Dawson

I won't hear it," King Simeon said. The months hadn't been kind to him. His skin was greyer than it had been, his lips an unhealthy blue. Sweat beaded his brow though the room wasn't particularly warm. "God, Dawson. Listen to yourself. You're back from exile for one day - one - and already you're back at it."

"If Clara's right and Maas is plotting against Aster's life - "

Simeon slapped his palm to the table. The meeting chamber echoed with it, and the silence that followed was broken only by the songs of finches and the babbling of the fountain outside the windows. The guards around the back wall remained impassive as always, their armor the black and gold of the city, their swords sheathed at their hips. Dawson wondered what they would have said, had they been asked. Someone must be able to talk sense to Simeon, though it clearly wasn't him.

"If I'd listened to your advice," the king said, "Issandrian would be leading a popular revolt against me right now. Instead, he was here yesterday, bending his knee, asking my forgiveness and swearing on his life that the mercenary riot wasn't his plan or doing."

"If it wasn't his, it was someone's," Dawson said.

"I am your king, Baron Osterling. I am perfectly capable of guiding this kingdom safely."

"Simeon, you are my friend," Dawson said softly. "I know how you sound when you're frightened to your bones. Can you put it off until next year?"

"Put what off?"

"Fostering your son. Naming his protector. The closing of the court is three weeks from now. Only say that the events of the season have distracted you from the decision. Take time."

Simeon rose. He walked like an old man. Outside the window the leaves were still green, but less so than they had been. The summer was dying, and someday very soon the green would fade, red and gold taking the field. Beautiful colors, but still death.

"Maas has no reason to wish Aster ill," Simeon said.

"He's in contact with Asterilhold. He's working with them - "

"You worked with Maccia to reinforce Vanai. Lord Daskellin danced with Northcoast. Lord Tremontair is keeping assignations with the ambassador from Borja, and Lord Arminnin spent more time in Hallskar than Antea last year. Shall I slaughter every nobleman with connections outside the kingdom? You wouldn't live." Simeon's breath was fast and shallow. He leaned against the windowsill, steadying himself. "My father died when he was a year younger than I am now."

"I remember."

"Maas has allies. Everyone who loved Issandrian and Klin turned to him when they left."

"Mine turned to Daskellin."

"You don't have allies, Dawson. You have enemies and admirers. You couldn't even keep Palliako's boy near you when he was the hero of the day. Lerer sent him off to the edge of the world rather than let him take another revel from you. Enemies and admirers."

"Which are you, Majesty?"

"Both. Have been since you flirted that Cinnae girl away from me at the tourney when we were twelve."

Dawson chuckled. The king's smile was almost abashed, and then he was laughing too. Simeon came back and collapsed into his chair.

"I know you don't approve," he said. "But trust me that I'm doing the best I can. There are just so many things to balance, and I'm so tired. I am unbearably tired."

"At least don't give Aster to Maas. I don't care if he is the most influential man at court just now. Find someone else."

"Thank you for your advice, old friend."

"Simeon - "

"No. Thank you. That's all."

In the antechamber, the servants gave Dawson back his sword and dagger. It seemed years since Simeon had insisted on the old formality of coming to private audience unarmed. This was how far they had all fallen. Dawson was still adjusting the buckle when he stepped outside. The air was warm, the sun heavy in the sky, but the breeze had an edge to it. The soft, pressing air of summer was gone. The seasons were changing again. Dawson turned away the footman's assisting hand and climbed into his carriage.

"My lord?" the driver asked.

"The Great Bear," Dawson said.

The whip cracked, and the carriage lurched off, leaving the blocky towers and martial gates of the Kingspire behind. He let himself lean back into the seat, the jolts and knocks sending jabs of pain up his spine. First the journey back from Osterling Fells and then the better half of the day waiting for his majesty to clear an audience for him had worn him down more than it once would have.

When he'd been a young man, he'd ridden from Osterling Fells to Camnipol, stopping only to trade horses, arrived just before the queen's ball, and spent the whole evening until the dawn dancing. Mostly with Clara. It seemed like a story he'd heard told of someone else, except that he could still see the dress she'd worn and smell the perfume at the nape of her neck. He turned the memory aside before his wife's younger incarnation aroused him. He wanted to walk upright when he reached the club, and while he was old, he wasn't dead.

The Fraternity of the Great Bear rose up, its façade the black stone and gold leaf of the Undying City. Coaches and carriages were thick in the street, drivers pushing to position themselves where their particular masters would walk the fewest steps from carriage to door. The air stank of the fresh horse droppings being ground to paste under a hundred hooves. Dawson toyed with the idea of getting out here and walking in just to escape, but it was beneath his station, so he made do with abusing the driver for his slowness and incompetence. By the time the footmen of the club hurried out with a step for him, he almost felt better.

Within, the club was a fabric woven from pipe smoke, heat, and music ignored in favor of conversation. Dawson gave his jacket to a servant girl who bowed and scurried away. When he entered the great hall, half a dozen men turned toward him, applauding his return with varying degrees of pleasure and sarcasm. Enemies and admirers. Dawson cut a bow that could be read as acknowledgment or insult depending on who it was given to, scooped up a cut crystal glass of fortified wine, and stalked to the smaller halls on the left.

A wide, round table sat in the center of one hall, a dozen men around it, many of them talking at once. In among the press of bodies and wit, Issandrian's long hair and Sir Klin's artless face. Issandrian caught sight of him and stood. He nodded to Dawson rather than bow. It might only have been a trick of the light, but the man seemed lessened. As if his exile had actually humbled him. The others at his table began to grow quiet, becoming aware that something was happening around them even if they were too dim to know what. Dawson drew his dagger in a duelist's salute, and Issandrian smiled in what might have been approval.

At the back of the hall were private meeting rooms, and the least of these was hardly larger than a carriage itself. The dark leather couches ate what little light the candles gave. Daskellin sat in a corner where he could see whoever entered. His back was to the wall, and his sword was undrawn, but near his hand.

"Well," Dawson said, lowering himself to the couch opposite, "I see you've squandered everything we had in my absence."

"Pleasure to see you too," Canl Daskellin said.

"How do we go from successfully defending Camnipol from foreign blades to riding behind Feldin Maas? Can you answer that?"

"Do you want the long answer or the short?"

"Will the long be less annoying?"

Daskellin leaned forward.

"Maas has backing, and we don't. I had it. Or I thought I did. Then a balance sheet changed or some such, and Clark lit out for Birancour."

"It's what you deserve for working with bankers."

"It won't happen again," Daskellin said darkly.

It was as close to an apology as Dawson expected to get. He let the matter slide. Instead, he drained his glass, leaned to the door, and rapped against it until a serving girl appeared to refresh his glass.

"Where do we stand, then?" Dawson asked when she'd gone.

Daskellin shook his head, breath hissing out through his teeth.

"If it comes to the field, we can hold our own. There are enough landholders who still hate Asterilhold that it's easy enough to rally them."

"If Aster dies before he takes the throne?"

"Then we fervently pray his majesty's royal scepter's still in working order, because a new male heir is the best hope we have. I've had my genealogist look through the blood archives, and Simeon has a cousin in Asterilhold with a legitimate claim."

"Legitimate?" Dawson asked, leaning forward.

"I'm afraid so, and you can't guess this. He's a supporter of the principle of a farmer's council. We lose the quarter of our support with more sense that guts. The others rally around Oyer Verennin or possibly Umansin Tor, both of whom can also make a claim. Asterilhold backs its man with the help of the group Maas and Issandrian have gathered, we fight a civil war, and we lose."

Daskellin clapped his hands once. The candle above him sputtered. In the halls of the club, a serving girl shouted and a man laughed. Dawson's fortified wine tasted more bitter than it had when he started it, and he put the glass down.

"Could this have been the scheme all along?" Dawson asked. "Was Maas using Issandrian and Klin and all that hairwash about a farmer's council just for this? We may have been aiming at the wrong target all this time."

"Possibly," Daskellin said. "Or it might have been a chance he saw and decided to take. We'd have to ask Feldin, and I suspect he might not tell us the truth."

Dawson tapped the lip of his glass with a finger, the crystal chiming softly.

"We can't let Aster die," Dawson said.

"Everything dies. Men, cities, empires. Everything," Daskellin said. "The timing's the question."

Dawson took his dinner with the family in the informal dining hall. Roast pork with apple, honeyed squash, and fresh bread with whole cloves of garlic baked into it. A cream linen cloth on the table. Ceramic dishes from Far Syramys and polished silver utensils. It could as well have been ashes served on scrap iron.

"Geder Palliako's come back," Jorey said.

"Really?" Clara said. "I don't remember where he'd gone. Not to the south, certainly, with so many people having friends and family in Vanai. You can't expect a decent reception when you've killed a person's cousin or some such. Wouldn't be realistic. Was he in Hallskar?"

"The Keshet," Jorey said around a mouthful of apple. "Came back with a pet cunning man."

"That's nice for him," Clara said. She rang for the serving girl, and then, frowning, "We don't need to throw another revel for him, do we?"

"No," Dawson said.

He knew, of course, what they were doing. Jorey bringing up odd, trivial subjects. Clara burbling on about them and turning everything into a question for him to answer. It was the strategy they always used in dark times to lift him up out of himself. Tonight, the burden was too heavy.

He'd considered killing Maas. It would be difficult, of course. A direct assault was impossible. In the first place, it was expected and so would be guarded against. In the second, failure meant an even greater sympathy for Maas in the court. The idea of challenging him to a duel and then allowing things to go wrong appealed to him. He and Maas had been on the dueling grounds often enough that it wouldn't be an obvious convenience, and men slipped all the time. Blades went deeper than intended. He had to ignore the fact that Feldin was younger, stronger, and had lost their last duel only because Dawson was cleverer. The idea was still sweet.

"Fact is," Barriath said as the serving girl came in, "this boat is sinking, and we're bailing it out with a sieve."

"Meaning what?" Jorey said.

"Simeon's my king and I'll put my life down at his word, the same as anyone," Barriath said, "but he's barely his own master anymore. Father stopped the Edford Charter madness, and now we're looking at plots from Asterilhold. If we stop that, there will be another crisis after it, and another after that one."

"I don't think that's appropriate talk for the dinner table, dear," Clara said, accepting a fresh glass of watered wine from the servant.

"Ah, let him talk," Dawson said. "It's what we're all thinking about anyway."

"At least wait until the help is gone," Clara said. "Or who knows what they'll think of us in the small quarters."

The servant girl left blushing. Clara watched the door close after her, then nodded to her eldest son.

"Antea needs a king," Barriath said. "Instead it's got a kindly uncle. I hate to be the one to bring the bad news, but it's all through the navy. If it weren't for Lord Skestinin encouraging the captains to lay on the lash and drop troublemakers for the fish, we'd have had a mutiny by now. At least one."

"I can't believe that," Clara said. "Mutiny's such a rude, shortsighted thing. I'm certain that our men in the king's navy wouldn't stoop so low."

Barriath laughed.

"Mother, if you want truly inappropriate dinner conversation, I can tell you something about how low sailing men stoop."

"But Simeon is the king and Aster's still a boy," Jorey said. It was, Dawson thought, a brave attempt to keep the subject from veering again. "You can't expect them to be different people than they are."

"I agree with you, my boy," Dawson said. "I wish I didn't."

"Best thing," Barriath said, "would be for Simeon to find a protector with a spine to watch over Aster, and then abdicate. A regency could last eight or ten years, and by the time Aster took the crown, the kingdom would be in order."

Jorey snorted his derision, and Barriath's face went hard.

"Spare me," Jorey said. "A regent who could solve all the kingdom's conflicts in a decade wouldn't be likely to give up his regency. He'd be king."

"You're right," Barriath said. "And that would be just terrible, would it?"

"That's starting to sound awfully like the people we're working against, brother."

"If you two are going to start fighting, you can leave the table now," Clara said. Barriath and Jorey looked at their plates, muttering variations on I'm sorry, Mother. Clara nodded to herself. "That's better. Besides, it's a waste of effort to argue about the problems you don't have at the expense of the ones you do. We simply have to convince Simeon that poor Feldin really has gotten himself in too deep with those terrible Asterilhold people."

"It isn't as easy as that," Dawson said.

"Certainly it is," Clara said. "He's certain to have letters, isn't he? That's what Phelia said. That he was always off at his meetings and letters."

"I don't think he'll be writing to his foreign friends with detailed accounts of treason, Mother," Barriath said. "Dear Lord Such-and-so, glad to hear you'll help me slaughter the prince."

"He wouldn't have to say it, though. Not outright," Jorey said. "If there was evidence he was corresponding with this cousin who'd lay claim to the throne, it might be enough."

"You can always judge people by who they write to," Clara said with satisfaction. "There's the inconvenience of actually getting the letters, of course, but Phelia was so desperately pleased to see me last time, I can't think it will be particularly difficult to arrange another invitation. Not that one can rely on that, of course, which is why I've sponsored that needlework master to come show us his stitching patterns. Embroidery seems simple just to look at, but the more complex work can be quite boggling. Which reminds me, Dawson dear, I'm going to require the back hall with the good light tomorrow. There will be about five of us, because after all it seemed a bit obvious to only bring Phelia. That won't be a problem, will it?"

"What?" Dawson said.

"The back hall with the good light," Clara said, turning her head to him and raising her eyebrows without actually looking up from cutting her meat. "Because really needlework can't be done in gloom. It - "

"You're cultivating Phelia Maas?"

"She lives with Feldin," Clara said. "And with the close of court coming so soon, waiting seems unwise, don't you think?"

There was a glitter in her eye and a dangerous angle at the corner of her mouth. Dawson found himself quite certain that his wife was enjoying herself. He found his mind dashing to keep up with hers. If Phelia could be convinced to allow access to the house for a few men...

"What are you doing, Mother?" Barriath asked.

"Saving the kingdom, dear," she said. "Eat your squash. Don't just move it around on the plate and pretend you've done anything. That never worked when you were a boy, I can't imagine why you still try it."

"He won't believe us," Dawson said. "After all the objections I've raised, Maas will claim forgery. But it might be enough to sway Simeon from giving Aster over."

"More swaying from the king?" Barriath said. "Is that really what we need? Move him to decisive action, or stay back."

"Someone else could take them," Jorey said. "Someone who isn't particularly allied with us or Maas."

"What about the Palliako boy?" Clara said. "I know he seems a bit frivolous, but he and Jorey are on good terms and it isn't as though he were part of your inner circle."

Dawson ate a bite of pork, chewing slowly to give himself time to think. In truth, the meat wasn't bad. Salt and sweet and something like pepper heat under it all. Quite good, in fact. He felt the smile spreading across his lips, becoming aware that it had been some time since he'd smiled.

"I don't know about that," Jorey said, but Dawson waved the words away.

"Palliako was useful ending the Vanai campaign. And he was here to stop the mercenary riot. He's been an apt tool before," Dawson said. "I can't think why this time would be different."