The King's Blood(121)

“Listen to my voice,” he called. “You have already lost. Everything you fight for is meaningless. You cannot win. Listen to my voice…”





Cithrin



Y

ou need a bath,” Sandr said, prodding Charlit Soon with his toe. And then a moment later, “I need a bath.”

“I think we can say we’d all do well with baths,” Cary said. “And fresh food. And maybe a rainstorm.”

Cithrin squatted on the back of the cart, a bowl of stewed barley in her hand. She hadn’t come out of the hole until just after midday, and even after the walk to Yellow House, the sun seemed too bright. Twelve days in the darkness. So far.

“Well, the good news is we found your high priest,” Cary said. “The bad is that he’s holed up in the middle of an army and won’t let anyone come near him. I thought about passing him a letter, but I wasn’t sure you’d want that.”

Cithrin frowned. The truth was, she was of two minds. Several times in the last week, she’d have offered to cut off a toe if it meant a warm bed, a good meal, and five hours in a bathhouse. When Geder and Aster emerged from the hole, there would be no reason for her to be down in it with them, and she was coming to truly loathe that place. But when the time came, Geder would become Lord Regent Palliako again. Aster would be prince and king. Everything would change.

She’d been sent here to find out what she could about Antea in the face of its war with Asterilhold. Now she was hiding with two of the most important leaders, present and future, that the kingdom would have. What she’d learned was that Geder Palliako was a funny, somewhat awkward man who loved books of improbable history. That Aster hadn’t known how to spit for distance, and now—thanks to her—he did. She saw the affection between the pair of them, and the enthusiasms. And the almost physical shared sorrow that neither one of them acknowledged, or even recognized. When they rose out of the ground, they would leave her, and her chance to learn more of them both would vanish.

“I’ll talk to Geder about it,” she said, scooping up the last of the barley with two cupped fingers. “Anything else?”

“The usual human landscape of lies and folly,” Cary said. “Did you know that Geder commands the spirits of the dead, and that at night ghosts stalk the streets rooting out his enemies?”

“He hadn’t mentioned that,” Cithrin said. “Good to know. All right, then. If that’s all—”

Mikel grinned.

“Well,” he said, “as a matter of fact…”

Cithrin lifted her eyebrows.

“You always do that,” Charlit Soon said. “That’s exactly what I was talking about with A Tragedy of Tarsk. You always play the pause for effect.”

“Has an effect,” Smit said.

“Yeah,” Charlit Soon said, “it prolongs and annoys.” She tossed a pebble at Mikel.

“As a matter of fact,” Cithrin prompted.

“As a matter of fact,” Mikel said, somewhat abashed, “I found where your Paerin Clark’s been hiding. Went to ground in a guesthouse of Canl Daskellin’s, which was a pretty good idea since the inn you were staying in burned.”

“It burned?” Cithrin said.

“Fourth night after,” Cary said.

“My clothes were in there,” Cithrin said.

“Twelve people were in there,” Sandr said. “Two of them children.”

Cithrin considered Sandr. There had been a time not all that long ago when she’d very nearly taken him as a lover. From where she sat now, the wisdom of her decision not to glowed like a fire in the night.

“Yes, I am a small, petty woman,” she said, “and I mourn for the dead and the suffering, but I really wanted to get my own damn clothes back. Can you reach Paerin, or is he as guarded as the priest?”

“He’s not taking visitors he doesn’t know,” Mikel said.

“All right,” Cithrin said. “I’ll need something to write on.”

The company cipher was still clear in her mind, and the note was a brief one: Have access to Lord Regent and Prince Aster. What questions do I ask? Reply by same courier. She considered adding something that would say where she was, where Geder and Aster were, and she didn’t. If he wanted Geder and Aster, he could come to her.

It was one of the great and powerful lessons of finance. The key to wealth and power was simple enough to state and difficult to employ: be between things. Narinisle was a chilly island with barely enough arable land to support its own population and no particular resources to offer, but the currents of the Ocean Sea put it between Far Syramys and the rest of the continent. And so it was vastly wealthy. Now Cithrin had fallen into Narinisle’s position, and while it wouldn’t last, she could gain more the longer she remained in place.