Brent Weeks - Beyond the Shadows

Dorian felt sick. She seized on exactly the crux of it. “My father suffered a huge setback by being stalled in Cenaria. It was a distraction, a mistake. He thought he could grab it and send home riches and food, but the supplies he hoped to send home were put to the torch instead by the fleeing Cenarians.” Dorian rubbed his face. “So when the barbarians come down from the Freeze, Khaliras will be indefensible. Its citizens would want to cross Luxbridge and live here in the Citadel. As they wait out the siege, they’ll have to be fed—and we have no food. Our military’s good at following orders, but no good at taking initiative. If I throw them into a battle facing three-to-one odds, they’ll get massacred. There’s no way to win.”

Jenine said nothing for a moment, then glanced around at the stacks and stacks of bones. “You mean there’s no way to win except …”

He looked at the bones of men and thought of all the stories of krul he’d ever heard, and he thought of dipping so deeply into the vir, and he thought of men dying no matter what he did. “Yes,” he said. “There’s no way to win except to raise these monsters. It will be an orgy of death.”

“Whose deaths? The invaders’ or your innocent people’s?”

“The invaders’,” Dorian said. So long as he did everything right.

“Then let us raise monsters,” Jenine said.

After dressing appropriately, Kylar walked to Logan’s tent. Logan’s bodyguards nodded and pulled back the flap for him. The sun was poised on the horizon, but the tent was still dark enough that lanterns were needed to illuminate the maps that the officers, Agon, and Logan were studying.

Kylar joined the group silently. The maps were accurate, aside from missing the supply train.

“They outnumber us six to one,” Agon said, “but they don’t have any cavalry. So we ride out, the wytch hunters pick off a few officers and we melt back into the hills. We start gathering food so we can make it through the winter, and send out more scouts so we find any supply train they might have coming. It’s the only way. They didn’t expect walls. They’ll starve before we do.”

“The supply train is right here,” Kylar said, pointing on the map. “It’s accompanied by a thousand horse.”

There was silence at the table.

“We have lost a scout in that direction,” an officer said.

“Are you certain?” Agon asked. “How big is it?”

Kylar dropped a sheaf of notes on the table.

There was silence as the men picked up the rice paper sheets and read. Only Logan didn’t read as the officers shared the notes back and forth. He stared at Kylar quizzically, obviously wondering what he was trying to accomplish.

“How did you get these, Wolfhound?” an officer asked, using the nickname the soldiers had given Kylar.

“I fetched.” Kylar gave him a toothy smile.

“Enough,” Agon said, throwing his papers down on the table. “It’s worse than we feared.”

“Worse?” the officer said. “It’s a disaster.”

“General,” Kylar said to Logan, “can I have a word with you? Alone?”

Logan nodded and other men filed from the tent, carrying the notes for further study. “What are you playing at, Kylar?”

“Just making you look good.”

“An impending slaughter makes me look good?”

“A disaster diverted makes you look good.”

“And you have a plan.”

“Garuwashi wants food and a victory. I propose we give them to him.”

“Why hadn’t I thought of that?” Logan said, uncharacteristically sarcastic. He was really worried, then. Good.

“It doesn’t have to be a victory over us, ” Kylar said. Then he explained.

When he finished, Logan didn’t look surprised. He looked profoundly sad. “That would make me look good, wouldn’t it?”

“And save thousands of lives and the city,” Kylar said.

“Kylar, it’s time for us to finish that conversation.”

“What conversation?”

“The one about king-making and queen unmaking.”

“I don’t have any more to say.”

“Good, then you can listen,” Logan said. He rubbed his unshaven face and his sleeve fell to show the edge of the dully glowing green tattoo etched in his forearm. “People commonly misquote the old Sacrinomicon and say that money is the root of all evil, which is moronic if you think about it. The real quote is that the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. Not as pithy, but a lot truer. In the same way, what I am capable of doing in the pursuit of power and sex, the man I choose for Logan Gyre to be will not allow. My hunger for food couldn’t make me a monster in my own eyes. Not even when I ate human flesh. I was driven to that by necessity, not perversion. I suppose the same could be said for you, for killing. I saw it on your face when you killed my gaoler Gorkhy. You do it, but you don’t love it. If you loved it, you’d turn into Hu Gibbet.”

“There is a foul pleasure in it,” Kylar said quietly.

“There’s pleasure in having a full belly too, but for some it’s dangerous pleasure. When I ordered you to kill Gorkhy, you didn’t feel that.” Logan saw his tattoo was uncovered and covered it. “I did. I gave an order and he died. I killed with a word. And I loved it. And I wanted more.”

“So now what? You going to become a hermit, move to a cottage in the woods?”

“I’m not that selfish.” Logan scrubbed a hand through his hair. “If I asked you, would you kill Terah Graesin?”

“Absolutely.”

Logan closed his eyes. He’d obviously expected it. “If I didn’t ask you, would you do it anyway?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been planning it?”

“Yes.”

“Dammit, Kylar! Now I know.”

“So why’d you ask?” Kylar asked.

“To remove the excuse. Can you rule justly after you take the throne unjustly?”

“Good question to ask the woman who stole yours.”

“How, Kylar?”

“Schedule a meeting with her and drink a lot before-hand.”

“Dammit, man, how were you going to kill her?”

“A botched abortion. I’d poison whatever abortifacient she uses. Many of those potions are dangerous. If it appeared she’d taken double what her apothecary recommended, it would look like a tragic and shameful accident for a single, wanton young queen. If the nobles tried to cover up the details, the rumors would swirl around what a whore Terah was, rather than speculations that she was assassinated. And it would make the virtuous new king look even better.”

“Gods,” Logan breathed. “How long did it take you to come up with that?”

Kylar shrugged. “Couple minutes.”

There was pain in Logan’s eyes, as if he had to struggle to speak. “It’s brilliant, Kylar. It’s brilliant—and I forbid it.”

“You forbid it?”

“Yes.”

“And how do you propose to forbid me anything?” Kylar asked.

Logan looked astonished.

“Despite all my efforts, you’re not my king. You can’t forbid me a damn thing.”

Logan’s face darkened and all his usual conviviality drained away. It made Kylar conscious of just how tall Logan was. His lean seven-foot height made him a looming, merciless skeleton. “Know this,” Logan said. “If I’m crowned because of Terah Graesin’s murder, I’ll have you executed.”

“You’d kill me for Terah Graesin?”

“I’d execute you for treason. An attack on Cenaria’s sovereign is an attack on Cenaria.”

“She shouldn’t be queen.”

“But she is.”

“You had no right to swear fealty.”

“I did what I had to do to save the people, Kylar. Now I must abide by my word. Politics is ethics writ large.”

“Politics is the art of the possible, and you know it,” Kylar said. “On the eve of battle, the tides changed so you couldn’t be king, so you changed course. The tides are changing again.”