue glass beads of the northern sea, his arms crossed before him. The news of Kavinpol’s fall hung in the air between them like smoke.

“That’s going to make things harder,” Wester said, then turned to Geder. “We’re sure about the numbers?”

“No,” Geder said. “We aren’t sure about anything. But it’s what Daskellin wrote, and I don’t have a better source.”

Wester grunted. “All right. The next question’s whether Karol Dannien’s going to turn east to join them or keep pressing north.”

“North,” Yardem said.

“That’s what I figure too.”

“Is that bad?” Geder asked.

“It’s different, anyway,” Wester said. “We’re hard-pressed for good in any of this. We’ve slowed him to a crawl, but that was with support coming from the east. With that cut, Kalliam and Daskellin… well, I don’t see a way to keep Dannien in the field. Better to have them pull back to the city. The road up the cliff on the south’s a nightmare. We could hold it with two legless men and a slingshot. The question’s whether we want the siege to come in from the east or the west. He’ll go to one of them.”

“There are still priests coming in from the Keshet,” Geder said. “All of them from Asterilhold are here already.”

“And Birancour?”

“Soon,” Geder said, hoping it was true.

“Better to have Karol dancing out west of the city, then. So draw Jorey and Daskellin here”—he pointed to a hill to the east of Camnipol, where the landscape of Antea grew rough—“and here.” A small lake halfway between Kavinpol and the city.

“But the traditional families…”

“They won’t set foot out of Kavinpol,” Marcus said. “They’ve taken themselves a city, and they know better than to push on past their strength.”

He spoke the words with a bland matter-of-factness, but Geder felt the sting of them anyway. They would know better how to fight a war than he had. Well, that was fair, after all. They didn’t have Basrahip pouring poison in their ears. It wasn’t his fault the spiders had tried to ruin everything.

“I’ll send out the orders,” Geder said. “Anything else I should tell them?”

“No,” Marcus said. And then, “There hasn’t been any word from Magistra Isadau, has there?”

“There hasn’t,” Geder said.

“All right, then no. Just have them set up where I showed you and we’ll see what comes next.”

Geder made his way out first. So far as the court was concerned, he was planning out the rest of the war by himself. With Mecelli lost in his own despair and Daskellin in the field, the only one of his advisors left was Emming. And he’d been happy enough to leave Geder to himself.

He walked out to the gardens and the private house where King Simeon had spent his last days. Geder understood the sense of keeping rooms outside the Kingspire. Walking up numberless stairs for the pleasure of looking down over city and empire could get wearisome, especially for a man in
failing health. He’d have been tempted to use the house himself just for the convenience of it, except that he’d been thinking of Basrahip’s comfort. Holding the royal apartments where he had given the big priest a way to come only halfway down from his temple. Geder didn’t care a wet slap about that anymore. Let the huge cow of a man puff his way up and down a dozen flights of stairs and have his priests haul him the rest of the way on a rope. It didn’t matter to Geder.

But the other reason not to was Aster. These wooden walls with their carved shutters, this fountain with its verdigris-taken statue of what was supposed to be a dragon, were the place Aster’s father had belonged. Better, Geder had thought, to leave it behind. Sitting with the sorrow would only make the boy sad.

And so, when Geder walked in and found Aster sitting beside the little fountain, it surprised him.

The prince wore a dark leather cloak, full cut in the style that Geder had started years ago, with a green sash that had only come into fashion this season. His hair was slicked back and dark with the water, and his face was terribly still. When Geder cleared his throat, announcing that Aster wasn’t alone any longer, the prince stiffened.

“Didn’t think to see you here,” Geder said.

“I can go if you want,” Aster said, and the raw hurt in the words felt like a slap. Geder paused.

“Is something wrong?”

“No,” Aster said. “Everything’s fine.”

The water chuckled and murmured to itself as he came nearer. He more than half expected Aster to rise up and storm away, but he didn’t. The prince only kept his gaze fixed on the water and scowled. It was an expression Geder knew well, though from the other side of it. He’d worn it enough himself.

“Is it something I did?” he asked, gently. “If it is, I’ll apologize. If it’s someone else… I don’t know. Maybe we could think of some way to make me useful?”

“It’s not you. It’s not anyone,” Aster said. And then, a moment later and softly, “It’s me.”

“Feels like that sometimes, doesn’t it?” Geder said, his words pressing gently to see where the hurt was and trying not to make it worse. “You don’t have to say if you don’t want to. But if you do want—”

“Then what?” Aster shouted. “You’ll take time out of your busy schedule to nursemaid me? Put a rag in some warm milk so I can suck on it? Why would you suddenly start caring about me?” The pain in the boy’s voice was like violence.

“I’ve been thinner on the ground than I should be,” Geder said. “That’s truth. I’m sorry for it.”

“Why be sorry? You’re busy doing all the things that I should be. If I could. Trying to keep everything from falling apart because I can’t. And all the armies and the dead men and…”

When Geder took the boy’s hand, Aster tried to pull away. He wouldn’t let him. By main force, he pulled Aster close, wrapped his arms around the boy’s shoulders, and held him. Aster struggled for a moment, trying to break free, and then the sobbing came in earnest and he held tight to Geder instead.

He’d been a fool to forget Aster. All the effort that Geder had put into avoiding Basrahip and the other false priests had also kept him away from the boy, and that was a cruelty he hadn’t intended. He thought of all the confusion and pain he’d suffered before Cithrin came. The sense of wrongness that had filled the world and his heart and everything in between. Of course Aster felt the same things, only more so
because he was young and fatherless and doomed to spend a lifetime on the throne that Geder had the chance to walk away from. In Geder’s mind, Aster was still a child, and what you didn’t point out to him he wouldn’t know. Likely he’d been wrong about that last part even when the first had been true.

“I don’t know why I feel this way,” Aster forced out between sobs. “The war. And you calling all the priests back. And spending all your time away. I know everything will be all right, but I can’t
feel
it. I can’t feel it that way.”

Geder shushed the prince gently, and rocked him back and forth the way he remembered his own father rocking him.

“It’s my fault,” Geder said. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault. I thought it would be easier for you not to know, and I was wrong. And I’m sorry. This was my fault.”

“I don’t
understand
,” Aster said. A life’s burden of longing fell in the last word, and Geder kissed the boy’s temple.

“Come with me,” he said, “and you will.”

W
atching the reunion of Cithrin and Aster was like getting to live his own moment over again. The boy’s shock and confusion and then Cary and the others sweeping him up in their arms, grinning and laughing and telling Aster how much he’d grown and changed. Aster’s smile was more the blank look of a man stunned than actual joy until Master Kit led him to the garden to explain.

In the withdrawing room with its screens and lemon candles, Cithrin looked like a picture of herself painted by an artist who loved her. She wore her white-pale hair braided back and a thin summer dress with loops of silver at the shoulders that caught the warm light of the sunlight and remade it. The murmur of voices—the apostate priest and the crown prince of Antea—drifted in on the evening’s
breeze. His father came in briefly and then made a pointed show of being needed elsewhere and left them alone again.

Geder couldn’t tell if the silence between them was comfortable or charged. He wished more than he’d ever wished anything that he knew Cithrin’s mind. A summer beetle tapped against the screen, trying to reach the candle flames, then gave up and buzzed away into the afternoon sun.

“I wanted to…” he began, and then found he didn’t know what he was going to say next.

Cithrin shifted to look at him. In truth she looked older than he remembered her. Her Cinnae blood meant she would always be unnaturally thin, unnaturally pale. He could trace the veins beneath her skin. Her smile seemed genuine, though. Encouraging, but the way she’d have encouraged Aster. To speak, perhaps. Not more than that. When the time came to do what he’d promised himself he would do, pull her close to him, enfold her in his arms, kiss her again as he had once before, it was going to take more courage than anything he’d ever done. He could feel himself balking at it even now. He found himself breathing shallowly and made a point of not glancing at her breasts. He wasn’t going to embarrass himself. He wouldn’t do that.

Through main force of will, he kept his voice from shaking. “I wanted this, you know.”

“This?” she said, the smallest lilt making the word glide a little.

“All this,” Geder said. “I wanted to be someplace nice, with you. Where we weren’t worried that someone was going to try and kill us at any moment. With a little breeze and the smell of flowers. Aster somewhere we could hear him. That’s silly, isn’t it? Like having a little family. I’m Lord Regent of Antea. I could have anything I want, but this… this is nice.”

“It is,” Cithrin said.

“I was thinking of kissing you,” he said, “but I was afraid you’d laugh at me.”

The air in the room seemed to go solid. Nothing moved. He looked down at the floor. Someone had tracked in lumps of mud and grass. He might have doen it. He couldn’t be sure. The brightness and excitement faltered in him, and settled into a kind of peace. He’d said it. It was done. He’d jumped off the bridge, and there was no taking it back now. Either he’d fall or he’d fly.

He glanced up at her. Her gaze was on him, her face expressionless. The candles danced in the pale blue of her eyes, sparks living inside ice.

“It’s stupid, I know,” he said. “But there it is. Every time I think of it, I remember coming to Suddapal thinking you’d be there. Rushing through the streets like an idiot. And then…” He pressed his lips together, as if the pressure could keep the memory at bay. Humiliation shifted in his heart like a snake in darkness. He gestured vaguely, trying to explain something to her, show something to her.