The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,35

to, even if he dies, you can stay in yours. You can curl up in grief around your sweet, doomed love. You can take that tragedy and wrap yourself up in it like a blanket to keep you feeling warm and self-righteous, because this world done you wrong. You could’ve gotten out earlier, and if so, sure, what happens in there today would be a terrible blow—losing a dear friend is always tragic, but people lose friends in war, and still go home and have those babies and that full house. You could’ve gotten out earlier and easier, but you didn’t.

“You’re here now. So you can stay in this shit, or you can climb out, too. And I’m sorry to say it, but I don’t have a rope to throw you or a key to offer. Climbing out will be tougher than it would be to tell yourself what a noble martyr you are and live half a life, cuddled up with your misery. But you’re making a choice, like it or not. This isn’t happening to you. You can choose to love him and have his babies—and, yeah, probably die in childbirth. Or you can choose to love him and not have babies, or adopt—plenty of war orphans already, and there’ll be more before we’re done. Or choose to move on. Or choose to sink into self-pity and self-loathing. I even respect a couple of those. But whatever you choose, I expect you to make yourself useful in the meantime. If he kills himself in there in the next few minutes, you get to clean up the blood and the shit, and you get to bury him. You brought this mess on us when you brought him back. If he can’t find the guts to use the knife or to live, then you get to be the hangman. None of these other men and women deserve to have that on them. Last, as we both hope, if he comes out, choosing to live, you get to clean him up. Maybe it’ll be a good chance to tell him what you are choosing for your life.

“Regardless,” Kip said, “report for duty first thing tomorrow morning; I want you to brief me on the lands you’ve scouted. Oh, and Captain Siofra? Never fucking leave your post without permission again.”

Chapter 10

“To work,” Kip said to the Mighty gathered around the table with him once more. “Strategy first. The banking meeting will come next. Big Leo, Ferk, you’re in on that one. Tactics we’ll save for when General Antonius and the trainers can be here. Ferkudi, I’ll need you to lead a logistics meeting later. Bring your ledgers. I know you don’t need ’em, but everyone else does. Ben-hadad, you’re in that one, too. I know you are each doing the work of two or three people, so let’s be quick. Now the big question: what do we have to do to win?”

“Define ‘win,’ ” Winsen said.

“Winsen, shut up,” Cruxer said.

“No, I’m serious. I’m not being a jackass.” He shrugged. “This time.”

Big Leo said, “We win once we kill the White King and all his leadership. That’s winning. Nothing short of that.”

Ben-hadad took off his flip-down spectacles. “What if, by that definition, we can’t win?”

“You think we can’t win?” Ferkudi asked.

“Worse,” Ben-hadad said. “Breaker doesn’t.”

They all looked at Kip. “I never said that,” he said.

But they all knew him.

“Focus on the problem,” Cruxer said. “We have to lift the siege on Green Haven or we’ll lose the satrapy. If we lose the capital, we lose Blood Forest. We do that and the other satrapies fall eventually. Maybe we can’t beat him alone, but we’re not alone. Winning is stopping him here, showing he can be defeated and trusting the rest of the empire to do their part, too, albeit later than we’d like.”

“No, we have to do more than that,” Ben-hadad said. “The White King has multiple paths to victory. Big Leo was right. We have to kill him. Even if he loses here, he can go on and win elsewhere, drawing strength from everything he’s already conquered, and then come back. With the land he holds and the revenues he commands, the longer this war goes on, the more certain our defeat.”

Cruxer said, “To lift the siege, we either have to leave right away or we’ll get besieged ourselves here. Even if the bandits can’t keep us under siege for more than a few weeks, that’ll be long enough for Green Haven