The King's Blood

present to a child.
    “I hope you like it,” he said. “I have the sense that we’ll be spending quite a bit of time in here over the next year or so. The guardsmen stand on the benches to either side, you see? Rising up like that? And then I’ll sit up there, and you can be down here near me, but where you can hear the prisoner talking better.”
    “The prisoner?”
    “Or whoever,” Geder said, waving the question away.
    “It is majestic, my lord,” Basrahip said. “But?”
    The priest nodded to the back wall.
    “There is no banner,” Basrahip said. “I would put the symbol of your house there on the right, and the sigil of the goddess there to the left. For balance.”
    “Brilliant!” Geder said. “We can do that. But… before that, I was wondering if you’d like to try it. In practice, I mean. Just to see whether the design works as well as I think it does.”
    “If you wish. I am here as your servant.”
    Geder arranged it all as carefully as a party. Which guards, with what arms and armor. The lighting of the candles. Everything. And then, when it was all as he’d hoped it would be, he sent out the guard into the city. Four hours later, they returned with the prisoner in hand.
    Geder looked down from his heights. Barriath Kalliam looked small and frightened.
    “My lord,” Geder said.
    “Lord Regent.”
    “Thank you for joining me. I apologize for the unpleasantness of your arrival.”
    “Think nothing of it,” Barriath said, he looked from side to side, taking in the armed men arrayed at his flanks. “I may not be as formally dressed as the occasion calls for.”
    “I hear that you have left your brother’s house,” Geder said. “Is that true?”
    Barriath shrugged.
    “It wasn’t what we wanted, so no. I’m not there any longer.”
    Geder shifted his eyes, and Basrahip nodded. It wasn’t as easy to see, though. The angle wasn’t quite right for it. He’d need to think about that.
    “You had a falling-out with Jorey.”
    “Wouldn’t go that far,” Barriath said. The priest hesitated, and then nodded, but Geder realized he didn’t know what that meant. It might be true that Barriath wouldn’t go that far, but that wasn’t the question he’d wanted answered. Below him, Barriath seemed less awed and humbled than amused.
    “Are you loyal to me?”
    “Excuse me, Lord?”
    “Your brother renounced Lord Kalliam. You didn’t say the words. I’m asking now, are you loyal to me?”
    “I’m a proud servant of the Severed Throne and I always have been,” Barriath said, throwing the words out like a challenge. Basrahip nodded. Yes. Geder felt a surprising bite of disappointment. Still, it was what he’d brought the man here to find out.
    Only no. It wasn’t.
    “Are you loyal to me?” Geder asked.
    “You’re the Lord Regent,” Barriath said. Yes . And yet.
    “Are you loyal to me ?”
    Barriath shrugged, looking up at Geder the way a lumberjack might size up the tree he wanted to fell.
    “I am,” he said. No.
    Geder chuckled.
    “I am not a man easily fooled,” he said.
    “If you say so, my lord.”
    “You’ve lied to me. The last man that did that I cut his hands off. I have an offer for you. If it weren’t for my friendship with your brother, I wouldn’t offer this much. I am going to ask you the same question again. If you tell me that you are loyal to me and you are telling the truth, I will make you lord of Asinport and head of the fleet that was Asteril-hold’s. Tell me that you are loyal and lie, you will die where you stand. Or admit your disloyalty, and I will only send you into exile. You have my word on that.”
    “I don’t understand,” Barriath said. “Is this some kind of trick?”
    “You know my terms,” Geder said. “Now. For the last time. Are you loyal to me?”
    Barriath was silent, his arms folded and his face bent in a scowl. He stretched his neck first one way and then the other. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and conversational.
    “No,” he said. “You’re a small-hearted, small-minded prick and any man with a real love of Antea would want your head on a pike.”
    “As I thought. You are exiled from Antea and all its holdings beginning now and lasting until your death. Any man who finds you on Antean soil may kill you and bring your head to me for what reward I see fit.”
    “All right,” Barriath said. “Wasn’t as if I had much worth staying here for. We done, then, Lord Regent?”
    “Captain? See him out,”