The King's Blood

She laughed and sat on a red silk divan. It occurred to Geder that she wasn’t leaving. The combination of unease and excitement was slightly nauseating. He was talking to a woman in his own house with her chaperone present. There was no transgression against etiquette or propriety, but his blood raced through his veins a little faster all the same. Geder licked his lips nervously.

“So what are his plans for the season’s opening. The usual feast, I assume.”

“A fireshow,” Sanna Daskellin said. “He’s found this marvelous cunning man from Borja who can build structures to channel flame and make it burn in all different sorts of colors. I’ve seen him practicing.” She leaned toward him, a small shift of weight that indicated a shared secret. “It’s beautiful, but it smells of sulfur.”

Geder laughed. Behind the girl, the Tralgu chaperone remained impassive as a guard at a counting house. Geder moved toward a leather chair, but the girl slid to one side of her divan and tapped gently against the abandoned half, inviting him. Geder hesitated, then sat at her side, careful not to touch her. Her smile was made of sun and shadows, and it left Geder feeling both uncomfortably aroused and subtly mocked.

“Isn’t it awkward sharing a courtyard with Curtin Issandrian?” she asked.

“Not particularly,” Geder said. “Of course, he hasn’t even returned yet. I suppose it could be once he’s back. He might be a bit unpleasant to be near. Could be some conflict.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Sanna said. “Issandrian may be ignorant enough to keep company with traitors, but he knows a lion when it looks at him.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know about that,” Geder said. Sanna’s expression invited him to smile along, and he found it very difficult not to. “I mean… I suppose he would.” He made a claw of his fingers and scratched at the air. “Grrr,” he said.

Sanna’s laughter brought her a degree nearer to him. She smelled of rosewater and musk. When her fingers brushed his arm, Geder’s throat felt oddly thick.

“Oh, I’m terribly thirsty. Aren’t you?” she asked.

“I am,” Geder said almost before he understood the question.

“Seribina?”

“Ma’am?” the Tralgu woman asked.

“Could you go fetch us some water?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

But she’s your chaperone, Geder thought, then bit back before he could say it. He was going to be alone with a woman. A woman of high blood was clearly arranging things so that she could spend a few minutes alone in his house with him. He felt the first insistent stirrings of an erection and ground his lip hard between his teeth to check it. The Tralgu woman moved for the door, as calm and stately as a ship in the ocean. Geder was torn between the impulse to let her leave and the one to call her back.

The issue was taken out of his hands.

“My lord,” the master of house said, appearing at the door just before the Tralgu reached it. “I am sorry to interrupt. Sir Darin Ashford has arrived and requests a moment of your time.”

“Ashford?” Sanna asked. The surprise in her voice made her sound like a different woman, and a more serious one. She looked at Geder with less coquetry and greater respect. “I didn’t know you were entertaining the ambassador.”

“Favor,” Geder said. Words seemed difficult to come by. “For a friend.”

The perfect skin went smooth. Geder had the sense—possibly accurate or possibly imagined—that some complex calculation was happening behind her deep black eyes.

“Well,” she said. “I can’t keep you from affairs of state. But say again that you’ll come to Father’s party?”

“I will,” Geder said, rising to his feet as she did. “I promise. I’ll be there.”

“I have witnesses,” Sanna said with a laugh and gestured to the servants. She gave her hand to him again, and Geder kissed it gently.

“Let me see you out,” he said.

“Why thank you, Baron Ebbingbaugh,” she said, offering her arm.

They walked together from the back of the mansion to the wide stone stairs that led down to her carriage, an old-fashioned design drawn by horses instead of slaves. Geder gave her up to the care of the footmen with a bone- deep regret and also relief. Sanna stepped up and let herself be seated behind a cascade of lace. The smell of rose and musk returned to him, but it was only an illusion or a particularly visceral memory. The horses clattered out to the courtyard. He looked past them to Curtin Issandrian’s empty mansion and a sense of unease trickled down his spine.

“You play a dangerous game, my lord,” an unfamiliar voice behind him said.

The man was a Firstblood with pale brown hair and an open, guileless expression. He wore riding leathers and a wool cloak entirely covered in patterned embroidery that seemed understated until Geder looked at it closely, and then seemed like a boast. Geder didn’t need to be told who he was. Sir Darin Ashford was his own introduction.

“My Lord Ambassador,” Geder said.

Ashford nodded, but his gaze was set farther out. To the courtyard.

“Lord Daskellin’s girl, isn’t she? Beautiful woman. I remember when she first entered society. She was all knees and elbows back then. Amazing the difference three years will make.”

“She was here to deliver her father’s invitation,” Geder said, defensive without knowing precisely what he was defending against.

“I’m sure she was, and she won’t be the last. A baron without a baroness is a rare and precious thing, and protector of the prince carries as much prestige as a wardenship. Maybe more. You’ll have to step clever or you’ll find yourself married before you know who you’re married to.” Ashford’s smile was charming. “Is the prince here, by the way?”

“He’s not,” Geder said. “I thought it was poor form to have him too close to hand when you were here.”

Something like chagrin passed over the ambassador’s face.

“Well, that doesn’t bode well for me. It’s hard to ask for your help when you already think I’m an assassin.”

“I didn’t say that,” Geder said.

“No, you acted on it,” Ashford said. “And that, Lord Protector, very much matches your reputation. Should we retire inside?”

Geder didn’t take him back to the same room. Having the voice and face of Asterilhold in the same room where Sanna Daskellin had been felt like dirtying something Geder didn’t want soiled. Instead, they went to the private study where Feldin Maas had killed his wife Phelia and all his elaborate, clandestine plans to join Antea and Asterilhold with her. The significance was lost on Ashford, but Geder knew.

Geder sat on a wide-set chair, leaving an upholstered bench for Ashford. A servant boy brought in a carafe of watered wine and two glasses, poured one into the others, and retreated without speaking or being spoken to. Ashford sipped the wine first.

“Thank you for seeing me, Lord Palliako,” he said. “I’d have understood if you’d refused me.”

“Jorey Kalliam spoke for you.”

“Yes. I’d heard you two were friends. Served in Vanai under Alan Klin, didn’t you?”

“We did,” Geder said.

“Klin, Issandrian, Maas. The triad, and Feldin Maas the only one who didn’t get thrown out of Camnipol that summer. King Simeon sent Dawson Kalliam away instead.”

“Your point?”

Ashford looked pained and sat forward, the glass of wine cradled between his fingertips.

“King Simeon is a good man,” Ashford said. “No one doubts that. King Lechan is too. But no king can be better than his advisors. If he’d known then what he does now, Dawson Kalliam wouldn’t have been exiled and Feldin Maas wouldn’t have been let stay. Simeon needs good men to guide him. Men like you and Kalliam.”

Geder crossed his arms.

“Go on,” he said.

“His son was threatened. Go to any man, peasant or priest or high noble, hold a knife to his child’s throat, and he’ll kill you to keep his own safe. It’s nature. You saved the prince, and Simeon saw justice done when he