The King's Blood

divine from the mixture of truth and lies. And a few minutes—an hour or two—entirely his own was welcome in a way that made his joints ache a little.
    He heard Aster’s voice reciting lines, and then the tutor— an ancient Cinnae man so frail-looking that he seemed always on the edge of collapse. Geder followed their voices to the study and hung in the shadows of the doorway for a moment.
    Aster sat at a small table, looking up at the tutor’s podium. The old Cinnae smiled encouragingly, and Aster began the lines again.
    “Information without practice can never grow to knowledge. Knowledge without silence can never grow to wisdom. And so practice and silence, doing and not doing, are at the heart of the right man’s path.”
    “Marras Toca,” Geder said. “I didn’t know you were learning military philosophy.”
    The tutor’s watery smile greeted him as he stepped into the room.
    “You know the text, my Lord Regent?” he asked.
    “I read an essay mentioning him that was very important to me. Afterward, I made a point of finding some of his work. I made a translation of it over the winter. I didn’t use silence in mine. I thought stillness was closer to the original meaning.”
    “I think it’s dull,” Aster said.
    “Some of it’s dry,” Geder said. The room was small, but sun-warmed. “Some of it was pretty interesting, though. Did you read the section about the spiritual exercises?”
    “Like a cunning man’s tricks?” Aster said, brightening a little.
    “No, they were more like ways to practice thinking. When he’s talking about silence or stillness, it’s not just about not moving around. He’s got a particular technical meaning.”
    “Have you done the exercises, my Lord Regent?” the tutor asked.
    “No, not really, but I read about them a lot, and I think it’s very interesting. Wise, even,” Geder said, and leaned close to Aster with a rueful little grin. “I’m better at reading about those kinds of things than doing them. Can I see the translation you’re using?”
    The tutor leaned over his podium and held out the book. Geder took it carefully. It was very old, and the binding was leather and string. The pages were cloth, and thicker than usual, which gave the thing a feeling of solidity and weight. Geder turned the pages reverently.
    “It’s beautiful ,” he said. “Where did you get it?”
    “A teacher of mine gave it to me when I was hardly older than Prince Aster,” the tutor said, smiling. “I’ve kept it with me ever since. I have heard that you have quite the sizable library yourself, my Lord Regent?”
    “Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I used to have more time to read. And translate. I was working on an essay that tracked the royal houses of Elassae by the dates of their births, and it argued that Timzinae have two annual mating seasons. The actual dates were a little sketchy, but the argument was brilliant.”
    Aster sighed and leaned his elbows against his desk, but the old tutor’s eyes were alight.
    “It sounds fascinating, my lord. Do you recall the name of the author?”
    “It was speculative essay, and only about three hundred years ago, so it had an attribution, but…”
    “Yes, not much use to it. Not in those days,” the tutor agreed.
    Geder turned the pages, the cloth softer than skin under his fingertips. Toca’s section on battle maps looked different in this than the one Geder had. There were at least three more diagrams, and a table of comparison that must have been added in by a later scribe. He traced the ancient ink with his fingertips.
    “Could I borrow this?” Geder asked. “I’d like to compare it to mine.”
    The tutor’s expression froze, and his hands made small spider’s fists.
    “Of course, my lord,” he said. “I would be honored.”
    “Thank you,” Geder said. “I will bring it back. I’m just going to go put it in with my books, if you don’t mind.” “Of course not,” the tutor said.
    “Does that mean we can do something else?” Aster asked as Geder walked out of the room. The boy’s voice sounded hopeful.
    Geder walked with the pages open before him, his finger tracing the words. A little glow of excitement warmed him.
    This wasn’t a translation he’d ever seen before, and the original text seemed more complete than the one he’d worked with.
     
The goal of war is peace. The small general leads his army into battle to achieve victory, and so his own nature will force him to return to it.