The King's Blood(116)

She tilted her head, considering him. The wine brought color to her cheeks. A stray lock of hair drifted onto her lips, and she blew it away.

“What happened, then?” she asked. “You’ve moved up in the world. You’re practically the king.”

“It’s a long, complicated story,” he said.

“You’re right,” she said. “We might run out of time.”

He began at the beginning. Rivenhalm, with its fast, small river and the library his father had built up. He remembered a little of his mother, and told what there was. His imaginings of Camnipol when he was young and it had been a magical city that his father spoke of, where noble lords and ladies danced and spoke wise things and dueled for love and honor. He laughed about it now, but it had seemed powerful and important at the time.

And then his first entry into the life of the court. His first campaign.

When he mentioned Vanai, she went still. It wasn’t that her expression closed so much as that it turned inward, became somber. Something in the back of his mind told him to stop, but the more quiet she grew, the more he wanted to pull her out, to make her laugh. The anxiety drove him on. He exaggerated his own failures and shortcomings for comic effect. Everyone else laughed at him, so maybe she could too, but she only nodded. He knew he had to change the topic before he got to the burning, but the tale and the wine had taken a life of their own and he listened to himself in growing horror as Ternigan took the city and named Alan Klin its protector. He told of his own role as petty enforcer of Klin’s will.

When he mentioned the caravan that was supposedly smuggling the wealth of Vanai, she roused a bit. When he told how he’d drawn the improbable range south of the dragon’s road, slogging through ice and mud with a troop of disloyal Timzinae soldiers, he had her full attention back. He even let himself confess—for the first time to anyone— that he’d found the treasure and let it go. Her expression of disbelief was almost comic.

“I know,” he said, shaking his head. “It was petty of me. And probably disloyal, but Klin was such a pompous… I don’t even know the word.”

She was looking at him as if she were seeing him for the first time, and her smile was like pouring water on a burn. He grinned and shrugged.

“I only took a bit,” he said. “Enough for some books when I got back to Vanai.”

“Of course you did,” she said and shook her head in amazement. The way she said it made it flattery, and he looked down, suddenly proud of his own daring. “You were there for the burning.”

Geder took a deep breath. The dread welled up in him. He ignored it well, but it was never far away.

“I was protector of the city,” he said.

Her face went very still.

“Was it your order, then?”

The truth was on the edge of his mind. It would have taken so little to say yes. But he wanted her to like him.

“No,” he said. “The command came from higher ranks. But I didn’t rise against it. I should have. It was a mistake. It was a terrible, terrible stupid mistake. Whoever did give the order, he can’t have understood what it meant. Not really. I still have nightmares about it sometimes. You… you knew Vanai?”

“I was raised there,” she said. “My parents were buried there, and the bank took me in. I lost everyone there.”

Geder’s belly felt hollow with fear, and he quietly thanked God that he’d chosen against the truth. Guilt washed over him like a wave.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured, looking away.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I loved them, but they didn’t love me. Cam, maybe. But Magister Imaniel didn’t love anyone, I don’t think. He wasn’t that kind of man. It hurt me when they died, but…”

“But?”

“But I don’t know who I’d be if they’d lived,” she said. She spoke with the clarity of being just drunk enough to know she had to try not to slur her words. “I missed them. And I mourned for them, I think. But I like who I am. What I do. I’m looking forward to everything. The things that happened to bring me here? I can’t judge them. Good. Bad. Who would I be if I’d had parents? Who would I be if I’d gone to Carse? If something terrible leads to something good, where does that leave you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, though he didn’t understand the part about going to Carse. She’d come from Carse, so she must have gone there at some point.

She put the wineskin to her mouth, tilting back her head. Her throat worked, once, twice, last. A tiny red trickle slipped from her lips, and she wiped it away with her sleeve. When she smiled, the expression was lazy and joyful, utterly out of place in the ruins of a city at war.