The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,285

rack until the executioner, Life, has wrung all our vital fluids from us: sweat, and blood, and tears from the commons; and blood, luxin, ink, semen, and tears from us.

“We need those ships and those men, grandson. Excellent mundane fighters, against the bane? Who else has a chance? Ironfist’s fleet could stop the armada and the bane before they even arrive! And Ironfist likes you. If I tie his family back into ours, we can survive this.

“I’m getting ahead of myself, but naturally, should we survive, you’ll have to produce an heir immediately, especially after not producing one with your first wife . . . but even should Ironfist make the marriage contingent upon children being born to our families, it still buys us a fleet for this week. So after the battle, stop drafting sub-red for a while. Impedes fertility.”

Maybe I could go back to Tisis afterward.

No. Her sister Eirene would be too insulted to accept that. And not just Eirene. Tisis understood politics, but she wouldn’t understand this. She would never forgive him if he didn’t fight for her to the death. Rightly so.

But it wasn’t his death he would be fighting to, if he refused this.

It was death for everyone.

Without the Parians, the Chromeria was doomed. Maybe they were doomed even with it. But without it, they didn’t have a chance.

But . . . Tisis!

Kip thought he was going to throw up.

“A wet cloth for your face, my lord?” Grinwoody asked, polite as a handshake from a stable-mucker. Kip hadn’t even noticed his return.

“But if I win this game,” Kip said, “all those things will still be true. You’ll still need the fleet. You’ll still want everything else long-term, too.”

“I have another grandson to marry off, worse luck for that poor girl. If you win, I’ll just have to gamble that with time so pressing, Ironfist won’t be able to look too deeply into Zymun’s affairs or his character. I had hoped to spend him elsewhere. But I’ll have you know: if you win—if you become Prism, things might actually be worse for you. Ironfist might already know about Zymun’s character. Then you won’t be able to blame me when you put Tisis aside.”

“You make this sound like it’s all cold intellect and unblinking rationale. It’s not.”

“Oh?” Andross asked.

“You’re punishing me.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“Why? I brought an army of drafters back here! I’ve done more for this family than anyone. And more for the Seven Satrapies, too!”

“Your disobedience destroyed my plans,” Andross said.

“Your plans were shit! You underestimated me. You thought I was worthless, so you gave me a worthless post as a hostage in Ruthgar’s court.”

“I don’t like to dwell on plans that went nowhere—”

“Because you can’t admit that what I did was better. You, O Mighty Andross Guile, you were wrong!”

Andross shook his head slowly. He tamped the ash off his zigarro. Finished his last sip of whiskey, then stopped Grinwoody from pouring him more. “My tea now, I think,” he said. Then he looked at Kip once more. “Finished?”

“Yes,” Kip said.

He was only delaying the inevitable.

He was going to have to play, wasn’t he?

“Then know this,” Andross said. “If you’d obeyed me and gone to Eirene Malargos, the Nuqaba would have been obligated to stay another week or month while the preparations for your official wedding to Tisis were made. In that time, with your help—or without it, if you chose to be worthless—that insane bitch who put out Gavin’s eye would have been assassinated. Things were arranged so the blame would’ve fallen on the White King. Regardless, the Parians would have spent the last year united and rallying troops for us. And without that Nuqaba at their doorstep, whom they’d considered untrustworthy and hated and been preparing their defenses against, the Aborneans would’ve built us another navy. The Parians then would’ve been deployed on those Abornean ships and circled the satrapies behind the White King—claiming Garriston first, then Ru. That navy would’ve attacked any supply lines the White King mustered near the coast. The White King would’ve had to try to deal with that threat. Depending on how many troops the White King sent back from his front lines to deal with that, Blood Forest might not have fallen. But you’re right, I was willing to let it fall, to win the war.

“Instead, the Nuqaba lived. And her indecision about whether she was willing to commit treason outright and join the White King ending up freezing Ruthgar, Paria, and Abornea while the White King got