The King's Blood (29 page)

Aster’s face went still. “I see,” the prince said.

Geder shook his head and waved a heel of bread.

“No no no. Marrying in won’t work. Being married to a woman doesn’t mean that all of Asterilhold is suddenly going to be placated. This is what got us here at the first, isn’t it? Mixing bloodlines so that there were plausible claims to the Severed Throne in Asterilhold’s court. If we hadn’t tried making peace through marriage generations ago, there wouldn’t have been the opportunity to even appear legitimate now. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.”

“What, then?” Aster asked.

“
We
take the land. The cities. Asterilhold comes back to being part of Imperial Antea, just the way it was under the High Kings. There are any number of men in the court who deserve reward for the work they’ve done. And with loyal Anteans controlling the place, we’ll have less to worry about. It’s simple, really. I don’t know why it wasn’t obvious earlier.”

“And the present ruling caste?” Basrahip asked.

“Well, they can’t be trusted, can they? We’ve exposed them, humiliated them, and taken their positions and holdings,” Geder said. “I’m sure they’d do anything in their power to undermine us. And these are the people, some of them, who were plotting to kill Aster. Losing a war doesn’t change who they are, you know.”

“I see,” Basrahip said.

Geder took half of a stewed pear, sucking it into his mouth and pressing the juice out against his palate. Sweetness flooded him.

“No,” he said, around the food. “I wish I saw another way. I do. But to keep Aster safe, I don’t think we can leave our enemies with power. If they can’t be friends and allies, they’ve made their choice. They have to die.”

Dawson

K

altfel stood on a wide plain rising up from the long strips of farmland like a strange dream. Its spires and towers were built from red stone, its walls stood as high as four men one atop the other. In gentler days, it was the home of the greatest breeders of messenger birds. It had been said that a bird bred in Kaltfel was fashioned with the secrets of the dragons, and for all Dawson knew, it might have been truth. Dawson had been there before as a young man. He still remembered the pale streets and the hot peppers and chocolate they seasoned their coffee with. He had fought a duel in the odd triangular yard that Asterilhold courts employed, and had won. He’d gotten drunk afterwards, and woken in another man’s room, Prince Simeon beside him.

The day his army arrived at the royal city of Asterilhold, Dawson had begun by burning every structure that stood outside the city walls—farmhouses, storehouses, stables, tanners’ yards, dyers’ yards. What still stood when the smoke cleared, they had razed, with the exception of the necropolis to the east of the city. The tombs, he respected. Antea had no quarrel with the dead. After that, his engineers began constructing the siege engines. Trebuchet and catapult rained stones against the great red walls and the sealed gates. They worked in teams, eroding the tops of the walls day and night for seven days. At dawn and dusk, he would send runners through his camps to collect the shit and offal of the day, reset one of the trebuchets, and rain it down into the city itself. Soon his men were including other bits of refuse— dead cats and bloody bandages, spoiled meat alive with maggots. The gates did not open. The enemy did not appear. He hadn’t expected them to. On the ninth day of the siege, a scout had discovered where a buried network of pipes had been emptying the waste of the city into a hidden gully. Dawson’s engineers had destroyed them.

When they ran out of stones, they switched to tar-soaked wood set alight. For three more days, Kaltfel withstood the rain of fire. Twice, smoke began to take hold of the city, and twice the beseiged beat back the flames. On the tenth day, Dawson saw his first sign of real hope. The birds were all set free. The great flocks whirled around the towers, confused and looking for a way to come home. At dusk, they went north. Dawson considered sending huntsmen after them and flinging the corpses of pigeons and rooks back over the walls. He chose not to. The birds and the dead, then. They could escape.

Simeon had loved Kaltfel. The court manners there had just a hint of the exotic about them. Familiar and unfamiliar both. The men and women there spoke with a slight accent, stressing their long vowels in a way that made even the Firstblood among them seem more foreign than the Jasuru or Timzinae back in Camnipol. The King’s Palace stood before a wide, open square where a thousand girls had danced for them. More stones arrived from a quarry his soldiers had taken to the north, and the attack against the walls began again. One night, a desperate handful of soldiers slipped out of the city and came under cover of darkness to set fire to the catapults. They managed to destroy two before they were caught, and Dawson returned them using a third. He did not kill them first.

And every morning, the three priests came to him.

Dawson sat in his leather camp chair, his legs bared, while his squire plucked ticks out of his skin. The bright, damp summer morning reminded him of swimming in a lake. The priests, creatures of the desert, seemed to hate it.

“My lord, we will win this battle for you if you will allow it.”

“But I won’t,” Dawson said, as he did every morning. “Antea is strong enough to break Kaltfel without your help, and that’s what I intend to do.”

“Listen to me, my lord—”

“We’re done. Go now,” Dawson said, as he did every day. They were silver-tongued. If he let them make their arguments, he might weaken again here as he had at the Seref and the paired keeps. He watched them walk away, and he smiled to himself as they went.

The camps ate through their supplies, and then turned to the landscape. No tree stood, and the smoke of green wood left the air hazy and white. Carts came in from Antea, and raiding parties pushed farther and farther south toward the marshlands, killing cattle and razing farms. It was a war of endurance, the slow, grudging end to a war that had gone too quickly at the beginning. Dawson’s best estimate was that the landscape would bear the scars for a generation.

Twenty days into the siege, one of his own men died of a fever he’d caught in the southern marshes. Dawson stood rites over him in lieu of a real priest, then he’d ordered the fallen soldier dismembered and his body flung into the city.

On the twenty-first day, a banner of parley rose over the southern gate, and three unarmed men on horseback rode out. Dawson took Fallon Broot and Dacid Bannien for his. The three priests he left pointedly behind. They sat at a table in the empty space between tiring army and eroding city. The men of Asterilhold held themselves proudly, but they rode thin horses and their cheeks were sharp. Dawson’s squire had brought a ham and a basket of summer apples, a wheel of cheese and a tun of beer. Dawson saw his enemies looking at it, but he made them no offers.

“Lord Kalliam, I take it,” the eldest of the three riders said as he took his seat. “Your reputation precedes you.”

“I am sorry not to say the same,” Dawson said, sitting.

“Mysin Hawl, Count of Evenford.”

Dawson nodded. The ground was uneven, and the table rocked slightly as Count Hawl leaned against it.

“You know,” the Count of Evenford said, “that we have the resources to withstand your siege.”

“No, you don’t,” Dawson said. “We came faster than you anticipated and with more men. You were caught napping. And even if you had the food and water to squat behind your walls for a year, it wouldn’t change the end.”

The man sucked his teeth and shrugged.

“I have come to ask what terms you would require to end this.”

“Are you empowered to offer surrender?”

“I am not,” the count said. “Only the king has that authority.”

“Then perhaps I should speak to the king.”

Behind him, Fallon Broot chuckled, and Dawson felt a pang of annoyance. Perhaps he should have brought someone else.

“I am authorized to bring whatever message you care directly to his majesty.”

Dawson nodded.

“He will open the gates of Kaltfel and surrender himself and every man involved in the plot against Prince Aster to me. We will sack for twelve hours. Not more. After that, all the holdings and territories of Asterilhold are under my protection until such time as your king and Lord Regent Palliako come to a final agreement.”

“Then perhaps I should speak to the Lord Regent,” the count said.

“You wouldn’t enjoy the experience,” Dawson said.

“I will carry this to King Lechan,” the count said. “May we meet again in the morning?”

“If we remain under parley, then yes.”

“We will make no attempt to attack or escape,” the count said.

“Then I will wait for your king’s reply,” Dawson said, and nodded to Broot and Bannien. The pair brought the food-stuffs and placed them on the table. “A token of our esteem. They’re not poisoned.”

He rode back to the camp smiling. It was almost over.

M

y lord.”

Dawson shifted in his cot, fighting toward consciousness. The tent was dark except for the squire’s candle. Dawson sat up on his cot and shook his head.

“ ’S happened?” he asked. “Is it a fire? Are the bastards coming? What?”

“A courier, my lord. From the Lord Regent.”

Dawson was on his feet. The night was cool but not cold. He shrugged on his cloak and stepped out. The cookfires had for the most part burned out, and the night around him was dark. The thin sliver of moon and the scattering of stars couldn’t outshine his candle. The courier stood beside his horse, satchel in hand. Dawson took the letter, checked the seal and the knotting to be sure it was authentic, and then ripped out the threads. The contents were ciphered.

“Wait here,” Dawson said to the courier, and then to his squire. “Bring more light. Do it now.”

It took an hour to decipher the text, and Dawson’s belly grew thicker and heavier with every word he uncovered. The matter was clear. It was the considered decision of the Lord Regent that the crimes against Antea were too grave and threatened the safety and sovereignty of Imperial Antea as a whole. For this reason, Lord Regent Geder Palliako, in the name of Aster, King of Antea, claimed rights to Asteril-hold and all the lands and holdings owing fealty to it. The Lord Marshal was instructed to gather together every man, woman, and child of noble birth in Asterilhold, seize and confiscate all lands and holdings, and put them all to death in as painless and humane a manner as was convenient.

Dawson sat in the darkness, bloodless. He read the words over again. Every man, woman, and child of noble blood in Asterilhold. Palliako’s bloody thumb smeared the bottom of the page. His seal was on the wax. It was an order, given by the regent to whom he had sworn loyalty. True, the regent was Geder Palliako. True, the order was bloody-minded and cruel. But honor that was conditional was not honor; loyalty offered when he agreed and rescinded when he did not was not loyalty. Dawson sat by himself in the darkened tent, the flames of his candles the only light. He ran his hand across the pages, his throat thick. His hands were trembling.

Honor demanded. It
required
.

And then, as if coming before him in a dream, he saw Palliako look to his pet cultist, and the cultist nod.

My Lord Regent,

I am pleased to bring you happy news. This after-noon, I have accepted the surrender of Asterilhold and all holdings owing fealty to it. King Lechan is under my immediate control, and through his body, all those who swear loyalty to him.

As part of the terms of surrender and in accordance with tradition, I have accepted King Lechan, and through him all the noble persons and houses of Asterilhold, into my protection. I am devastated that your most recent instructions as to the terms of surrender reached me when the agreement had already been made. I feel certain that the respect and reverence we both have for the honor of the empire will compel you as it does me to respect the word as I have given it in your name, and Prince Aster’s.

Dawson took a small silver blade, pressing it to his thumb until a drop of blood appeared, and then pressed it into the thirsty paper. He sewed the letter closed himself, melted the wax, and pressed his seal into it. He felt the hours of the night slipping by him, and he trotted out to the sounds of the first birds. There was no light in the east, no sign of the dawn apart from the bright and cheerful birdsong. He pressed the letter into the courier’s hand.

“Take this back. Give it to no one but the Lord Regent. No one else, you understand? Even if his priest swears he will deliver it at once, you put this in the regent’s hands, yes?”

“Yes, Lord Marshal,” the boy said, and was gone.

Dawson stood for a moment, listening to the hoofbeats, soft against the mud and patchy grass, grow softer. And then the distant tapping when they reached the eternally solid jade. There was still time. He could send a fresh rider after the boy on a fast horse. Dawson had set this thing in motion, but he could still take it back. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, the cool air filling him and then seeping away. He waited for his heart to feel some misgiving.

He found his squire dozing and shook him awake.

“Listen to me,” Dawson said. “Wake up and listen to me, you little bastard. You go and find the flag of parley. Take it out to the city. And take someone with you to carry it if someone gets excited and puts an arrow through you by mistake. Tell the count that I need to speak with him immediately. The situation has changed, he and I have very little time. Can you do that?”

“Y-yes, Lord Marshal.”

“Then stop looking at me and
go
!”

When the sun came up, Dawson and Mysin Hawl, Count of Evenford, were at their little table in the no-man’s-land. At midmorning, the count rode back to the city, shaken and weeping, the deciphered letter tucked in his belt. All day, Dawson sat at the parley table. His chair was as uncomfortable as a saddle, but in a different way. His back ached afresh, and he was hungry and thirsty, and desperately tired, but he remained at the table, the parley still not officially concluded.