The King's Blood (6 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“I think it’s already started. And I don’t think she threw the first punch.”

“Was coming to that myself, sir,” Yardem said. And a moment later, “Are you still going to talk to her?”

“Yes.”

“About being patient and mature and waiting for the situation to change of its own accord?”

“No.”

Geder Palliako, Baron of Ebbingbaugh and Protector of the Prince

The nature of history itself defies us. To know with certainty what the last Dragon Emperor thought or planned or schemed would require not only an understanding of the draconic mind lost to humanity (if indeed it were ever available), but also a comprehension of the particular form of madness which took him in the violent days that ended his reign. Certain facts are known: that Morade’s clutch-mates contested his selection to the throne, that the battle between them raged for three human generations, that their end marked the opening of the ages of humanity. But these are generalities. Vagaries.

As we reach for greater precision, certainty recedes. For centuries it was understood that the Dry Wastes east of the Cenner range had been empty since Seriskat, the first Dragon Emperor, battled his semi-bestial fathers there and founded civilization itself. It was only questioned when the chemist Fulsin Sarranis, made suspicious by the metallic content of certain inks in the ancient Book of Feathers, proved that the documents were forgeries written not by the secretary of Drakkis Stormcrow, but by a scribe of the court of Sammer a thousand years after the death of Morade. Expeditions into the Dry Wastes since that time have confirmed the existence of the Dead Towns, Timzinae agricultural centers that suggest a full and active farm culture. As the Timzinae were not brought into being before the last great war, it must be assumed that these towns were built after the rise of humanity, and that the Dry Wastes result from another more recent calamity.

The documentation of these hoaxes of history has been the work of my life. From the time I first set out for the great universities of Samin and Urgoloth, I knew that my destiny was to chronicle the follies of my fellow historians and define the limits of historical knowledge. I began my quest at the age of seven, when as a follower of the poet Merimis Cassian Clayg, I uncovered a misattribution in the notations of his rival poet, the repulsive half-lizard known only by the name of his philosophy, Amidism.

Geder closed the book, pressing his eyes with finger and thumb. The pages were soft rag, thick and limp. The binding was cracked leather. When the book had been presented to him, a gift for his twenty-third naming day, he’d had high hopes for it. Ever since he’d found the temple of the spider goddess and heard of the age of the goddess that reached back even before the dragons, he’d been looking for some evidence of it. A history of frauds and lies seemed like an excellent prospect for finding some sign of it, even if it was only a suggestion.

Instead, the book was a tissue of increasingly improbable discoveries by the almost supernaturally clever author, leading to the discovery of more and more supposedly earth-shattering revelations, and more than once confessions of sexual misconduct more boastful than repentant. Every ten or twenty pages, the nameless author felt moved to restate his thesis, often using the same phrases. And each time the apparent sincerity of the book began to persuade Geder, some new improbability would come to throw him back out. A half-lizard named Amidism?

With the clarity of disappointment, Geder saw that he’d expected a parallel between the writer of the essay and Basrahip, high priest of the spider goddess. Both, after all, prom ised to tell of a secret history otherwise unknown to mankind. But where Basrahip had the power of the Sinir Kushku, Righteous Servant, the goddess of spiders, this other person had self-aggrandizing stories. If only Basrahip could judge the truth of written words as clearly as living voices…

“Baron Ebbingbaugh?”

Geder looked up, half annoyed by the interruption and half pleased by it. His house master was a Firstblood man with a long white beard and bushy white eyebrows that reminded Geder of drawings of Uncle Snow from a children’s book he’d had as a youth.

“Yes?”

“You have a caller, my lord.”

Geder stood up from his desk. His personal study was a disaster of papers, scrolls, notebooks, and wax tablets. He looked around with dismay. He couldn’t have anyone see this.

“All right,” Geder said. “Put him… put him in the garden?”

“I have put her in the north drawing room.”

Geder nodded, more than half to himself.

“North drawing room,” he said. “Which one’s that?”

“I’ll take you there, my lord.”

The mansion and grounds of his estate were still new to him. A year before, he’d been the heir to the Viscount of Rivenhalm. Now, after Basrahip had helped him expose the treason of Feldin Maas, he was not only Baron Ebbingbaugh but Protector of Prince Aster. The boy who would one day be king of Antea was his ward. It was an honor he’d never dreamed of in a life now full of things that had once seemed beyond his grasp.

He’d wintered in Ebbingbaugh when he wasn’t chasing around after the wandering feast of the King’s Hunt. Returning to the mansion in Camnipol had been strange as a dream. Here was the storage room where he’d watched Feldin Maas, the previous Baron Ebbingbaugh, slaughter his own wife. Here were the garden paths he’d fled through in the night, the letters proving Maas’s guilt pressed to his chest. Everything about the place screamed danger. But it was his by right now.

The north drawing room was the one he’d mentally labeled “the sitting room by the courtyard.” And the guest he’d expected wasn’t the one waiting for him.

He’d seen the girl in court the year before, but he’d seen more or less everyone in court. Her skin was the soft brown of coffee and milk, her hair spilling softly around her long, high-cheeked face. She wore a dress of startling green under a black leather cloak cut slightly too large, a fashion Geder himself had unintentionally begun. Her chaperone was a looming Tralgu woman in an almost comically frilly dress who stood in the corner.

“Ah, oh,” Geder said.

“Lord Protector Geder Palliako,” his house master intoned. “Her Ladyship Sanna Daskellin, third daughter of Lord Canl Daskellin.”

“I hope I haven’t come at a bad time,” the girl said, gliding across the room toward him, her hand out for him to accept. He accepted it.

“No,” he said, nodding. “No, this is fine.”

Her smile was fast and bright.

“My father is hosting the opening of the season, and I wanted to bring the invitation to you especially. You don’t think I’m too forward, do you?”

“No,” Geder said. “No, not at all. No. I’m delighted you could stop by.”

She squeezed his fingers gently and he realized he was still holding her hand. He let it drop.

“We’ve only just returned to Camnipol,” she said. “How did you find your new holdings?”

Geder crossed his arms, trying to affect an ease he didn’t feel.

“With a map and a guide for the most part,” he said. “Maas never invited me out. We didn’t travel in the same circles. I spent most of the winter just trying to find out where he’d put everything.”

She laughed and sat on a red silk divan. It occurred to Geder that she wasn’t leaving. The combination of unease and excitement was slightly nauseating. He was talking to a woman in his own house with her chaperone present. There was no transgression against etiquette or propriety, but his blood raced through his veins a little faster all the same. Geder licked his lips nervously.

“So what are his plans for the season’s opening. The usual feast, I assume.”

“A fireshow,” Sanna Daskellin said. “He’s found this marvelous cunning man from Borja who can build structures to channel flame and make it burn in all different sorts of colors. I’ve seen him practicing.” She leaned toward him, a small shift of weight that indicated a shared secret. “It’s beautiful, but it smells of sulfur.”

Geder laughed. Behind the girl, the Tralgu chaperone remained impassive as a guard at a counting house. Geder moved toward a leather chair, but the girl slid to one side of her divan and tapped gently against the abandoned half, inviting him. Geder hesitated, then sat at her side, careful not to touch her. Her smile was made of sun and shadows, and it left Geder feeling both uncomfortably aroused and subtly mocked.

“Isn’t it awkward sharing a courtyard with Curtin Issandrian?” she asked.

“Not particularly,” Geder said. “Of course, he hasn’t even returned yet. I suppose it could be once he’s back. He might be a bit unpleasant to be near. Could be some conflict.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Sanna said. “Issandrian may be ignorant enough to keep company with traitors, but he knows a lion when it looks at him.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know about that,” Geder said. Sanna’s expression invited him to smile along, and he found it very difficult not to. “I mean… I suppose he would.” He made a claw of his fingers and scratched at the air. “Grrr,” he said.

Sanna’s laughter brought her a degree nearer to him. She smelled of rosewater and musk. When her fingers brushed his arm, Geder’s throat felt oddly thick.

“Oh, I’m terribly thirsty. Aren’t you?” she asked.

“I am,” Geder said almost before he understood the question.

“Seribina?”

“Ma’am?” the Tralgu woman asked.

“Could you go fetch us some water?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

But she’s your chaperone
, Geder thought, then bit back before he could say it. He was going to be alone with a woman. A woman of high blood was clearly arranging things so that she could spend a few minutes alone in his house with him. He felt the first insistent stirrings of an erection and ground his lip hard between his teeth to check it. The Tralgu woman moved for the door, as calm and stately as a ship in the ocean. Geder was torn between the impulse to let her leave and the one to call her back.

The issue was taken out of his hands.

“My lord,” the master of house said, appearing at the door just before the Tralgu reached it. “I am sorry to interrupt. Sir Darin Ashford has arrived and requests a moment of your time.”

“Ashford?” Sanna asked. The surprise in her voice made her sound like a different woman, and a more serious one. She looked at Geder with less coquetry and greater respect. “I didn’t know you were entertaining the ambassador.”

“Favor,” Geder said. Words seemed difficult to come by. “For a friend.”

The perfect skin went smooth. Geder had the sense—possibly accurate or possibly imagined—that some complex calculation was happening behind her deep black eyes.

“Well,” she said. “I can’t keep you from affairs of state. But say again that you’ll come to Father’s party?”

“I will,” Geder said, rising to his feet as she did. “I promise. I’ll be there.”

“I have witnesses,” Sanna said with a laugh and gestured to the servants. She gave her hand to him again, and Geder kissed it gently.

“Let me see you out,” he said.

“Why thank you, Baron Ebbingbaugh,” she said, offering her arm.

They walked together from the back of the mansion to the wide stone stairs that led down to her carriage, an old-fashioned design drawn by horses instead of slaves. Geder gave her up to the care of the footmen with a bone-deep regret and also relief. Sanna stepped up and let herself be seated behind a cascade of lace. The smell of rose and musk returned to him, but it was only an illusion or a particularly visceral memory. The horses clattered out to the courtyard. He looked past them to Curtin Issandrian’s empty mansion and a sense of unease trickled down his spine.

“You play a dangerous game, my lord,” an unfamiliar voice behind him said.

The man was a Firstblood with pale brown hair and an open, guileless expression. He wore riding leathers and a wool cloak entirely covered in patterned embroidery that seemed understated until Geder looked at it closely, and then seemed like a boast. Geder didn’t need to be told who he was. Sir Darin Ashford was his own introduction.

“My Lord Ambassador,” Geder said.

Ashford nodded, but his gaze was set farther out. To the courtyard.

“Lord Daskellin’s girl, isn’t she? Beautiful woman. I remember when she first entered society. She was all knees and elbows back then. Amazing the difference three years will make.”

“She was here to deliver her father’s invitation,” Geder said, defensive without knowing precisely what he was defending against.

“I’m sure she was, and she won’t be the last. A baron without a baroness is a rare and precious thing, and protector of the prince carries as much prestige as a wardenship. Maybe more. You’ll have to step clever or you’ll find yourself married before you know who you’re married to.” Ashford’s smile was charming. “Is the prince here, by the way?”

“He’s not,” Geder said. “I thought it was poor form to have him too close to hand when you were here.”

Something like chagrin passed over the ambassador’s face.

“Well, that doesn’t bode well for me. It’s hard to ask for your help when you already think I’m an assassin.”

“I didn’t say that,” Geder said.

“No, you acted on it,” Ashford said. “And that, Lord Protector, very much matches your reputation. Should we retire inside?”

Geder didn’t take him back to the same room. Having the voice and face of Asterilhold in the same room where Sanna Daskellin had been felt like dirtying something Geder didn’t want soiled. Instead, they went to the private study where Feldin Maas had killed his wife Phelia and all his elaborate, clandestine plans to join Antea and Asterilhold with her. The significance was lost on Ashford, but Geder knew.

Geder sat on a wide-set chair, leaving an upholstered bench for Ashford. A servant boy brought in a carafe of watered wine and two glasses, poured one into the others, and retreated without speaking or being spoken to. Ashford sipped the wine first.