find you attractive, now that you’re king?” Karris asked.
Temper, Karris, temper. But the truth was, it wasn’t the red that made her say that. She’d always hated to perform for others, to do just what they wanted.
He scowled. “The shrewish tongue somehow was omitted from the panegyrics. Or is that a new addition?”
“I feel a bit freer to speak my mind these days. I already destroyed the world, what’s one man’s ego?” Karris said.
“Karris, I was on my way to pay you a compliment before you made us descend to this unpleasantness.”
“Oh, dear. Please do go on then, there’s nothing that would mean more to me than to hear praises from the Butcher of Rekton.”
He rubbed his palms together thoughtfully. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Karris.” He kept using her name. She didn’t like it. “I hope you know I took no joy in what I ordered there, but I also hope you understand that that small monstrosity will forestall larger ones in the future. You’re familiar with the manuscript called The Counselor to Kings?”
“Yes,” Karris said. “Loathsome advice and cruelty that not even he had the stomach to countenance, when he himself ruled.” The Counselor asked whether it was better for a ruler to be loved or feared. Both was best, he decided, but if a ruler had to choose, he should always choose to be feared.
“His advice was good. He was simply personally weak. I don’t hold that against him. The fact is, Karris, when kings aren’t feared, they end up having to instill fear eventually, at grievous prices. That’s what happened at Ru. That’s what happened at Garriston. Those men you loved—or at least bedded—learned the lesson eventually, but because they learned it late, what they had to do was far worse than destroying one little village. So tell me, how can you hold the death of a thousand against me, but not the death of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, against them?”
Karris hadn’t been allowed to see the royal steps at Ru, stained with the blood and shit of hundreds murdered coldly one at a time and thrown down the steps to the gaping, horrified crowds below. She’d been kept from going to Garriston even after the war, where tens of thousands—they didn’t even know how many—had perished in the red luxin fires of the besieged city. That was Gavin’s and Dazen’s doing. Somehow, it had never seemed possible that men she knew so well would have done such things. Men she thought she knew so well.
“The people of this land are my people. I am no mere satrap, no guardian of some other man’s land; I am king. These people belong to me. To kill a thousand of my own was to cut a chunk out of my own flesh. But cancers have to be cut out. I am this land. My people work this land and bring forth crops at my good pleasure. I protect them and provide for them, and they in turn must render to me of their crops and of their sons. Those who would not are rebels, traitors, thieves, and heretics, apostates. They defy the holy compact. To defy me is to defy the gods’ order. I had to do this because my father wouldn’t. If he had hanged half a dozen mayors when they first defied him and refused to send levies, that thousand would be alive now. He was weak and wanted to be loved. No one may acknowledge it during my life, but by killing that thousand in Rekton, I saved many more. This is what it is to be a king.”
“You’re awfully passionate in your defense of decapitating babies and stacking their heads.” The gods’ order, not Orholam’s?
“Karris, you’re making me understand why men beat their wives.” King Garadul rubbed his black beard, but made no move to strike her. “By making the display so awful, I ensured it would be seared into every mind that saw it. Do you think the dead care what happened to their bodies? Better that their example save the living than that I bury them all in a hole and my descendants have to kill their descendants. That monument will stay for a dozen generations. That is the legacy I will leave to my children’s children, a secure rule, without the need to commit such massacres themselves. And the reason I tell you, Karris, is that I had hoped you of all people might understand. You’re a