The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,284

be rewarded with very choice ‘presents’ at your wedding as ‘small symbols of our long love for Paria and its leadership.’ Ironfist will be made very wealthy; he will have enough power and the control of his Nuqaba to make sure he isn’t betrayed or imprisoned in the future; and we will have saved the empire from this immediate crisis. And if I don’t miss my guess, as a wedding gift Ironfist will grant you substantial lands in Paria that the Guiles haven’t owned since my grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s time. You will spend your time between your lands and the major Parian cities, making sure no new rebellion is planned against the empire, and making as much of yourself as you will. When I die, you will take over family Guile, having been given all the advantages I never had.

“Naturally, that’s only one way the negotiations may go, but I need to know what cards I have in hand so I can do the best for the Seven Satrapies that may be done, and after that the best I can do for the Guile family, and after that the best for my grandson’s oh-so tender feelings.”

“This is disgusting,” Kip said.

“This is survival, you preening microcephalic baboon! Exactly which part of survival do you object to? Morality’s a warm blanket, but it’s not worth dying for, and it’s useless to the dead. I have been the one who’s paid the price for our survival until now. I have been the one who killed so that others might live, who took the beating sun on my own shoulders so that others might play in my shadow, safe and ignorant and innocent and carefree. Now it’s your turn. You want the power? You pay the price.”

Kip tried to keep a level voice, tried to speak to Andross in a way he could understand. “You’re asking me to go back on my oath.”

“I’m asking you to save a million lives with your semen and your tears—and you’d prefer they die instead?”

“I swore Tisis a solemn oath. I—”

“When you swear to do what you don’t have the power to do, that makes you a fool, not a liar.”

“I swore a hundred times!”

“You swore a hundred times because you knew the keeping of that oath was out of your control. She asked you to because she knew it, too.”

Kip’s heart was aching already. He was willing to break Tisis with his death but not with his betrayal.

Not even if it saves tens of thousands of lives in this battle alone? Hundreds of thousands or a million eventually?

He said, “You loved Felia, you adored her, she was the heart of your heart. I know she was. Even those who hate you remark that she, she was the one thing in this world you loved. Would you have betrayed her? Would you have betrayed her for all the world?”

Andross’s face grew still and his eyes, gleaming like iridescent-edged razors, turned inward. “For all the world, Kip, I did.”

And Kip felt suddenly like a young dandy lecturing an old veteran on the costs of war.

This was war for the fate of the world. This was war as seen from the vantage of politics, with prices paid in grief and private wounds and terrible compromises and personal failures that could cost the deaths of entire families or entire empires. Andross was the high commander, sacrificing units to gain objectives, sending envoys to their deaths on mere slim chances, and making grand gambles that could cost everything. The currencies were different, but what warrior, having cut down an unarmed, fleeing enemy, could say that his way of fighting was cleaner?

If anyone should understand Andross Guile now, it was Kip.

Kip himself had thought Antonius Malargos a limited general for understanding tactics but never strategy. Andross must be looking at him the same way right now.

The old man spoke again, almost gently. “That bit where we’ll excuse your first marriage as foolish young love isn’t a convenient lie, son. I gave you this year to enjoy life as lesser men may. But this is our yoke. Lesser men give their sweat in labor, give their blood in battle, and give their tears, but their love is their own, if they’re strong enough or lucky enough to claim it. Our duties are different from theirs. Our bodies are pampered, but we pay the price with our souls. We belong not to ourselves. All men are brothers in this, all are captives twisted on the