Geder might have found it more difficult to hide his subterfuge if his failure hadn’t been assumed from the start. Instead, he and his half-loyal soldiers limped back into the city, gave their thin reports, and were dismissed. Geder returned to the weak stream of his duties; enforcing taxes, arresting loyalists, and generally harassing the people of Vanai in the name of Alan Klin.
“I can’t pay this,” the old Timzinae said, looking up from the taxation order. “The prince had us all pay twice over before the war, and now you want as much as he did.”
“It isn’t me,” Geder said.
“I don’t see anyone else in here.”
The shop squatted in a dark street. Scraps of leather lay here and there. A brass tailor’s dummy wrapped in soft black hide that still smelled slightly of the tanner’s yard loomed near the oilcloth window. As armor, leather that thin would be useless. Barely better than cloth, and probably worse than good quilting. As court costume, on the other hand, it would look quite impressive.
“You want it?” the Timzinae asked.
“Sorry, what?”
“The cloak. Commissioned by the Master of Canals, then he vanished in the night just before”-he held up the taxation notice in his black-scaled hand-“our liberation by the noble empire. It’s not done, and I’ve got enough of that dye lot left I could recut it to fit you.”
Geder licked his lips. He couldn’t. Someone would ask where he’d gotten it, and he’d have to explain. Or lie. If he said he’d bought it on the cheap, maybe while he was on the southern roads or from one of the little caravans they’d searched…
“Could you really recut it?”
The Timzinae’s smile was a marvel of cynicism.
“Could you misplace this?” he asked, nodding at the paper.
For a moment, Geder felt the echo of his pleasure riding away from the smugglers, gems and jewels hidden in his shirt. One lost tax notice. At worst it would keep Klin’s coffers a little more sparse, his reports back to Camnipol a little less promising. It would keep the leatherman in his shop for another season; if the man had asked, Geder would probably have “lost” the notice even without the promise of a good cloak.
Besides which, compared to what he’d already done, the twenty silver coins lost to Klin were like a raindrop in the ocean.
“Putting an honest man out of work can’t be to anyone’s benefit,” Geder said. “I’m sure we can work this through.”
“Stand up on that stool, then,” the Timzinae said. “I’ll make sure the drape’s best for your frame.”
Winter was dry season in Vanai. The walls of the canals showed high-water marks feet above the thin ice and sluggish, dark flow. Fallen leaves skittered along the bases of walls, and trees stood bare and dead in the gardens and arbors. The icicles that hung from the wooden eaves of the houses grew thinner by the day, and new snow didn’t come. The nights were bitter, the days merely cold. The city waited for the thaw, the melt, the rush of freshwater and life that came from a spring still months away. Everything was dead or sleeping. Geder walked through the street bouncing on his toes a little, his guardsmen following behind.
When he’d first returned, Geder had locked his doors, taken out the cloth pouch that he’d bought in Gilea, and spread the gems and jewels on his bed. Glittering in the dim light, they’d posed a problem. He had enough available wealth now to make his day-to-day life in Vanai more comfortable, but not as coin. He could sell them, of course, but giving them to gem merchants within the city risked someone recognizing a stone or a piece of metalwork. And if Klin or one of his favorites noticed that Geder had suddenly more coin than he should, nothing good could follow.
He’d answered the problem by sending his squire out to exchange only the most innocuous stones-three round garnets and a diamond in undistinguished silver. The purse of coins had silver and bronze, copper, and two thin rounds of gold frail enough to bend with his fingers. For his lifestyle, it was a fortune, and he carried a portion of it now in his satchel along with a book, ready for his last errand of the day.
The academy looked over a narrow square. In its greater days, it had been a center for the children of the lower nobility and the higher merchant class to hire tutors or commission speeches. The carved oaken archway that led into its great hall was marked with the names of the scholars and priests who had given lectures there over the century and a half since its founding. Within, the air smelled of wax and sandalwood, and sunlight filtered through high horizontal windows, catching motes of dust suspended in the air. Somewhere nearby, a man recited poetry in a deep, resonant voice. He breathed the air of the place.
Footsteps padded up behind him. The clerk was a thin Southling man, his huge dark eyes dominating his face. His body spoke of deference and fear.
“May I help you, my lord? There isn’t a problem?”
“I wanted to find a researcher,” Geder said. “My squire was told this was the place to come.”
The Southling blinked his huge black eyes.
“I… That is, my lord…” The clerk shook himself. “Really?”
“Yes,” Geder said.
“You haven’t come to arrest someone? Or levy fines?”
“No.”
“Well. Just a moment, my lord,” the Southling said. “Let me find someone that might be of use. If you’ll come with me?”
In the side chamber, Geder sat on a wooden bench worn smooth by decades of use. The recitation of poems went on, the voice fainter now, the words made unintelligible. Geder loosened his belt, shifting in his seat. He had the almost physical memory of waiting for his own tutors, and pushed back the irrational anxiety that he might not be able to answer the scholar’s questions. The door slid open, and a Firstblood man sidled in. Geder popped to his feet.
“Good afternoon. My name is Geder Palliako.”
“You’re known in the city, Lord Palliako,” the man said. “Tamask said something about wanting a researcher?”
“Yes,” Geder said, taking the book from his side and holding it out. “I’ve been translating this book, only it’s not very well presented. I want someone to find more like it, but different.”
The scholar took the book gently, as if it were a colorful but unknown insect, and opened the pages. Geder fidgeted.
“It’s about the fall of the Dragon Empire,” he said. “It’s couched as history, but I’m more interested in speculative essay?”
The sound of ancient pages hushing against each other competed with the distant voice and the murmur of a breeze outside the windows. The scholar leaned close to the book, frowning.
“What are you proposing, Lord Palliako?”
“I’ll pay for any books you can find on the period. If they can be bought outright, I’ll pay a reward. If they have to be copied, I can commission a scribe, but that means a smaller payment for the researcher. I’m looking particularly for considerations of the fall of the dragons, and especially there’s a passage in there about something called the Righteous Servant? I’d like more about that.”
“May I ask why, lord?”
Geder opened his mouth, then closed it. He’d never had anyone to talk with about the question, never had to explain himself.
“It’s about… truth. And deceit. And I thought it was interesting,” he said gamely.
“Would you also be interested in rhetorics on the subject? Asinia Secundus wrote a fine examination of the nature of truth during the Second Alfin Occupation.”
“That’s philosophy? I’ll look at it, but I’d really rather it was an essay.”
“You mentioned that. Speculative essay,” the scholar said, the faintest sigh in his voice.
“Is that a problem?” Geder asked.
“Not at all, my lord,” the scholar said with a forced smile. “We would be honored to help.”
My contention is this: given the lack of primary documents from that time, our best practice is to examine those who later claimed the mantle of the Dragon Empire, and by considering their actions infer the nature of the
