facing Antea in the coming years, and how we might be able to help.”
The meeting went longer than Geder had intended, the conversation ranging from the division of Asterilhold into new baronies and holdings under the control of Antean noble houses to the possibility of buying up grain supplies from Sarakal to ease the coming harvest to the new Antean border with Northcoast and the changing diplomatic position with King Tracian. In truth, Geder didn’t care deeply about any of it, but Paerin Clark knew Cithrin, and so Geder wanted the man to think well of him.
When at last the meeting ended, Geder made his farewells and walked back to his private rooms, Basrahip at his side.
“So?” Geder asked. “What do you think of him?”
“He means the things that he says,” Basrahip answered, “but he chooses what he says very carefully. He is a wise man, but not holy. We will be careful of him.”
“Good idea,” Geder said. “I agree.”
“There is another matter.”
“Kalliam,” Geder said.
“No. With him, nothing need be said. All his roads have ended. But in his fear of the coming justice, he made the servants of the goddess his targets. His hatred of us has taken its toll. We have lost many, my lord. With the new temples you are sworn to build in these cities that fall before you, I must ask that more of my brethren are permitted to join us.”
“How many more?”
“I would send for ten cohorts of ten,” Basrahip said.
“A hundred?” Geder said. “Is that all? Of course you can. If it’s a question of seeing them with food and shelter, I can send a hundred servants away tonight and not miss them tomorrow. In fact, why not take Kalliam’s mansion? I mean, it won’t be enough space, I don’t think, but there’s a poetry in it.”
They paused at a small fountain, water pouring over the shoulders of an ancient king and flowing down the half-sized noblemen and women at his feet, and then a miniature horde of carved-stone peasants. Political philosophy as decoration.
“I am grateful to you, Prince Geder.”
“You don’t need to be. I couldn’t do any of this with-out you.”
The fear came with night. He couldn’t think why that would be. Darkness had been the best part of all that had come before, but now when the sun failed, Geder found the face of Dawson Kalliam coming to him. The flash of the blade. The blood on Basrahip’s hand.
Sitting in his library now, his personal guard discreetly at a distance, he knew he was in no danger. But he hadn’t seen danger in Kalliam’s revel either. If there was one thing to learn, it was that danger came at any time and from any quarter. He fought the darkness with light. Lamps and lanterns and candles glowed in among the papers and piles of books, pressing back the night.
His own collection, product of a lifetime’s gathering, wasn’t so much as a quarter of what stood in the royal archive, but the archive reflected the tastes and opinions of any number of scholars. It had all the genres in some degree— poetry, moral tales, histories—but speculative essay, his own particular favorite, was thin. And besides that, there was a comfort in reading again what he already read, and he was here for comfort.
The pillow essays traced back to the reign of the second Queen Esteya and addressed everything from points of court politics and rivalries between people whose names were now otherwise forgotten to speculations on the sexuality of the various races. The dialect was simple enough to follow, especially since he was used to translating from other languages. When he’d read it before, it had been a guilty pleasure. Titillating and embarrassing. What he knew of women and their bodies had, for the most part, come from this book and others like it.
It is the nature of women or any race except the Firstblood to be attracted to men most like the original forms of man. The Jasuru find most pleasing men with the thinner scales of colors more near to flesh. Southling women, apart from those given over to being their pod’s breeding stock who need not concern us here, choose men with smaller, lighter eyes. Women of the Yemmu will, given the option, provide themselves to males of slighter frame and more upright stance. Indeed the races would, in time, fade back into a single form if it were not for the masculine drive to explore carnally the exotic.
The scandals of Robbe Sastillin are the classic example. Here was a man of noble frame and blood, a man with real possibilities and prospects in the court who took a series of Cinnae girls to his bed. It debased him and ruined the girls, but in the moment each was acting from the base impulse natural to them.
Geder put a fingertip on the passage, leaning back in his chair. It didn’t seem plausible to him. Not for the first time, he wished that Basrahip and the goddess could speak to the truth of written words as well as those that were spoken.
Was it true? he wondered. Would a woman of one of the crafted races be drawn to a Firstblood man simply because of his race? Had Cithrin bel Sarcour chosen him because he was himself, or because he was Lord Regent, or because he was a Firstblood? Was there any way to tease apart the logic that had brought them to that singular moment in the darkness? He wondered what Basrahip would tell him if he could bring her to speak of it in the priest’s presence. Not that he ever would, but it was hard not to speculate.
He wondered whether she was thinking of him.
Aster’s voice startled him.
“Here you are.”
Geder clapped the book closed and turned to the prince. Aster looked older now. As if the days underground had sharpened his cheeks. Geder wondered if that was normal. He would have guessed that children grew to adults imperceptibly, each day’s change too small to see, each week too small, each month. The changes may be clear if seen year by year by year, but maybe that was wrong. Maybe people stayed just the same for long stretches of time, and then shifted suddenly, becoming someone different than they’d been. Or not different, but older. More mature. More themselves.
“Yes,” Geder said. “I was reading. It’s a long day, and I thought…”
Aster nodded. His face might not have changed shape. It might only have been the solemnity of his expression that had changed, though why their time with Cithrin would have done that and the death of King Simeon hadn’t… Or maybe it was one thing coming as it did after another.
That was certainly how Geder felt about himself.
“You haven’t done anything about Kalliam yet.”
“I know,” Geder said. “I mean, I have. I’ve given his estate to Basrahip. For priests. That’s something. I did something.”
Aster sat on the table, his legs swinging under it. His silence was reproach enough.
“It’s Jorey,” Geder said. “Dawson’s his father. I can’t execute my friend’s father.”
“Are you certain he’s your friend?”
Geder looked out toward the gardens, but the light had turned the glass to a dark mirror and all he could make out was himself and his books. Piles and piles of words that were neither truth nor lies.
“No,” he said. “And I know that I could just ask, and Basrahip would tell me. But I don’t want to. Because what if he isn’t? What if it all runs so deep that I don’t have anyone left? No, don’t. I know it makes sense to do the thing. I know I’d be better off knowing. Only, I could read a book first. Or talk with one of Cithrin’s bank people. Or anything, really. In any given hour, I can find something I’d rather do than know.”
“Why aren’t you angry at him?”
“Jorey?”
“Dawson. The father. He tried to kill you.”
“I know. And I should be. Maybe I am, just… I mean, it’s not like he laughed at me. He takes me seriously enough to think I’m worth killing. It’s just that I liked him. I did. And I wish he liked me too.”
“I don’t think he does,” Aster said.
Geder laughed.
“I think you’re right. I’ll do what needs doing. And I won’t die. I promise.”
Geder wondered whether this was what it was to have a son. He didn’t think so. It was too much like having
