The Spider's War (The Dagger and the Coin series) (31 page)

“They’re a godsend,” Issandrian said, without hesitating. “There’s not a farm in the southern empire that hasn’t lost at least one son to the army. Near Sevenpol there are farms running that have lost four or five to it. Without the slaves, we’d be eating clouds and drinking raindrops.”

“I see,” Clara said, drawing on her pipe. The smoke tasted rich, and the coffee better. Issandrian’s gaze was a question. She let the smoke seep out through her teeth while she considered what she wanted to ask, and how she wanted to ask it. “Between the two of us, and purely as speculation—yes?—purely as speculation, what do you imagine your friends among that stratum would think of setting the Timzinae free?”

Issandrian laughed, but it was from shock, not condescension. That was good. “I can’t think why they would.”

“Say as speculation it was required to make peace.”

“Peace? Peace with who?”

“Elassae. Sarakal. Everyone.”

Issandrian put down his cup. His skin, already pale, had gone a shade paler. She gave him the moment, drinking her own coffee. It wasn’t quite pure, she thought, but she couldn’t identify what the extender was that he’d used. Something about the kind of bitterness it carried made her suspect it was a root of some sort. Issandrian folded his hands on his knees.

“I thought we were winning,” Issandrian said. “Everyone says that we’re winning.”

“We’re not.”

Issandrian pressed a hand to his chin. His distress would have been comic if it hadn’t been so sincere. “I can talk with them about raising more troops. I don’t know that there’s many to be had, but if it’s that or lose the war—”

“The war cannot be won. Only prolonged,” Clara said. “It may come to a place where prolonging it is worth the effort and blood, but that isn’t what I need to know of you now. I believe there is a change coming upon us rather quickly. If I’m right, it may give us a chance to save something of the empire, but we would need to be ready to act.”

“Lady,” Issandrian said. The poor man. He’d started his day as an outcast, ill-dignified and shunned by polite company. Now here he was listening to half riddles from a woman with the most complex and uncertain status in the history of the court. In his position she wouldn’t have known if she was being asked to defend the throne or conspire against it. Which, in fairness, hadn’t been clear to her either, these last few years. It was a problem, she supposed, of trying to use the tools of another time as if nothing had changed. This war was not like the last one, this kingdom was not the kingdom it believed itself to be, she was not the woman she had once been, nor Issandrian any of the
versions of himself that had come before. Hardly a surprise that he felt a bit dizzy with it all.

He gathered himself. “I will do what I can,” he said. “What are you asking of me now?”

“Should we require that the Timzinae be freed, it will need to happen quickly and uniformly and without any of the farms demanding that they be excepted.”

“That won’t be easy,” he said.

“Not if it’s demanded without any return,” Clara said, then laughed. “I sound like a banker, don’t I? Well, regardless, if you could use what contacts you have to sound them out, we might be able to recompense them for their loss.”

Issandrian shook his head. Somewhere in the world of the dead, Dawson turned his head away. Poor ghost.

“It may be time,” Clara said, “to revisit the idea of a farmer’s council.”

G
eder slept through the night and woke rested in the morning. He lay in the wide bed, looking up at his ceiling, the blankets a nest around him and over him. Outside his room, servants went about their morning routines. The sounds of voices were like music just at the edge of his hearing. Outside, a bird sang and another answered it. His belly growled, pleasantly empty, and he stretched his arms above his head until his muscles felt tight enough to sing if someone took a viol’s bow and struck them.

He smiled without having a particular thing he was smiling about. Only everything at once. A servant rapped gently at the door, brought in a washstand and fresh cloth, then retreated, careful not to speak or look at the Lord Regent in repose. Geder stretched again, sighed, and hauled himself up from bed. He washed himself in privacy, chose his own clothing for the day, and prepared himself.

The euphoria wouldn’t last forever. He knew himself well enough to know that at least. Just now, not feeling ill was enough to make him feel well. The buzzing, cottony sensation of a mind at war with itself had gone, and he felt clearer than water in a fountain. All the joy in his body just now came from that. The rage—and oh, there was rage—lay below it. Rage and humiliation and the overwhelming conviction that the men who’d misled him were going to
suffer. There were only two ways this story could go. The world would either remember him as the greatest dupe in history, or it would tell the story of what a terrible mistake it had been to cross Geder Palliako. He’d been Lord Regent long enough to know how it felt to put his enemies on their knees, and it felt very, very good. He was looking forward to it.

And then there was Cithrin. She was there, in his city. In his house, even if it wasn’t the one he’d lived in most. Her face was as beautiful as he’d remembered. When she’d touched his hand, it had been like his skin was in a cunning man’s fire—bright and alive and unburning. All the fantasies he’d had about her—her mocking laugh, her mewling and naked shame—paled when they were faced with the actual woman. She’d come to him, to help him. And together they’d do what needed to be done and save the world. He was already imagining sitting with her after it was over, taking her hand again, pressing it to his chest. He’d tell her that he understood now why she’d fled Suddapal, that he forgave her.

What had happened between them during the insurrection had been between a man and a woman of equal dignity. It had felt almost like that again when they’d seen each other now, and likely would be even more so at the meeting of the conspiracy tonight. And once Basrahip and his lackeys were done with and Aster took the throne—

“Lord Geder?”

“Not yet,” Geder snapped, and returned to pulling on his clothes. “I’m not ready yet. Give me time.”

The workings of the Kingspire—the functions, in fact, of the whole empire—seemed clearer to him now. The effort it had required to look at the maps of the war and see victory in them only became clear now that he was able to stop.
That he could trace his fingers along the paths the armies had taken and would take, count up the numbers of the men he’d sent out and the reports of the dead, and not be forced into finding one particular message in them was like being released from prison. The empire was crumbling, and that was a terrible danger that had to be addressed. But he saw it now, and the truth alone gave him peace.

It did not, however, make him want to spend more time at the Kingspire.

The late-morning light slanted down out of a bright sky. Blue arced above the city, unbroken by clouds. Camnipol shifted along its streets and bridges, the commerce of human activity rushing through it like blood through veins. The birds of winter were still there, but with them, brighter ones. Finches among the sparrows. Robins with the crows. Geder watched out the carriage window as he ate dried apples and boiled oats.

There was a beauty in Camnipol he felt he hadn’t seen for some time. The city bore its ages well, the ruins of what had come before making the foundation of all that had come after and above it. The curving streets with their dark cobbles felt familiar and dignified. The Tralgu beggar at the corner singing in his low and broken voice was ignored by the passersby, but his song was part of the grandeur of the empire. The occasional unfortunate wind that brought up a curl of the rot and shit in the chaos at the base of the Division was a part of the city, part of what made it unlike anyplace else in the world. And the Kingspire, with the red banner he’d been tricked into placing there.

But more than that, there were the city’s fresh wounds. The compounds of the families who’d risen in revolt against him had been torn down or burned or given to loyalists from Asterilhold or lesser families promoted by Geder’s
favor. The lane he passed now had once been travelled by Mirkus Shoat and Estin Cersillian, whose houses were broken now for rising against Geder and the throne. There was still a plaque at the Great Bear in honor of a poetry contest won by Lord Bannien, Duke of Estinfort, in deference either to his wit with a rhyme or the power and wealth he’d commanded. All of which were only memory now. Camnipol, like the world, was drawn in scars and violence, and for the most part beautiful despite that.

Geder pressed at the thought of those fallen houses like he was scratching at a wound. Technically, he was responsible for those dead. However much he had been made the puppet of Basrahip and the so-called goddess, he had been the one to give the final commands that ended the men whose grandeur he’d once admired. He tried to feel guilt for their deaths, but had to make do with a kind of peace. Almost forgiveness. He saw now that they had been as much tools of the conspiracy as he had been himself, and in a sense, it put them all on the same side now. He wished there were some way that they could know it. He’d been their enemy once—even their executioner—but he would avenge them now. He couldn’t imagine they’d be anything but grateful for that.

The Great Bear was empty. With so many gone to war and so early in the season, it would have been nearly so anyway, but Geder had made his wishes clear. The rooms were vacant, what servants there were kept away in their corridors and kitchens until he called for them. With Canl Daskellin in the field and Mecelli retired to his holding, only Cyr Emming, the last of his inner councilors, waited at the wide oaken table. His war room. Not the miniature maps built of glass and dirt in the Kingspire. Nothing so near to the temple as that. He’d chosen his own space now, and
this—this, where the great minds of the kingdom had come together for generations—was his. The old man’s face broke into a smile when Geder walked in, but it was a smile that meant nothing. There had been a time when Geder might have cared.

“What news?” Geder demanded.

“Reports are… ah… still coming in, Lord Geder. It seems certain that Nus has in fact been taken up in the death throes of the enemy. The unrest hasn’t spread further.”

Because it isn’t unrest
, Geder thought.
It’s a military campaign reorganizing after a conquest
. He leaned on the table and squinted down at the maps, making what sense he could of the marks and scratchings.

“How likely is it that they’ll come to Kavinpol before the end of the season?”

Emming laughed, then, when Geder didn’t follow suit, sobered. “Cross into Antea proper? It can’t happen, my lord. This is the poison of the dragons being purged from the world. There was never any poison here to begin with inside Antea. No, I expect Nus and Inentai will return to order before the summer is done.”

Of course
lifted toward Geder’s lips, but he didn’t say it. He even believed it somewhat. The habit of seeing all the marks of the war through the story of the goddess and the purification of the world wasn’t gone from him. Its back was only broken. Nus and Inentai might return to the empire by the end of summer, but he didn’t have to agree that they would. He could dissent. And because that option existed, the freedom to consider his own opinion did as well.

And his opinion was they were fucked.

The thinner thread at the south of the map was the greater issue. The army of Elassae pushing its way north from Orsen would reach Camnipol long before the forces in
Nus could fight their way through Kavinpol to reach him. If it hadn’t been for Jorey coming back with the Antean men over the winter, the Timzinae might already be at the gate. He needed time. They had to find a way to give the priests scattered across the map time to reach Camnipol. Anything else that mattered would come after.

“How much gold do we have?” Geder asked.

“Lord Regent?”

“Coin? How much coin do we have? Can we hire mercenaries in the south to slow the Timzinae? Or pay the mercenaries who’re with them to abandon the campaign? There’s got to be some nomad prince in the Keshet who’s looking to grab a bit of glory. We could make the Timzinae pull back to protect Suddapal.”

“Is there any need?” Emming said.

Was there any
need
? Geder looked into the man’s swimming eyes and saw the confusion there. It was like seeing someone walking in their sleep. Emming literally couldn’t see the world because he was trapped in someone’s dream of it. Geder felt a surge of impatience and then, to his surprise and confusion, a vast and terrible grief. Hot tears filled his eyes and spilled down his cheeks, smearing the ink that was Camnipol. It lifted him like a storm wave hoisting a ship and brought him down to shatter on rocks hidden under the surface of his heart.

Cyr Emming flapped his hands and looked about at the empty halls as they rang with Geder’s sudden sobs. Was there any need? There was
all
of it, and it was his fault. From the start, it had been him.
He
had brought Basrahip back from the Sinir Kushku.
He
had let the priests poison his mind and through him the minds of all Antea. Anyone who might have had the strength of will to stand against him, he’d exiled or killed. The stupidity of it washed him
away until he could only sit, his knees drawn to his chest, bawling like an infant. Emming patted his shoulder like a dog pawing at his wounded master.

There was nothing—
nothing
—Emming could do. No insight left in the man’s pithed mind. He was dead already, as Geder had been before Cithrin had come and brought him back to life. Geder bared his teeth and screamed, the sound echoing through the chamber. It was like a beast larger than himself stalked the hall. The Great Bear forcing its way into the world through Geder’s throat.

And then laughter that had nothing to do with mirth, everything with rage. He had been fucked. Basrahip had fucked him and broken everything he held sacred and dear. He’d poisoned Aster’s mind and his friendship with the boy along with it. He’d taken away Geder’s
books
. Geder stood now, taken in a glorious madness, and tried to tip over the oaken table and its maps, only the thing was too heavy. He had to make do with scattering the papers to the ground.

Cithrin had cracked the egg; the small, still part of himself that watched him suffer saw that. She’d opened him enough to blow away the fog that had taken him. Now, he couldn’t stop ripping open from the same hole. And he would not be silent until there was blood in the streets for what had been done to him. He grabbed Emming’s cloak, pulled him close, and screamed in the sleeping bastard’s face. Spit flicked the man’s cheeks, bright as froth. Geder screamed again, and again, and again, louder each time.

And then it was gone. The wave had passed. Geder felt worn. Wrung out. Emming was weeping a little now too, in fear and confusion. There was nothing Geder could do to wake him. Not yet, anyway. Later perhaps. Geder took a long, shuddering sigh and sat back in his chair. The rage was
still there. The humiliation and the anger and the grief. Like an infected wound, it would fill again and be drained again and fill. But for now, he was empty. He used his fingers as combs. Gathered himself.

“I think,” he said, in a calm, level voice, “we should do whatever we can to reinforce Kalliam and Daskellin in the south. If there are standing garrisons in Sevenpol and Anninfort, we should call them south. Even if they’re small.”

“L-lord Regent,” Emming said.

“Every little bit will help. And it’s important, I think.”

“Yes,” Emming said. When Geder clapped him on the shoulder, the man flinched.

“Sorry about that,” Geder said. “I’m sorry.”

P
rince Geder,” Basrahip said through his vast, placid smile. “You honor me by your presence.”

I can disagree with that,
Geder thought
. I might honor him with my presence. I might
not
. I might have no effect on his dignity at all. I’ll have to decide that myself.

“Thank you,” he said, and sat.

The high priest’s cell was as simple now as it had been in the Sinir Kushku. A lantern. A brazier, unused now in the warmth of spring. A censer with a few smoking twigs of incense. Outside the cell, a half dozen priests stood at the open doors, hauling up the blood-red banner so it could be washed and mended and set out again in the morning with rites and chants imported from the caves east of the Keshet. The vast stretch of the city spread out beyond them, and the horizon past that. The wide bowl of the sky seemed wider up here, higher than the birds and trees below.

Geder considered all he’d planned to say and how he’d planned to say it. Perhaps he should have waited to see
Cithrin again, to consult with Master Kit and Captain Wester, but he couldn’t. Waiting was too hard, and there wasn’t time. And this wasn’t their fight. Not really.

“You always say I am the chosen of the goddess, yes?”

“You are such,” Basrahip said with a dumb certainty. “The goddess has chosen you to lead us out to the world, and through you her truth has spread through the world.”

I don’t have to agree
. Geder clung to the thought like a castaway hugging a bit of wood.
I can disagree
.

“Can you say it?”

“Prince Geder?”