and don’t expect a protracted fight. Coming overland would likely take four weeks, three at best.”
“And you said we’re about three weeks from launching the armada,” she said. It was significantly later than she’d first assumed, and that meant she might have to hedge this bet of joining Koios. “So if he doesn’t figure out what you’re doing for another week or two, he can’t possibly make it?”
“He’s got less time than that, actually,” Koios said. His grin was skeletal under the hard blue luxin.
She raised her hands palm up.
“We’ve seized the Great River,” the White King said, “right behind his back.”
“You what? How’d you manage that?”
He looked immensely pleased with himself. “In many ways, my wights are inferior to the Chromeria’s drafters. But they’re also fearless. We’ve made great strides with magics long buried.”
“What? Some kind of night magic?”
“No luck with that. The caoránaigh.”
“What is that? Sea monsters?”
“Wights who’ve transformed their bodies as much as possible for the water. They took the names of old monsters to make people fear them. Actually, though, I wonder if what they are is exactly what those old monsters were. They can go wherever the rivers go, unseen, and board boats before anyone knows they’re there.”
“How many do you have?” Aliviana asked.
“Enough. Mercenaries on the shores for fortifications and intel. Wights in the woods, wights in the waters. No one escapes. The silence won’t hold forever, but it’s already held longer than I’d dared hope. Long enough.”
“And if he figures out your little plan? What if—”
“Hardly ‘little.’ No one’s ever done it before.”
“For good reason!” she said. “What if Kip moves faster than you imagine? He’s done it before, I hear. Surprising you time and again, defeating your forces over and over?”
“And always pushing deeper and deeper into Blood Forest as he did so.”
“And why do you care? The capital’s there, and you’ll never hold the satrapy without Green Haven. Not for long. These people—”
“The people of this satrapy believe Kip is the Lightbringer. Their Luíseach.”
She put her hands to her cheeks in mock horror. “Oh no, the Light-bringer! Whatever shall we do?” She shook her head. “Are we really going to start listening to what desperate peasants say? Do you know what they say about you?”
“I believe it, too.”
“Excuse me?”
He didn’t seem to be joking.
“This is Kip Delauria we’re talking about, right? Of Rekton? I’ve known him all his life. He’s not some mystical being, Lucidonius reborn or something. He’s a fat kid. A cringing whinger. There’s nothing in him of—”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care how you cover for your old boyfriend—”
“I’m not covering and he’s not—”
“You misunderstand. I don’t care if he really is the Lightbringer.”
She couldn’t follow that at all. Either he’d gone mad, or . . . “You know something I don’t,” she said.
He looked at her as if surprised by her astuteness.
That rankled. Underestimating me? Still? I will burn you.
The White King said, “As long as the Lightbringer’s not on the Jaspers when I arrive, the Jaspers will fall.”
“How do you know that? Because some prophecy says so? I thought all this superstitious horseshit was just a put-on until you fully seized power, like your ‘freeing’ of the slaves.”
“Silence!” he roared.
His guards shifted uncomfortably, looking at each other uncertainly. Oh, hadn’t everyone seen through that foolishness by now?
She turned her attention to Koios. She couldn’t tell if he’d yelled because she was right or because she was wrong. Even as she was getting better at divining the tells that showed this emotion or that, her own emotions were growing more distant, more mysterious, and her intuition getting worse. Reading anger and fear didn’t tell her for which reasons he was angry and afraid.
“You don’t understand how this works at all, do you?” he sneered. “Hell, it could be real.”
“This prophecy?” she asked.
“Since Guile burned me, I’ve seen things that bent my mind in half. The Chromeria’s too quick to dismiss what it doesn’t control. I’m sorry to see that you do the same. Maybe you didn’t escape their tutelage soon enough. Maybe their weakness infected you.”
“How dare you!” she said, but he didn’t even stop.
Him talking about things that had bent his mind in half didn’t bode well. Even if the Chromeria oversold the dangers of going wight, this man was a wight seven times over, and was trying for nine.
“But the accuracy of the prophecy doesn’t matter,” he went on. “The belief in it is what matters. The prophecy I’m talking about is not well-known—but by