The King's Blood (25 page)

If only what the priests said were true, hundreds—maybe thousands—would live who now were slated to die. Many of them were the men he commanded now. The dead waited in ranks outside the keep, only waiting for their turn to die. Perhaps it didn’t matter if they died here on this bridge or a year and a half from now, starving in the mud of Asterilhold.

“Listen to my voice,” the priest said again. He seemed overly fond of the phrase. “The war is yours if you will accept it from us.”

Dawson took a deep breath. He knew it was doomed. All sense and experience told him that it would fail. And yet, against that knowledge, there was some new force, some waking part of him that he could neither embrace nor deny. It felt like trying to wake from a dream, and being uncertain which was the dream and which the waking world. His skull filled with uncombed wool.

“This is madness,” he said.

“Then you can take joy in madness,” the priest said. “And then in victory.”

T

hey armed.

The priests had wanted to talk to all the men, to assure them all that what was about to happen wouldn’t be Lord Marshal Kalliam marching three hundred men into a slaughter chute. Dawson didn’t allow it. Bad enough that Palliako was taking orders from foreigners and priests. That he was taking them from Palliako.

As soon as he’d left the close little room, the regrets and misgivings had begun to crawl back. But by then the order was given, and there was still that small, almost-silent voice in his mind that said maybe it could all end well.

All night, the priests had stood on the bridge, shouting themselves hoarse in the darkness. The river seemed to shout with them. The rhetoric was much as Dawson had heard before, but there were occasional flourishes. The spirits of the dead marched beside the soldiers of Antea and protected them from harm. The arrow shot at Antean soldiers would turn aside. The river itself was allied with the Severed Throne. It was all about as subtle as schoolyard taunts, but taken over the long, black hours, it built a story in which being loyal to Asterilhold was an unfortunate thing.

Dawson tried to sleep, but only managed a few hours. And then his squire came and told him it was time.

The charge would come at dawn when the sun would be in the enemy’s eyes. They had a better battering ram now— a wider log, and a bronze wedge fixed on the end. A thin roof of slats and thatching would slow the arrows down. Any number of other things could be rained down on it. Hot oil or boiling water. Open flame. It might take half an hour to shatter the opposing gates. How many men could he lose in half an hour? All of them, near enough.

Mist rose from the ground as the first pale light of dawn appeared, blue and rose stretching fingers across the sky. The shouting priests were harsh as crows.

“Men,” Dawson said, addressing his knights. “We are the lords of Antea and the Severed Throne. Nothing more need be said.”

Their swords rang as they cleared their scabbards, his knights making their salute. Dawson turned his mount, and they took their places.

As the first sunlight struck the round keep, Dawson sounded the charge. His farmers and peasants and landless soldiery surged forward across the bridge, their voices blending into a single roar that shouted down the water. For a moment, Dawson let himself believe that the enemy had been stunned into inactivity, paralyzed by the sight of them. Then arrows began to rain down. He watched a man struck in the shoulder stumble and fall into the river and be swept away. More arrows. More screams.

And then the thud of the battering ram began. His mount danced beneath him, frightened by the chaos or feeling his own anxiety or both. The three priests stood by the open mouth of the white keep, huddled in their brown robes looking sleepy and worn.

If we fail, I will send Palliako their heads
, he thought.

The press of bodies on the far side of the bridge seemed to breathe, a great, half-formed giant. The ram was its elephantine heart. They weren’t scattered. The arrows weren’t breaking the formation, and while there had been a few torches dropped from the merlons above, the ram hadn’t taken fire. They were doing well. Even if they died, they died bravely.

Something changed. The thud and thud and thud became a crack. And then a splintering. And then a shout went up and the men before him were pushing into the round keep through broken doors.

“Take them!” Dawson shouted. “Knights of Antea, to me! To
me
!”

Leaning close to his horse’s back, he flew across the bridge, his lips pulled back in a grimace of rage and joy and the lust of battle. The clot of bodies he struck on the other side was as much his own side as the others, but they scattered all the same. And then all of them were there, inside the keep’s round courtyard, breaking over the enemy like a wave and washing them away. Something was burning, the smoke acrid and dense and invigorating. The screams of the soldiers was music.

By midday, even the last of it was over. Sixty soldiers of Asterilhold dead. Twice that captured. He could only guess the number scattered to the winds and the waters. Most of all, the dragon’s jade road was his, cleared and opened into the heart of the enemy’s kingdom.

He stood on the ramparts of this, his new keep, the first soil west of the Siyat that an Antean had unquestionably held for a generation. The courier that he’d meant to take his refusal to Palliako stood by, waiting. Dawson handed the boy seven letters, folded and sewn and marked with his seal. The orders to all his commanders in the field, telling each of them the same thing.
The war is won. Leave the swamps and come to me.

It should have been glorious. It should have been the finest moment in a life rich with them.

Below him, in the courtyard of the keep, the men were laughing and dancing. Two of the farmers were kicking the head of an Asterilhold soldier between them like a ball until the garrison commander saw them and put a stop to it. Wine flowed, and things stronger than wine. The banners of Asteril hold were put to the flame, and the banners of Antea-lifted.

The banners of Antea, and also one other. Red, with an eightfold sigil. And in the courtyard, the three sparrows laughed and shook hands and received the gratitude of the men. Palliako’s pet cultists. This wasn’t his victory. It wasn’t the Severed Throne’s or even Palliako’s. It was the foreign priests’, and even if none of the others knew it, he did. He knew it, and more than that, he knew what it meant.

He had let himself be perverted.

Clara

N

ews of the victory spread through Camnipol like a soft wind; very little changed, and everything did. Clara saw it in a hundred small things. The baker put a wider strip of honey across the top of her buns. The fashion for dark leather cloaks of too generous a cut had been on the verge of fading, and now surged again. The conversations at the gatherings of the wives of the great nobles began to shift from dreading their husbands’ being away to dreading their return. It was, Clara thought, very much like watching a winter tree take the first rush of sap into its bark, greening slightly even before the first leaf came out.

Word kept coming day by day, as much of it rumor as truth. The armies had taken Kaltfel or they had been driven back. One of the soldiers had seen Simeon’s ghost in the midst of the melee or striding across the battlefield or standing beside the Lord Marshal. Clara had lived through other times of strife and battle, and the fascination with the spirits of the dead was new. She wondered whether there were fashions in wartime rumor just as in anything else. Put that way, she couldn’t imagine why there ought not be.

The letters from Dawson, however, were worrying.

They came almost twice a week. Often, but not with the regularity that left her worried if one was late. He related few solid facts to her—she might be his wife, but she wasn’t on the war council—relying more on general statements and impressions. With every new victory, he seemed a bit more angry. Often he would meditate upon the political and filial connections Antea had with Asterilhold; like two fighting brothers, he said. Also, his opinion of foreigners, which God knew had never tended toward charity, was darker than ever. She felt, reading his words, as if he were writing the messages more to himself than to her. Perhaps the ghost of Simeon was riding with him, even if it was only as a metaphor.

The other notable shift in the life of the court was the growing popularity of Geder Palliako’s private priesthood. After he’d celebrated his victory over Maas by founding a temple, there had been a certain morbid curiosity among the court. Then, after he’d become regent, the courtiers had descended on the place, looking for new ways to curry favor. But even beyond that, there seemed to be a growing interest for the temple in its own right. She wasn’t sure yet what she thought of that, but she was hesitant to go without talking to Dawson about it. Better to judge his mood first and then decide whether broadening her piety was worth the effort.

With the road to Kaltfel open and the armies of Asteril-hold struggling up from the southern marshlands, she expected Dawson home by midsummer. Sooner than that if the inevitable peace talks were held in Camnipol. And before that happened, she had an armistice of her own to negotiate.

Marriage had been good for Elisia. Clara would never have said it aloud, but her daughter had always seemed too thin growing up, sharp-featured and narrow-hipped. In truth, Elisia Kalliam had been a cruel girl. As with anyone living in the royal court—man or woman, boy or girl—Elisia had had her clique, and as an adolescent, she’d ruled it ruthlessly. Now she was Elisia Annerin, wife of Gorman Annerin. Her face and bust had a softness in them that made her look more her mother’s daughter. And she had hips, and thank God she had or birthing her son would have been even worse. There was confidence in her body, and an ease.

Sabiha, by contrast, seemed almost more tentative than she had during the courtship.

The three of them sat in the summer garden under the shade of a great catalpa. Clara, Elisia, Sabiha. The daughter she’d lost and the daughter she’d gained. The two girls—well, women now, really—looked at each other across the table with a brittle politeness that told Clara exactly how large the chasm was between them. From the little pond just beyond the rose bushes, little Corl Annerin, not yet five years old, shrieked with delight and was hushed by his nurse.

“I had the flux just before my thirteenth name day,” Sabiha said. “I still remember it. I thought I was going to die.”

“It is terrible,” Clara agreed. “But you seem to have recovered nicely, dear. I’m only sorry that you missed the wedding and of course the funeral so close after that. Odd how the world seems to pair things that way. Something pleasant right up against something awful.”

“God’s sense of humor, I suppose,” Elisia said. Her voice had changed a bit. Taken on the slightly clipped vowels of the eastern reaches where Antea shared its borders with Sarakal. “I’m glad Corl didn’t get it. When he was younger, he’d catch everything, and there is simply nothing worse than being ill with an ill child.”

Sabiha’s smile came from past the horizon.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said.

“Of course not,” Elisia said, “but I imagine you will soon. New brides and all that. It was hardly a year after I was married before I had Corl.”

“I think it may take a bit longer for me,” Sabiha said. “Jorey’s gone so much with the war.”

Elisia made a sympathetic clucking, then shrugged.

“Still better too long than not long enough.”

Sabiha laughed and nodded as if the insult hadn’t struck home. There was hardly even a flicker in her eyes. Clara thought Jorey’s wife really was an impressive girl in her fashion.

“Oh!” Clara said. “I’ve forgotten my pipe. Honestly, I think my memory’s starting to fail. It did for my mother, you know. Spent her last years wandering about the house trying to recall what she was looking for. Perfectly amused by the whole situation, even when she was quite out of her mind. Did I have my pipe in your sitting room, Sabiha dear?”

“I don’t think so. Perhaps your withdrawing room. Would you like me to go look for it?”

“Would you, dear? I don’t want the servants to think I’ve gone mindless on them. They start taking liberties.”

Sabiha rose, nodding to mother and daughter as if they weren’t all of them perfectly aware that Clara had asked for a moment’s privacy. As the girl stepped into the house, Clara let the mask of geniality fall. Elisia rolled her eyes.

“She isn’t my sister,” Elisia said even before Clara spoke. “I can’t believe you’ve let Jorey marry her. Really, Mother, what were you thinking?”

“Whatever I thought, her name is Kalliam now. Prodding her about dead scandals isn’t going to do any of us well. And you could at least pretend you were actually ill.”

“I have spent weeks defending you and Father to my husband and his family. Do you know what they call us? Kalliam’s shelter for lost girls. How do you think that makes me feel?”

“Ashamed of your husband, I should think.”

Elisia’s mouth closed with an audible click. A loud splash came, and the nurse’s scolding voice. A breeze almost too gentle to feel set the rosebuds nodding. A few had already bloomed, white and orange. Clara had always preferred simple roses with two or three rows of petals to the grand and gaudy balls that others seemed to favor. She took a deep breath, gathering her composure before she turned back to Elisia.

“Family is what we have, dear,” Clara said. “There will always be others, people on the outside, who will try to tear us down. It’s not even their fault. Dogs bark, and people gossip. But we don’t do that in the family.”

“She is—”

“She is going to be mother to my grandchildren, as much as you, my dear. She has an unfortunate past which you and your husband are bringing to my table. She isn’t. You are. And I have never heard her say a word against either of you.”

Elisia’s mouth pressed thin and two bright spots of color appeared on her cheeks. Clara raised her eyebrows and leaned forward, inviting comment or reproof. It was the same pose she’d taken before Elisia since her daughter had been a child in diapers, and long training had its power.