so quiet that it was easy to forget that he was there with them. Geder turned to him, even though it meant putting his back to Daskellin.
“If Elassae wants to avoid war, they can,” the boy said sweetly. “All they’d need to do is hand over the conspirators. And if they won’t do that, then we can’t really pretend they haven’t chosen sides.”
Geder felt objections boiling up, but he closed his lips against them. Talking to Aster wasn’t like sitting with Emming or Daskellin. Or even Jorey Kalliam. Aster would be king when he was old enough. The Severed Throne was his, and Geder was only protecting it for him. And Aster watched Geder as he’d watched King Simeon. He studied with his tutors and with Minister Basrahip, and his young mind, while not yet fully formed, was engaged and lively. Already, the shape of his face had changed from the roundness it had had. The first planes and angles were in his cheeks, showing what he would be when he’d grown to manhood. The same was true of his words. Letting him have his voice in the decisions of the crown wasn’t handing him live steel. Geder would still sign the commands. Hearing the boy out was the least he could do.
“So you think we shouldn’t press on?” he said.
“I think giving them the chance to avoid war would be the kind and honorable thing.”
“I agree with the prince,” Daskellin said. “If there is a way to end this gracefully and turn back to the business of rebuilding the kingdom, we should.”
Geder folded his hands together. “I will put together a proclamation for Ternigan to deliver before he comes to any more battles. If they turn over the conspirators—all the conspirators—we’ll show mercy. Agreed?”
“I do,” Aster said. “Though honestly, I can’t think they’ll take it. They’re Timzinae. It’s not as if they were people.”
Marcus
The dream came again. After so many months away, it was like encountering an old enemy. Marcus knew, even as it began, as the normal meaningless patterns of his sleeping mind began to change to the terrible and familiar, that it wasn’t real. Perhaps it should have helped.
Alys and Merian were there, with him. He couldn’t see their faces anymore. They had been lost from memory years ago, but the sense of their physical presence was unmistakable. His wife. Their daughter. The flood of love and joy filled him against his will. He didn’t want it, but it came. The sense of relief was like an assault, because he knew what would follow it.
The crackling of fire. Merian was screaming. Marcus ran, his legs refusing him. Tree branches held him back, or men’s arms, or the thickened air itself. He panted and gasped, he willed himself forward even as he knew that he was already years too late. The green scabbard bounced against his back, the poison of the blade making him stumble. Merian’s shrieks were like a cat being strangled. Even though he couldn’t reach her, he could feel her breath against his ear.
He was in the fire, cradling her. She was still in his arms, and he thought—as he always did in this part—that she was safe. That he’d saved her. This time, he’d saved her, and when he woke, she would be alive because of it. And then he understood. The grief was wider than oceans. He screamed out for a vengeance that he’d taken almost a decade before.
The burned child in his arms was Merian, but it was also Cithrin. He didn’t put her down, but in the logic of dreams he was also drawing the venomed blade. He felt himself running, and this time the speed was like falling. He would take his revenge.
He woke up trying to bring the blade down.
The stars of the Keshet glowed above him, a vast and milky horde. He muttered an obscenity and rolled to his side. His body ached like someone had beaten him, but at least he wasn’t dreaming anymore. Long experience had taught him that he could. If he closed his eyes again now, it would all begin again from the start. He’d known men with fevers that let them be for months or even years at a time, and then descended again, pulling them into delirium and illness for weeks. This wasn’t so different. Except that it was his, so he had to suffer it.
He sat up, yawned. The sky was clear, but the air smelled like rain. There would be