The King's Blood(79)

“All right,” she said. “Why do you want me there?”

On the street, a horse neighed and a carter shouted. The breeze shifted the shadows across the pale man’s face. She waited while he weighed his answer.

“I recall being your age,” he said, portioning out each word, “and I remember what it was like to look for something without knowing what it was. You have one of the best minds for coin and the powers of coin that I’ve ever seen, but you lack experience. That’s not a criticism, it’s only true. And there’s a negotiation happening tonight. I would like you to be there. See how the game is played.”

Cithrin turned this over in her mind. Her heart was beating a little faster, and she felt the flush in her cheeks. This might be the opportunity she’d come all this way to find.

“May I ask you a question?” she said.

“That seems fair.”

“Why is that what you want?”

He nodded. Almost a minute passed.

“You’re young. You’re still making yourself into the woman you’re going to be, looking for the project that your life will become. People sometimes need help to find that. I am older, and in a position of some power, and I think you may become the sort of person I would like to owe me favors later on.”

The smile forced its way to Cithrin’s lips. It felt like victory.

“And here I thought it was altruism,” she said.

“Oh, Magistra.” Paerin Clark smiled. “We don’t do that here.”

The meal began just before sundown around a table of wooden planks no grander than a laborer might sit at. Platters filled the space between: clams in garlic sauce, pasta and cream, bottles of wine, loaves of fresh-baked bread. Komme Medean sat at one end, the swelling in his ankle and knee gone down enough that they looked almost normal. Cithrin and Lauro sat along one side across from Paerin Clark and his wife, Chana, who looked even more like her father than Lauro did. At the other end of the table, the Antean nobleman with skin as dark as coffee. Canl Daskellin, Baron of Watermarch and Protector of Northport and the Regent’s Special Ambassador to Northcoast, grinned and broke bread with his hands.

“Think how I feel,” Daskellin said. “I’m sent on a fast boat with desperate pleas for King Tracian to help us in the war, and by the time I get here, we’ve all but won. It doesn’t make me look smarter, let’s say.”

Komme Medean chortled and nodded.

“I know just how you feel,” he said. “I was trying to win a concession in a sugar plantation on an island off Elassae. Year and a half of negotiation, and I was just sending back the final contracts to their council when the whole damn thing burned flat. Wound up with a concession on a salt cinder in the Inner Sea. Thank God I hadn’t paid for it yet.”

“I remember that,” Cithrin said.

“Do you now?” Komme said.

Canl Daskellin’s gaze turned to her, and she realized how thin the ice was she’d just put herself on. If it came out she’d been living at the Vanai branch, it might come out why. If anyone looked into her age, there could be a great deal at stake.

“Heard about it from Magister Imaniel,” she said without missing a beat. “It was done out of the Vanai branch, wasn’t it?”

Komme Medean pursed his lips as if in thought.

“I suppose it was, now you mention it,” he said. And another danger was stepped past.

“This new regent of yours,” Paerin Clark said. “Geder Palliako. It’s not a name I’ve heard often. I’m surprised we didn’t see a more familiar man.”

“I hope you aren’t looking at me,” Daskellin said. “No, Palliako’s father is a viscount. Unremarkable man. His son’s something different, though. He stopped the showfighters’ coup. He exposed Feldin Maas. There’s a strong case that this war is his private project from the start.”

“What sort of man is he?” Chana asked, then winked broadly at Cithrin and said, “I hear he isn’t married.”

They all laughed because it was expected.

“He’s a strong man,” Daskellin said. “He comes almost from outside the court, and it makes him very independent. His own thoughts. His own plans.”

“Ambitious?” Komme asked, cracking open a clam and pulling out the flesh.

“He’d have to be,” Canl said. “People underestimated him at first. That’s happening less now. His unofficial patron is Dawson Kalliam, and I think he’s got the feeling of riding a tiger.”

“Bad enemy to have,” Paerin said.

“That,” Daskellin said, “is the regent in a phrase. Would someone pass me that wine? I seem to have finished mine.”