The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

merely a vehicle for court intrigue. King Simeon would travel the realm, gracing his friends and allies with his presence, killing a few animals, and having a lot of feasts. It had looked like one of the sort of parties Geder was bad at, only stretched out over the course of weeks and punctuated by feats of manly athletics, half-drunken poetry contests, and extemporaneous speeches. Only when he’d become Lord Regent and the empire was his to command did he begin to see how the hunt was also a tool of convenience.
    Not all men of court came to Camnipol. Not all facts of a landscape could be captured on a map. The hunt might seem to wander through the lands and holdings of the empire, but the path he followed was as set and certain as the dragon’s roads themselves. It was not chance that had brought him here, but necessity.
    He rose from the water, dried himself, and put on his undergarments before signaling to the body servants that they could enter to finish dressing him. He would have been as happy staying the rest of the day in the warmth and solitude, but the feast was coming, and now that he’d spent some time in the forests near Flor, it was time to attend to the matter that had actually brought him there.
    He found Basrahip and Aster sitting together in a withdrawing room. The walls were papered in red velvet and the lamps burned with the rich scent of whale oil. The priest’s voice rolled and thundered like thunder from a distant storm. The young prince in his silk and cloth-of-gold sat looking up into the face of the massive brown-clad priest like an allegory of youth at the feet of wisdom. Geder stopped in the doorway to listen.
    “Seeing that the world had fallen from his hands, Morade, in his death, was possessed by the sick pride of his kind. He released a terrible weapon. For three years, the world burned. Every forest fell to ash. Every city crumbled. The thirteen races of humanity took refuge where they could, preserving the animals in pens and the fish in clay pots against the day when they might be freed to fill the world again.”
    “Three years ?” Aster said, awe in his voice.
    “Yes, young prince. For three years, all was laid waste. And so the freedom of humanity was born in ashes and in starvation. Only the Timzinae, favored of the dragons, kept the old ways alive, sacrificing children of the other races to the memory of the Dragon Empire. All others remade themselves, replanting the forests and rebuilding the cities. And without the guidance of the goddess, all lost their way, as the goddess had known they would. She kept aside the temple in the mountains in the lands of the Sinir that are holy to her, that we could prepare for the day when a great man would come and we would know it was time to reenter the world.”
    “That was Geder, wasn’t it?” Aster said.
    “It was,” Basrahip said, with a broad, gentle smile.
    “Speaking of which,” Geder said, stepping into the room. Aster turned to him. He looked stronger, healthier since they’d taken to the hunt. Geder would still see moments of sorrow in the boy, but they were growing fewer and fewer. Whenever Geder worried about it, he reminded himself that Aster had lost his father not a full year ago, and that even the most resilient child would mourn a parent for much longer than that.
    “Prince Geder,” Basrahip said, levering himself to his feet.
    “Lord Regent,” Geder said. “Aster’s a prince. I’m Lord Regent.”
    “Of course,” Basrahip said, as he always did. The correction would never take.
    “Is everything all right?” Aster said.
    “Yes, fine,” Geder said. “But I need to borrow Basrahip for a time. Before the feast starts.”
    “Of course, Prince Geder,” Basrahip said with a bow. When Geder rolled his eyes, Aster chuckled.
    Geder and Basrahip walked together down the long hallways. Here, in the heart of the holdfast, the ceilings rose up higher than four men one atop the other, and a clever series of holes admitted the falling sunlight without letting the warmth of the braziers escape. The color of the light was enough to tell Geder that the winter night would be on them soon. Servants and guards went before and came behind, creating a mobile privacy for him and Basrahip.
    “That can’t be right, can it?” Geder said.
    Basrahip raised querying eyebrows.
    “The three-year fire,” Geder explained. “A fire that went on that long would have left a layer of ash all over the world. And there are