The King's Blood(146)

“I didn’t give you leave to speak,” Geder shouted. Cithrin was watching him now. His face was darkening, and the relief was gone. “You will be quiet!”

“Or what? You’ll kill me? You’re a buffoon. I see how you’ve sold the throne. I stepped forward, and know this, Palliako, when we start to rise, you won’t be able to kill us fast enough. The true men of Antea will—”

It happened quickly. There were executioners at the ready, dull and rusted blades in their hands. Geder ignored them. His face a mask of fury, he strode out to where Kalliam knelt, arms chain-bound. Geder walked past him, plucked the blade from the guard’s side, and swung it hard and artlessly as a child hewing wood. The sword took Kalliam in the face, shearing off a great slice of his cheek. He stumbled back, lost his footing, and fell. Geder stood over the fallen man, swinging the blade up and down again, soaking himself and the guards in the dying man’s blood.

“You will speak when I say you can!” Geder screamed. Cithrin almost laughed at the unintended, bleak comedy of it. No one would ever successfully command Dawson Kalliam to speak again.

Geder stood, looking out at the crowd as if seeing them for the first time and unimpressed. At his feet, Dawson Kalliam spasmed once, then again, bare heels kicking at the floor. He went still.

“It’s over,” Geder said. “You can go now.”

He walked out quickly, the bloody sword forgotten in his hand.

“I do believe that man is about to vomit,” Paerin Clark said.

“I think we should leave,” Cithrin said.

The court left with them. Men with wide eyes and women with tight mouths. They’d come to see a death, and there had been one, but the form of it had been wrong and it left them shaken. If Dawson Kalliam had been stabbed with thirteen dull, rusted blades, there would have been no discomfort. Instead, Geder had lost his temper and taken the thing in hand and anything was possible. And she’d have bet a month’s salary that by nightfall, the story in the taphouses and alley mouths would make it sound like something out of a drama. The righteous king taking the executioner’s sword in his own hand.

The day gave no hint at the violence that had just taken place. Birds still sang, and the breeze smelled of flowers and smoke and the promise of rain. As she and Paerin walked down the flagstone pathway past sprays of midsummer blooms, she caught sight of the woman in grey. Lady Kalliam. On impulse, she took Paerin’s hand and dragged him with her as she threaded her way through the crowd.

“Lady Kalliam,” she said as she drew up beside the woman.

“Yes?”

“My name is Cithrin bel Sarcour. I’m voice of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva. I wanted to give you the bank’s sympathies and my own. This can’t have been a good day.”

Lady Kalliam lifted her chin and smiled. She looked younger than Cithrin had thought. And on a better day, she would have been beautiful.

“That’s kind of you,” she said. “Very few people seem to feel that way.”

Cithrin put her hand on the woman’s arm, and Lady Kalliam covered Cithrin’s fingers with her own. It was less than a breath, and then the crowd parted them again.

“And that was for?” Paerin asked.

“Her son’s important enough to Palliako that there was special dispensation to speak at the execution,” Cithrin said. “May be useful later, it may not. Either way it costs us nothing.”

“Well, I suppose that’s one—”

“Cithrin!”

She stopped, looking back. The crowd between her and the Kingspire was splitting apart, highborn and low, noblemen and servants, all of them stepped off the flagstones and into flowerbeds or grass or mud. Geder Palliako was racing toward them, his face red. Blood still spattered his sleeves and face. She waited for him. The eyes of the court were on her like hawks considering a rabbit. Paerin Clark’s eyebrows were crawling up his forehead. This was a problem, and she couldn’t solve it.

“Oh dear,” she said. Then, stepping forward. “Lord Regent. You’re much too kind.”

He stood before her now, his chest working like a bellows.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You shouldn’t have had to see that. I shouldn’t have … I meant to invite you. And Paerin. Both of you. After it was done, I wanted you to join me for a meal. Some conversation. I have a book of poems that I got in Vanai, and I wanted you …”

Paerin Clark, beside her, said nothing. She didn’t think a little help here would have been too much to ask, but she also knew he wouldn’t give it.

“You are very, very kind to make such an offer, my lord,” she said. “But it occurs to me that you are presently soaked in a dead man’s blood.”