The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

almost as solid as a true building, but movable provided the work of enough servants. Lord Ternigan’s bed stood against one wall with a real mattress and wool blankets. An unlit brazier squatted in the room’s center, tinder and sticks already laid out in case the Lord Marshal should want to warm himself later. A decanter of cut crystal held wine, and Geder couldn’t help wondering whether it always did or if this was something special put together to impress him.
    “I thought it was important to see the men in the field,” he said. “Raise their spirits. Let them know that the strength of the empire is with them.”
    “Yes,” Ternigan said. “They were quite excited when they heard. I hope the journey wasn’t unpleasant?”
    “Much more pleasant than the first time we were in the field together,” Geder said, and Lord Ternigan laughed. Geder’s first campaign—his only one, really—he had been under the command of Alan Klin, Klin under the direction of Lord Marshal Ternigan. Then, Geder had ridden with a single squire and a tired horse from Camnipol to Vanai. Now he rode in a wheelhouse almost wider than the road, slept when he wished to, ate where he chose. He lifted his eyebrows and glanced toward the decanter. Ternigan rose from his chair and poured a glass for him. Outside, the army of Antea waited in their own less elegant tents. The smoke from their cookfires tainted the air, reminding Geder of another night, another city, another fire.
    The wine was decent, but a little acid. Too much, Geder suspected, would upset his stomach, but a glass wouldn’t do any harm.
    “What is the situation?” he asked, and Ternigan sat back down, spreading his hands like a merchant in a stall.
    “We knew this would be a siege,” Ternigan said. “They call Nus the Iron City for good reason. But we’ve cut off all approaches from land and Skestinin’s done a fair job keeping relief from coming by sea. No food is going in, and they have only the water they can draw from their wells inside the walls, much of which is brackish.”
    “Why haven’t they surrendered, then?” Geder asked. “If they don’t have good water, they have to know they’re going to lose.”
    “They don’t have good water, but they aren’t dying from thirst either, and we”—Ternigan paused to sigh—“don’t have a great deal of food. When the farmers retreated, they burned their crops and collapsed their wells. They took to the countryside. If we send out parties to forage, they’re harassed by the locals. There’s no one to buy food from, and if there were, there’s reason to expect it would be poisoned. It will take time and fortitude. The traditional families are wagering that we don’t have those. We will have Nus, my lord. Don’t mistake me, the city will fall. And when it does, we’ll be able to make whatever terms we want in the peace.”
    “I don’t want Nus,” Geder said. “I want Sarakal. Nus and Inentai and every garrison and farm in between. It doesn’t do me any good to come here and half win.”
    Ternigan’s face pinched in, and he pressed the backs of his fingers to his chin. When he spoke, his voice was measured and careful.
    “There are constraints, my lord, that are outside our control. However much I want to break the city today, the enemy is in a strong position. Even the most noble causes sometimes have to compromise.”
    “How long?” Geder asked.
    “How long for what, precisely?”
    “How long before Nus falls?”
    “It will be ours by winter,” Ternigan said without hesitation.
    Geder sat, letting the silence stretch. Over the course of a minute, Ternigan’s expression went from uncomfortable to embarrassed to angry to a kind of petulant confusion. Geder smiled without meaning it.
    “You’ll tour the city’s fortifications with me and Minister Basrahip in the morning,” he said.
    “If you like, Lord Regent.”
    “Good to see you again, my lord,” Geder said, standing. “I think it’s good that I’ve come.”
    The walls of Nus stood grey and seamless on three sides of the city. The iron gates that gave the city its name rose to the height of ten men one atop the other, and great bands of the metal reinforced the stone so that the whole city had the sense of being a single great mechanism devised by a huge, inhuman mind. Which might, after all, have been true. The dragon’s road came to the sea here, and had since before the dragons fell. There had likely been a city in