The King's Blood

come to meet you,” Daskellin said. “As have the Duchess of Longhearth, and the Dukes of Whitestone and Wodford. I think you should consider—”
    But what he thought Geder should consider was lost in a sudden shouting from behind them. Geder craned around in his chair. At the end of the vast room’s southern leg, something was happening. Men in boiled leather were marching into the hall. They had swords drawn. As Geder watched, one of the palace guards marched up to demand explanation. When they cut him down, the screaming began.
    “Prince Geder!” Basrahip shouted. Geder didn’t remember rising to his feet, and when the great priest shoved him hard enough to drop him to his knees, the only thing he felt at first was confusion. He turned, tried to stand, and the image confused him. A dark, spreading stain marked Basrahip’s left arm just above the elbow. The priest’s face was twisted in pain, and on the other side of him Dawson Kalliam stood, a bloody dagger in his hand. A woman was screaming, but Geder didn’t know where. Dawson flinched as if stung, dropping his blade, and Geder’s personal guard swarmed toward him.
    “To me!” Dawson shouted as he leaped over the high table. “He’s over here! To me!”
    “No, wait,” Geder said. “Stop. Something’s wrong.”
    Basrahip’s hand took him by the arm, four wide fingers almost filling the full distance between shoulder and elbow.
    “We must go, Lord Geder. We must go now. Come.”
    Something crawled across Geder’s skin. A tiny black spider drenched in the priest’s blood, tiny feet leaving a trail of red as it scrambled. Geder pulled his hand back with a shout, but Basrahip was already pushing toward the east, bullying him along like a child. The revelers were on their feet, the mass of bodies surging forward and back. The crash of a table overturning came from behind him, and shattering glass, and the clash of steel against steel.
    They reached the far door and Basrahip forced his way through, bellowing like an animal in pain. The tiny spider or another one like it bit Geder at the soft flesh inside his elbow. He cried out, slapping at it, and Basrahip lost his grip.
    “Come, Prince Geder! Come quickly!” the priest shouted, and Geder was about to follow when a terrible thought came to him like icewater running through his heart.
    “Aster!” he shouted. “Where’s Aster?”
    “Come to me, Prince Geder!”
    “I have to… Wait for me. I’ll be right back.”
    Geder ran back into the chaos of the bloody revel. The violence had spread. To his left, a wide arc of blood spattered the wall. To his right three of his guardsmen were surrounding two of the attackers, but two more enemy were pelting toward them, bloodied blades at the ready. Geder jumped over the body of a middle-aged man, unsure whether he was alive or dead. His focus was set on the high table, and Aster cowering under it. Geder ran as he hadn’t in months. When he regained the high table, he barely had the breath left to speak. He pulled Aster from his crouch, yanking the prince by the arm as Basrahip had to him not a minute before.
    “What’s happening?” Aster cried.
    “You’ll be fine,” Geder said, asserting it as if certainty of tone could make it true. “But you can’t stay here. You have to come with me.”
    Only when he rose, the path east was blocked. A dozen attackers were overwhelming what was left of his personal guard. And in the center of the attackers, Dawson Kalliam hewed alongside the enemy with a sword in his awkward left hand. As Geder gaped, Kalliam caught sight of him.
    “There! He’s at the high table.”
    Geder turned north and bolted. The hall was less than half full now, men and women fleeing into the Kingspire shrieking. Geder’s heart was going so fast that he thought it might begin a beat before the last one was finished, seize up, and kill him on the spot. An old man in servant’s dress saw him running with the prince. For a terrible moment, Geder saw the fear in the man’s face, and then determination. The servant scooped up a soup ladle, brandishing it like a mace.
    “For Aster and Antea!” the old man screamed as he charged the swordsmen pursuing them. Geder didn’t pause to watch the man die.
    The corridors outside the feast hall were a stampede inside a slaughterhouse. People were running in all directions, dodging each other, turning, fleeing without any sign of knowing where they could flee to. And Geder was as lost as