Daniel Abraham - The Tyrant's Law

Aster threw another stone into the pond as the ripples of the first reached the edge and either echoed back faintly or died.

“Lord Regent?”

Geder turned to look over his shoulder. The servant at the edge of the garden bowed until he was bent almost double.

“Yes?”

“Your advisors await you, my lord.”

Geder rose, but Aster only scowled at the surface of the pond.

“Are you … would you like to sit in?” Geder asked, then when Aster didn’t answer, “All this is going to be yours. Probably best that you see how it all works.”

“Not today,” Aster said, and threw another stone. This one skipped twice before it sank.

“Is something wrong?”

The prince didn’t respond, and Geder, for want of a better idea of what to do, let the servant lead him away. As they walked along the paths of crushed marble, he brooded. He’d been selfish, perhaps, to go to Sarakal and leave Aster behind. The prince was usually so mature and well contained, it was easy to forget he was still a child, and more than that, a child who’d lost his father. Who’d been the target of assassination. Geder was his protector, and he’d gone off to the war. And now he was making jokes about his own death and his replaceability. He reimagined the conversation that he’d just had, but from Aster’s point of view, and he cringed. He’d only meant to make Aster see that being prince made him special and important, and instead he’d brought up the idea of yet another person Aster relied on dying. Little wonder the boy hadn’t taken comfort in it.

“Stupid,” Geder muttered to himself. “Stupid, stupid, stupid .”

“My lord?” the servant asked.

“Nothing. Keep going.”

The official meeting room was halfway up the vast Kingspire, so it wasn’t used except for great ceremonial occasions. The more common business of the empire took place at ground level. Today, the men Geder had set to help him manage the kingdom were seated at a low stone table not far from the dueling grounds. The Kingspire rose up to Geder’s left, the vast chasm of the Division away to his right, and the gorgeous sprawl of Camnipol before him.

Canl Daskellin sat to his right with Cyr Emming, Baron of Suderland Fells, at his side. Across from them were Noyel Flor, Earl of Greenhaven and Protector of Sevenpol and cousin to Namen Flor, and Sir Ernst Mecilli. Had Lord Ternigan and Lord Skestinin been in the city, they would have sat at a larger table. As Geder sat, it occurred to him that a year ago this same group would have included Lord Bannien and Dawson Kalliam, both of them dead now as traitors. And the year before that, King Simeon would have been in his own seat. Of them all, only Canl Daskellin and Noyel Flor had served as steadying hands on the rudder of state for more than three years. It was sobering to realize that so much had changed in so short a time.

“Well,” Geder said, “thank you, gentlemen, for keeping the city out of the flames while I went to help Lord Ternigan. And now that that’s done, where exactly do we stand?”

Noyel Flor stroked his beard and made a sound like a cough but with greater intent behind it. Mecilli nodded, took a breath, held it, and then spoke.

“The food, Lord Regent, that we had hoped to gain by attacking Sarakal is not in as great a quantity as we had expected. In specific, the grains we’ve recovered are half what we’d projected, and the livestock hardly better than a third.”

“On the one hand,” Daskellin said, “Ternigan’s not moving as quickly as we’d hoped, so more of it’s being eaten by the locals. And on the other, they’ve been slaughtering their own stock and leaving the grains to rot rather than let us put hands on it. We’re looking at a thin year. But I’ve been talking with my friends in Northcoast, and if we’re willing to pay a small premium, I think we can import enough of their wheat to see us through.”

“I don’t like it,” Lord Emming growled. Between his tone of voice and the bulldog flatness of his face, he seemed almost a caricature of himself. “We should be sustaining our own, not buying from Northcoast like we were servants at market.”

“It’s one season, Cyr,” Daskellin said. “Be reasonable. There’s more than enough precedent for—”

“Is it one season?” Emming snapped. “Is Ternigan going get the job done and get our men back here in time to prepare the farms this autumn? Because my people have had the most productive fields in Antea for three generations, and I’ll tell you sooner than anyone that what you do before first frost tells whether the spring’s hungry or full.”

“With the money we’ll have from Nus, we could import food for at least three years,” Daskellin said. “And as long as we’re buying from Northcoast, they aren’t likely to get nervous about us or start talking to dissident factions in Asterilhold about whether they should throw off the yoke of Antean rule.”

“They wouldn’t dare,” Emming said.

“Actually,” Geder said, “I think if we can make it through one year, the problem will go away. I have a plan that will give us full production from the farms and let us keep a standing army.” Noyel Flor coughed again, and this time it sounded almost like laughter. Geder waited for the cutting remark. Something like, And will it make all the cows shit gold too? But the men stayed silent, waiting. Geder felt a stab of nervousness, but he kept it hidden. “You’ve all seen the prisons I’ve built over the winter? Well, the time’s come to use them. I’m having all the children of Sarakal sent here to live as hostages. We can distribute the adults as workers on the farms to replace the men we’ve put in the army. If the farms produce as they were doing before the war, then the children are kept safe. If there’s trouble, we have a census of which slaves are at which places, and all their children will stand as communal hostage. So even if there’s one troublemaker in the group, all the other Timzinae will put them down to protect their own children.”

“And so if there’s a problem, you kill all the children?” Daskellin asked.

“All the ones that belong to the people on that farm. Or in that group. Yes,” Geder said. “I haven’t worked out all the details yet. I was basing it on an essay I read about how Varel Caot enforced peace after the Interregnum.”

The four men at the table were silent. Geder felt a flush of annoyance and embarrassment that he couldn’t entirely account for.

“It might be difficult to … maintain enthusiasm when the time comes to kill these children,” Mecilli asked.

“Enthusiasm or loyalty?” Geder asked.

“You could spell them the same,” Mecilli said.

“The point is we won’t have to,” Emming said. “I think the Lord Regent’s right. The threat alone will keep the roaches in line.”

“ Thank you,” Geder said, and leaned back, his arms crossed before him. “It’s not like I want to kill children. I’m not a monster. But we have to get the farms producing again. And anyway, I’ve already had the census made and the children are being marched here now.”

“Well, then there’s nothing we need to argue about,” Daskellin said. “Let’s move on, shall we?”

The meeting continued for the better part of the morning, but Geder felt distracted. There were questions upon questions upon questions. The remaining high families of Asterilhold—the ones who had survived the purge that came after the death of King Lechan—were eager to cement relations with Antea, resulting in a swarm of proposals of marriage between the young men and women of the two courts. There were even suggestions that Aster and Geder make alliances with several young women, none of whom Geder recognized by name. Once that was all disposed of, they moved on to whether the spoils of Sarakal would support Ternigan’s army or if a tax should be called, and if it were whether to accept payment exclusively in coin, or if food and horses would suffice. Through it all Sir Ernst Mecilli’s expression was sour and he didn’t meet Geder’s eyes.