The King's Blood

presently in the field. This was a gathering of sons and grandfathers and secretaries. Men who’d fought the war from their chairs, and were happy now to congratulate each other on how well they’d done. The only ones present who’d been in the field at all were Gospey Allintot, still recovering from an arrow in the meat of his arm, and Jorey Kalliam, just come with the reports from his father. The army had reached Kaltfel. The final siege was under way.

“If I may?” Jorey said slowly. “What are we trying to achieve? I mean if we want to cripple Asterilhold for a generation, it’s easy enough to do that. But is that what we want?”

“Well, they have to be punished,” Emmer Faskellan said. “My cousin died from their scheming. Died in the streets of Camnipol!”

“That’s what I mean,” Jorey said. “Are we trying to punish them and then go back to the way things were before? Are we trying to take control of Asterilhold? They wanted to unify the nations. Do we?”

“I see what you’re thinking,” Allintot said.

“I don’t,” said Geder. It wasn’t something he would have admitted usually, but this was Jorey.

“Taking the bridge, for example,” Jorey said. “That helps us win the next war if there is one. Maybe it makes one less likely because they’d be afraid of losing. But they didn’t want a war in the first place. Asterilhold was acting with people in our own court. There aren’t any reparations we can demand that will keep that from happening again.”

The group was quiet for a moment.

“Hostages?” Geder said. “We could take hostages. Raise their children. If there was ever any sign of conspiracy, we’d have someone here at hand.”

“I was thinking something more permanent,” Jorey said. “Lechan has two sons and a daughter. If the sons abdicate their rights to the throne and the daughter weds Prince Aster, he’ll become heir to Asterilhold’s throne.”

“This did all start as a drive for unification,” Emmer Faskellan said thoughtfully. “Perhaps it’s inevitable. If that’s true, it would be best if we were the ones to set the terms. They’ll want something done at once, of course. Waiting until Aster’s of age and Lechan dies is too long.”

“You’ve all given me things to think about,” Geder said quickly. He had a sense of where the conversation was heading. “But if you’ll excuse me, I’m called elsewhere.”

A small chorus of Yes, of course and Thank you, Lord Regent rolled through the air as Geder rose and made his private exit. The guards followed him through the narrow passages reserved for the men who sat on thrones and the blades that guarded them. Even Basrahip would have to leave by the normal door and rejoin him elsewhere.

It was just the sort of thing that Geder had imagined he would enjoy, one of the unnumbered small privileges of power that he’d gained with the regency. In practice, it felt oppressive. Being the most powerful man in Imperial Antea meant being busy all the time, being constrained by form and etiquette, and carrying the world on his shoulders. He would never again be able to ride out through the streets whenever he saw fit. And never, ever alone. He had traded poking through the old scriptorums for this small corridor that only he and his guards could use, and the exchange seemed less attractive than it had before he’d made it.

The private corridor widened into the royal apartments. High windows looked out over the Division and the spreading land beyond, filling the vaulted ceilings and tall air with light and just a hint of the woodsmoke of the city. These were the rooms where King Simeon had lived. The queen had died in one of the wood-paneled bedrooms. Aster had taken some of his first steps in the candlelit hallway Geder walked through. It was where Aster had grown up. When the boy had become Geder’s ward, Aster had expected to be leaving these walls for years, not months, and now he was back. It was and would always be more Aster’s home than his own.

Geder knew from experience that it might be some time before the meeting he’d left spiraled to its true, if unofficial, close. Basrahip would stay there, and if the others picked and chose their words carefully, knowing that Geder’s right hand was still with them, they didn’t know how much the priest could still divine from the mixture of truth and lies. And a few minutes—an hour or two—entirely his own was welcome in a way that made his joints ache a little.

He heard Aster’s voice reciting lines, and then the tutor— an ancient Cinnae man so frail-looking that he seemed always on the edge of collapse. Geder followed their voices to the study and hung in the shadows of the doorway for a moment.

Aster sat at a small table, looking up at the tutor’s podium. The old Cinnae smiled encouragingly, and Aster began the lines again.

“Information without practice can never grow to knowledge. Knowledge without silence can never grow to wisdom. And so practice and silence, doing and not doing, are at the heart of the right man’s path.”

“Marras Toca,” Geder said. “I didn’t know you were learning military philosophy.”

The tutor’s watery smile greeted him as he stepped into the room.

“You know the text, my Lord Regent?” he asked.

“I read an essay mentioning him that was very important to me. Afterward, I made a point of finding some of his work. I made a translation of it over the winter. I didn’t use silence in mine. I thought stillness was closer to the original meaning.”

“I think it’s dull,” Aster said.

“Some of it’s dry,” Geder said. The room was small, but sun-warmed. “Some of it was pretty interesting, though. Did you read the section about the spiritual exercises?”

“Like a cunning man’s tricks?” Aster said, brightening a little.

“No, they were more like ways to practice thinking. When he’s talking about silence or stillness, it’s not just about not moving around. He’s got a particular technical meaning.”

“Have you done the exercises, my Lord Regent?” the tutor asked.

“No, not really, but I read about them a lot, and I think it’s very interesting. Wise, even,” Geder said, and leaned close to Aster with a rueful little grin. “I’m better at reading about those kinds of things than doing them. Can I see the translation you’re using?”

The tutor leaned over his podium and held out the book. Geder took it carefully. It was very old, and the binding was leather and string. The pages were cloth, and thicker than usual, which gave the thing a feeling of solidity and weight. Geder turned the pages reverently.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

“A teacher of mine gave it to me when I was hardly older than Prince Aster,” the tutor said, smiling. “I’ve kept it with me ever since. I have heard that you have quite the sizable library yourself, my Lord Regent?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I used to have more time to read. And translate. I was working on an essay that tracked the royal houses of Elassae by the dates of their births, and it argued that Timzinae have two annual mating seasons. The actual dates were a little sketchy, but the argument was brilliant.”

Aster sighed and leaned his elbows against his desk, but the old tutor’s eyes were alight.

“It sounds fascinating, my lord. Do you recall the name of the author?”

“It was speculative essay, and only about three hundred years ago, so it had an attribution, but…”

“Yes, not much use to it. Not in those days,” the tutor agreed.

Geder turned the pages, the cloth softer than skin under his fingertips. Toca’s section on battle maps looked different in this than the one Geder had. There were at least three more diagrams, and a table of comparison that must have been added in by a later scribe. He traced the ancient ink with his fingertips.

“Could I borrow this?” Geder asked. “I’d like to compare it to mine.”

The tutor’s expression froze, and his hands made small spider’s fists.

“Of course, my lord,” he said. “I would be honored.”

“Thank you,” Geder said. “I will bring it back. I’m just going to go put it in with my books, if you don’t mind.” “Of course not,” the tutor said.

“Does that mean we can do something else?” Aster asked as Geder walked out of the room. The boy’s voice sounded hopeful.

Geder walked with the pages open before him, his finger tracing the words. A little glow of excitement warmed him.

This wasn’t a translation he’d ever seen before, and the original text seemed more complete than the one