revolt by spring and we’ll be right back where we were when the whole damned thing started.”
“There will be no revolt,” Basrahip said.
“Easy for you to say, Minister,” Broot said. “All respect, but you’ve never run a city. They’re worse than children.”
“They have the temple of the goddess within them,” Basrahip said. “The Righteous Servant will keep them true.”
Daskellin and Broot shared a glance. Daskellin looked away first.
“We did just have war in the streets for the best part of the summer,” Daskellin said.
“Yes,” Basrahip said, his smile broad. “The city was tested and purified, and note, Prince Daskellin, that we are here, and the enemy is slain.”
“Speaking of slaying enemies,” Broot said. “There is a third option, but it does mean abandoning the wholesale slaughter of the noble classes of Asterilhold.”
“And means less reward for the people who stayed with the crown,” Daskellin said.
“It’s not a reward if you can’t manage it, Canl. If you would stop thinking with your purse and see sense, you’d know that.”
“Stop!” Geder shouted, and the two men went silent and abashed. “There’s a third option. What is it?”
One of the maps slid to the floor, pooling in great loops and folds. Broot tugged on his mustache.
“We could keep Asterilhold under its own rule. Take men from their best stock, let ’em swear fealty to the Severed Throne. Not all that many. Just five or six to… well, to replace the ones we lost. As it were. Even if they weren’t on our side before, it doesn’t take a wise man to see where the power is now.”
Geder stepped to the table and plucked one of the maps to the center where he could see the whole place at once. Asterilhold was much smaller than Antea, and with the marshes and mountains in the south, less of it was arable than a part of Antea the same size. Apart from the two great cities, it wasn’t even a particularly great conquest.
“Have we started killing the noblemen yet?” Geder asked.
“No, my lord,” Daskellin said. “Kalliam’s insurrection threw the plans badly behind schedule.”
“Hold off, then. I think I have an idea.”
The ballroom where Basrahip had questioned the personal guard hadn’t been used for dancing in some years. The boards were warped and uneven. The chandelier, though clean, was rusting at the joints. Geder walked through the space, his eyes narrow, seeing not what was before him, but what could be. Basrahip stood by the doorway, hands folded. If the big priest had an opinion, he didn’t say it.
“The thing we did here,” Geder said, nodding up at the steep tiered benches. “We could do that again, couldn’t we?”
“If you like, Prince Geder, we could.”
Geder stepped up two, three, four tiers, then turned, looking down at Basrahip and the ballroom floor from a height. The perspective made even Basrahip seem small. Geder felt a little bubble of pleasure rising in him. It reminded him of finding a new book on a subject he enjoyed.
“Not with the guards,” Geder said. “With the nobles of Asterilhold. We bring them here and question them. The guilty, we throw off a bridge, and the innocent we reward with lands and titles and control over their homeland, only with fealty to the Severed Throne. All the problems go away, yes?”
Basraship stepped forward.
“It can be done, my lord.”
“Good,” Geder said.
“May I suggest, my prince?”
“Yes? What?”
“We would not need to wait for the men of Asterilhold to arrive before we made some use of this plan.”
It took a week to remake the room into something of the appropriate dignity. The walls, Geder stained black. The benches on the sides of the room, he left in place, but his carpenters removed most of the ones in the front, using the same wood to construct something almost like a magistrate’s desk, only built higher. The sweet smell of their sawdust leaked out through the halls and grounds of the Kingspire. The rusted chandelier, Geder left in place, in part because it was thickcast iron and in part because it would have taken the smiths another week to replace it with something better, and he was impatient.
When the remade chamber was complete, he brought Basrahip to it like he was presenting a present to a child.
“I hope you like it,” he said. “I have the sense that we’ll be spending quite a bit of time in here over the next year or so. The guardsmen stand on the benches to either side, you see? Rising up like that? And then I’ll sit up there, and you can be down here near me, but where you can hear the prisoner talking better.”
“The prisoner?”
“Or whoever,” Geder said, waving the question away.
“It is majestic, my lord,” Basrahip said. “But?”
The priest nodded to the back wall.
“There is no banner,” Basrahip said. “I would put the symbol of your house there on the right, and the sigil of the goddess there to the left. For balance.”
“Brilliant!” Geder said. “We can do that. But… before that, I was wondering if you’d like to try it. In practice, I mean. Just to see whether the design works as well as I think it does.”
“If you wish. I am here as your servant.”
Geder arranged it all as carefully as a party. Which guards, with what arms and armor. The lighting of the candles. Everything. And then, when it was all as he’d hoped it would be, he sent out the guard into the city. Four hours later, they returned with the prisoner in hand.
Geder looked down from his heights. Barriath Kalliam looked small and frightened.
“My lord,” Geder said.
“Lord Regent.”
“Thank you for joining me. I apologize for the unpleasantness of your arrival.”
“Think nothing of it,” Barriath said, he looked from side to side, taking in the armed men arrayed at his flanks. “I may not be as formally dressed as the occasion calls for.”
“I hear that you have left your brother’s house,” Geder said. “Is that true?”
Barriath shrugged.
“It wasn’t what we wanted, so no. I’m not there any longer.”
Geder shifted his eyes, and Basrahip nodded. It wasn’t as easy to see, though. The angle wasn’t quite right for it. He’d need to think about that.
“You had a falling-out with Jorey.”
“Wouldn’t go that far,” Barriath said. The priest hesitated, and then nodded, but Geder realized he didn’t know what that meant. It might be true that Barriath wouldn’t go that far, but that wasn’t the question he’d wanted answered. Below him, Barriath seemed less awed and humbled than amused.
“Are you loyal to me?”
“Excuse me, Lord?”
“Your brother renounced Lord Kalliam. You didn’t say the words. I’m asking now, are you loyal to me?”
“I’m a proud servant of the Severed Throne and I always have been,” Barriath said, throwing the words out like a challenge. Basrahip nodded.
Only no. It wasn’t.
“Are you loyal to me?” Geder asked.
“You’re the Lord Regent,” Barriath said.
“Are you loyal to
Barriath shrugged, looking up at Geder the way a lumberjack might size up the tree he wanted to fell.
“I am,” he said.
Geder chuckled.
“I am not a man easily fooled,” he said.
