The King's Blood

east that the others would gather. It might take a month for the second and larger force to come together, marching up from the southern holdings or west from the border with Sarakal. At an estimate, the empire could field an army six thousand strong, armed and armored, and still have men enough in the fields to avoid starving next spring.

But that would come later. Now the horses of the knights rode along the wide jade path, and carts of food and fodder came along after. Behind the column, Camnipol faded until the Kingspire itself was little more than a smudge against the horizon. And at the head of the army, Lord Marshal Dawson Kalliam rode with his son Jorey at his side, moving fast as if trying to pull the army along behind by example and force of will.

To look at the map, Asterilhold was little more than a wide strip of land dividing Imperial Antea from Northcoast, caught between the two great northern kingdoms like a squire standing between two knights. The length of Asteril-hold’s coastline was the least of all three nations. It boasted only two great cities: Kaltfel and Asinport. Its protections were deeper than simple lines of ink on parchment would show. In the south, the river Siyat found its mouth by draining wide marshes fed by runoff from the mountains along its southern border. Invasion from the Dry Wastes would be difficult and time-consuming. From the west, boggy and prone to disease. The river itself—the Siyat—was navigable in the northernmost reaches, but for most of its length was muddy, cold, unreliable, and deep. The only Antean city to declare itself against the Severed Throne in a generation was Anninfort, which sat on the river’s edge, breathing the air of Asterilhold and giving home to men loyal to both kingdoms.

Dawson had studied the wars between the minor kings and the separation of Antea before it became an empire of its own, and the difference between a fast conflict, quickly ended and a grinding, bloody war that could stretch out for years was Seref Bridge.

A day’s ride south of Kaltfel, a ribbon of dragon’s jade spanned the water over a rapids. The story was that the road predated the river, that the dragon’s road had once passed through a plain, and thousands of years of erosion had made a bridge of it. Garrison keeps squatted at both sides, glowering at one another across the span. The nation that controlled both keeps controlled the war, and Dawson’s best hope was to reach the bridge with a great enough force to overwhelm the farther side before King Lechan had recovered from the shock of Geder Palliako’s rage. Any assault across the bridge would take its toll in blood, but to lose five hundred men in an afternoon now would save five thousand from dying in marshes and fords, on ships and beaches, over the course of years.

Dawson’s camp tent stood solid as a house. Thick leather stretched across iron frames to make walls and rooms. A brazier stood in the middle of the central chamber, its smoke rising in a pale grey spiral to the chimney hole in the roof. Crickets sang all around him as he ate a dinner of chicken and apples and outrage. His sometime ally Canl Daskellin sat across from him, peeling an apple of his own with a dagger and the strength of his thumb.

“I don’t know what you’re proposing, old friend,” Daskellin said.

“I’m not proposing anything.”

“No?” A long green spiral of skin fell to the floor, pale flesh clinging to one side. “Because it sounds as if you were accusing the Lord Regent of treason against the crown.”

“I’m not calling for a coup. I don’t want anyone’s head on a pike. Or at least not anybody important. If we whipped all Palliako’s cultists out of the city with chains, I can’t say I’d mind.”

“Still…”

“I know what I saw, Canl. You’d have seen it too if you’d watched. He goes everywhere with that pet priest. And what do we know about them and their spider goddess? We moved too quickly. We let the panic over Maas and the relief at his failure stampede us.”

“First time that’s happened in history,” Daskellin said dryly. “We’ve had bad regencies and we’ve had bad kings. We’ve had decent kings with bad advisors and kings who ruled half drunk from a whorehouse while their advisors saw to it that the kingdom didn’t burn down. Speaking as Special Ambassador to Northcoast, I’m not pleased that we’re cutting ambassadors into small bits, but apart from that, I don’t see the difference.”

“I do,” Dawson said. “Those were our bad kings. Our bad advisors. They were Antean. This time we’ve given ourselves into the power of foreigners.”

Daskellin’s silence sounded like agreement. When he spoke, his voice was low and thoughtful.

“Are you thinking that we’re in someone else’s war?”

“I didn’t say that,” Dawson said, plucking the flesh off his chicken with his fingers. At home or at a feast, he would never have done so, but this was war, and he was on campaign. “I’m saying that if Palliako does owe his loyalty to these people, we’re just as badly off as if Maas had put his cousin from Asterilhold on our throne.”

“I have the feeling that you’re asking something of me. I’m not sure what it is.”

“I want you to sound them out. Not everyone, but the men Palliako brought to respectability. Broot and Veren. Men like that. Find out if they’re loyal to Palliako.”

“Of course they are,” Daskellin said. “We all are. You are. We’re here marching and drilling instead of being at court. That’s the sign of loyalty.”

Dawson shook his head.

“I’ve come because the Lord Regent commanded it,” he said. “Not for Geder Palliako.”

Daskellin laughed, and for a moment the crickets stopped their songs. He cut a slice from the apple and popped it into his mouth before pointing the blade at Dawson.

“You’re making very fine distinctions. You should watch that or you’ll turn into a politician.”

“Don’t be rude,” Dawson said. “There’s nothing to be done until the war’s finished, one way or the other. But as long as I am Lord Marshal, it’s my duty to cultivate the loyalty of the high houses. And when we’ve finished with Asterilhold, those priests have to be dealt with.”

Canl Daskellin sighed.

“You’re a difficult man to conspire with, Dawson. The last time we did this, it didn’t go well.”

Dawson frowned, and then a slow, joyless smile spread across his lips.

“Now I think you’re asking something of me,” he said.

“My youngest. Sanna. She’s taken a liking to the Lord Regent. Once we purge these cultist friends of his, I was thinking your boy Jorey might hold a ball. Make some introductions.”

The words You want me as your daughter’s procurer? came to Dawson’s tongue, but he took another bite of chicken, and they stayed there.

“Sanna seems a lovely girl,” Dawson said. “Whatever happens, I’d be pleased to help her in any way I can.”

“Spoken like a diplomat,” Daskellin said. Dawson frowned, but didn’t reply. He would accept insult. For now, anyway. There was time. If he failed at Seref Bridge, there might be nothing but time. And blood and battles. Daskellin seemed to lose himself in the slow-rising smoke from the brazier. His dark brows were troubled.

“One question for you,” he said. “Do you think it’s true? Do you think that King Lechan knew. That he approved?”

“I don’t know.”

“But do you think?”

“Yes.”

Daskellin nodded.

“I do too,” he said. “So for now, at least, your conspiracy of foreign priests is in the right.”

The morning smelled of wildflowers. Rain had fallen in the night, wetting the ground, and the morning sun had heated it. Mist hovered no higher than a walking man’s knees. The scouts had come to Dawson at first light, and so he was prepared for the sight. The river curved up from the south in a carved canyon of earth and stone. It ran high with the night’s rain, white spray rising almost to the pale strip of jade that spanned it. On the far shore, the keep was as round as a drum, as high as three men, and made from grey stone and mortar the color of old blood. On the Antean shore—his shore—the building was square and made of chalk-white brick. The arrow slits looked down on the dragon’s road as it entered the keep and as it left. The merlons were narrow, with barely enough room for an archer to stand and fire and step back.

The banners of Asterilhold flew over both keeps, but they were few. Three stood on the white keep, limp and dark with dew and damp. Two others claimed the farther side. Behind Dawson, twenty knights from fifteen houses. Bannien and Broot, Corenhall and Osterling Fells, the houses and holdings of Antea. Fifteen banners to their five.