The King's Blood (30 page)

The sun had started its long, weary arc toward the horizon when a sound came. A great, dry mourning drum. Far away before him, the gates of Kaltfel cracked and slowly swung open. The soldiers who came out carried the banner of Lechan, hung in reverse, and the yellow pennant of surrender. From behind him, Dawson heard the swelling, roaring shouts of victory. The sound washed over him like surf against the shore. All he felt himself was relief. King Lechan was a small man with poor teeth, but he held himself with dignity as Dawson accepted his surrender and took him into protection. In exchange, Dawson swore to do all he could to maintain that protection. All of the things he’d written to Palliako became true, except for a small matter of timing.

A small matter of timing that was the difference between loyalty to the man sitting on the throne and loyalty to the honor of the throne itself.

He gave command of the sack to Fallon Broot. For twelve hours, Kaltfel would feel the price of its loss as the soldiers of Antea ran riot over it, stripping its gold and gems and silver, its spices and silks. All the soldiers of Antea except two. If Dawson had looked for a better way to be assured privacy, he couldn’t have invented one.

Alan Klin was paler than Dawson remembered him. A fever had taken him during the southern campaign, and he had not entirely recovered. The cunning men said he might never. He sat on the ground, his expression closed and sullen. Dawson considered his onetime enemy with a bitter amusement. The world made for strange partners.

“Curtin Issandrian met with my wife,” Dawson said. “He was jealous of you. He hoped to have his own chance in the field. A way to regain his honor and good name.”

“He’s always been a bit of an idiot,” Klin said. “Sincere, but…”

“You do have a chance to regain your honor,” Dawson said quietly.

“I’m not here to get back my good name. I’m not here because of what Maas did. Back before Vanai, I pulled a prank on Geder Palliako. And now he’s killing me without even the favor of doing it quickly.”

“I think that’s true,” Dawson said and handed Klin a cup of honeyed water.

“I mean less than a book to him. My life is worth less than a book.”

“How many of your friends do you still have in the court?” Dawson asked.

“A few, but none that’ll speak to me anyway. Everyone knows that Palliako bronzes a grudge. I’m going to be trapped under his idea of revenge for the rest of my life.” He sipped the water.

“Sir Klin,” Dawson said. “I need your help. Your kingdom needs your help.”

Klin chuckled and shook his head.

“What is it this time? Does the greater glory of the empire require me to climb a mountain naked with bear bait strapped to my neck?”

Dawson leaned forward. He had a sudden and powerful apprehension that the three priests would be nearby, that they would hear him.

“There’s a difference between being loyal to a man and loyal to a nation,” Dawson said. “I thought once that Palliako was nothing more than an apt tool.”

“I think you called that poorly, Lord Marshal,” Klin said, but his eyes were more focused than they had been. He scented smoke in what Dawson was saying. He wasn’t a stupid man.

“No, I was right. My mistake was that I thought he was
my
tool. He isn’t. He belongs to those priests he pulled back out of the world’s asshole. They are uncanny, and I suspect they are more powerful than we understand. He’s dancing to whatever song they call. He is letting them choose our way, and he will do so until Aster’s of age. He is a monstrosity and we, in our folly, have given him the throne. As long as he has it, Antea will suffer. And you, my dear old friend, will be marked for an unpleasant death.”

Klin drank his water again, but his gaze was solidly on Dawson now. He handed the cup back and licked his lips.

“I think you’re telling me something,” Klin said. “But I’m very tired and I’ve been very ill, so I think you should say exactly what you mean in very simple terms, yes?”

“Fair enough. I am offering you freedom from Palliako’s wrath and the return of your good name and reputation. And more than that, I am calling you to the defense of Antea and the Severed Throne. We have been betrayed from within, and we allowed it to happen. Now we have to make it right. Antea needs a different regent. Anyone other than Geder Palliako.”

“And how am I to manage that?” Klin asked, but Dawson could see that he already knew the answer.

“You help me kill him.”

Marcus

T

he trade ships from Narinisle arrived in Porte Oliva, and the city was a madness of activity. Merchants flooded the inns and pubs near the port, digging for information, pouring beer into the sailors and coin into the purses of keeps and brewers. Which ships had left first, which last, which traders had met with each other on the distant island kingdom. No detail was too small to be wrung of all significance. It was the high season of Porte Oliva, and even in the exhausting heat of the day, trade and barter and negotiations filled every corner. The Medean bank had placed no direct stake the previous year, and so the absence of Cithrin bel Sarcour could be excused. It could not, however, go unnoticed.

A light rain fell from a low, white sky, leaving the air steamy and thick. The interior of the taproom was punishingly hot. Given the choice between the damp and the heat, rain won out, and the courtyard that overlooked the sea was thick with benches and chairs. The keep had taken away the tables to make more room. Marcus sat with Yardem, Ahariel Akkabrian, and the Jasuru named Hart. Four men of four different races all sitting together. They were, Marcus noted, the only such group in the yard.

“You need a cunning man who can turn the beer cold,” Ahariel said.

“You need a desert,” Hart said.

“How’d a desert help?” the Kurtadam asked. He’d had his pelt shaved almost to the skin for the summer. Seeing his pink skin dotted with thick black stubble and improbably pink nipples exposed to the air felt slightly obscene. Without his beads, he looked more like a Firstblood, but also eerily less like a human—neither one race nor another. Some other of his race left a decorative V of fur to keep the beads in place, but Ahariel had opted for the extreme.

“You take a great pot,” Hart said, making his arms round. “Put a small one within, and sand between them. Damp the sand, and it will keep meat or beer cool. Only it won’t work here. Too wet.” His teeth clicked on the last word like it was threatening it. “What about you, Yardem? What do the Tralgu do?”

“Drink warm beer,” Yardem said with a wide, canine grin.

The others laughed, but not Marcus. He’d come drinking because he didn’t want to stay another day in the barracks or at the counting house, and a taproom by the port seemed to offer the chance of something interesting. Once he’d gotten there, the press of bodies and the roar of the voices left him anxious. There were too many people in not enough space. There was no way to see a threat coming. The tension was building across his shoulders and in the pit of his stomach.

He scanned the crowd, looking for something without quite knowing what it was. A familiar face, perhaps. Cithrin or Pyk. Or Master Kit. Yes, that was it. He was looking for Kit. Not—he told himself—because of the mad scheme the man had talked of. Only to pass an evening in conversation with someone who’d seen the world outside Porte Oliva recently. Someone whom the world hadn’t yet nailed in place.

He wondered where Kit had gone. What he was doing just then. It was hard to imagine him away from the other players. Kit had built a life and a family and then had walked away from it because he felt he had to. It didn’t matter that the reason was nonsense, it was still the mark of a brave man in a world of cowards. Marcus wasn’t going to leave his work here to run off on some mad and doomed adventure. Unless, perhaps…

Someone put a hand on his shoulder and he looked up into the face of Qahuar Em. The half-breed had the coloring and features of a Firstblood, but with a rough skin where the Jasuru scales hadn’t quite formed. Once, he had been Cithrin’s rival and lover, and that he couldn’t father children had been the only thing Marcus liked about him.

“Buy you men a round?” Qahuar Em asked, and then waited for an answer.

“Why not?” Marcus said, shifting on the bench.

Qahuar shouted to a harried serving boy and gestured toward the little knot of guards before he sat. His smile was both practiced and sincere. He was a difficult man to dislike. That was his job.

“The magistra seems to be missing the season,” Qahuar said.

“Pressing work in Carse,” Marcus said. “Don’t know much about it. Just poor soldiers, us.” Qahuar Em laughed, because they both knew better. “I heard your escort fleet hasn’t gone as well as planned.”

“We knew it would take a few years before we saw profit,” Qahuar Em said, with a shrug. “
I
heard that I might have some gratitude to offer you, though.”

“Always sorry for that,” Marcus said, his smile pulling the sting of the words, but only a little.

The serving boy came, a tray held above his head as he threaded his way through the crowd, and delivered mugs of last year’s cider to the five men. It was sweet and crisp and the fumes from his first mouthful went to Marcus’s head so that he only sipped it after that.

“The story goes that half the pirates between Cabral and here have moved elsewhere because the famed General Wester has been attacking them in their sleep and burning all their boats.”

“Exaggeration,” Marcus said. “Burned one boat once. But you know how these stories go. By next year, I’ll have lit the ocean on fire and anyone who loses a cargo someplace besides here will say it’s my fault for pushing the pirates in their way.”

“Likely true,” Qahuar said, and someone at the far end of the yard called his name. He looked up and waved at a Firstblood woman in a blue cotton gown, but he muttered something under his breath as he did it.

“Friend of yours?” Marcus asked.

“Client,” Qahuar said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to—”

“We’ll drink your cider without you,” Ahariel said with a broad smile. “Think of you while we do it.”

“Good man,” Qahuar Em said, rising to his feet. He clapped Marcus on the shoulder. “Give the magistra my regards when you see her. The game’s less interesting without her.”

“She’ll be pleased to hear it,” Marcus said, and watched the man walk away. He knew his animosity wasn’t entirely fair. Porte Oliva thought Cithrin to be older than she was. Marcus knew Qahuar Em had been sleeping with a girl barely more than a child, but even the half-Jasuru didn’t.

“Hm,” Hart said. “I’d say the captain’s got an admirer.”

The woman in the blue gown was speaking with Qahuar. She glanced back toward Marcus as Qahuar nodded, then she looked away perhaps a bit too quickly. She was too old to be pretty, but so was he. And she was handsome. Younger than Alys would have been, Marcus guessed, and older than Merian. Marcus sighed and handed his mug across to Yardem. The rain plastered her dress to her body, much as it did with everyone.

“You boys behave,” Marcus said, standing.

“You’re going for an introduction?” Hart asked with a leer.

“I’m going for a walk.”

The streets were less crowded than the courtyard had been, but they were just as hot, just as damp. Horses and oxen pulled carts across filthy pavement, their heads hung low and heat spume on their lips. Men with hands on sword pommel walked beside loads of silk and spice, gold and tobacco leaf come from Far Syramys. The air smelled of horse shit and rotting vegetables and curry. All familiar, Marcus thought, but he wouldn’t go so far as to say it smelled like home. Having no place in mind he cared to be, he found himself falling into a lonely patrol. The bank warehouse was open, bills of lading being compared with a cartful of crates. Enen and Roach waved to him as he passed. The barracks was nearly empty, the heat of the day making the interior unpleasant, but several of his guards sat in the shade of the building playing music and telling one another unlikely stories of battle or sexual misadventure. The counting house was open, the planter of tulips that Cithrin had put out when they had first purchased the building was a splash of celebratory red and pink.

Inside, Pyk was squatting on a stool, her legs splayed. Sweat ran down her face and stained her robe under her arms and breasts. She lifted her chin in greeting.

“You look like a drowned cat. Was about to send for you,” she said.

“What’s the matter?” Marcus asked.

The Yemmu woman heaved a tectonic shrug. “Depends on how you look at it. Maybe nothing. Letter came. On the table there. I’d get up and hand it to you if it wasn’t so fucking hot.”

The pages were coarse, and the ripped edges where they’d been sewn had tiny tears going into the page. The cheap paper the bank used for things that didn’t need keeping. The signature at the bottom was Cithrin’s, but it didn’t bear her thumb. Not a legal document. He started from the top, reading slowly, and his heart went stiller.

“Camnipol,” he said. “Thought they had a war going there.”

“They do,” Pyk said. “All but over, from what I hear. My money’d be on old Komme keeping his eye on the next war. Antea’s a big place, and may be about to get bigger. Good to know who the players are.”

“Didn’t know it was a game.”

“It’s all a game,” Pyk said. He wanted to find a sneer in her voice, but she only sounded tired. “The girl’s a good choice. Pretty. Young. Smart. People say things in front of her and think she won’t understand. What’s this do to you?”

Marcus put the letter back on the table. It lay limp and broke-winged.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just means I’ll be watching the store a little longer before she gets back.”

Pyk smacked her lips.

“And if she doesn’t come back?”

Marcus leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. He took a deep breath, and felt hollow. “Why wouldn’t she come back?”

“Because she’s young and finding her place in the world. It may not be here. Maybe she gets out there and finds there’s something she’d rather do than be my mask.”