Vaelin raised his gaze to meet hers, finding it wary. “Ahm Lin has heard his song for a lifetime,” he said, keeping his tone gentle. “He knows it well and I trust his judgement.”
“And I know the True Dream. I have told you all it has told me.”
“I have seen much that makes me question the value of prophecy. But the legends of my homeland speak of it as a thing that comes unbidden, an unwanted gift. You appear to be different. Because you can summon it, can you not?”
“Usually. And, as I told you, it is . . . inconstant in what it chooses to show me.”
“Have you tried since we came here?”
She looked away once more, head moving in a small shake of negation.
“Why?” he asked. “With so much at stake?”
She retreated from him, arms tightening about her waist like a shield. “It has shown me much that I would never have chosen to see,” she told him in a thin whisper.
“So you fear what it might show you now?”
She blinked and a tear rolled down her otherwise impassive face. “Kehlbrand hid so much from me. For years, he lied as I loved. What . . .” She hesitated, swallowed and spoke on. “What if this, all of this, is what he wants, what he always intended? Would that not make us all just his puppets? He twitches the strings and we dance like the fools we are.”
“Not puppets. Pieces on a Keschet board.”
“Keschet?”
“A game from the Alpiran Empire but beloved of my queen. I doubt there is anyone in the world who could best her at it, even your brother. I asked her once what the key to victory is in Keschet. She laughed and said there isn’t one, for every game is different, but the key to defeat is always the same: predictability.”
“You wish me to seek another dream, divine the outcome of this siege.”
“I wish you to pluck the thorn from your mind.” He smoothed hair from Jihla’s forehead. “So that her sacrifice, the sacrifice of her brother and so many others will not be for nothing. Will you do it?”
She unfolded her arms, wiping her tears away and muttering something in her own tongue.
“What was that?” he asked her.
“Mercy is weakness, compassion is cowardice, wisdom is falsehood.” She gave a faint laugh, shrugging. “The mantra of the priests to the Unseen, spoken as truth for centuries and cast aside at my brother’s whim. He saw no use in it, for a god needs no words but his own. But I cast it aside because I knew it to be a lie. Mercy requires strength, compassion demands courage and wisdom compels truth.” Her humour faded and she moved to a stool at Jihla’s bedside, reaching out to take her hand. “I’ll seek the dream when she wakes. My mind will be too unsettled otherwise.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
No assaults were launched for the rest of the day, nor any the day that followed. Fires continued to burn unchecked in the lower tier, but mercifully the screams had long faded. As the fires began to dwindle, Tsai Lin, now recovered from his encounter with the exploding apothecary shop, used the spyglass atop the tower to conduct a methodical counting of the dead visible in the streets.
“Four thousand three hundred and eighty-three,” he told his father, the general having summoned him, Vaelin and Governor Neshim to the library in order to plan the defence of the second tier. “But,” the Dai Lo went on, “I would submit that the count can safely be doubled in light of the number of dead rendered unrecognisable by the fire.”
“Call it eight thousand then,” Vaelin said. He had spent the morning drilling the companies under his command whilst occasionally surveying the charred expanse beyond the walls. Only a half-dozen fires were still burning, soon to shrink to nothing whereupon Kehlbrand would surely make his next move. “A grievous blow to be sure, but hardly fatal for a host of this size.”
“It must have unnerved them,” Governor Neshim said. He still wore his ill-fitting armour, though it sat more easily on him now, his girth having diminished over recent days. His fear, however, had not and Vaelin found himself assailed by the sweaty stench of the man.
“Seeing so many comrades perish in such a terrible manner,” Neshim continued, “would test the strongest of hearts.”
“I would agree,” Sho Tsai replied. “Were they an army that fights for pay or plunder.