The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,68

men wish to have the new start I’ve offered—if they wish to live henceforth as honest, pardoned men, they will need to bring you, Daragh, either dead or in chains, to the foot of the stairs of the Palace of the Divines.”

Kip looked at the hard-faced men around Daragh, ignoring him completely. “You have until tomorrow morning. It will take time to integrate you into the army.”

“You can’t do that!” Daragh shouted. “These are my men. They will do what I say! You can’t buy them from me!”

“I am doing nothing,” Kip said. “I’m pointing out three paths you each may choose: one, abandon the Forest in her hour of need and choose to be bandits until the day you die; two, serve as auxiliaries and remain on the edges of human society; or three, buy the chance to become honest men again. Daragh calls you his men?” Kip said to the others, pointedly ignoring Daragh. “ ‘His’? He speaks of ‘buying’? As if you’re slaves? I call you free men. Make your decision and pay the price for it. It’s what free men do.”

Tisis’s intelligence was good, but she didn’t have people everywhere. She hadn’t been able to tell Kip anything about the men flanking Daragh the Coward. She and Kip had assumed that they were all drafters and formidable warriors—in case Kip broke the truce and tried to capture Daragh.

What Kip and Tisis didn’t know was if these were also the most loyal men in Daragh’s bandit army. Would Kip’s words even be passed along at all?

Kip didn’t like making promises that he wasn’t sure he could keep, but he wouldn’t be keeping any promises at all if he didn’t get these bandits to join his army.

“This is horseshit,” Daragh said. “You need me. You think you can offer us scraps while you feast?”

“Oh, ‘free men.’ That reminds me,” Kip said as if he hadn’t heard Daragh. Nor did he look at him now. “I know many of you escaped from other satrapies. If you do choose to integrate into my units, you’ll earn not only your pardon for your crimes while a bandit but also papers of manumission upon your retirement or discharge—regardless of where in the Seven Satrapies you were enslaved. On the power of the Guiles and the wealth of the Malargoi, I swear this. Further, if any of you earns a citation for valor in battle, he will also earn having his family redeemed.” Kip raised his hand, as if he were taking an oath, but with his fingers spread. “Up to five family members manumitted, at my expense.

“But perhaps you will say, ‘What if I fall heroically in battle but no one sees my heroism? Or what if my commander is stingy with recognition?’ I’ll be honest with you. I always will. I can’t see everything, or root out every injustice, so let me add this: whether you earn a ribbon or not, if you die in battle or from wounds sustained in battle, five family members shall be redeemed, at my expense.

“If you pledge your hands to me,” Kip vowed, looking at each of those stone-faced men, “I will repay you five times over. Honorable service, a pardon for wrongs, and freedom for you and those you love most. This I swear.”

Freedom? Real freedom?

What Kip promised wasn’t just an absence of the chains that all fugitive slaves found intolerable by definition—else they’d not have run in the first place. This was freedom from the stalking fear that hunted every fugitive, the fear that everything one had built up for many years might be taken away in an instant. And it was hope of being reunited with those one had thought forever lost.

Freedom? How could a fugitive slave think of anything else?

No matter how loyal and hardened the drafter-warriors flanking Daragh were, Kip’s words would be passed along. It didn’t matter what Daragh said as soon as he left this hall; he wouldn’t be able to suppress them.

Of all the things that die, hope is the most easily resurrected.

Kip saw Daragh the Coward’s hold on even the men flanking him crumbling. And Daragh saw it too.

“That is all,” Kip said. “You may go.”

He turned to Tisis and asked, still letting his voice project, “What’s next? Is it time for breakfast, or do we have to deal with the embargo talks first?”

“The valor-award citations for the freeing of Dúnbheo, actually,” Tisis said. “We need to decide how best to read those out. You’d wanted