“We’ve won,” Daskellin said, turning away from the window and striding into the room. “You played your hand brilliantly. You lured Issandrian into a thrust he couldn’t follow through, then cut his conspiracy down. Now he’s in disgrace. His inner circle is exiled. Stripped of lands and titles. There’s no saying who will take Prince Aster as ward, but it won’t be any of them. There won’t be a farmer’s council in our lifetimes. I’m sorry it came at a price to you, but I swear that your name will be praised as a hero while you’re gone.”
“What good’s winning battles when the war’s lost?” Dawson said. “Did you actually come here to celebrate, Daskellin? Or is this how you gloat?”
“Gloat?”
“Odderd Faskellin was a rabbit and a coward, but he had high blood. He died yesterday. In Camnipol, and by foreign hands. That hasn’t happened in centuries. And how did Simeon reply? Increased taxes. Petty exile. A few minor lands and titles shuffled about.”
Daskellin leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. Grey smoke spilled from his lips and nostrils.
“What would you have had him do?”
“Slaughter them all himself. Bind them, take sword in hand, and take their heads with his own hand,” Dawson said.
“It sounds like you’re missing Palliako already,” Canl said dryly. Dawson ignored him.
“An armed company in the streets? It’s treason against the throne, and to answer it with less than death is one step short of open surrender. He made himself a mask of fierceness, and all it did was point out how frightened he is. You should have seen it. Simeon strutting and raging and calling for an ending. It was like watching a shepherd boy trying to shout down wolves.”
“Frightened? Of whom?”
“The power backing Issandrian. He’s afraid of Asterilhold,” Dawson said, and then pointed an accusing finger at Daskellin himself. “And he’s afraid of Northcoast.”
The imitation of a smile bent Daskellin’s lips and he took his pipe from his mouth.
“I am not Northcoast, old friend,” he said. “And if consideration of the reactions of the other courts and kingdoms brought King Simeon to a place of greater mercy, that’s wisdom on his part.”
“That’s permission for every landholder in the kingdom to spread his loyalty as widely as he can,” Dawson said. “As long as answering to a duchess in Asterilhold or a bank in Northcoast makes us safer than standing by Antea, Simeon won’t have a court of his own. He wants to keep the kingdom off the dragon’s path so badly that he’s walking down it.”
Daskellin knelt by the fire grate, knocking the bowl of his pipe against the soot-stained brick. A rain of ashes fell from it.
“We disagree,” he said, “but there can be room for a little differences between allies. You’re right, of course, that even with Issandrian’s cabal hobbled, the danger to the kingdom hasn’t entirely passed. Whether you believe me or not, I’d thought to reassure you that I would keep working during your exile.”
“By selling us to the Medean bank?”
“By seeing that King Simeon has the support and loyalty he needs.”
“Spoken like a diplomat,” Dawson said.
Daskellin bristled, and then as Dawson watched, gathered his temper in. He tucked his pipe into his belt and stood. The smell of old smoke still hung in the room.
“It’s a dark day for you,” Canl said, “so I’m going to take that for what you said and ignore what you meant by it. Whatever you think, I didn’t come to gloat.”
The two stood for a moment, the silence between them stretching. Canl Daskellin made a rueful half-smile, then walked out, putting a hand on Dawson’s shoulder as he passed. Dawson listened to the footsteps draw away, drowning in the noise of his household being uprooted. He stood a moment longer, looking out the window without seeing the early summer trees beyond it. Without hearing the birds or the servants or the whining of dogs.
He turned away.
Dawson left in a single open carriage. He sat on the forward seat, looking back toward the city, Clara sat at his side. Vincen Coe on the bench beside the teamster. Carts with his belongings would come more slowly, but they would come. The path to Osterling Fells would carry them over the dragon’s roads for half a day, and the dragon’s jade under their wheels was smoother than the streets of Camnipol.
“There isn’t any chance of coming upon them, is there?” Clara asked.
“Who?”
“One of them,” Clara said. “Lord Issandrian or Lord Klin. Or Lord Maas. It would by entirely too awkward, I think. I mean really, what does one say? I can’t see inviting them to share a meal, but it would be rude not to. Do you think we should tell the driver to keep distance if he sees another carriage? If we can pretend not to have realized who they are, we can all keep to form. Unless it’s Maas. Phelia must be in ruins over this.”
Despite everything, Dawson smiled. He took his wife’s hand in his. Her fingers were thicker than when he’d first known her. His own, rougher. Time had changed them both in some ways, and in some ways left them untouched. From the first day of their marriage, before even, he’d known she saw a different world than he did. It was part of what he loved in her.
“I’m sure we won’t,” he said. “Issandrian and Klin won’t be taking this road, and there’s no reason for Maas to leave court. Not now.”
Clara sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“My poor man,” she said.
He craned his neck a bit, kissing the hair just above her ear, then put his arm around her shoulders.
“It won’t be so bad,” he said, trying to sound as if he believed it. “I missed the winter in Osterling Fells. This can make up for it. We’ll summer at home, run back to Camnipol for the closing of court, and then turn back for the winter.”
“Can we?” Clara said. “We could stay through the winter if you’d rather. We don’t have to make two trips.”
“No, love,” he said. “It’s not just to see the autumn pageant. I’ll want to see how things have played in court before winter anyway. It only seems like I’m indulging you. I’m really a selfish boor.”
Clara chuckled. A few miles later, she began snoring gently. Coe, noticing, handed down a wool blanket in silence, and Dawson covered Clara without rousing her. The sun sank behind them, reddening. Shadows spilled across the landscape, and the trilling, shrill birds of evening announced themselves.
Dawson was leaving the field of battle, but the fight would go on without him. Issandrian, Maas, Klin. They weren’t killed, nor had they acted alone. Maas and his allies in court would do everything in their power to see their names raised again to respectability. Daskellin would doubtless take the helm of Dawson’s own group, or at least that part of it that could stomach the bland little banker from Northcoast. Simeon would dance between the blades and tell himself there was a place at the middle where everything could balance, that peace could be kept if he only never made a stand.
A weak king might survive if he had a loyal court, but in casting Dawson out, Simeon had exiled the only man who had truly championed him. Nothing good could come now. The court was being led through an idiot’s dance, made up of men with their own agendas. Shortsighted, self-serving idiots.
It would take a miracle to redeem King Simeon now. The best hope of the kingdom was that Prince Aster be sent as ward of a family that could show him what kingship was better than the king himself. Dawson indulged himself for a moment in the fantasy of taking the prince under his own wing and teaching him what Simeon could not. Clara murmured in her sleep, pulling the blanket more tightly around her.
The sun dipped down to the horizon, the walls and towers of Camnipol obscured by the power of its fire. For a moment, Dawson imagined the light came from a great conflagration. Not the sunset, but Camnipol burning. It had the weight of prophecy.
Shortsighted, self-serving idiots. A burning city.
Dawson wondered, almost idly, where Geder Palliako had gotten to.
Cithrin
