The guard captain put a hand on Ashford’s shoulder.
“You have to come with me now, my lord.”
“You cannot do this!” Ashford shouted. Fear fueled the words.
“I can,” Geder said.
Ashford fought, but not for long. When the door had closed behind him, the high men of Antea looked at each other. For a long time, no one spoke.
“My lords,” Geder Palliako, Lord Regent of Imperial Antea said, “we are at war.”
Dawson sat on his couch, the leather creaking under him. Jorey and Barriath were in chairs opposite him, and his favorite hunting dog whined at his knee, forcing her damp nose under his palm.
“He was right before,” Barriath said. “About Feldin Maas. He was right. He knows things. Maybe… maybe he isn’t wrong. Jorey? You served with him.”
“I did,” Jorey said, and the dread in the words was enough.
“We can’t have done this,” Dawson said. “I can’t believe we’ve done this.”
“It isn’t all us,” Barriath said. “If Palliako’s right—”
“I don’t mean the war. I don’t even mean violating the sanctity of the ambassador. The man was a disrespectful, pompous ass. I don’t mean any of that.”
“Then what, Father?” Jorey asked.
In Dawson’s memory, the huge priest’s head moved, a finger’s width one way, and then the other, as Palliako watched. There was no doubt in his mind. The priest had been telling Palliako what to do, and Geder had done it. Simeon had died, and they had given the Severed Throne to a religious zealot who wasn’t even a subject of the crown. The thought nauseated him. If he’d woken in the morning to find the seas had floated into the air and the fish flying where the birds had been, it wouldn’t have been more upsetting than this. Everything was out of joint. The proper order of the kingdom was shattered.
“We have to make this right,” he said. “We have to fix this.”
A scratch came at the door, and it opened a handspan. A frightened-looking footman leaned in.
“There’s a guest, my lords,” he said.
“I’m not receiving them,” Dawson said.
“It’s Lord Regent Palliako, my lord,” the footman said.
Dawson tried to catch his breath.
“Show… show him in.”
“Should we go?” Barriath asked.
“No,” Dawson said, though the proper answer was likely yes. He wanted his family with him.
Geder came in still wearing the same red velvet, though the golden circlet was gone. He looked as he had before, a small man with a tendency toward weight. Uncertain smile, apologetic before he had anything to apologize for.
“Lord Kalliam,” he said. “Thank you for seeing me. Jorey. Barriath. Good to see you both too. I hope Sabiha’s well?”
“She’s fine, Lord Regent,” Jorey said, and Palliako waved it away.
“Please. Geder. You can always call me Geder. We’re friends.”
“All right,” Jorey said.
Palliako sat, and Dawson realized he and his boys hadn’t risen. They should have.
“I’ve come to ask a favor,” Palliako said. “You see, I served under Ternigan? And of course Alan Klin, and the others, served under him. Everything about Vanai was badly done. My part too, though I don’t like to say it, could probably have been done better.”
“Anyway, the short of it is, I don’t trust him. You and your family have always been kind to me. You’ve been my patron, so to speak, when I really didn’t know my way around court. So now that I’m in need of a Lord Marshal, on the one hand it makes sense to appoint Ternigan, only because he’s got the experience most recently. But I would rather it be you.”
Dawson sat forward, his head swimming.
Palliako had betrayed his crown and kingdom, had given the reins of power to a goatherd, begun a war with Asteril-hold that was doomed to slaughter hundreds or thousands on both sides of the border, and now he had come to deliver control of the army into Dawson’s hands. And he was presenting it as asking a favor.
It took Dawson almost a full minute to find the words.
“Lord Regent, I would be honored.”
Marcus
Sometime, centuries before, someone had built a low wall along the top of the rise. In the moonlight, the scattered rocks reminded Marcus of knucklebones. He knelt, one hand on the dew-slick grass. In the cove below him, three ships rested at anchor. Shallow-bottomed with paired masts. Faster and more maneuverable than the round-bellied trade ships that they hunted. One showed a mark on the side where she’d been struck not too many weeks before, the new timber of the patch bright and unweathered.
On the sand, a cookfire still burned, its orange glow the only warmth in the spring night. From where they stood, Marcus counted a dozen structures—more than tents, less than huts—scattered just above the tide line. A wellestablished camp, then. That was good. A half dozen stretchedleather boats rested near the water.
Yardem Hane grunted softly and pointed a wide hand to the east. A tree a hundred feet or so from the water towered up toward the sky. A glimmer, moonlight on metal, less than a third of the way to its tip showed where the sentry perched. Marcus pointed out at the ships. High in the rigging of the one nearest the shore, another dark figure.
Yardem held up two fingers, wide brows rising in question.
Marcus shook his head, holding up a third finger.
The pair sat still in the shadows made darker by the spray of fallen stone. The moon shifted slowly in its arc. The movement was subtle. A single branch on the distant tree that moved in the breeze more slowly. Marcus pointed. Yardem flicked an ear silently; he wore no earrings when they were scouting. Marcus looked over the cove one last time, cataloging it as best he could. They faded back down the rise, into the shadows. They walked north, and then west. They didn’t speak until they’d traveled twice as far as their low voices would carry.
“How many do you make out?” Marcus asked.
Yardem spat thoughtfully.
“Not more than seventy, sir,” he said.
“That’s my count too.”
The path was hardly more than a deer trail. Thin spaces in the trees. It wouldn’t be many weeks before the leaves of summer choked the path, but tonight their steps were muffled by well-rotted litter and a spring’s soft moss. The moon was no more than a scattering of pale dapples in the darkness under the leaves.
“We could go back to the city,” Yardem said. “Raise a hundred men. Maybe a ship.”
“You think Pyk would pay out the coin?”
“Could borrow it from someone.”
In the brush, a small animal skittered, fleeing before them as if they were a fire.
“The one farthest from shore was riding lower than the others,” Marcus said.
“Was.”
“We come in with a ship, they’ll see us. It’ll be empty water by the time we’re there.”
Yardem was quiet apart from a small grunt when his head bumped against a low branch. Marcus kept his eyes on the darkness, not really seeing. His legs shifted and moved easily. His mind gnawed at the puzzle.
“If they see us coming on land,” he said, “they haul out boats and wave to us from the sea. We trap them on land in a fair fight with the men we have now, they have numbers and territory on us. We wait to get more sword-
