city. Killed the people who raised and looked after me. I lived with him for weeks. Took comfort in him. I don’t think there’s a word for what he and I are to each other.”
“Do you love him?”
“Are you drunk?”
“You took comfort in him,” Yardem said. “For some people—”
“He got anxious, I didn’t say no. What’s love got to do with that?”
“Nothing,” Yardem agreed. “Only there are people who don’t see it that way.”
“They’re fools,” Cithrin said, without rancor. And then, “You said partly. What’s the other part?”
“I don’t know where the captain is. What he’s doing. There’s no word of him anywhere. It … bothers me.”
“I wish he was still here too.”
“Not sure I said that, ma’am,” Yardem said ruefully. “I’d hoped to know where he went and what he did. The captain and I didn’t part on the best terms. People who betray him don’t tend to end well, and there’s a good chance he feels I betrayed him.”
“Then he’s a fool too,” Cithrin said.
Yardem didn’t answer.
Geder
Well, you know how it is,” Geder’s father said, scratching at his belly. “Rivenhalm in winter. Spent a fair part of the season listening to the ice crack. Not a great deal more going on. Though this might amuse you, hey? You remember old Jeyup the weirkeeper? The one with the crooked nose?”
“Yes, of course,” Geder said, though the truth of it was that he had only a vague impression of a tall man with dark hair and an unfortunate voice. The room in which they sat now was less than halfway up the Kingspire, and still higher than any other tower in Camnipol. He’d thought that the view might impress his father, and perhaps it had. It was hard to tell.
“Well, just before thaw, he was out cutting ice away from the weir. Making repairs. Only he’d misjudged the ice. Fell right through, half died from the cold of it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Geder said, and glanced at the great spiral stair of rosewood dressed in gold that led to the floor above. The floor where Basrahip and his pet adventurer Dar Cinlama were meeting even now. He hoped to catch sight of the great priest as he descended, but the only form on the stairway was a servant in ceremonial robes trotting off on some errand or another. Geder leaned back in his seat.
“Don’t be,” his father said, “because that’s just the thing. Good came of it after all. The cunning man was away in the east seeing to a man who’d had a tree fall on him, so until he got back old Jeyup had Arrien, the butcher’s widow, coming to nurse him along. And they married at first thaw, if you can picture that!”
Geder’s father slapped his knee in merriment that invited Geder to join in. Geder did smile, pretending pleasure he didn’t actually feel. Rivenhalm had been his home for the whole length of his childhood and the early part of his time as a man, but the fine points of it seemed as vague as someone else’s memories. He remembered the weir and its keeper, the long path behind the manor house that led to the cave where he’d hide in the summer, the smell of the library, the small niche his father kept always lit by a single candle in memory of Geder’s mother, and those tiny fragments would be rich and full of meaning. But they had no context.
“So,” Geder’s father said, “tell me. What translations are you working on these days?”
“I’m not really,” Geder said. “You know. Being Lord Regent. Running the empire. The war makes it hard to have the time, really.”
Lehrer’s face fell a bit, and Geder felt he’d said the wrong thing.
“Of course,” his father said. “It’s just that it was so important to you when you were a boy. I hoped you’d be able … Well, that’s the world, isn’t it? We do what we have to do.”
A long, low, rolling laughter echoed in the distance. Basrahip. The urge to leap up from his seat and go up the stairs, the desire to know what had happened in the meeting was like an itch, but he also didn’t want to seem anxious. It would have been beneath his dignity, and he didn’t want Basrahip to laugh at him. He hated it when people did that.
“I’ve, ah, I’ve kept you too long,” his father said. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” Geder said. “I’m always happy to see you. As long as I’m