The King's Blood(132)

Geder’s face was growing darker than a stormcloud. When he spoke again, his words were clipped, narrow, and rich with anger.

“All right,” he said. “If that’s how you want it, that’s how we’ll have it. Lechan of Asterilhold, for your crimes against Antea, I declare your life and your kingdom forfeit to the Severed Throne.”

Lechan didn’t move. His face was calm. Geder raised a hand, and the call went for the executioner. The man who came out wore the white, faceless mask. He bowed to Geder and again to Aster, then drew his sword and walked to the prisoner.

The crowd gasped when the blow struck, and then they cheered. The chorus of voices raised in joy and bloodlust was like a waterfall. It deafened. Dawson watched in silence as one enemy of his kingdom bled dry at the feet of another. The claiming of responsibility had been a noble gesture, he thought, but doomed. Palliako’s wrath wouldn’t be restrained by it. If he chose to spill every drop of noble blood in Asterilhold, he would do it. There was no one left to stop him.

The guard tapped his shoulder, and Dawson realized it wasn’t the first time he’d been told to stand. He rose to his feet and began the walk back toward his cell. Skestinin walked at his side, his gaze cast low. The halls of the Kingspire seemed different now. Smaller, darker. It wasn’t that they had changed—the structures were all just as they had been since the day they’d been built. But it also wasn’t the Kingspire any longer.

As they walked out into the open air, Dawson looked to his left, craning his neck to see the dueling grounds, and beyond that the Division, and beyond that the buildings and mansions, one of which had been his. The wind was picking up, pressing a warm hand against him. It smelled of rain. He paused, looking for clouds on the horizon, and the guards shoved him.

His cell seemed larger now that he was its only occupant.

“Well,” Skestinin said.

“Thank you for that,” Dawson said. “And give my family my regards.”

“I will.”

Skestinin hesitated, desperate to leave and unable to. Dawson lifted his eyebrows.

“About Barriath,” Skestinin said. “He’s a good man. I’ve been proud to have him. But as things are… I’ve asked him to step down, and I’d rather you got word of it from me. It’s not wise right now to have a Kalliam commanding swords or ships. Not good for him and not good for the court.”

The anger came fast and clean.

“Are you going to have your daughter step down from her marriage?” Dawson said.

Skestinin’s contrition blinked out as if it had never been there.

“Might if I could,” he said. “I don’t agree with what you did, Dawson, but you’ll face your judgment and take the consequences. My Sabiha didn’t have the choice. They said she was a slut. Now they’re going to say she’s a traitor too.”

“But she isn’t,” Dawson said. “Truth isn’t what other people say. Sabiha isn’t a traitor, and she isn’t a slut. If she doesn’t know that without someone telling her, you’ve done a poor job as a father.”

For a moment, Skestinin didn’t answer. His expression was incredulous, fading slowly to disgust. Or worse, pity.

“You don’t change, Kalliam.”

“No,” Dawson said. “I don’t.”





Geder



G

eder stalked through the halls of the Kingspire. He had expected that the death of King Lechan would leave him feeling better. Relieved, perhaps. Victorious, certainly. Instead, he felt grumpy. He’d thought that returning to his bed and his place in the Kingspire would be more of a homecoming, the end to his time in exile. If anything, he felt less at home now than he had before.

When he’d been his own man, back before King Simeon had died, there had been days spent in his library, immersed in a translation, his mind utterly focused. He would forget to eat. He would forget to rest. Everything in him would come to a single point, a perfect kind of clarity. And when, as inevitably happened, something broke the trance, he would discover that he was hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and in the ragged edge of pissing himself. And even when all his bodily needs had been satisfied, he would still feel displaced, still reaching for that next word or phrase, the nuance that best captured what he thought the original author had intended. Everything around him—walls, chairs, people— could seem unreal.

The Kingspire, and in truth all of Camnipol, felt odd and unstructured. Out of joint. His mind and memory were aimed behind him, at a dusty, stinking ruin. Days in darkness with nothing to do but play simple puzzle games by the light of a candle and talk to a part-Cinnae banker. Cithrin bel Sarcour. Part of him was still there, with her, in that darkness. All the rest was distraction.