The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin) (21 page)

Though, as Basrahip pointed out, not before the goddess.

They rode in a company of twenty. Geder wore his black leather cloak against the morning chill, but pulled it off almost at once when the sunlight warmed them. Ternigan wore bright steel armor like a boast, Basrahip and his two fellow priests the brown robes that they always wore. And Geder’s personal guard. If there were assassins in the brush, they didn’t trouble the group. All around the city, Ternigan explained the difficulties of an attack. The long wings of the wall hung over the water and forced any approach from the sea to suffer under the defenders’ bolts long before they could come to shore. Here, the walls were topped with spouts to pour down stones or flaming oil. Here, the shape of the land itself forbade the siege ladders. There, a team of engineers might be able to tunnel under the fortifications and collapse them, and Ternigan had in fact begun the project, but it would take time. Weeks at least, months more like. The seawall couldn’t be surveyed, but Ternigan brought diagrams and maps with him to fill any time that wasn’t already rich with discouragement.

As the hours passed, Ternigan’s tone shifted from defensive to conciliatory as Geder began to understand the scope of the problem. Geder had helped to take and even briefly ruled the Free City of Vanai, and he realized now that the experience had set his expectations poorly. When he thought of taking a city, he imagined Vanai. Nus was no Vanai. It was one of the great cities of humanity.

When near midday they returned to the army’s main camp, the arrayed forces of Antea that had seemed vast as an ocean only hours before had shrunk in his view. They were the same men, the same horses, the same engines of war. What they weren’t was plausible.

“You see my situation,” Ternigan said as they dismounted. Geder’s thighs and back ached, and a sense of growing embarrassment sat in his gut as uneasy as the first pangs of illness. He nodded to Ternigan as he passed his reins to the groom, but didn’t say anything.

If Ternigan’s tent was near to a house, Geder’s was like a movable palace. It was still the same framed leather walls, but arranged into half a dozen different rooms, including a separate latrine for his own private use and a copper bathtub that they’d apparently hauled all the way from Camnipol in the event he might feel dusty. Rosemary and lilac had been scattered on the ground so that every footstep belched forth perfume. A plate of dried apples and flatbread waited for him, and he sucked at the fruit disconsolately. Ternigan was right, damn the man. Nus would have to be starved out or its walls undermined. It would take months. It would take longer than he could afford. This was his war, and he’d managed to lose it already. His ears were already burning with the whispers at court, the jokes told where he couldn’t hear them. He could already see the brave loyalty on Aster’s face as the boy tried to lift his spirits. He could see the pity in Cithrin bel Sarcour’s eyes, should he ever be lucky enough to see them again.

By the time Basrahip joined him, he had worked himself into a bleak and self-pitying despair. The priest stood across the desk, his expression a question.

“What?” Geder snapped.

“You seem troubled, Prince Geder,” Basrahip said.

“Of course I’m troubled. You saw it all just as well as I did. Those walls?”

“I saw walls,” Basrahip said.

“We can’t beat that.”

Basrahip grunted deep in his throat, his eyes narrowing as if in deep consideration. He turned, stepped to the leather wall. When he struck it, it sounded like a massive drum.

“What are you doing?” Geder demanded.

“I am trying to think why you would beat a wall.”

The rush of anger in Geder’s throat felt like a dam ready to burst.

“Are you laughing at me?”

“A wall is a thing, Prince Geder. A gate is a thing. A well, a granary, a ship. Things. You don’t defeat things. You defeat people, yes? So we see all these beautiful, strong things and think that the ones behind them must be beautiful, strong people. But they are Timzinae and the puppets of Timzinae. They are the slaves of dead masters. There is nothing in this place to stop us.”

“They could be toys made of sticks and tree sap, but we still can’t get to them,” Geder said, but he felt the darkness and anger slipping in him. Losing its hold. Basrahip sat at the desk. In his fingers, the apple seemed tiny. When he bit it, the white of the flesh seemed vaguely obscene.

“Have faith in the goddess,” Basrahip said. “You have kept your promise to her. She will keep faith with you. These walls will bow to you, if you wish them to.”

“How?”

Basrahip smiled.

“Speak to the enemy. Do this.”

“Call the parley, you mean?”

“This,” Basrahip said. “Let us hear our enemy’s voice.”

I
t took the better part of three days, but on the fourth, a lesser gate swung open and a small group came out carrying the banners of parley. The man who led them was old, his broad scales greying and cracked, but he held himself with a haughtiness and pride so profound they radiated. Mesach Sau, patriarch of his family and war leader of Nus sat across the table from Geder and folded his arms. The nictitating membranes under his eyelids slid slowly closed and open again, blinking without breaking off his stare.

“You wanted to talk,” Sau said.

“Open the gates of the city,” Geder said.

“Kiss my ass.”

Geder looked over. Ternigan and Basrahip both sat on camp stools like matched statues, Ternigan the image of dour seriousness, Basrahip serene and smiling. Geder cleared his throat, and Basrahip’s smile grew a degree wider.

“You cannot win,” the priest said. “Everything you care for is already lost.”

“He can kiss my ass too,” Sau said.

“You should listen to him,” Geder replied.

“You have no hope but surrender. The armies of Antea are powerful beyond measure. Their mercy is your only hope.”

“Is that what I’ve come here for?” the old Timzinae asked, then turned his head and spat on the grass. “We have the food and water to sit on our thumbs and grin until this time next year. Your boys will be starving in a month. We know all about your engineers and their mining, and that’s not going to do you any damned good either.”

“Listen to my voice,” Basrahip said, and it seemed as though his words took on a wild music. Geder felt himself almost lifted by them. “Prince Geder cannot be defeated. He cannot be stopped. It is not in your power to defeat him. If you stand against him, your children will die before your eyes. And their children as well. It is inevitable.”

“This is shit,” Sau said, standing. Geder lifted his hand and ten men approached, bare blades in their hands. Sau turned, his mouth a gape of rage. “We’re under parley! You kill me and you’ll never get another chance, boy.”

“Don’t call me boy,” Geder said. “I’m trying to save your life.”

“You cannot win,” Basrahip said again, as old Sau retook his seat, his hands in fists at his sides. “The dead will rise and march with the soldiers. Any you cut down will stand again, stronger and without fear. You cannot win against the power facing you. Everything you love is already lost.”

The hours of the parley passed slowly, but with every one, Geder felt his fear lose hold. Nothing had changed. The walls of Nus were just as tall, the defenses just as vicious, but what had seemed doomed before began to take on the mantle of possibility, and then credibility, and before sunset, it was certain. Old Sau sat just as proudly in his seat, his head just as high, but tears leaked out of his eyes, the scales of his cheeks black and bright as a fountain.

“I won’t do it,” Sau said, but his voice broke when he said it. “I’ll die before I’ll do it.”

“Another will come,” Basrahip said. His voice had taken on a dry rasp from the hours he’d spent talking. “If you will not, the next one will, and then his family will be the one to take Prince Geder’s mercy and your grandchildren will die bleeding in your streets.”

“I won’t do it. Won’t do it. Better we die than give in to bastards like you.” Sau broke off, sobbing. Geder didn’t clap his hands in delight—it would have been rude—but the impulse was there.

“Go,” Geder said. “We can continue the negotiation tomorrow.”

Sau stood up and turned without a word. He stumbled as he left the camp. The red of the setting sun made the walls of Nus glow like iron in a forge. Geder watched the old man make his journey back to the city, watched him disappear within it.

“I’m damned,” Ternigan said, and his voice was soft with wonder. “He’s going to, isn’t he? We’re going to take this bastard of a city after all.”

“It may take time,” Basrahip said. “Perhaps as long as two full weeks together. But yes, Prince Ternigan. The gates will open to you. The city will fall. Your victory is certain.”

Ternigan shook his head again, pressing a palm to his temple.

“I don’t understand all that I saw here today, my lord,” he said. “But …”

“You don’t have to understand,” Geder said. “Just have faith in it.”

They walked back toward camp slowly. In the broad arch of sky, a handful of stars appeared in the twilight. Then a scattering. Then countless millions.

“We will have to make arrangements for a protectorate,” Ternigan said. “That may be a trick. I thought I’d have much more time. Did you have someone in mind to take control?”

Jorey Kalliam
, Geder almost said, but stopped himself. Now that it was asked, he realized it was a question he should have been considering from before he’d left Camnipol. Jorey was still reestablishing himself in court, and while having a few visible honors like the protection of a conquered city would help in that, it would also mean being away from Camnipol. He wished he’d thought to ask. But there would be other cities. Other chances.

That night, they all dined on fresh chicken and a sweet mash made from sugar beets and rice. Ternigan had the captains he commanded compete in extemporaneous poetry praising Antea, the Severed Throne, Geder, and Prince Aster. The night was like something from the histories Geder had read of the great generations of the empire, a bit of the past with new life breathed into its nostrils. It was as if he’d taken all the romances of campaign life and made them real. The comradery, the joy, the bluff masculine competition. All of the things he’d hoped for and never found were his now. All evening, Basrahip and the other priests walked through the camps, speaking with the soldiers, laughing with them, cheering them, and near midnight the whole camp broke into song at once, literally singing Geder’s praises.

He went to bed drunk as much on the affection and loyalty of his men as on any sort of wine, and lay in the darkness grinning and satisfied. He let his mind wander, remembering the darkness of his mood the day he’d seen the city’s defenses. The thought was almost pleasant now, and he turned it in his mind like a glass marble held to the sun, watching it glitter and flash. He’d been so sure that he’d have to return humiliated. He imagined Aster looked up at him again, solid and encouraging even in defeat, and Geder was filled with a kind of love. Aster was such a good child. Geder felt the depth of his own good fortune in getting to deliver the prince a vastly expanded empire when the time finally came for his coronation. A world at peace. It would be a beautiful thing.

And then, after. When Geder was only the Baron of Ebbingbaugh again, he could return to his own life. His books, his holding. Perhaps a wife, or since Cithrin bel Sarcour wasn’t of noble blood, at least a consort. If she’d have him. Or he could travel. Aster could name him as a special ambassador to Birancour, and he’d have reason to visit her in Porte Oliva. He closed his eyes and conjured up the feeling of her body against him, the sound of her breath. He didn’t know he was falling asleep until a servant’s apologetic voice woke him.

Mesach Sau hadn’t slept. Fatigue showed in his clouded eyes and the droop of his shoulders. He hadn’t bothered with the formalities of parley, but walked directly to the camp, to the sentry. It was as if the old man didn’t particularly care whether he was brought before Geder or killed on the spot. As Geder arrived, Ternigan came trotting from his tent as well. Basrahip, serene and pleasant, was already there.

“I’ll do it,” Sau said, his voice breaking on the words. “Swear that you’ll spare my family, and I’ll open the fucking gates for you.”

Geder turned to Ternigan and swept a hand to indicate the weeping man, defeated even before the sack began.

“And that, Lord Marshal, is how it’s done,” Geder said. “Now. Bring me Inentai.”

Cithrin

L
iving in the midst of a family changed many of the small details of life. Privacy was often a matter of politeness and etiquette in a way that it wasn’t when she’d had rooms of her own. Bits and pieces of other lives seemed scattered through the halls like fresh rushes, and had Magistra Isadau and Maha, her cousin’s daughter, been speaking of matters of family or politics, even questions of finance and the running of the bank, Cithrin would not, she told herself, have eavesdropped. But instead, she walked down the wide polished granite hall bright with the light of morning, heard the voices of the older Timzinae woman and the girl, and picked out the words
love
and
sex
. Her journey to the kitchens suddenly became less immediate. Curiosity sharpened her ears and softened her footsteps and she edged closer to the office chambers.

“That too,” the magistra said. “But not
only
that.”

“But if you really love him, doesn’t that make it all right? Even if there is a baby from it?”

Maha’s voice was strong, but not confrontational. This wasn’t an argument, but a deposition. A discovery of the facts. Magistra Isadau’s laughter was low and rueful.

“I have loved many, many people,” she said, “and I’ve never meant the same thing by the word twice. Love is wonderful, but it doesn’t justify anything or make a bad choice wise. Everyone loves. Idiots love. Murderers love. Pick any atrocity you want, and someone will be able to justify it out of something they call love. Anything can wear love like a cloak.”