Aster snored gently in his blankets and murmured to himself.
“He’s taking all this well,” Cithrin said, nodding toward the sleeping boy.
“He puts up a good front,” Geder said. “It’s been hard for him, though. He lost his mother young, and now his father. Add the weight of the crown.”
“It doesn’t seem fair that being born to the throne should make things so much harder,” she said. “You’d think power would have more to recommend it.”
“What? You don’t think things are going well?” he asked. She didn’t laugh for a moment, and he was relieved when she did.
“I assume this is an aberration for you, Lord Regent,” she said. “But you’ve grown up noble, just like the prince. You understand what he’s carrying.”
“I really don’t. I mean, I suppose I’m in the same place with him now, but I was very low before. He’s known from the time he could talk that he was destined for the throne. I’ve known I was going to have a tiny little holding in a valley with too many trees and not enough farmland.”
She tilted her head, considering him. The wine brought color to her cheeks. A stray lock of hair drifted onto her lips, and she blew it away.
“What happened, then?” she asked. “You’ve moved up in the world. You’re practically the king.”
“It’s a long, complicated story,” he said.
“You’re right,” she said. “We might run out of time.”
He began at the beginning. Rivenhalm, with its fast, small river and the library his father had built up. He remembered a little of his mother, and told what there was. His imaginings of Camnipol when he was young and it had been a magical city that his father spoke of, where noble lords and ladies danced and spoke wise things and dueled for love and honor. He laughed about it now, but it had seemed powerful and important at the time.
And then his first entry into the life of the court. His first campaign.
When he mentioned Vanai, she went still. It wasn’t that her expression closed so much as that it turned inward, became somber. Something in the back of his mind told him to stop, but the more quiet she grew, the more he wanted to pull her out, to make her laugh. The anxiety drove him on. He exaggerated his own failures and shortcomings for comic effect. Everyone else laughed at him, so maybe she could too, but she only nodded. He knew he had to change the topic before he got to the burning, but the tale and the wine had taken a life of their own and he listened to himself in growing horror as Ternigan took the city and named Alan Klin its protector. He told of his own role as petty enforcer of Klin’s will.
When he mentioned the caravan that was supposedly smuggling the wealth of Vanai, she roused a bit. When he told how he’d drawn the improbable range south of the dragon’s road, slogging through ice and mud with a troop of disloyal Timzinae soldiers, he had her full attention back. He even let himself confess—for the first time to anyone— that he’d found the treasure and let it go. Her expression of disbelief was almost comic.
“I know,” he said, shaking his head. “It was petty of me. And probably disloyal, but Klin was such a pompous… I don’t even know the word.”
She was looking at him as if she were seeing him for the first time, and her smile was like pouring water on a burn. He grinned and shrugged.
“I only took a bit,” he said. “Enough for some books when I got back to Vanai.”
“Of course you did,” she said and shook her head in amazement. The way she said it made it flattery, and he looked down, suddenly proud of his own daring. “You were there for the burning.”
Geder took a deep breath. The dread welled up in him. He ignored it well, but it was never far away.
“I was protector of the city,” he said.
Her face went very still.
“Was it your order, then?”
The truth was on the edge of his mind. It would have taken so little to say yes. But he wanted her to like him.
“No,” he said. “The command came from higher ranks. But I didn’t rise against it. I should have. It was a mistake. It was a terrible, terrible stupid mistake. Whoever did give the order, he can’t have understood what it meant. Not really. I still have nightmares about it sometimes. You… you knew Vanai?”
“I was raised there,” she said. “My parents were buried there, and the bank took me in. I lost everyone there.”
Geder’s belly felt hollow with fear, and he quietly thanked God that he’d chosen against the truth. Guilt washed over him like a wave.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured, looking away.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I loved them, but they didn’t love me. Cam, maybe. But Magister Imaniel didn’t love anyone, I don’t think. He wasn’t that kind of man. It hurt me when they died, but…”
“But?”
“But I don’t know who I’d be if they’d lived,” she said. She spoke with the clarity of being just drunk enough to know she had to try not to slur her words. “I missed them. And I mourned for them, I think. But I like who I am. What I do. I’m looking forward to everything. The things that happened to bring me here? I can’t judge them. Good. Bad. Who would I be if I’d had parents? Who would I be if I’d gone to Carse? If something terrible leads to something good, where does that leave you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, though he didn’t understand the part about going to Carse. She’d come from Carse, so she must have gone there at some point.
She put the wineskin to her mouth, tilting back her head. Her throat worked, once, twice, last. A tiny red trickle slipped from her lips, and she wiped it away with her sleeve. When she smiled, the expression was lazy and joyful, utterly out of place in the ruins of a city at war.
“I,” she said, putting the empty skin on the ground, “am drunk enough to sleep now.”
“Well, then. Good night, Magistra.”
She nodded an unsteady bow, but her eyes were bright and merry.
“Sleep well, Lord Regent. We’ll see who has to find a home for the piss pot,” she said, leaned forward with pursed lips, and blew out the candle.
The darkness was utter and absolute. Geder found a blanket by touch and curled himself into it. The welts on his arm were itching, but not badly. He heard her struggling with her own blanket, muttering small curses, shifting, cloth moving against cloth. Her breath was shallow and impatient, and then softer, deeper, fuller. She snored a little, the rattle high in her throat. Geder lay on the dirt, his own arm for a pillow. He heard the patter of soft cat feet, one of the previous owners drawn by the smell of the chicken. The frantic licking of a small, rough tongue. When he moved, the cat fled, and he was sorry that it had. He didn’t mind sharing what was left of the meal.
He hadn’t realized how much the tiny candle flame had warmed the little room, but the air was growing steadily colder. He willed himself to sleep, counting his breaths to himself the way he had when he was younger. Going through his body, forcing each muscle to relax, starting with his feet and ending with the top of his head. It grew colder, but he minded it less. Slowly, by inches, he felt his mind letting go, slipping apart into the quiet darkness. When she shifted against him, he only half noticed she was there.
His last coherent thought was that he was sleeping beside a woman and it didn’t seem strange at all.
Dawson
The battle of Camnipol had raged for more than a week now, violence following violence, attack calling forth reprisal calling forth reprisal of its own. Twice now, someone had tried to open the gates, and both times they had been driven back. The city’s food supplies were growing shorter, the water in the cisterns lower. The high summer sun had joined the battle with the worst heat in years. It beat down from an implacable blue sky, turning all the roofs to a burning bronze, wilting the flowers, and driving men to madness.
Dawson stood on the rooftop of Alan Klin’s estate, his arms behind him, his chin jutting forward with a confidence he didn’t feel. His city was suffering. His nation was suffering. Asterilhold could have reassembled its army and stood outside the walls right now, and not only would Dawson not know it, it wouldn’t have made any difference. The siege they held themselves under was as vicious as any enemy could devise. It was like watching a
