The Spider's War (The Dagger and the Coin series) by Daniel Abraham

the end of the world, eh?”
    Daskellin’s confusion passed quickly, replaced by chagrin. “No, my lord. We didn’t win. They broke the siege. Fallon Broot led a counterattack, but it failed. We don’t know if he was captured or killed. The city… Suddapal is no longer under our control.”
    Geder heard the words, but couldn’t understand them. Daskellin could as well have said
The pigeons have all voted to become crabs
. It would have made as much sense. “No,” Geder said. “We put a temple in Suddapal. Once we put a temple there, it can’t fall.” He turned to Basrahip. The wide face was the perfect image of concern and sorrow. “It can’t fall. Can it?”
    “It cannot be lost,” Basrahip said, “but even what is not lost can be made to suffer terribly. The blow has been struck, and even though we do not see it, the world knows. Feels within its blood and its flesh. Death throes can be violent and dangerous, even as the final end comes.”
    “Oh,” Geder said. Just hours—less than hours—before, they’d been talking about how it was all already ended. How Aster was safe and all the good that Geder had managed for him, and now he couldn’t meet the boy’s eyes for fear of seeing the disappointment in them. Everything he’d said in the carriage came back like a weight. He felt as if he’d swept open the curtains to reveal a grand ball in Aster’s honor and revealed a bunch of panicked servants still setting up the tables. He felt the humiliation like putting his hand in a fire.
    “The problem is not only there, my lord,” Daskellin was saying. “Mecelli has written from Inentai. The raids have grown more intense, and there are suggestions that the traditional families have regrouped in the towns of Borja. They may have been coordinating with the enemy in Elassae. He reports that letters like the ones in Asterilhold have begun appearing. And, my lord? There is the question of the farms.”
    Geder shook his head, anger flaring in his throat. Daskellin was one of the great men of Antea. Advisor to the crown since before Simeon was king. You’d think he could come out with something more useful than “the question of the farms.” What question? Was he just leaving the phrase out there to make Geder ask? Or was there something so obvious that he should have known what the man meant, and they were all laughing at him on the inside for not knowing?
    Geder scowled at Daskellin so fiercely his cheeks ached, and shrugged.
Are you planning to explain that?
    “Half the farms in the southeast are being manned by war slaves,” Daskellin said. “
Timzinae
war slaves. It won’t be possible to keep word of the troubles in Suddapal from reaching them. And if they should revolt, we don’t have enough swords to send, even with your army home.”
    “And?”
    “And… we have the prison,” Daskellin said.
    A thrill of horror cut through Geder’s foul mood. Of course they had the prison. He’d had it built when the invasion began. Housing for Timzinae children taken as guarantee of their parents’ good behavior. Only now the parents in Suddapal had misbehaved, and if the farm slaves saw that Suddapal could rise without consequences, trouble would spread like fire. The understanding of what he would have to do sank in his gut, and with it, anger and resentment for the people—not the people, the
Timzinae
—who’d put him in this position. But Daskellin, for all his stammering and talking past the point, was right. The thing had to be done.
    “Identify all the hostages with parents working the farms,” Geder said. “Pull one out of every ten as witnesses. The others, keep them locked in their cells. The ones with parents in Elassae, throw off the Prisoner’s Span. When it’sdone, send the witnesses to the farms under guard and let them tell what they saw.”
    “My lord,” Daskellin said, “they’re
children
.”
    “I know what they are!” Geder said, more loudly than he’d meant. “Do you