The Widow's House

Geder

The wind that threw itself across Camnipol the day of the grand audience didn’t rise quite to the level of a storm. The cloaks of the men and women in the street flapped and fluttered, pressed tight against their bodies on one side and streamed away on the other. High, thin clouds formed and were ripped apart and formed again. Moaning and whistling and dust filled the air. Worst, through some terrible accident of angle and flow, the stink of the midden in the depths of the Division was pulled up into the high city streets. Geder couldn’t take a breath without smelling rot and corruption, and even great billowing clouds of incense in the audience hall only covered it over. Sometimes the reek was so thick it seemed less a scent than a taste.

Geder sat the Severed Throne, the crown of the regent on his brows, and huddled in his cloak. His head ached. The short walk from the Kingspire to the hall had felt like a punishment. The great hall itself, wide and tall and muttering now with the voice of the wind, had impressed him as stately and grand once. Today it was a metaphor of hollowness expressed as architecture. The Severed Throne was a chair with more history than cushioning, and the mass of bodies in their cloth-of-gold and worked jewels were actually all the same people he saw at feasts and balls and council meetings, except with the ones he cared for best absent. Jorey. Basrahip.

The new priest was a thin man with one pale eye and a thin scrub of beard. He stood now in Basrahip’s place, doing the same work Basrahip had done—nodding when the petitioners to the throne spoke true, shaking his head when they lied, keeping still when the words were in fact only meaningless gabble devoid of anything that could be called truth or falsehood.

“I have no wish to reopen old wounds,” Curtin Issandrian said, standing before the throne with his palms out like the statue of an orator come to life. “And the question of a farmer’s council has been one that’s caused division and strife in years past. I have hope that in our newfound prosperity and the victories and glories of our conquests we can let go of the old arguments that divided us and consider the question with fresh eyes. And more importantly fresh hearts.”

The years hadn’t been kind to the man. The long, flowing hair that had been a sort of personal banner was cut between his ear and shoulder now, and ashy. His face had lost its handsomeness to an excess of jowls and a darkness at the eyes. His voice was as sweet and compelling as it had been, back when Issandrian had been the darling of the court and Geder the butt of its jokes. Everything else about him spoke of being outside the court’s favor. Even his cloak was cut in last year’s fashion.

“The changes we have seen over even the past year are greater,” Issandrian said, “than any since the reign of King Osteban. The farm slaves we had before had entered indenture as a choice or from a magistrate’s judgment. Now Timzinae work the fields under the righteous lash of Antean farmers. But the needs and skills of those farmers—good men and loyal citizens of the empire though they are—must also change. If we are to support them, they must have a voice within the court. If we are to—”

“What are you asking me for?” Geder snapped. Issandrian’s speech stumbled against itself. His hands fell to his sides. Impatience bit at Geder’s gut, and he leaned forward. “You want something, yes? Just say it and be done.”

Issandrian glanced back at the priest. The grand audience had been more fun when no one knew that Geder’s ability to tell truth from lies had rested in the grace of the spider priests. As soon as they’d inducted a wave of Anteans into the priesthood, the knowledge had entered the cycle of gossip. It was common knowledge now, and it left Geder almost feeling that the audience was with them more than him now.

“I would ask the crown to consider forming a farmer’s council to advise the court,” Issandrian said.

“Thank you. The answer is no. I’ll hear the next petition now.”

Issandrian’s shoulders fell, but there was nothing for it. He bowed because he had to and was led away. The wind raked its nails across the great hall’s roof and chewed at the windows. Onin Pyrellin rose next and launched into a speech about his father’s service to the crown as a prelude, Geder knew, to asking that the protectorship of Nus be given to him.

It was a sign of the empire’s sudden glorious expansion that so few heads of the great families were at court. Fallon Broot was ruling Suddapal. Savin Caot and Ernst Mecelli were managing the defense of Inentai from the Borjan raiders. Mikellin Faskellan was in Anninfort, consolidating the still-recent conquest of Asterilhold. Lord Skestinin was lost to the enemy. Dawson Kalliam was dead for his treason. Lord Bannien was dead for his. Mirkus Shoat, Earl of Rivencourt, dead. Estin Cersillian, Earl of Masonhalm, dead. Feldin Maas, whose barony was now Geder’s, dead. Lord Ternigan, dead. King Simeon, dead. The march of victory in the field and the needed purge of corrupt elements in the court left them stretched tight as the skin of a drum. They were a court of wives, daughters, and third sons now.

He became aware that Onin Pyrellin had stopped speaking and was looking up at him expectantly. Geder pressed a hand to his cheek and looked out over the crowd. He wasn’t halfway through the petitions of the nobility yet, and there was the merchant class after that, and the poor and landless after them. An endless procession of people who wanted, and he was the one they all thought could provide whatever it was. Justice or favor or status.

In the crowd, he caught sight of Sabiha Kalliam. Her mother was at her side. Little Annalise would be with the wet nurse, then, and they were here to ask him to ransom back Lord Skestinin. He would have to tell them no. And beside them, Laren Shoat, here to ask pardon for his family and a return of their titles and lands. And beside him, Namen Flor with God only knew what concerns that would be Geder’s concerns too, before it was all done with.

Go home, he thought. All of you just go home and whatever the problems were you thought you had, just forget them. Start over. Do it without bothering me.

“I’m sorry,” Geder said. “You lost my attention. Start again.”

Pyrellin’s mouth pressed tight, but he started in again detailing his father’s glories and Geder tried to attend to it all this time.

He went on as long as he could stand it, refreshing himself with cucumber water, apples, and cheese. The regent’s crown chafed his temples, but he left it on because it was expected of him. He found that, now that everyone knew that lying before the throne was impossible, no one tried. The pale-eyed priest might almost not have been there for all the use he was, and Geder regretted the loss.

The white-gold light of afternoon pressed in through the windows and the stinking wind had died to a low, disconsolate muttering when Geder finally called the halt, thanked the court, declared once again his loyalty to the throne and to Aster who would sit it in a few years’ time, and made his way out. His back ached, his head hurt, his eyes felt like someone had poured grit into them, but the grand audience was done for another year, and good riddance. The pale-eyed priest walked with him as Basrahip would have done, only Geder took no comfort in this man’s presence.

“You did well today, Prince Geder,” the priest said as they reached his private rooms at the Kingspire’s base. “You rule with wisdom and grace.”

“And you’d think the rewards would be better for that,” Geder said. A servant boy accepted the regent’s crown from him and scuttled away with it. “Do we have any word from Basrahip? Is he coming back soon?”

“Alas, the apostate’s corruption was narrow but deep,” the priest said, his hands lifted in apology as if he had some responsibility for what had happened in a different city. “The Basrahip’s messengers tell me that he has rooted out much of the weed of lies and blasphemy, but one corrupted priest remains. If that man is sacrificed to her glory and her truth, he will return to us.”

Geder lumbered toward the stairs, and from there to his rooms. He wondered where Aster was. He’d more than half expected the boy to attend the grand audience. It was going to be Aster’s task before very long, and better that he see as many examples of it as possible before it was his ass in that damned uncomfortable chair. Geder couldn’t really blame him for finding something better to do, though. He would have been elsewhere too, if he could have been.

“What do you mean, if? What else would he do with the bastard?”

“All is in accordance with her will,” the priest said. “If it is her will that the apostate be sacrificed, then he will be sacrificed.”

“But he’s going to be killed. That’s what Basrahip went out there for. He’s a threat to the empire, and the empire is the chosen of the goddess. The apostate needs to die, and Basrahip’ll kill him. There’s no if in there.”

“The goddess is wise beyond our knowing,” the priest said, trotting a little to keep up. Geder wished he would just go away. “Her purity will cleanse the world, and all things fold to her wishes. If the Basrahip finds this apostate and ends him, it will be because she wills it.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Geder said, reaching the stairs. “Basrahip’s been very clear. The goddess has come to bring peace to the world. I’m her chosen, and so Antea is her chosen. We’re spreading out and building her temples and bringing peace. That’s what we do. Whatever opposes us fails. That’s all.”

“I have also heard the Basrahip’s living voice,” the priest said. He sounded a little hurt. Geder wondered if a day on the throne had left him cranky. Probably, it had. “We are not in disagreement, Prince Geder. If it is the will of the goddess, all the world will bow down before you.”

Geder stopped, turned, poked the man’s chest with a single stiff finger as he spoke. “What you heard Basrahip say and what I heard him say seem to be very different. I’ll walk you through this one last time, and then I’m going to go eat my dinner and take my bath and sleep, I hope, until a day and a half from now. The goddess has come to bring peace to the world, and so she will. I am the chosen of the goddess, so I have her blessing and her protection. Every city I take, I raise a temple to her. Lies and deceit are purged from the world. The new age is going to dawn with the last evil of the dragons burned out of the world. Nowhere in there anywhere is an if.”

“I fear I have given you some offense, Prince Geder,” the priest said, his eyes growing wide.

“I’m not offended,” Geder said, biting each word off as he spoke it. “You’re not listening. When you say if—if the goddess wants it, if it’s her will—it’s like we don’t know what’s going to happen. But we do. Not all the fine, fiddly little details, maybe, but the important part is known. We’re going to win. The world is going to be better and purer and right. And here’s an if for you. If you aren’t certain of that, you’re the one who’s outside of her grace.”

The priest shook his head in distress. “But I am certain in my faith. I would never—”

“Stop. Just send word to Basrahip from me that I’d like him to come back as soon as he can.”

“If that is your wish, Prince Geder,” the priest said, bowing. Geder had to restrain himself from punching the man in the neck.

Geder dreamed that he was dead, and that Cithrin had killed him. His body was thick, his veins black with clotted blood, and he still had to rule the empire. In his dream, he was forcing himself down a long hallway, looking for the place he was meant to be. He could hear Cithrin, but every door he came to opened to the wrong rooms. If he could find her, she would be able to undo his death, but he had to find her first.

At the dream’s end, he pushed open a door to find Cithrin naked in the arms of the dead King Simeon and woke up shouting. Afternoon light pressed in through the window. His shirt and hose were sticky with sweat and his body felt almost as upset and sluggish as it had before he’d laid down for his nap. He hadn’t made it as far as his bath. When he rose from his bed, his back ached. It seemed unfair that sitting for the better part of a day should make him ache as much as hard work would have. He blamed the throne.

He called for fresh clothes and sent the servants away while he changed. Fresh talc soaked up the worst of the sweat, and the new robes were light. The wind had given way to cooler air, and he decided to wear a thin wool cloak along with it. He needed food and perhaps some light entertainment. Music, maybe. But when he stepped out of his rooms, Canl Daskellin was waiting for him.

“Lord Regent,” he said, bowing.

“Must we?” Geder asked.

“I’m afraid there’s news,” Daskellin said. “If you’d prefer, I can come back in the morning, but it won’t be any better then than now.”

“So it’s a choice of spending the evening fretting over what you’ve said or else fretting over what you’re going to say.”

“That’s the shape of it, my lord.” Daskellin’s smile was rueful. It occured to Geder that he was the closest thing to a real friend Geder had in the city, and they barely knew one another outside the work of the court.

“All right. Come with me.”

Geder tramped down to the gardens, Daskellin at his side and the royal guard trailing behind them. The gardens were thick with the scent of flowers. The perfume seemed almost too sweet after the sewer-smell of the morning. Wide red blossoms nodded in the breeze and the setting sun pulled the shadows out across the green. Servants brought chairs and chilled wine and a platter of roasted walnuts and berries glazed with honey and salt. Geder pressed a handful into his mouth.

“What’s happened?” he asked. “It’s Inentai, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid not,” Daskellin said. “The first reports have come from Porte Oliva. The city is ours. The weapons we sent made the difference. When the dragon attacked—and the dragon did attack—we brought it down. It got away again, but injured badly. The city fell, but Cithrin bel Sarcour escaped.”

Geder sat with the words, waiting to feel something. Rage, disappointment, resolve. Something. Of course she was gone. Of course it hadn’t worked. Nothing went the way it should for him, not ever. He took a sip of the wine, curled his lip, and called the servant back to bring him water instead.

“What does Jorey say about finding her?”

“His first reports confirm that the dragon and the woman are in league. They left by ship, and we assume they’re heading west mostly because none of our ships in the Inner Sea have seen them. They may be going to Cabral or Herez or Princip C’Annaldé. Or they may be going farther north.”

“We’ll have to find her,” Geder said. “She’s the key to it all. The Timzinae conspiracy. The dragon. Get her, and it cracks that nut. There won’t be peace while she’s free.”

“I assumed you’d say as much, my lord,” Daskellin said. “I’ve drawn up orders for the Lord Marshal to make chase with as much speed as is possible without exhausting the troops.”

That sounded like a backhanded way to give Jorey permission to rest in Porte Oliva, but what else was he supposed to do? And if they weren’t even certain where she’d gone…

“Fine. That’s fine. Is there anything else?” Daskellin’s silence was alarming. Geder looked up. Daskellin’s expression was closed and empty. Dread tugged at his belly. “There’s more?”

“The siege at Kiaria has broken,” Daskellin said. “There was a fever among the men, and the Timzinae forces inside the fortress took advantage of it to launch a night attack. We believe the enemy forces are small and ill-equipped, but there is an enemy army loose in Elassae.”

“No,” Geder said. “That’s not possible.” Only maybe it was. They hadn’t taken Kiaria, hadn’t built a temple in it. Maybe the goddess wouldn’t let him hold places where he hadn’t kept his bargain.

“Fallon Broot’s gathered his forces in Suddapal and preparing the attack.”

“Yes, of course. That’s good. He has priests with him, yes?”

“He does.”

“That’s going to be fine, then. He’ll beat them back. Maybe we can even get soldiers inside Kiaria this time. Put an end to this.”

“The force is smaller than it would have been,” Daskellin said. “He’d already transferred his spare blades to Inentai. The mercenaries in Suddapal are contracted for garrison duty, not field service.”

“So renegotiate. Pay them more. We’ve got all of Suddapal we can sell off if we need to.”

“That was my thought as well, but I wanted to consult with you.”

“Yes, of course,” Geder said. “Whatever we need to do.”

“And if it becomes clear that we can’t hold Suddapal, my lord?”

A strange dread washed over Geder, carried by the memory of a woman’s silhouette against the flames of a burning city. Vanai, boarded tight and lit to keep it from ever falling into enemy hands again. That was the question Daskellin was asking. If Broot couldn’t hold back the Timzinae, would Suddapal burn? The answer should have been obvious. Geder had set precedent. This was war, after all. There was no room for sentiment. We burn it. If we can’t hold Suddapal, we burn it and everyone in it.

“We’ll decide that if we need to,” Geder said. “Not something we have to worry about today. Broot’s good. He’ll beat them. He’s very good.”

“If you say so, Lord Regent.”

Geder nodded to himself more than the man beside him. Perhaps it was just the unpleasant weather and the uneasing dreams, but he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was all coming apart at the seams. The empire, the war. Even the goddess. In his mind, Cithrin smirked at him, pleased with herself. And why shouldn’t she be?

She was winning.