Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path

“Fine, Highness,” Dawson said. “I’m fine.”

An hour later, as they rode back to the house, Feldin Maas trotted alongside him. Since Vanai’s fall and the defeat of the Maccian reinforcements, Dawson had pretended that the news from the Free Cities meant nothing particular to him, but the charade chafed.

“Lord Kalliam,” Maas said. “Something for you.”

He tossed a twig to Dawson. No, not a twig. A bit of broken horn, red with the dog’s blood.

“Small honor’s better than none, eh?” Maas said with a grin, then chucked to his mount and moved forward.

“Small honor,” Dawson said bitterly and under his breath, the words white as fog.

As they rode back to the holding, the snowfall turned from deep, feathery flakes to mere specks, and the mountains to the east reappeared as the low clouds thinned and broke. The scent of smoke touched the air, and the spiraling towers of Osterling Fells stood in the south. The stone—granite and dragon’s jade—glowed with sunlight, and the garlands that hung from the battlements left the impression that the buildings themselves had come to welcome the moment’s brightness.

As host, Dawson was to oversee the preparation of the hart. It meant little more than standing in the kitchens for half an hour looking jolly, and still his soul rebelled. He couldn’t bring himself to descend into the chaos of servants and dogs. He stalked to the wide stone stairs beside the ovens and stood on the landing that overlooked the preparation tables. Along the wall, pies and loaves of bread cooled, and an ancient woman pressed peacock feathers into a pork loaf that had been sculpted to resemble the bird and candied until it shone like glass. The smell of baked raisins and chicken filled the hot air. The huntsmen arrived with the carcass, and four young men fell to preparing the meat, rubbing salt, mint leaves, and butter into the flesh, carving out the glands and veins that the unmaking had left in. Dawson scowled and watched. The beast had been noble once, and watching it now—

“Husband?”

Clara, behind him, wore the pleasant expression she adopted in the early stages of exhaustion. Her eyes glittered, and the dimples that framed her mouth dug just a fraction deeper than usual. No one would know who hadn’t spent a lifetime looking at her. He resented the court for putting that look in her eyes.

“Wife,” he said.

“If we might?” she said, taking half a step toward the back hall. Annoyance tightened his mouth. Not with her, but with whatever domestic catastrophe required him now. He nodded curtly and followed her back toward the shadows and relative privacy. Before he left the landing a new voice stopped him.

“Sir! You’ve dropped this, my lord.”

One of the huntsmen stood at the stair. A young man, wide-chinned and open-faced, wearing Kalliam livery. He held out the bit of broken, blood-darkened horn. A servant, calling Baron Kalliam back like a child for a lost bauble.

Dawson felt his face darken, his hands clench.

“What is your name,” he said, and the huntsman went pale at the sound of his voice

“Vincen, sir. Vincen Coe.”

“You are no man of mine, Vincen Coe. Get your things and leave my house by nightfall.”

“M-my lord?”

“Do you want to be whipped in the bargain, boy?” Dawson shouted. The kitchen below them went silent, all eyes turning to them, and then quickly away.

“No, my lord,” the huntsman said.

Dawson turned and stalked into the gloom of the corridor, Clara at his side. She didn’t rebuke him. In the shadows of the stair, she leaned in speaking quietly and almost into his ear.

“Simeon asked for a warm bath when he came in, and instead of kicking everyone else out of the blue rooms, I had the janitor prepare Andr’s house. The one by the eastern wing? It’s a more pleasant space anyway, and it has those clever little pipes to keep the water hot.”

“That’s fine,” Dawson said.

“I’ve left orders that no one else be let in except you, of course. Because I knew that you wanted a moment with him.”

“I can’t intrude on the king’s bath,” Dawson said.

“Of course you can, dear. Only tell him I didn’t remember to warn you. I was very careful to mention that it was the place you’ve always preferred after a hunt, so it won’t be at all implausible. Unless, of course, he asks the servants and they say you actually use the blue rooms. But prying like that would be rude, and Simeon’s never struck me that way, has he you?”

Dawson felt a weight he’d only been half aware of lift from him.

“What did I do to deserve a wife as perfect as you?”

“It was luck,” she said, a faint smile penetrating her polite façade. “Now go before he finishes his bath. I’ll tend to that poor puppy of a huntsman you just kicked. They really should know better than to approach you when you’re in a temper.”

Andr’s house sat within the walls of the holding proper, tucked beside the chapel hall and otherwise apart from the main buildings. The Cinnae poet whose name it bore had lived in it when Osterling Fells had been the seat of a king with a penchant for the art of lesser races, and Antea only the name of a minor line of noblemen half a day’s ride to the north. None of Andr’s poems had survived the centuries. The only marks that she had left on the world were a small house that bore her name and a carving in the stone doorway—DRACANI SANT DRACAS—whose meaning was itself forgotten.

King Simeon lay in a bath of worked bronze shaped into a wide Dartinae hand, the long fingers turned back to the palm and dribbling steaming hot water from channels just beneath the claws. A stone bowl of soap rested in a shelf on the thumb. A window of stained glass turned the warm air green and gold. The body servants stood at the back wall with soft cloths to dry the king and black swords to defend him. The king looked up as Dawson stepped into the room.

“Forgive me, sire,” Dawson said. “I hadn’t known you were here.”

“It’s nothing, old friend,” Simeon said, gesturing to the body servants. “I knew I was intruding on your private haunts. Sit. Enjoy the heat, and I’ll make way for you as soon as I have feeling back in my toes.”

“Thank you, sire,” Dawson said as the servants brought a stool for him. “As it happens, I was hoping to discuss a matter with you in private. About Vanai. There’s something it would be best you hear from me.”

King Simeon sat up, and for a moment, they weren’t lord and subject noble, but Simeon and Dawson again. Two boys of blood and rank, full of their own pride and dignity. Dawson’s disdain for the Vanai campaign and outrage at his own son being set to serve under Alan Klin were well-known matters. Still, Dawson rehashed them, building up his anger and self-righteousness to a speed that would carry him through his confession. Simeon listened and the body servants ignored everything with equal care. Dawson watched the old, familiar face as it passed from curiosity to surprise to disappointment and settled at the end in a species of amused despair.

“You have to stop playing games like that with Issandrian’s cabal,” the king of Imperial Antea said, leaning back in his bath. “And still, I wish to God it had worked. Would have saved me half a world of trouble. You’ve heard about the Edford Charter?”

“The what?”

“Edford Charter. It’s a piece of parchment a priest found in the deepest library of Sevenpol that names the head of a farmer’s council under King Durren the White. There’s a petition in the north to name a new farmer’s council on the strength of it. Any landholder with enough crops to pay in would have a voice in court.”

“You can’t be serious,” Dawson said. “Are they going to drive mules through the palaces? Keep goats in the Kingspire gardens?”