The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,73

about the Parians now?’

Dealing with Andross Guile was exhausting. Karris was already mentally out of breath, and he didn’t seem to be breaking a sweat.

“The sea chariots haven’t verified it yet,” Andross said. The lift had come to a stop, and the Blackguards opened the door, but he made no move to exit. “It’s a large sea after all, but our spies in Azûlay agree: Your King Ironfist is sailing. Here. He’ll likely arrive a week before or after Sun Day, depending on the weather. He’s coming to negotiate.”

The Blackguards in the lift and those outside it couldn’t help but exchange looks, but Karris couldn’t read their thoughts. She couldn’t even untangle her own. Ironfist was coming back?

“If he wants to negotiate, why wouldn’t he take a sea chariot?” she asked. “He knows how to build them.”

“A secret it would have been nice for you not to put in the hands of a traitor,” Andross muttered. “But you misunderstand.” He glanced briefly at the slaves. All of them were cleared to serve at the highest levels, which meant they were trusted fully, but Andross trusted no one fully, except maybe Grinwoody. “They say he’s furious. They say he’s bringing an army. They say he wishes to negotiate our surrender.”

It was a punch in the guts when you haven’t had time to tense your belly. Fighting Ironfist? He was the kind of gentle warrior who got quiet and somber before he went into a battle. You never wanted to see him furious. In sparring, he’d bested his brother Tremblefist—the man whose battle rage had earned him a Name: the Butcher of Aghbalu.

Karris did not want to see Ironfist furious.

But forget fighting Ironfist himself. The people of the Chromeria, fighting against Parians? Their brothers? More than half of the Blackguards were Parians, and though she’d never question their loyalty, she also never wanted to put it to the test.

Especially not with a real enemy at the door. Even a victory over Ironfist would only guarantee losing to the White King, and the dissolution of the empire.

“Oh, but I left out the best part,” Andross said, motioning that he was going to remain in the lift. “You’ll pardon me. I’ve other urgent matters to attend to, given this news.”

“What? What is it? Tell me the rest.”

“King Ironfist trusts no one. Has no close advisers. Seems to think anyone at all could be a traitor.” He opened his palm toward Grinwoody, but the wrinkled old slave didn’t notice, seemed frozen. “Grinwoody,” Andross said, exasperated.

The old man started and fumbled a scroll into Andross’s outstretched hand.

Karris didn’t like Grinwoody.

No, no, if a White is to be without stain—as a White must be—then she must be honest, with herself first of all.

Karris hated Grinwoody’s guts. Not only because he was an extension of Andross’s malevolent will, a spiked gauntlet on Andross’s steel fist of command, but because he’d taken the Blackguard training—at far too advanced an age to usually get a chance. Then, when he’d passed all of it, on the eve of his final vows, he’d accepted a buyout of his contract to serve Andross. Karris, like every Blackguard, despised those who stole their expensive training and went elsewhere for the sake of more money. It spat on everything the Blackguard was. You bond with a fellow elite warrior-drafter, thinking they’ll be your brother for life, and then he turns his back on you.

Regardless of his many years of faithful service to Andross, the Blackguards still thought of Grinwoody as a traitor. Which made it worse for everyone that as he was Andross’s secretary and slave overseer, they had to deal with him constantly.

Him getting old and mentally missing a step sent an unkind (and unholy) thrill through her.

Andross was frowning, frustrated at having to take time from his real problems to manage a slave. That was a duty Grinwoody was supposed to handle for him.

“Five lashes, milord?” Grinwoody knew, even when he himself was the problem, to keep the interruption to his lord’s day quick and quietly efficient.

“You’re too damn old, you fool. Five would break you.”

“Privilege suspension. One month,” Grinwoody said.

Andross waved it off. “Where was I? No advisers. So there’s no solid intelligence on his plans. Smart of him. He knows how we work. But. The suspicion among Paria’s nobles is that this talk of our surrendering to him may be a feint.”

“A ‘feint’?” Karris asked.

“The Parian nobility believe there’s something else Ironfist wants.”

“Yes, thank you, I know what a feint is.