The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,51

now. “Is that your father?”

“Little brother,” she said. Kip thought he saw real joy in her pygmy smile. Then she said, “Usurper.”

Well, shit. And now Kip looked ignorant of his own people in front of the ambassador. But it was beside the point. “Other troops?” Kip asked, irritated with himself.

“Twelve hundred cavalry, and a militia led by the woodsmen of forty thousand.”

“And how many of your nearly one hundred sixty thousand have been blooded?” Kip asked. “Ten thousand?”

Bram’s brow wrinkled as if he were trying to figure out some way to pad the total, as Kip’s disgust had made it clear that that was a low number. “If one counts the militias?” the ambassador offered.

Aha. So the commoners in the militias weren’t worth counting, despite that Kip’s army—the only army to have success against the Blood Robes—was composed of such folk.

These morons.

What would Andross do here? Andross would consolidate power into the only hands that knew what to do with it: his own.

“So rather than giving commissions and better arms to your best fighters, you’ve consigned your only veterans into militias under officers who’ve never lifted a weapon themselves except to impress a lady.”

Kip scrubbed his face. It took a lot to change a culture. Here the poorer sort of nobles—men whose sole patrimony had been their fathers’ swords and the right to carry them—didn’t want to share ranks with lumberjacks and poachers, and wouldn’t until they saw for themselves that those were exactly the men who would keep them alive.

Those lumberjacks and poachers were the kind of men their own fathers and grandfathers had been when they earned those swords.

By the time they learned that truth, though, it would be too late for Blood Forest.

Maybe the White King was on to something. Just burn it down.

It was an idle thought, but a monstrous one.

It was too late to change the Foresters now, with the Blood Robes laying siege to the capital itself.

“How many Blood Robes?” Kip asked.

“Forty thousand, give or take. Maybe four thousand of those are drafters. Maybe two or three hundred wights. At least that many will-casters. I know we outnumber them heartily, but . . .” He patted his forehead again with his handkerchief. It had to be soaked by now. “But you’re the only one who’s been able to stop him anywhere. Everywhere we fight, they roll over us. And all our men know it. You might be the only commander for whom our soldiers would stand.”

“You’ve seen my crowds,” Kip said, waving toward the window. He didn’t need to approach it.

The ambassador nodded. “They are yours indeed.”

Kip said, “What’s to stop me from letting you and the White King smash each other and then marching in, wiping out the remnants of your armies, and declaring myself king?”

The man pursed his wide mouth. It made him look like a frog. The question had clearly already occurred to him. “Your conscience, this people’s loyalty to their own, and our incompetence.”

“Incompetence?” Kip asked. The others were clear.

“Coming in and wiping up the remnants only works if there are only remnants left. If, however, the Blood Robes take Green Haven easily, with few losses of their own, you’d be facing the White King with his experienced troops and competent leaders who would have the advantages of our defenses, our materiel, and our wealth. Right now? With us inside the walls and you outside them, and the Blood Robes exposed, our odds together are better than good. But what are your odds if you have to try to take Green Haven by yourself, from them?”

So the man was clever after all.

Most people didn’t even see their own weaknesses so well. Most wouldn’t have been so adept at framing the question in terms of what would be good for Kip, rather than that he simply must help them because, well, he must.

“Any deal you make with me is binding, and you have full authority to make treaties? How do I know none will gainsay it afterward?” Kip asked. “You said yourself that you’ve promised everything to everyone.”

“But we’ve given no one this.” Ambassador Red Leaf produced a scroll with a single sentence written on it. He read it aloud: “ ‘On our oaths and holy honor, any deal Bram Red Leaf signs with Kip Guile shall be fully binding on the satraps, lords, and peoples of Blood Forest now and forever.’ ” Below that sentence was a candle’s worth of sealing wax: the Willow Bough seal prominent, surrounded by constellations