The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,64

yours, yet you’ve been careful to avoid attacking me directly.

“That avoidance doubtless cost you both in money and in the respect of your people, but you’re cunning: you wanted to keep an option open, just in case there was a time to jump onto my side. But now things have changed.”

Surprisingly, Daragh kept quiet. He wanted to see how accurate Kip’s read of him and his situation was.

That suited Kip. He would set the ground rules of this game, and skip past some of the introductory positioning. Except that he had to be careful not to go too far too fast: one of the things he needed not to do was to reach the crisis of this meeting too quickly.

“You’ve been at this a long time. You know exactly what it costs to keep your men fed. Everyone you’d ordinarily prey upon has fled, and you’ve still not attacked the easy pickings under my protection? Even as, in recent days, your forces have swelled far beyond what you can support through banditry in the best of times. That means you’re making your big move. Perhaps you’ve realized there’s not much security in retirement for a bandit. Or perhaps you’re not thinking about the growing stiffness in your joints each morning or the pain in your aging back. You want to come back in from the cold, you want lands, you want to stop running, stop watching your back and become a lord—for him or for us. Maybe you don’t even care. So you’ve taken the Wight King’s coin and brought as many men here as you can afford to try to extract as much from us as you can.

“It’s an obvious ploy,” Kip said, though he’d thought himself pretty clever when he figured it out. “But regardless, you bring a not-inconsiderable number of men here, tested in killing if not actually in fighting against those who fight back. So come, let’s make like horse traders. What do you want? I’ve much else to do today.”

If Daragh the Coward was aghast at Kip’s open assertion that he served the White King, he didn’t show it. “My dear b—Lord Guile,” he said as if catching himself. “I’m surprised. I come to a room full of people like you all, gracious lords and ladies that you are. But we’re all Foresters, are we not? We’re not so removed from the earth beneath our toes and the wind in our hair. I see the curiosity in every eye, and yet we’ve not even taken the time for proper introductions.”

“How’s that?” Kip said. The man was stalling, trying to reframe the discussion.

“You haven’t asked me about my scars,” Daragh said. “ I—”

“No! No! Of course not!” Kip interrupted as if aghast at the idea.

“So you do know—”

“No, why would I? And I don’t need to know. I was taught better than to draw attention to the disabilities of my guests. I’d never! It’s uncouth to comment on things a man can’t fix: say, a cleft lip, or a lame foot, or even a . . . a regrettable clumsiness at shaving.”

The room erupted in shocked laughter.

The laughter hit Daragh the Coward so hard that Kip felt momentarily sorry for him. No one likes to be mocked, but mock a noble and he’s still a noble. Mock a shopkeeper, she still owns her shop. But a bandit leader lives on his reputation. Turning this man’s fearsome scars into an object of ridicule?

That could be fatal.

“But might I suggest”—Kip paused, as if he’d bumbled into rudeness and wanted to extricate himself—“perhaps . . . just let the beard grow out?”

Murder shot through Daragh the Coward’s eyes. He shot a glance at stony Cruxer and then Big Leo, whose expressions said, ‘Don’t even think about it.’ Clearly in the camps he’d lived in for nearly two decades, when one mocked another man, the possibility of personal violence was always on the table. He was unaccustomed to dealing with insults when that was gone.

“I bring five thousand men and you—” Daragh said, raising his voice.

“Five thousand?! Five?!” Kip interrupted. And here was where, if Tisis or Antonius was wrong, he was going to get his ass handed to him. “You have three thousand four hundred men; three hundred more who are casualties, well enough to walk but not to fight; and a thousand more camp followers. And that’s counting the cavalry you were hoping to conceal twelve leagues from here in Little Wash. What kind of counting is this?