The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,74

I meant a feint to what end?” Karris snapped. Not the way the White should act at all.

“There were certain questions he’s asked with ‘uncommon intensity,’ is how my spy put it.”

Oh yes. Ironfist had stood at the elbow of the world’s most powerful and devious personalities, seeing how they excelled and how they failed, and when, and often why. But it was one thing to study how the best people in the world do a thing; perhaps Ironfist was learning it was quite another to actually do it. Karris had been learning it herself for a year now.

It was like analyzing a fight versus taking the blows yourself.

Finding out exactly what you needed to know to act boldly and notifying all the people who needed to know, because they were the ones who would actually make it happen, while keeping spies in the dark about what you intended? That was not as easy as you’d think, even after years of watching it. A master worked art a mere spectator couldn’t even see.

Karris herself still didn’t know how the hell Andross did half the things he did.

“What kind of questions?” Karris asked, impatient. They were still holding up the lift.

Now she was getting paranoid, wondering if Andross was somehow using even that silence against her.

Important to remember: there isn’t always a secret plan to make you look a fool. Andross was her ally, after all. At least against Ironfist.

“About the Prism-elect, naturally,” Andross said. “But also about you, his old friend. People there can’t believe he’ll actually side with the White King. But for some odd reason he blames me for his sister’s unfortunate accidental death. It comes out now that she had quite a penchant for riotous living. She used all manner of intoxicants, mixed together no less.”

“That is odd,” she said. “But at least the part about Ironfist not wanting to side against us is good . . . right?”

“In declaring himself king, he’s committed treason. He believes I ordered his sister’s murder—who, despite her flaws, was at least a legitimate Nuqaba. So him sending an army here is not good news in any fashion whatsoever.”

“I didn’t say it was good news. I said—”

Andross ran right over her words. “So what’s his play? He paralyzes us from hostile action with an offer to ally with us, but then, once he’s here with his army . . .”

Karris said, “He gives us some kind of ultimatum? He’ll only join us if . . . what?”

What Andross didn’t say aloud was that the Chromeria would lose the war if Paria sided against them. Without question, it would be the end of the empire. Full stop.

They would likely lose the war even if Paria simply decided on neutrality.

Andross said, “I don’t know, and he’s not telling anyone, but if he gives us such a choice, how outrageous would his demands have to be before we would say no?”

Short of asking them to abandon Orholam and worship the old gods instead? Short of that, Ironfist could likely ask anything at all. The Chromeria would have to agree.

Andross could obviously tell by the look on her face that she’d grasped the crux of it. She felt dread growing in the pit of her stomach. It was one thing to think, ‘I am so dead.’ It was quite another for a cowled man to escort you to the executioner’s ax-bitten, bloodstained block.

“He seemed quite intent about . . . about you,” Andross said, watching her carefully.

“You said that. But why?”

“He’s declared himself king. Even if he wanted to, even if he’s discovered that being a king isn’t quite the prize everyone thinks, he can’t submit to us now and hope to go back to the way things were before. Or so he must surely believe, with me as promachos. What guarantee could I give him that would make him trust me? He thinks I am a man of such low moral character that I have truck with assassins!”

Of course, Andross had—but he wasn’t going to admit to it, not even only in front of slaves. Andross was no fool. (Though perhaps he believed Karris was.)

“Believing me so low,” Andross said, “how could he trust any oath I gave him? If he believes I murdered his sister—who was guilty only of being slow to answer the Chromeria’s call for help—he must doubtless believe I would murder him, an outright traitor.”

Gee, old man, maybe if you didn’t assassinate people, maybe people won’t think you assassinate people.

But