The King's Blood

Throne in Asterilhold’s court. If we hadn’t tried making peace through marriage generations ago, there wouldn’t have been the opportunity to even appear legitimate now. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.”
    “What, then?” Aster asked.
    “ We take the land. The cities. Asterilhold comes back to being part of Imperial Antea, just the way it was under the High Kings. There are any number of men in the court who deserve reward for the work they’ve done. And with loyal Anteans controlling the place, we’ll have less to worry about. It’s simple, really. I don’t know why it wasn’t obvious earlier.”
    “And the present ruling caste?” Basrahip asked.
    “Well, they can’t be trusted, can they? We’ve exposed them, humiliated them, and taken their positions and holdings,” Geder said. “I’m sure they’d do anything in their power to undermine us. And these are the people, some of them, who were plotting to kill Aster. Losing a war doesn’t change who they are, you know.”
    “I see,” Basrahip said.
    Geder took half of a stewed pear, sucking it into his mouth and pressing the juice out against his palate. Sweetness flooded him.
    “No,” he said, around the food. “I wish I saw another way. I do. But to keep Aster safe, I don’t think we can leave our enemies with power. If they can’t be friends and allies, they’ve made their choice. They have to die.”

Dawson
     
    K
    altfel stood on a wide plain rising up from the long strips of farmland like a strange dream. Its spires and towers were built from red stone, its walls stood as high as four men one atop the other. In gentler days, it was the home of the greatest breeders of messenger birds. It had been said that a bird bred in Kaltfel was fashioned with the secrets of the dragons, and for all Dawson knew, it might have been truth. Dawson had been there before as a young man. He still remembered the pale streets and the hot peppers and chocolate they seasoned their coffee with. He had fought a duel in the odd triangular yard that Asterilhold courts employed, and had won. He’d gotten drunk afterwards, and woken in another man’s room, Prince Simeon beside him.
    The day his army arrived at the royal city of Asterilhold, Dawson had begun by burning every structure that stood outside the city walls—farmhouses, storehouses, stables, tanners’ yards, dyers’ yards. What still stood when the smoke cleared, they had razed, with the exception of the necropolis to the east of the city. The tombs, he respected. Antea had no quarrel with the dead. After that, his engineers began constructing the siege engines. Trebuchet and catapult rained stones against the great red walls and the sealed gates. They worked in teams, eroding the tops of the walls day and night for seven days. At dawn and dusk, he would send runners through his camps to collect the shit and offal of the day, reset one of the trebuchets, and rain it down into the city itself. Soon his men were including other bits of refuse— dead cats and bloody bandages, spoiled meat alive with maggots. The gates did not open. The enemy did not appear. He hadn’t expected them to. On the ninth day of the siege, a scout had discovered where a buried network of pipes had been emptying the waste of the city into a hidden gully. Dawson’s engineers had destroyed them.
    When they ran out of stones, they switched to tar-soaked wood set alight. For three more days, Kaltfel withstood the rain of fire. Twice, smoke began to take hold of the city, and twice the beseiged beat back the flames. On the tenth day, Dawson saw his first sign of real hope. The birds were all set free. The great flocks whirled around the towers, confused and looking for a way to come home. At dusk, they went north. Dawson considered sending huntsmen after them and flinging the corpses of pigeons and rooks back over the walls. He chose not to. The birds and the dead, then. They could escape.
    Simeon had loved Kaltfel. The court manners there had just a hint of the exotic about them. Familiar and unfamiliar both. The men and women there spoke with a slight accent, stressing their long vowels in a way that made even the Firstblood among them seem more foreign than the Jasuru or Timzinae back in Camnipol. The King’s Palace stood before a wide, open square where a thousand girls had danced for them. More stones arrived from a quarry his soldiers had taken to the north, and the attack against the walls began again.