“I will do my best,” Daskellin said, with a small, crisp bow. He hesitated. “I don’t mean to be rude. But may I ask something about the southern front?”
“Yes?”
“I’d heard that Alan Klin was in the field. At the front, in fact. Quite far in the front.”
Geder shrugged.
“We’re hoping to lure the enemy out of position,” he said. “And I thought giving Klin the opportunity to regain some part of his honor seemed kind. Don’t you think?”
“Of course, Lord Regent,” Daskellin said with another bow. “I understand.”
After the door had closed behind him, Geder turned to the priest.
“Well?”
Basrahip cocked his head.
“My prince?”
“Was it true?”
“Yes, he understood,” the priest said calmly.
“What did he understand?”
“He didn’t say, my prince.”
“Does he approve?”
“He didn’t say,” Basrahip repeated and showed Geder his palms as if offering him the empty air cupped there. “The living voice carries what it carries. If you wish to know these things, ask him. And then we will know.”
Geder paced over to the small model of Kaltfel and squatted down. It was such a short distance. He could step to Kalliam’s command from there. He had the deep urge to step on the model, flatten the offending walls and street and towers. Grind them into the dirt. If only he could do the same to the real city. He became aware of a deep sound. Basrahip, laughing.
“What?” Geder said.
“Lord Prince—”
“I’m regent,” Geder said, peevishly. “Regent’s better than prince.”
“Lord Regent,” Basrahip said. “My friend. Your people are strange. They want to do something out there in the world, and so they lock you up in here, with little toys.”
The priest rose from the table and walked across to the Seref Bridge, sitting cross-legged before it. He picked up the figure of the horseman that represented Dannick and pretended to address himself to it.
“Why do you fight, little soldier? Mm? What do you hope to win? What does your heart tell you?” He pretended to listen. Or maybe he did, and pretended to hear. He looked up at Geder with merry eyes. “He doesn’t say.”
“Well, it isn’t as if I could go out and be in the middle of it myself,” Geder said. “I have to see it all, somehow. This is how I can keep track of everything. I mean, all I need to do to see that the supply lines are getting too long in the south is look there. I can see it.”
“No, you cannot. Nothing here is real. You see that this toy is so far from that toy, and not closer. And from that you think there is something to be learned. Here, look.”
Basrahip reached over and pushed one of the southern armies forward.
“Now your supplies come quick when they’re needed, yes?”
“No!” Geder said. “You can’t just move something and make it happen.”
“No, you can’t,” Basrahip said. “It is empty. It is a sign without a soul. And the orders and reports they send you. Words on paper. Empty. How do you hope to win battles between men using paper and toys?”
“Do you have a better idea?” Geder asked. He meant it as a sarcasm, as
“Yes,” Basrahip said. “Wait. This bridge—not this little toy, but the bridge you all speak of. This bridge to end your war. May I give it to you? Will you accept it from me?”
“I don’t… I don’t know what you mean.”
Basrahip rose to his knees and then his feet. The soil of the false battlefield stained his knees, and he brushed at it with a wide palm. His voice was calm.
“Let me send three of my priests to this place, and allow me twenty days. Then bring your armies and we will open this way and end your war. Let me do this for you, yes?”
“Yes,” Geder said. “If you can do that, then yes.”
The first time—the only time before—that Geder had been given command over something, it had been Vanai and it had been as a cruel joke. He still didn’t know what machinations had left some faction of the court hoping to lose control of Vanai by putting the idiotic, unprepared Geder Palliako in charge of it. Now that he had the kingdom, he had the allegiance and support of everyone. The intrigue politics of the court would never end, but the great minds answered to him now, and his cause was the victory of the kingdom over its enemies. No one could want him to fail without also being a traitor.
It changed everything. Even the men who had laughed at him, who had looked upon him as a sad joke, feared him now. Even they helped him when he demanded it.
He sat that night at a feast held by Sir Gospey Allintot. There had been a time not very long ago when Allintot had been if not his enemy then certainly not his friend. And now his full household was bent double for Geder’s honor.
Basrahip sat at his side as the hall filled with Allintot’s guests. Lady Oesteroth, wearing her husband’s dagger to show that he was in the field for the crown. Jorey Kalliam and his new bride. Sir Emund Serrinian, Earl of Whiteford. And coming in late and last to the high table, the Viscount of Rivenhalm, Lehrer Palliako. Geder’s father.
Geder went to him, tugging him toward the front. His father looked out over the crowd, squinting.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever been at the high table,” his father said. “Traveling above my circles these days, m’boy. Above mine.”
“I think if your son’s regent, that makes you part of the high circles,” Geder said, laughing a little nervously.
His father clapped him on the shoulder and nodded, but didn’t say anything more. The meal was lavish— candied pork with onions, winter-bred pheasant basted with its own fat, lark’s tongue and blackberries—and all of it served on plates of silver and gold. A cunning man came out as entertainment, calling the names of angels and spirits until a ghostly light filled his eyes and his palms became bright as candles. Geder watched it all, his delight cooled by his father’s quiet eyes and unfinished food. When the cunning man’s show was finished, his used and prostrate form hauled off by servants amid laugh ter and delight, Geder leaned close to his father.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“No,” Lehrer said. “No, my boy. Everything’s fine.”
He didn’t need Basrahip’s gift to know it wasn’t true.
“Come walk with me,” Geder said.
They were alone, except that of course they weren’t. The regent’s guards and body servants followed along at a distance as Geder and his father walked down the long, black-paved path to Allintot’s courtyard. The carriages and palanquins waited in the fading sunlight, ready to whisk away whatever noble blood wanted to go elsewhere. None of them would move so much as an inch while Geder remained at the feast. If he stayed until the dawn, each of them would too. The thought was strange and hilarious, and it made Geder want to try it, just to see the great men and ladies of the court trying to stay awake and pretending to enjoy themselves as the night grew longer beneath them.
His father found a bench and sat on it. Geder sat at his side.
“It’s quite a lot in not much time, isn’t it?” his father said. “My son, the Lord Regent. Who would have thought it, eh? It’s an honor. It’s… yes.”
“I wish Mother’d lived to see it.”
“Oh, oh yes. Yes, she’d have had something to say about it all, wouldn’t she? She was a firebrand, your mother. Hell of a woman.”
A cricket sang. The first one that Geder remembered hearing all season. A sudden powerful sadness rushed up in his chest, and with it a sense of grievance. He had done everything he could. He’d come as near to kingship as
