The King's Blood

Too big. It was all too big, the good and the evil too much mixed with each other. And in any case, King Tracian had given his permission for them to sit.

“You’re looking well, Komme,” the king said.

“Some days good, some bad,” Komme said with a shrug. “I hope your little problems are little too?”

“Much better,” the king said with a sour little smile that told Cithrin she was better not knowing what the reference was to. Komme’s smile was warm and apparently genuine, but she had the feeling it might always be.

“I’ve already heard quite a bit about our neighbors and cousins in Antea. This regent. How did we overlook him?”

“He wasn’t anyone until recently,” Komme said. “Minor house. Father of no importance.”

“Fortunes change quickly,” the king said, leaning forward. “What exactly have we found out?”

Paerin’s barely audible exhalation made it clear he was to take the lead. Cithrin sat on her hands.

“The situation in Antea has been unsettled,” Paerin said. “They’ve had two insurrections, the most recent of which led to a protracted battle and the collapse of several noble houses. They’ve conducted a particularly effective war against a traditional enemy. They’ve lost a king to the same ailment of the blood that took his father and which will, we must assume, eventually kill their next king as well.”

His voice and demeanor changed when he spoke like this, and Cithrin watched him, fascinated. He spoke firmly without aggression. His gestures were controlled but flowing. She was certain that the delivery would have been precisely the same if he’d been talking to a man like the king before him or the lowest servant in his house. They had moved beyond class and status, if only for a moment, and they were in the realm where Paerin Clark was the master.

“Palliako has an uncanny talent for mythologizing himself. But ultimately, his personality is unimportant. There are constraints on him that he won’t be able to avoid or to adjust to quickly.”

“Tell me,” the king said.

“He’s lost most of a harvest in two kingdoms,” Paerin said. “If he hadn’t made the war with Asterilhold a matter of conquest, he’d have fewer starving people next spring. But now they’re his, and they’re all his. He’s weakened his own support among the noble classes. He wasn’t precisely one of them to begin with. That his own Lord Marshal led an attack against him and did it in the name of the prince shows just how much work he has to do, just to get up to being an effective leader.

“He is open in ways that King Simeon wasn’t. There’s been the suggestion of a branch bank in Camnipol, which I think worth looking at seriously.”

Paerin folded his fingers together, and the king unconsciously mirrored him.

“Antea isn’t going to collapse, but it isn’t going to be stable either. I’d guess we were looking at five, maybe six years before Palliako poses any threat to trade or to his neighbors. I think he has a long memory, though. Anyone who crosses him while he’s weak will answer for it when he’s strong. Aster is still too young to judge, and by the time he takes the throne, the situation will have changed again.”

“In brief, then, Antea’s a colorful show with blood and thunder but no real threat,” the king said.

“Exactly,” Paerin said.

“You’re wrong,” Cithrin said. “All apologies, but that’s wrong.”

Komme scowled.

“You have a different analysis, that’s fine. But Paerin’s been my man in Antea for almost a decade. He knows the country. How it works.”

“Has he had the Lord Regent between his legs? Because I have. I’ve seen who he is when no one’s looking, and nothing you’ve just said applies to that man.”

King Tracian’s eyebrows rose and Paerin Clark coughed in a way that didn’t mean he had a tickle in his throat. Cithrin ignored him.

“You’re treating Geder like he’s political or religious. Like he’s the kind of man who runs kingdoms. He’s not that.”

“Perhaps the magistra will enlighten me about the kind of man he is,” the king said.

“He’s… he’s sweet and he’s lonesome and violent and he’s monstrously thin-skinned.” Cithrin paused, looking for the words that would explain what she’d seen in Geder Palliako. “He’s a bad loan.”

Komme Medean grunted as if struck by a sudden pain. Paerin looked somber.

“I don’t understand,” the king said. “Have you given him money?”

“No,” Cithrin said. “And I wouldn’t. There are things you see when you’ve made a mistake. You don’t always, but often, and they mean that the money’s gone. You have a man who takes his payment and then starts to spend like he’s rich. He looks at the money and he sees the coins, not the payments he’s making to have them. He spends as if it was his money and there would be more. That’s Geder. He’s one of those boys who needed a mother in order to grow up and didn’t get one. Now he has power and no restraint. He’ll spend coin. He’ll spend lives.

And there’s no one to stop him. He’s drawing from the biggest coffer outside of Far Syramys. “And when things go wrong, a bad loan denies it. Everything is someone else’s fault. Antea is already looking for who to blame when the starving starts. I’ve heard it in the taprooms. And it won’t be Geder.”

Cithrin sat back. She found she was out of breath. That was interesting.

“Komme?” the king said.

“It’s a valid perspective,” Komme Medean said. “But I’m not sure what we’d do with it.”

A soft knock interrupted them, and a servant came in bearing silver cups of cold water. No one spoke until he left.

“Magistra,” the king said. “If I were to agree to your reading of the text, what would you recommend?”

Cithrin considered. War wasn’t something she knew about. It wasn’t something she studied. And yet her opinion was asked, and after the line about lying down with Geder, it seemed late to be demure.

“I would recommend gathering forces together now. Don’t act against him, but make your predictions about where he’ll go and share them discreetly with allies. If the predictions start to come true, you’ll seem like the one who knew what trades to make before the ships arrived, and everyone will want to know what you knew.”

“I have friends in Sarakal,” Komme said. “Not business, but friends and with connections. I could send letters discussing things. At least we could see what people are saying near that border.”

“We could make closer relations with Antea,” the king suggested. “Your delegation was informal. If I put together a party. If I went myself.”

“Don’t do that,” Cithrin said. “If he feels betrayed, he’ll bite you harder than if you were an enemy from the start.”

“No offense,” the king said. “That might put you in an uncomfortable position.”

“That occurred to me,” Cithrin said.

Around the table, they were all silent. The air of confidence and reassurance was gone as if it had never been. Cithrin drank her cup of water, enjoying the cool of it, and the faint taste of lemon.

“Is there anything that can be done?” the king asked.

“Watch. Wait. Hope he overreaches himself early on and badly,” Cithrin said. “The best you can say about Geder is he’s the sort of man who makes good enemies.”

Clara

Over the days that followed, Clara was slowly convinced that in a way—in many ways—she’d died with Dawson on that terrible floor in front of all their friends and relations. She couldn’t watch the violence, but she’d heard it. The sounds of it might have been worse than the actual seeing. But perhaps not. Everything that happened afterward made more sense to her if she thought of herself as dead when it happened. Walking from the Kingspire, widow of only a few minutes with no one she knew speaking to her. None of the women she’d known all her life to say a kind word. The only one who had touched her, offered comfort, had been the thin, pale merchant girl whose name she’d forgotten as soon as it had been said.

She’d been in a daze, lost even to her own mind. Doing the things that her body felt needed to be done. Visiting old friends and enemies. Well, that was what a ghost did, wasn’t it? It made perfect sense, seen in that