Daniel Abraham - The Tyrant's Law

He walked to the balcony and looked out over the massive city below him. It was his, for the time being at least. Camnipol was his, and Antea, and so, in a sense, was everything. It stretched out before him like a map of itself—the Division, the wide manors and compounds of the noble classes, the maze of narrow streets in the south. Even the sun high in its blue arch of sky seemed part of Geder’s domain. The air smelled of smoke from a thousand forges, bakeries, and hearths. Tiny shapes moved on the ground far below, distance reducing them all to less than ants. It should have been enough.

Basrahip’s footsteps approached from behind him. Like a boy poking his tongue at a sore tooth, he remembered again the pleasure and interest on the priest’s face when Dar Cinlama had made his proposal.

“I was thinking,” Geder said, “we should move your temple. The highest floors of the Kingspire aren’t being used for anything in particular, and there’s a beautiful theater space you could use for sermons. It looks out like you’re a bird. And then if something else like Dawson Kalliam happens, you’ll be safe. No one can take the Kingspire.”

Basrahip was silent for a long moment. His nod was hardly visible in the corner of Geder’s eye. The echo of disappointment and shame he felt could have been the echo of speaking with his father. It could have been something else.

“The meeting with the adventurer,” Geder said. “It went well, then? We’re going to do what he said.”

“I have asked that he give over all the information he has about places where the bones of the world may lie near its skin,” Basrahip said. “He has agreed. The man himself will lead one group, but there will be others to go where he feels it wise to send them. With your permission, Prince Geder.”

“Of course you have my permission. Why would you not? Here’s my permission. Take it.”

Beyond the southern wall of the city, the land fell away into a deep plain. From where he stood, it was almost as if Camnipol stood at the edge of the world. A flock of pigeons rose in the air below them, grey wings glittering white in the sunlight. Basrahip’s sigh carried the weight of years.

“What is troubling you, Prince Geder?”

“Nothing.”

“That is not true, my friend,” Basrahip said, his voice gentle. “Try again.”

Geder crossed his arms. Without meaning to, he picked out the tiny blot of color that was Yellow House. He wondered if Cary and Smit and the other players who’d hidden him and Aster were still there. He wondered if they had heard from Cithrin. He started to speak, stopped himself, and then tried again.

“This man Cinlama. He’s going to go off into the world and find things, isn’t he? He’s going to follow these tiny traces of history, these clues and rumors and half-remembered stories, and try to dig up wonders. I used to be the one who did that. I’m the one who left Antea and went looking for the Sinir Kushku and found the temple. I was the one who brought you and the goddess back out into the world. And now …”

“Do you fear that this man would take your glory? Your place in the goddess’s favor?”

Geder shook his head. “I could have Cinlama killed for any reason. For no reason other than that I said so. It’s that I see him and I think of the ways I used to be him. Or the way I used to be my father’s son, and I’m not anymore. Or the way I used to be Dawson Kalliam’s client before he turned on me. I used to be the one who led you into the world and showed you all the things that had changed since your people went into seclusion. And I’m not any of those people anymore.”

“Would you wish to be?” the priest asked. “Lord Prince, what do you want?”

The question seemed to float in the air like a feather. Geder tried to imagine himself strapping a leather sack of books to the side of a horse, taking a handful of servants, and pressing out into the forgotten corners of the world. In truth, he hadn’t particularly enjoyed the journey when he had gone, and the prospect of sleeping in a tent and worrying about where the next freshwater would be had more charm in theory than in practice. It wasn’t what Dar Cinlama was doing that Geder envied, it was what he signified. For a moment, Geder was suffering the summer just gone by, hiding in a hole under a collapsed building, spending days and nights in darkness with Aster and Cithrin bel Sarcour. He heard her laugh again and the slight bitterness that seemed to flavor everything she said.

“I want to matter ,” Geder said.

“Ah,” Basrahip said, as if he understood.

There were, Geder supposed, things in the world that deserved his hatred more than ancient precedents of grazing rights. The worse sorts of stinging flies, for example. Or the way a man’s bowels turned to water if he ate bad meat. Those were worse, if only slightly.

“You see, my lord,” the scholarly man said, “the question you ask hinges on whether the men in question are grazing animals that come from the same stock. If, for example, they are sheep who descended from the same ram three generations previous, then they are by imperial standards within the same greater flock. In that case—”

“The old Miniean precedents apply, and this Sebinin fellow doesn’t owe the other one a single coin.”

“Exactly,” the scholar said, “but if there was another ram—”

“He owes a tenth of a sheep for every day he grazed on the land without permission.”

“Precisely. If you don’t mind my saying it, your lordship is very quick to understand the intricacies of these questions.”

Geder nodded and leaned forward, elbows on the table like a schoolboy before his tutor. It was another of the unresolved issues of the general audience taken care of, or if not taken care of, at least moved to the next stage. He’d send a messenger to the people in question and find out the lineages of their sheep. He had never in all his life imagined that the role of governing an empire would cook down to such a thin broth as this, but he understood now why the general audience came only once a year and usually ended well before the last of the petitioners came before the throne. If he’d chosen to stop an hour or two earlier, he wouldn’t be sitting here now. Nor would Dar Cinlama and his team be preparing to depart. Around him, the small library held the least command of his attention that any collection of books had ever managed. Volume after volume, codex after codex, trailing back through centuries to the founding of Antea, and many older even than that, without a single one being particularly interesting. He wondered whether Basrahip’s disdain for the written word was beginning to seep into him, or if this was genuinely the least interesting subject known to humanity.

“All right,” Geder said and consulted the page of notes he had sketched for himself, his heart sluggish and grey. “Let’s see what’s next. How much do you know about the legal differences between spring lettuce and autumn?”

The scholar’s eyebrows rose as Geder’s heart sank.

“Well, my lord, that is a fascinating question.”

It isn’t , Geder thought. No, it really, truly isn’t …

“Lord Regent?” a familiar voice said from the doorway. Canl Daskellin stood uncertainly, hesitating to step in or to leave. Geder sprang to his feet.

“Lord Daskellin! Come in, please,” he said, and then turned to the scholar. “I’m afraid the rest will have to wait. War and all. I’ll send someone for you when there’s time.”

The scholar bowed his way out and Geder led Daskellin to a chair, only realizing when he got there that he’d been pulling at the older man’s sleeve like a puppy worrying a dog’s ear. Daskellin smiled as he sat, but his expression seemed abstracted. It was as if he were still making some internal argument and had not come to a conclusion that entirely satisfied him. The dusting of white at the man’s temples stood out against the darkness of his skin, making him seem older than he was.