The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin) (26 page)

“And so if there’s a problem, you kill all the children?” Daskellin asked.

“All the ones that belong to the people on that farm. Or in that group. Yes,” Geder said. “I haven’t worked out all the details yet. I was basing it on an essay I read about how Varel Caot enforced peace after the Interregnum.”

The four men at the table were silent. Geder felt a flush of annoyance and embarrassment that he couldn’t entirely account for.

“It might be difficult to … maintain enthusiasm when the time comes to kill these children,” Mecilli asked.

“Enthusiasm or loyalty?” Geder asked.

“You could spell them the same,” Mecilli said.

“The point is we won’t have to,” Emming said. “I think the Lord Regent’s right. The threat alone will keep the roaches in line.”

“
Thank
you,” Geder said, and leaned back, his arms crossed before him. “It’s not like I want to kill children. I’m not a monster. But we have to get the farms producing again. And anyway, I’ve already had the census made and the children are being marched here now.”

“Well, then there’s nothing we need to argue about,” Daskellin said. “Let’s move on, shall we?”

The meeting continued for the better part of the morning, but Geder felt distracted. There were questions upon questions upon questions. The remaining high families of Asterilhold—the ones who had survived the purge that came after the death of King Lechan—were eager to cement relations with Antea, resulting in a swarm of proposals of marriage between the young men and women of the two courts. There were even suggestions that Aster and Geder make alliances with several young women, none of whom Geder recognized by name. Once that was all disposed of, they moved on to whether the spoils of Sarakal would support Ternigan’s army or if a tax should be called, and if it were whether to accept payment exclusively in coin, or if food and horses would suffice. Through it all Sir Ernst Mecilli’s expression was sour and he didn’t meet Geder’s eyes.

They ended before the midday meal, and Geder excused himself to his private rooms, feeling out of sorts and not at all in the mood to be fawned over by courtiers. He would much rather eat a simple meal of bread, cheese, apples, and chocolate by himself where no one else’s needs or judgments could intrude. When Basrahip lumbered into the room, Geder only nodded at him. For the briefest moment, he imagined dressing down the guard for letting him be disturbed, but the thought was gone as soon as it came. Of course the rules that bound the rest of the palace didn’t apply to Basrahip. Everyone knew that.

“How is the rededication going?” Geder asked.

“It will be time soon, Prince Geder. You are very kind to offer your servants such beautiful rooms in your home.”

Geder shrugged as Basrahip settled himself on a chair. The priest looked worried, which was a rare sight. Geder popped a sliver of tart apple into his mouth and spoke around it.

“Is there a problem?”

“You have taken a new city,” Basrahip said.

“And I’ll have at least one more by winter,” Geder said. “And the goddess is going to have a temple in both of them. At least one. More if you want.”

“She sees your generosity, Prince Geder. I know this to be true.”

“You’re not going to ask if you can bring more priests here, are you? You know you can. Just tell me how many we need to accommodate and I’ll make the room. It’s the least I can do.”

“It is not that,” Basrahip said. “You have always been kind to me. I have seen the truth of your heart, and you are the great man that was foretold. Your greatness has exceeded my small powers.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your new cities in the west. Now more to the east. The priests of the goddess march at your army’s side and stand in your court. We walk through the streets of your cities and hold the people’s will to the will of the goddess. But we are only a single temple. To do these new temples justice, they must have the faithful and the holy, and I have few more that I can bring forth.”

“Oh,” Geder said. It was an odd thought. Now that it was said aloud, of course there were only so many men at the temple in the Sinir mountains east of the Keshet. Somehow he’d always assumed there would be more if they were needed, as if they sprang full-grown from the earth out there. “Well. Can you initiate new priests? I mean, you must be able to … make more?”

“It will be necessary,” Basrahip said. “But the rites of the goddess are not simple things.”

“All right. I can write to the seminaries. We have temples and priests of our own, and with half the court coming to your sermons as it is, I’m sure there are plenty who’d be interested in learning from you. And really, the rededication’s a perfect time for it.”

Basrahip smiled and lowered his head to Geder in a half bow. “My thanks.”

“Basrahip? Can I ask you a question? Have you spoken with Aster at all lately? I just notice that he seems … unhappy. And I wondered whether you might have some idea why?”

“I do not,” Basrahip said. “But if you would like—”

“No. No, that’s all right. I was just wondering.”

“Have you asked him?”

Geder broke off a bit of cheese and chuckled ruefully.

“I suppose that would be the most direct way, wouldn’t it?” he said. “It’s just hard. I don’t want to make him feel like he’s on trial.”

“Ask gently, perhaps,” the priest said.

It was almost twilight when Geder found Aster again. The boy was at the dueling ground alone, walking the dry strip where questions of honor found their answers. He held his wooden practice sword carelessly, swinging it through the air more for the sensation of movement than against an imagined foe. The shadows of the coming night cut across the ground, leaving part of it bright as midday and the rest almost blue with darkness. Geder motioned his personal guard back and took another practice blade from the rack. When he stepped out, Aster took a guard position, but even then, it wasn’t serious. Geder lifted his own blade.

“How was the council?” Aster said, circling to Geder’s right.

“Frustrating,” Geder said. He feinted and pulled back. “Mecilli seems to dislike everything I do. I’m starting to wonder about him.”

“Take him before your private court?”

“Probably,” Geder said. Aster stepped in, swinging his blade low. Geder blocked it. “It may just be he had some bad fish and it made him disagreeable. But we can’t have another Dawson Kalliam.”

“Can’t we? Some days I think it’d be nice.”

Geder thrust, and Aster trapped the blade, the report of wood against wood resounding from the buildings.

“Why would you want that?” Geder asked, pressing in.

“I don’t know,” Aster said as made his release. He let the wooden blade’s tip sink until it was almost on the ground. “It’s just … I keep having this dream where we’re back in that hole with Cithrin’s actor friends sneaking us food and the cats that wouldn’t come close to us. I dream that I’m asleep, and that when I wake up, I’ll be there. Only I’m not. I’m here. And it’s always disappointing.”

Geder’s own blade sank. Across the wide gap of the Division, a flock of pigeons wheeled in the the air, grey bodies catching the light of the falling sun. It was coming close to summer, and the nights were short. Geder felt the weariness in his body that came from having been awake since first light. Kalliam’s insurrection had been terrible, violent, and uncertain. For weeks, Camnipol had been a battleground, and the scars were still there. Burned-out compounds that hadn’t yet been rebuilt or razed. Street barricades pulled aside or into alleys, but not dismantled. And it wasn’t only the city. Geder felt it in himself too, as much as he tried to deny it or find some joy. Dawson’s betrayal had changed him too.

But in those days and nights squatting in the darkness, hoarding the candles and eating whatever the actors had snuck to them, there had been a kind of distance from the world, a sense of time standing still. He’d spent more time talking to Aster in those few weeks than he had in the whole year since. No council meetings, no servants plucking at him, no duties or expectations or demands. It might have been terrible at the time, but looking back, it seemed benign. A kind of golden moment, barely recognized when it happened.

“It is disappointing, isn’t it?” he said. Aster sighed and looked up at the massive expanse of the Kingspire looming above them.

“I miss Cithrin.”

“I know,” Geder said, swinging his sword through the empty air just the way Aster had been doing not minutes before. “I do too.”

Cithrin

T
he stream of refugees from Inentai began with a handful that arrived after the fall of Nus. At first they were the sort of people who moved easily through the world—people without work or with the sorts of trade that called for travel, with family in Suddapal to support them or without family anywhere. They came to Suddapal to find new places for themselves, and some petitioned the Medean bank for the coin that would help them begin again. Cithrin sat with Magistra Isadau and listened to the requests, discussed which to accept and which to reject. The woman who needed a loan to join the tanner’s guild had years of experience in Inentai and would be nearly certain to find the work to repay them. The three young men looking to buy a boat had lived all their lives in a landlocked city, and by giving them the money the bank would also be providing them the means to flee the debt should it go bad. Cithrin learned the etiquette of the market houses: when she could step into another conversation and when it would be rude, how to bid up a competitor’s contract to lower their profit and how to build temporary partnerships with them to increase them again. The deep structure of the city slowly became clear to her, like a musician learning a song composed in a foreign style.

But the stream did not stop. More people in larger groups, and of a different nature. As the summer ran its course, whole families came together, carts laden with the possessions of lifetimes. Almost weekly, Magistra Isadau offered the hospitality of the compound to groups too large to find shelter in smaller households. The stories weren’t unexpected. The war in Sarakal was too dangerous, and they had a child or a mother or a cousin in health too fragile to withstand a siege. Often the men of fighting age stayed behind to defend city and country, but not always. Magistra Isadau and her siblings fed their guests and welcomed them to their table. And as if following their example, the fivefold city of Suddapal opened wide its arms and gathered the fugitives of Sarakal into its vast bosom. Even as she watched it, Cithrin understood that the generosity was a symptom of something rotten.

History was clear: refugees of war were seldom if ever welcomed in the cities to which they fled unless they brought with them something of value. And yet all, or nearly all, of the citizens of Inentai were welcomed. And so they all, even the poorest, had something of value. The explanation was simple: by their presence, they carried the story that Suddapal was safe. That image of the city was powerfully reassuring, almost intoxicating, to its citizens, because they knew it wasn’t true.

It was a matter of time before the grand and glorious fabrication collapsed. It would begin with one or two pessimists and dissenters, then a handful more, and then everyone. And when it came, it would come as letters of credit. The carefully coded instruments could be purchased with anything—coin, cloth, spice, steel—and presented at any of the Medean bank’s branches for nine-tenths of the value they’d been bought at. Lightweight, portable, and valueless to anyone besides the one named on them, the papers were perfect for anyone who had come to the conclusion that Suddapal had become a place to flee from rather than to. And they were not greatly in demand. Not yet.

After the day’s work at the trading house was finished, Cithrin followed Magistra Isadau on her walks through the city. They would stroll through the wide commons where the tents and carts of the refugees had become almost a township in themselves, or down to the massive piers where ships from across the Inner Sea came and went. Isadau had introduced Cithrin to many of the secret wonders of the city: an herb market in the third city where three full streets were lined with tables filled with living plants and the scent of soil; an ancient Tralgu cunning man whose talents let him turn berries and water into a sweet, icy slush; the hidden cove at the city’s edge where the Drowned had been bringing the wreckage of old ships and constructing some vast and arcane sculpture just below the waves. Often they would talk about the day’s trades as they walked, or the history of the bank, or more general topics: family, childhood, food, coffee, the hungers of men and of women, the pleasures of books. Cithrin tried to push past her reticence, sensing that Isadau was offering something that she deeply wanted. A better idea, perhaps, of how to become the woman she pretended to be. And Isadau listened carefully and deeply, and tried to make herself clear in reply.

Still, Cithrin felt that half the time they spoke past each other. Isadau was a Timzinae who had lived her whole life among not only her people, but her family. Cithrin was an orphan half-breed who’d never had a close friend among the Cinnae, much less a mother or sister. But she tried, and usually Isadau tried too. So when one day they left the trading house early and walked directly back toward the compound, Cithrin knew something was amiss. And what it was.

“Sold more letters of credit than usual today,” she said.

“I suppose we did,” Isadau said.

“May be there’s a market growing for them.”

“Oh, I think it’s early to say that.”

Cithrin scowled. Isadau’s stride was brisk and wide, and Cithrin had to scurry a little to keep up. They crossed a wide and grassy square, where a spire of black stone in the center was dedicated to the memory of someone or something. Cithrin fought the urge to pluck at Isadau’s sleeve like a child asking for attention.

“This isn’t the usual pattern for the season,” she said. “I’ve been looking through the books. You’ve sold most of them in the autumn or early spring, and even then, not more than ten or fifteen in a season. We took five
today
.”