Brent Weeks - Beyond the Shadows

Garuwashi was an honorable man, but that wasn’t the same as a good man. The Ceuran culture didn’t require him to be apologetic about craving power. He would be true to his oaths. He would be merciful—by his own definition of mercy, and Kylar had no chance to get to know him well enough to know what that was. The Ceuran nobles called him a barbarian? What if they were right?

But Cenaria had more than lives at stake. Kylar hadn’t stayed in the city long after killing Godking Ursuul, but everyone had been brimming with stories and pride about the Nocta Hemata.

Cenaria had been burnt to the ground, and something good was trying to grow in the ashes. Was Cenaria a land where the small became great despite overwhelming odds—as they had in the Nocta Hemata and the Battle of Pavvil’s Grove? Or were they Midcyru’s whipping boy—doomed to be overrun by their neighbors, fending off aggression only through the threat of such deep corruption that no one would want to rule them?

There were great souls in Cenaria. Momma K and Logan and Count Drake and Durzo were giants. Could they not be heroes as they might be in another country? Couldn’t a Scarred Wrable have been a lauded soldier instead of a hired killer? Kylar thought so, but two things stood in the way: this man’s invasion and Terah Graesin.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do this,” Kylar said.

Fully dressed now, Lantano Garuwashi tucked his thumbs into his sash, which would normally hold his swords. It must have been habit, a not-so-subtle hint to whoever challenged him of Garuwashi’s prowess. He removed his thumbs nonchalantly. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked. “I should find it difficult to fight an invisible man, but I thought we’d covered this ground already.”

Kylar ignored him. He was looking past the Ceuran to the man’s bed mat. There, for all the world looking like Ceur’caelestos, was a sword in its scabbard. A sword that Lantano Garuwashi hadn’t tucked into his sash. A sword that Kylar had thrown into Ezra’s Wood.

“Nice sword,” Kylar said.

Lantano Garuwashi flushed. Though he smiled to cover it immediately, with his fair skin it couldn’t be hidden.

“Whatever will your men say when they find out it’s a fake? You have a vested interest in not spilling blood? How about a vested interest in not drawing your sword?”

Given the circumstances, Kylar thought Lantano Garuwashi mastered his rage rather well. His eyes went dead and his muscles relaxed. It wasn’t the relaxation of a sluggard, but a swordsman’s relaxation. Kylar had heard that Garuwashi once ripped out an opponent’s throat before the man could draw his sword. He hadn’t believed that an un-Talented man could do such a thing. Now he reconsidered.

Lantano Garuwashi didn’t attack, though. Instead, he merely picked up his false Ceur’caelestos and tucked it into his belt. He forced a marginally pleasant expression to his face. “I have a secret of yours, Night Angel. You have an entire identity built as Kylar Stern. You wouldn’t wish to lose that, would you? All your friends, all your access to the kinds of things the Night Angel couldn’t find out on his own.”

“Remind me to thank Feir for that.” Kylar paused. Did this Ceuran never run out of tricks? “It would hurt me in any number of ways to lose Kylar Stern. But Kylar Stern isn’t all I have or all I am. I can change my name.”

“Changing a name is no great thing,” Garuwashi admitted. “In Ceura we know this. We sometimes do it to commemorate great events in our lives, but a face—” he cut off as Kylar rubbed a hand over his face and put on Durzo’s visage. “—ah, that is something else entirely, isn’t it?”

“Losing my identity will cost me years of effort,” Kylar said. “On the other hand, if you can’t draw your sword, you can’t lead your men at all, no matter how overwhelming your strength is. I know Ceura well enough to know that a king can’t rule with an iron sword, and there’s no such thing as an aceuran sa’ceurai.”

Lantano Garuwashi raised an eyebrow. He glanced at the sheathed sword on his hip. “If you wish to reprise our duel in the wood, I will oblige. Feir Cousat went into the Wood that day after my sword. As none ever has before, he returned, on my word as a sa’ceurai. I still bear Ceur’caelestos. If you force me to draw it, I will sate its spirit with your blood.”

It was a serious oath, but the words of his vow didn’t mean what he wanted Kylar to infer. “You bear nothing but a scabbard and a hilt. Say that I lie, Garuwashi, and I’ll stand before your tent and challenge you before your army. Your sa’ceurai will tear you apart with their bare hands when they find you’ve lost Ceur’caelestos.”

The muscles on Garuwashi’s jaw stood out. He said nothing for a long time. “Curse you,” he said finally. The iron in him seemed to melt. “Curse you for taking my sword, and curse Feir for making me live. He did come out of the Wood. He said he’d been chosen to make another Ceur’caelestos for me. He knew the sa’ceurai would never understand, so he gave me this hilt and swore to return by spring. I believed him.” Garuwashi breathed deeply. “And now you come again to destroy me. I don’t know whether to hate you or admire you, Night Angel. I almost had you. I saw it in your face. Do you never run out of tricks?”

Kylar didn’t let his guard down. “You don’t even want Cenaria, do you? You just thought it would be another quick victory that would make your legend grow.”

“What is a warleader without war, Night Angel? I was invincible before I took Ceur’caelestos, and now you wish me to lose—against Cenaria? You don’t know what it is to lead men.”

“I know what it is to kill them. I know what it is to ask others to pay for my mistakes.”

“Do you know what it is to refuse to be satisfied with the meager portion life hands you? I think you do. Can you imagine me squatting in a field next to my one servant with my trousers rolled up, picking rice? These hands were not made for a hoe. You took this name Kylar Stern. Why? Because you were born with an iron sword, too.

“My men need food, but they need victory more. With me or without me, they are here for the winter,” Lantano Garuwashi said. “The tunnels we widened to get through the mountains are rivers and ice now. If you expose me, the sa’ceurai will kill me, but then what? They will vent their fury on your people. For everyone’s sake, Night Angel, let that go. Go instead and tell this queen to surrender. I give you my word that if she does this, not a single Cenarian will die. We will take nothing more than food and a place to winter. She will be granted her throne once more when we leave in the spring.”

And you won’t ask for anything else once you have Cenaria and Ceur’caelestos both, right?

Kylar shook his head. “You’ll surrender.”

“I can’t,” Garuwashi said through gritted teeth. “In surrender, even Cenarians lay down their swords at the victor’s feet.”

Kylar hadn’t thought of that. It wasn’t the thought of surrender that was impossible for Lantano Garuwashi, it was the physical act.

“Maybe,” Kylar said, “maybe there’s a third way.”

When Dorian’s half-brother Paerik had brought his army to Khaliras to seize the throne, he had abandoned a vital post. The general who had served under him, General Talwin Naga, stood in front of the throne, explaining how the wild men would invade in the spring.

“Sixty thousand of them?” Dorian asked. “How could they raise so many?”

“Raise may be exactly the word, Your Holiness,” the tiny Lodricari man who had accompanied General Naga said.

“Who are you?” Dorian asked.