“Are you certain he’s your friend?”
Geder looked out toward the gardens, but the light had turned the glass to a dark mirror and all he could make out was himself and his books. Piles and piles of words that were neither truth nor lies.
“No,” he said. “And I know that I could just ask, and Basrahip would tell me. But I don’t want to. Because what if he isn’t? What if it all runs so deep that I don’t have anyone left? No, don’t. I know it makes sense to do the thing. I know I’d be better off knowing. Only, I could read a book first. Or talk with one of Cithrin’s bank people. Or anything, really. In any given hour, I can find something I’d rather do than know.”
“Why aren’t you angry at him?”
“Jorey?”
“Dawson. The father. He tried to kill you.”
“I know. And I should be. Maybe I am, just… I mean, it’s not like he laughed at me. He takes me seriously enough to think I’m worth killing. It’s just that I liked him. I did. And I wish he liked me too.”
“I don’t think he does,” Aster said.
Geder laughed.
“I think you’re right. I’ll do what needs doing. And I won’t die. I promise.”
Geder wondered whether this was what it was to have a son. He didn’t think so. It was too much like having a friend, and father and sons were something—many things—but not that. Perhaps it was that they both knew what it was to lose someone important. Or that they were the two men in Antea so wrapped in power and privilege that it isolated them.
“What are you going to do?” Aster asked.
“I’ll see him punished,” Geder said. “I’ll see all of it stopped. Whoever it is. And I’ll see that this never happens again. Agreed?”
Aster considered silently for a moment, then nodded. Geder put his book on the table, stood, and blew the first candle out. Aster joined him, snuffing each wick until darkness and a breath of smoke was all that was left of the library.
“So,” Geder said as they walked out, man and boy side by side, together but not touching, “I know nothing would be possible so long as I’m Lord Regent. But once I’m done with my watch and the throne’s yours? How bad do you think the scandal would be if I married a banker?”
Cithrin
C
ithrin walked through the charred ruins of the inn. It was dreamlike. Strange. She’d stood there not a month before and heard Smit’s voice again. When she had, the stone walls of the inn had been as strong and permanent as mountains. Now soot stained them, and the roof had fallen in where the supporting timbers had burned out. It seemed unlikely that this was the same place. Or even the same city. Perhaps it wasn’t.
“I went through it all as best I could, Magistra,” the woman said. She was Firstblood, thicker than Cithrin. Darkerskinned with ruddy cheeks and dark smudges of exhaustion and loss under her eyes. “I found what I could, but it was little. They took a good bit before they burned it, and the fire took the rest, most part.”
“Show me,” Cithrin said.
The little courtyard was laid out in squares now. A bit over two dozen of them. At a guess, they were the men and women who’d paid for the woman’s hospitality and been overtaken. The woman stopped at a square of blackened cloth.
“This was in about the right place, Magistra,” she said. “It was in the corner away from the worst of it. There’s a few things might be worth keeping.”
Cithrin squatted down. Everything smelled of smoke and ash. Yes, here was the green dress she’d brought from Carse. Here was a thin silver necklace, the links fused. If this had been in the corner farthest from the fire, it had still been a kiln. The notebook she’d kept had burned along all its edges, but the center pages had only yellowed and curled. When she flipped through them, the reek of smoke was over-whelming. She tossed it aside. The blue silk cloak, ruined. The wool, ruined. A ring of gold and gems that wasn’t hers she put aside for the innkeeper to either find its right finger or keep for herself.
Moving the ruined scraps of cloth, her fingers touched something hard and solid as stone. She pulled the dragon’s tooth free. It was perfectly white. The complicated roots looked like a sculpture of water. Amid all the human destruction, the dragon’s tooth stood untouched. She wasn’t sure whether she found the idea reassuring or eerie, but either way, the tooth was hers. She slipped it into her pocket.
Another man came, and the innkeeper went to speak with him. Not another guest of the ruined house, but a tax assessor come to negotiate. The small people might suffer their tragedies, but the taxmen had bought the rights to collect, and if they couldn’t make back the contract, their own children would go wanting. And so it all went on, endless and merciless and unyielding.