“I’m saying if we don’t pull out of Garriston and end the tribute on our terms, King Garadul is going to take Garriston by force and end it on his.” That’s what King Garadul had meant when he’d told Gavin, “We’re going to take back what you stole from us.” But Gavin couldn’t tell them about that without revealing more secrets, and they wouldn’t believe it anyway.
“I’m failing to see the humor here,” Klytos Blue said nervously. He was a coward in a dozen ways, but Ruthgar wasn’t going to give up Garriston easily, Gavin knew. “We’ve got a thousand soldiers and fifty drafters there. The drafters alone could hold off whatever army this ‘King’ Garadul could raise.”
“Knuckling under to a rebel, a man who declares himself a king—it’s unthinkable,” the Orange said. “He deserves death.”
Oh, father, it’s too bad you never come anymore. You would enjoy this. I can do one thing that you never could.
“First,” Gavin said, “us leaving is the right thing to do. We’re punishing people who have suffered too much already, and they hate us for it. We’ve been planting the seeds of another war for the last sixteen years. They started the war, yes. General Delmarta was born in Garriston, yes. But that doesn’t excuse us from what we’ve done, which is not just wrong, but also stupid.”
“Excuse me?” Delara Orange said. Her predecessor to the Orange—her mother—had been the architect of the rotating occupation scheme.
“You heard me,” Gavin said. “We get almost no Tyrean drafters. You think that’s because none are born there anymore? Ha! What if, instead of training here, where they are poor and reviled and suspected as traitors, what if someone decided to train them closer to home? A new school, a Chromeria dedicated to vengeance, started because of our pettiness and stupidity.”
“Nonsense,” Delara said. “We would have heard of such a thing.”
“But what if you hadn’t?” Gavin asked. “The quality of instruction might not be as good as ours. I hope it wouldn’t be. But even with a few rudimentary fire spells, how long could your fifty drafters stationed in Garriston hold out against several hundred? How long could your soldiers hold out against thousands of rebels who could hide in plain sight among the locals? The fact is, King Garadul will take Garriston. He will demand it, on terms that he knows are insufferable, and then he will seize it. The only question is, will we lose and lose face and make King Garadul seem like a winner, and finally get drawn into a war your satrapies don’t have the stomach for, or will we forgo a tribute which—after it’s divided six ways—is insignificant, and give away that which we can’t keep? If we give Garriston to King Garadul before he even asks, we look magnanimous. If we give him an apology, we look moral, and if we do both before he asks, we deprive him of a victory and a cause.”
“Do you have evidence of all this?” Delara asked. She was slippery, as oranges tended to be, but drafting red luxin made a drafter more aggressive and reckless over time, too. “Because it seems to me that you would like us to give away an entire city for little reason otherwise. We don’t know this new King Garadul. He has only recently taken power. He hasn’t sent us a single emissary, much less made demands.”
“You’re telling me none of you have spies at Garadul’s side?” Gavin shot back.
A few sardonic smiles and silence. No one was going to admit that, of course. They didn’t trust each other enough. There had been no wars in the last sixteen years, but that didn’t mean that everyone’s interests were aligned. The Chromeria and every capital was as full of spies as it had ever been.
“If you don’t,” Gavin said in an imperious tone sure to needle them, “get some.”
“High Luxlord, we take your advice to the satrapies very seriously, of course—” Klytos Blue started to say. The Ruthgari hated Gavin, and had since he’d ended the war with the Blood Forest.
Gavin cut him off. Time to play the hothead. “Listen, you morons. I don’t know how you didn’t see this coming. Or maybe some of you did. Your loyalty is noted. The fact remains, this is rebellion and it’s heresy. King Garadul is talking about overthrowing the satrapies and the worship of Orholam himself. I would have thought Orholam would command better service from his Colors.”