He’d really loved her.
And instantly, Karris felt the ice of her hatred for this man shiver, and a crack run right down the middle of it. If he could love Felia, then he could love.
Unless this, too, was a game. Was Andross so vile that he would use his own wife’s death to manipulate Karris?
Andross cleared his throat. “He had this ability, a perishingly rare ability for those who are good at practically everything they do. He knew where he wasn’t the best, and it didn’t bother him. He led his people, and he fought on the front lines, but he put another man in command of his armies. You met the man he chose. And he was not a choice anyone else would have made. At the time, Corvan Danavis was the last living son of a shattered, once-great family.”
Karris had met Corvan, but her own memories of any time before the False Prism’s War were dim and tainted with grief and self-recrimination.
“Corvan was bookish. He’d gone along on some raids with his brothers but had never fought. He was too young. As the youngest of ten brothers, he never dreamed he would lead, nor did they. Then the Danavises got swept into the death orgy that was the Blood Wars. Corvan’s brothers tried to take a shortcut through a swamp to surprise their enemies and were captured and flayed.”
Now that was something Karris hadn’t known.
“Do you know what happens to a drafter who’s been flayed?” Andross asked.
Karris’s distaste must have shown on her face.
“Same thing that happens to any man. Incredible pain and flies and infection and fever and slow, horrendous, inevitable death—unless he crafts a luxin skin for himself. There was a law at the time that any man who turned wight forfeited all his family’s belongings. So Grissel Spreading Oak—yes, Bran’s older brother—flayed all seven of the Danavises he captured. When one broke and finally drafted skin for himself, Grissel killed all the ones older than him and took that one to a friendly luxiat. One bribe later, and the Spreading Oaks took four-fifths of the Danavis properties, and the Magisterium one-fifth.”
“Orholam have mercy,” Karris said. That was sweet Bran Spreading Oak’s brother?
“I know. I would have negotiated for at least half,” Andross said. But he smiled slyly. He knew what she meant. “Anyway, according to my sources, Corvan wasn’t even an officer when he joined Dazen. He’d fought for half a dozen mercenary companies since his brothers died. He was a brawler and an angry drunk, and every time he got promoted, he got fired again. When his people’s lives were on the line, he couldn’t stand incompetence, and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He joined Dazen immediately, but the old guard wouldn’t give him so much as a squad. That is the problem of peacetime militaries: most of them train for peace, and they produce officers good at peacetime activities. Smiling sycophants mostly. Men who look good at balls, rather than men with balls.
“Dazen apparently saw Corvan lingering one day over the maps after his superiors left. He quizzed him, thinking he might be a spy—he was wrong, of course. For several months I had no spies at all in Dazen’s army, he inspired such devotion. Dazen was so impressed by Corvan’s answers, and how keenly he saw things, that he put Corvan in charge immediately. The audacity! And then they led together, Dazen bringing Corvan up to speed and Corvan showing a preternatural gift for strategy. They worked hand in glove. If he’d come in earlier, or if it weren’t me they opposed, bleeding off allies who might have joined them, they might have won the war. The only mistake they ever made was letting themselves be drawn into a full-scale battle at Sundered Rock. Of course, they say Corvan was deathly ill at the time. Hmm.”
“This is going somewhere,” Karris said.
“I’d intended to have Corvan take command of the Parian armies. Indeed, all of our armies. If he was willing to join Gavin after having fought against him, apparently his loyalty to the Guile line is strong. Or he simply likes fighting. Doesn’t matter to me. My son was right about Corvan; I’ll not be too obstinate to admit it.”
“This is all fascinating, and I’m not against Corvan leading our armies, at least not in principle. But we’re not finished talking about your assassinating one of the most important people in the Seven Satrapies behind my back.”
“Karris. Dear. I’ve done nothing but amplify your power. This ‘Iron White’ business might have seemed a whimsical affectation before. Now you will be feared.”
“Or you will be even more so. As much as this was a demonstration of my power, it was also a demonstration of yours. We both signed that ultimatum.”
“It isn’t either-or. We can be feared together, like Corvan and Dazen. Hand in glove.”
“With me as the glove,” Karris said. “And you the hand. I thought we wrote that letter together to show a united front. But really it was so your name would be attached to this.”
He didn’t deny it. “People need reminders. Just because there’s a new power in the game doesn’t mean all the old ones are gone. Besides, I did do all the work. I’m sharing my glory with you, not the other way around.”
“How did you do it?” Karris asked. She didn’t expect an answer, but it was a question she would ask if she were as in the dark as she was claiming to be.
“I’m not telling you that. I’m the promachos, and I go before us to fight in the ways I deem best. Now, your options are varied, but simple. You’ve yelled at me; you’ve questioned my sanity; you’ve made certain that I knew what I was risking; you’ve expressed how you wished I’d tell you things before I did them… and you’ve spilled my drink. Now you simply have to decide if you’re going to try to remove me from my offices, if you’re going to try to kill me, or if we’re going to get back to the delicate work of trying to save the satrapies. Because my plan worked, insofar as I could have predicted. Azmith’s death, however, leaves us with some very particular difficulties.”
He looked at her, questioning, waiting, and apparently not the least bit worried.
She’d been outflanked. Again. And this was what it was like to have Andross Guile as an ally. Damn him.
“So, can we move on now,” he said, “or are you going to ask the Blackguards to seize me? Will they, I wonder? Technically, they answer to the White… unless there’s a promachos appointed. Hmm. I know what a stickler like Commander Ironfist would have done, much as it might have pained him, but maybe Commander Fisk would be overwhelmed by his personal loyalty to you instead.”
What was she going to say to salvage her dignity? ‘Don’t do it again’? He’d do it again in a heartbeat.
“This was not the partnership I was looking for,” Karris said.
“That makes two of us. I would prefer you to be completely subservient,” Andross said.
Was that a hint of a smile?
Karris pursed her lips. “So where do we go from here?” She wondered which of them had been more wrong about Paria. Had she destroyed everything by killing Satrapah Azmith, or had she saved them from ruin by frustrating Andross Guile’s plans?
The intelligence she was getting from Azûlay was fragmentary and contradictory at best. Maybe the whole country would dissolve back into its tribes. And of Ironfist, she’d had no word at all.
Andross said, “Well, obviously, the first thing we need to do is send a letter. The tricky part is what to say, and for that, I was hoping your lighter touch might be helpful.”
“What do you mean? Whom are we sending the letter to?”
Andross smiled, superior again. “Why, to the only person who matters in Paria now, of course: King Ironfist.”
Karris was ashamed that her first reaction wasn’t joy that her old friend was alive, or that he was free, or that he was in charge.
Ironfist hadn’t claimed the title satrap. He hadn’t become Nuqaba.
Ironfist is calling himself king.
Chapter 72
“I can’t decide if I’m going to be moved to tears or throw up,” Cruxer said.
“There’s a good reason for that,” Tisis said.
The proce
ssion into the city wasn’t what Kip had expected. He wasn’t sure what that had been; it wasn’t as if he’d fantasized about being a conqueror. But as his army snaked in through the streets toward the Palace of the Divines, they saw that the city was in a horrific state. It was far worse than they’d been led to believe.
Which made sense, Kip realized. A besieged city had every reason to hide how bad things were.
Gaunt men and women holding sickly children and limp babies cheered as if to make up with enthusiasm for lacking any tangible way to show their appreciation. But there was a troubling undercurrent here, too. A look on some faces like that of a beaten dog cowering under a raised fist.
“They’re afraid of us,” Kip said suddenly. It was what Tisis had been hinting.
“What?” Cruxer asked in disbelief.
“If you let a strange army into your city, how do you stop them from doing whatever they want?” Tisis asked.
Kip looked around, sickened. Sad excuses for little banners of welcome waved from open windows and balconies. Instead of the famed living wood that the city was famous for, most of the buildings were built of the white granite that was so plentiful in the area. Everywhere, though, Kip saw the Foresters’ art, from carvings of intricate zoomorphic dogs and tygre wolves to the more typical infinite knots, plaits, braids, spirals, and step-and-key patterns for love, for husband and wife and children and clan, for eternal life, for the relations of nature and man and their gods, for life above and life below and for life and death and renewal.
Despite its power at the time, this civilization had converted with little or no force. Lucidonius’s teachings had made sense to these people, as if his ideas filled in the gaps that had left them puzzled, and contradicted only those things in their own practices that had left them uneasy. They had already revered the number seven: not only did they see it in their colors, but they arranged the world into what they called the seven creations: man, mammal, fish, reptile, bird, insect, and plant.
But all the grandeur of the city now was tarnished, a mock. Starving people had not the energy to clean their homes and streets or even themselves. Rubbish heaps had been plundered and the detritus left scattered about, not least on the faces of these walking skeletons in their rags.
“The city wasn’t under siege that long,” Kip said. “It shouldn’t be this bad. Are those burn marks on the walls? Were there riots here?”
“My spies haven’t reported yet,” Tisis said. “I don’t know what happened.”
Kip looked back at his lackluster parade: men and women literally bloodied, the grime and sweat and soot of the battlefield still on them, some limping, some still bleeding after refusing medical care because they didn’t want to disappoint their leader or leave their friends… all marching to impress whom? A starving crowd? The city leaders?
These people didn’t need to be impressed. They needed to be fed.
“What are we doing?” Kip said. “A military procession to the heart of the city? Why? Because that’s what people do? None of the people here have ever done it or ever seen it. There’s a place for spectacle, but it’s not here.”
Kip threw a flare into the sky to signal a stop.
It takes some time for an entire army to stop, though, and while the appropriate people got in their places for further orders, Sibéal Siofra said, “I know what you’re going to do, and while I admire the heart behind it, Lord Guile, it’s not a good idea. Think about the logistics—”
“I’ve thought of them,” Kip said. But he didn’t explain.
“What’s he going to do?” Ferkudi tried to whisper.
“He’s going to give away our food,” Cruxer said.
“He’s not going to give our food away,” Ben-hadad said. “Because that would be idiotic.”
“I’m giving our food away,” Kip told Ferkudi.
“Kip,” Ben-hadad said, “if you give away our food, the army stops. Period. We go nowhere, we do nothing, people start leaving within a couple days. If the army stops, the Blood Robes can kill as many Foresters as they want, including everyone in this city. In the long run, it’s not a mercy to—”
“Give away the food!” Kip commanded. “All of it. Section commanders, carry out the original plan, but begin now, and take all of our food rather than what we’d apportioned before.”
Sibéal huffed and Ben-hadad lifted his heavy spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Tell me you’ve got a plan,” Ben-hadad said. “Please.”
“Drafters, cavalry, and the Mighty with me,” Kip said. “I want our camp followers in here mending and washing clothes and cleaning streets. Anything that needs to be done and can be done in two days, do it. Looting or assault will earn hanging. Remind them to go in teams. Even killings in self-defense will be considered murder if there aren’t two corroborating witnesses.” Last thing Kip needed was some young assholes to antagonize the whole city.
The army didn’t dissolve at once, of course. But commanders began booming out orders, filling in their people on what they were about to do, and messengers exploded from the column like hornets from an upended nest.
Kip gave the signal, and the column began moving again, but now, as it got deeper into the city, sections broke off, each with its own wagons of provisions. It took a lot of work to give away something properly.
Gradually the signs of the city’s impoverishment cleared until they reached the great gate into the part of the city called the Sanctum of the Divines. Here there were undeniable scorch marks from at least one earlier riot. The great gate was now open, though.
Here, as at the wall, the posts of the gate were trees. But these weren’t sabino cypresses. They were atasifusta, though sadly no longer living. Kip hadn’t known that there were any left standing in the world. Atasifusta were the only known plant that converted sunlight into something a lot like red luxin. Except it was a more potent red luxin than man had ever drafted. A single stick of the stuff would burn for many days without being consumed. Its usefulness had doomed it to extinction. Families still passed down single sticks of the stuff. A few shavings made a perfect fire starter, or the whole stick could be set alight to help light damp wood, and then extinguished with no appreciable loss to its mass. It had found worse uses in war, the sawdust being a precursor to black powder.
Here, knot work had been carved into the entire surface of both trees, and the rest overlaid with some clear glaze so the designs stood out in black on bone-white wood. Clearly the designs were set alight for special occasions. Kip was somewhat sad that his arrival didn’t rate.
A dozen guards stood at the gate, but they said nothing. A single rider on a white charger in ceremonial white-and-gold armor and carrying the white-and-green triangular flag of the city nodded to them from his wolf helm and rode before them, leading them to the Palace of the Divines.
Here the buildings were older and grander by far. Living wood made the frames of these buildings, with a few supporting enormous stained glass windows between their branches, mostly hidden now by fresh green leaves, but no doubt glorious in autumn and winter.
“How the hell did they do that?” Ben-hadad said. “Do they will-cast the trees? How do you will-cast a tree? They don’t grow fast enough. How do the windows not shatter when the branches grow year by year? How do they keep the trees alive? It’s not possible.”
“It’s a great disgrace for any family to let their heartwood die,” Tisis said. “That said, perhaps we should focus on more immediate matters.”
“Such as?” Kip asked. He stopped. “Oh.”
A gallows had come into view. Ten ragged corpses bedecked with rags and carrion birds (rioters, no doubt) were hanged beside a familiar man whose trousers alone would have fed those rioters for a month.
“They hanged Conn Hill?” Cruxer asked. “But why?”
“Because he offended Kip,” Tisis said, shocked. “They’re that desperate.”
Kip felt a sudden wave of guilt, as when he’d not hidden the money well enough
and his mother had found it and gone on another binge. After she sobered, she’d berate him for failing her.
Conn Hill had been an asshole. Kip had wanted the man out of his sight. He’d guessed the Council of Divines would strip him of his position as conn. But this?
What had Kip done?
They entered a glorious plaza nearly the size of a hippodrome. It was paved with flawless white granite cobbles, and stately buildings in green and marble embraced by living wood rose on each side of the square. The grandest was the Palace of the Divines, which lay at the top of thirty wine-red marble steps like a pale bloated dictator in his palanquin.
The Divines, septuagenarians all, stood at the top of the steps in a semicircle.
Kip was clearly expected to dismount and climb the steps.
He rode up the steps.
Don’t fall off the damn horse. Don’t fall off the damn horse.
The horse was sure-footed, though, and it deposited Kip at the top of the stairs in the midst of seven scandalized old men and their retinues. The Mighty had dismounted, and flowed up the steps like a black tide.
Having made a small point about how he might not do what they expected, Kip undercut it by striking a demure attitude.
“Greetings, my lords,” he said with only a tiny smile.
“Greetings, Lord Guile, Savior of Dúnbheo, Defender of Blood Forest, and loyal son of the Seven Satrapies,” an officious, nasally man at one end said. Kip thought it was Lord Aodán Appleton from Tisis’s briefings. He decided he didn’t like the little stuffed turd.
The others echoed him. Several looked openly hostile. Good, those he could trust. They also stood together, like amateurs, like cattle herding close to ward off harm. A faction, then.
After dealings at the Chromeria, it was actually refreshing to see one’s friends and enemies do something so kind as to line up so you could tell who was who.
Time to stir the pot.
There were thousands of people gathered in the square, watching, though of course they wouldn’t hear anything that Kip said to the assembled lords. Then again, Kip supposed that after weeks and months under siege, pretty much anything would seem fascinating. Perhaps he couldn’t fault them for looking even to him for entertainment.