Brent Weeks - Beyond the Shadows

“Can’t you just use the illusion you used today?” Logan asked.

Garuwashi sighed. “Feir said there’s something about the magic of the blade that interferes with illusions. The glow looked good from ten or twenty paces while the sword was cutting back and forth, but from up close? It wouldn’t withstand a child’s scrutiny.”

“Your Majesties, if I may?” Feir asked. Garuwashi hadn’t seen him arrive, despite his huge bulk. It was a measure of how exhausted he was. Logan gestured Feir to continue. “I made that sword. If we can find a ruby to hold the spells, I dare say I’m the only person in the world who could tell the difference between the new Ceur’caelestos and the real thing. We don’t even need a special ruby. It just needs to be big. King Gyre, I’m sure your treasury has something that will work. It seems ridiculous that we’d give up this close.”

“It’s not giving up,” Garuwashi snapped. “It’s having our fraud discovered.”

“What if they didn’t discover it?” Feir asked.

“The Regents have been waiting centuries for this,” Logan said. “I’m sure they have some kind of test to determine if the blade is real.”

“So what if they do?” Feir asked. “The Regent’s not Talented and you have magae at your disposal. With a little preparation, we can—”

“Get out,” Garuwashi breathed. “I listened to you once and dishonored myself. No more. You know nothing of sa’ceurai. Begone, snake.”

Feir’s face drained of color. He stood slowly. Garuwashi turned his back to him. He almost hoped Feir would strike him down. Let Garuwashi die betrayed. Then any flaw found with the sword would be assumed to be the work of the betrayer. Something would be left of Garuwashi’s name.

“If you would save this army and all these thousands of souls, the magae and I will be near,” Feir said quietly. “If you would save only your precious honor, you can go to hell.”

When Garuwashi turned, the big man was gone. King Gyre looked at him silently.

“What is a king without honor?” Garuwashi asked. “These men mean everything to me. They have followed me from villages and cities to foreign lands. Where I have gone, they have gone. When I have told a hundred to take a hill, knowing it would cost ninety their lives, they have obeyed. They are lions. If they are to die, they should die in battle, not dishonored by their lord. Tomorrow, you will face twenty thousand Khalidorans and two thousand meisters, who barely fought today. Without the sa’ceurai, your men will be shaken.”

“Seeing six thousand men and their unbeatable general kill themselves may do that,” Logan said dryly. “As will looking at the backs of twenty thousand sa’ceurai who could have been allies.”

“You are a king. What would you do?” Garuwashi asked.

“You ask me that when I have such an interest in your answer?”

“I saw you put your closest friend to death for honor.”

Logan looked at his hands. He said nothing for a long time. “The night before Kylar went to the wheel, I sent a man to break him out of my own gaol. Kylar refused to leave because it would hurt my reign. He believed in me that much. To be king means to accept that others will pay the price of your failures—and even your successes. Part of me died on that wheel. Whatever you decide, doen-Lantano, it has been an honor to fight beside you.”

“King Gyre, if I choose expiation, will you be my second?”

Logan Gyre bowed low, his face rigid. “Doen-Lantano, I would be honored.”

He’d been mad. Feir had followed the instructions of an insane archmagus who was seven centuries dead. Feir had made a sword that even he didn’t fully understand. He had bent even Lantano Garuwashi to his will. He had believed, and now fraud would build on fraud unless Lantano Garuwashi chose to end it all.

Having sworn himself to the warleader, Feir would be expected to suicide along with Garuwashi, but he wouldn’t. He knew that. Of course, the warleader might slay him. But Feir didn’t think he’d allow that, either. So he would cheat again, and defend himself with magic. Every sa’ceurai in Midcyru would despise him. Perhaps one would hunt him down. That was Feir’s future. Either that, or serving forever as Lantano Garuwashi’s illusionist-in-chief, threading pretend flames onto his beautiful sword for the rest of his life.

That deception would destroy Lantano Garuwashi. If he ruled, he would rule badly, knowing himself to be dishonored. Garuwashi was not so young that honor was the only important thing in his life, but he was sa’ceurai to the roots of his soul. The best thing for Garuwashi would be to bury a blade in his own guts.

The sun sat low in the sky as Feir ducked to step into the council tent. Inside the tent sat King Gyre, Lord General Agon Brant, a wan Vi Sovari, and an older maja Feir didn’t recognize. Feir took an empty seat. King Gyre sat with folded hands to Feir’s right. His face was emotionless, but that in itself told Feir that the king was worried. As Feir pulled his chair in, something about Logan’s right arm drew his attention. There was some magic there, woven small and tight into Logan’s vambrace or his arm.

Logan noticed his attention and folded his hands in his lap, under the table. Feir dismissed it and continued looking around the table. Vi Sovari had covered herself with a modest maja’s dress, but at the wrists and neck her gray-black skin-tight wetboy’s garb was still visible. She had dark circles under her eyes and her skin was pale from her magical exertions at the dam. She was four places down the table, almost at the end of Feir’s magical vision, but he could see she hadn’t overextended her Talent. After Solon had used Curoch, he’d looked broken. His hair had grown in white, and he’d only escaped permanent injuries because Dorian was such a gifted Healer. With her escapades at the dam, Vi hadn’t hurt herself at all. She’d come near the limit of her gifts, but hadn’t exceeded it. Feir suspected that with a good night’s sleep, she’d be ready to do as much tomorrow. She was easily the most powerful mage here. She might even equal Solon. And, sitting up straight now at a word from the old maja at her right hand, Vi felt huge. As a man’s muscles looked most impressive after hard labor, so now did Vi’s Talent feel enormous. It made Feir feel small, and he didn’t like it.

The tent flap opened suddenly, and every eye turned to it, but the man who stepped in wasn’t Lantano Garuwashi. It was a dark-haired, dark-eyed Alitaeran with a waxed mustache and an eagle sigil on his cloak pin. A Marcus then, from one of Alitaera’s most important families, and certainly the leader of the two thousand Alitaeran lancers who’d arrived with the last of the magae this afternoon.

“I didn’t realize this council had anything to do with the Alitaeran military,” Lord General Agon Brant said. Clearly there was some bad blood there.

“This council decides if we’ve got an extra twenty thousand sa’ceurai or if we lose the six thousand we’ve got. I’d say that makes it a council of war. I’m Tiberius Antonius Marcus, Praetor, Fourth Army, Second Maniple. We’re to defend the Chantry. Sisters, Your Majesty.” He nodded to them.

“An honor, Praetor, please join us,” Logan said.

Before the man sat, the flap opened again and Lantano Garuwashi strode in. He rested his hand over the pommel of his sword and walked to his seat and sat before acknowledging anyone.

“Well, everyone’s here now except the Ceuran Regent himself, and of course, the dear Lae’knaught Overlord, who I suppose will walk in half an hour late and ask that we repeat everything,” Lord General Brant said.

“I suppose he will,” Logan said. “Since I told him this council wouldn’t meet for another half an hour.”