The Burning White (145 page)

They sat, sipping their whiskey, as if they were two gentlemen enjoying a pleasant summer day rather than mortal enemies whose paths had crossed as a battle wound down.

“Smoke, Lord Anazâr?” Andross asked.

“Please.”

They smoked as a fleet and a city burned, as sea demons tore through the remaining bane and devoured the wights thrown into the water and the Wight King’s fleet dissolved into chaos.

“It was an excellent gambit,” Andross said. He didn’t have to say that he meant Grinwoody’s long betrayal, not his failed poisoning attempt. “Not only well conceived but also flawlessly executed. Breathtaking daring wedded to such patience? Few would be capable of it. To sublimate one’s ego for so long? To become a
slave
? Astounding.”

“Thank you. I learned from the best.”

Andross inclined his head.

“So many temptations, you know?” Grinwoody said. “To step free of this garb, this face, these servile manners. Just once, not in front of a few subordinates, but to actually take my rightful place among equals.”

“To be fully yourself,” Andross said.

“Yes! There’s something so grating about the world thinking less of you than you know yourself to be.”

“Your Braxians put on masks once every few months, but for you, those holy days were the only time you got to take your mask off.”

“Perhaps just a different mask,” Grinwoody said, pensive.

“Lonely,” Andross said, looking not at him perhaps but at his own reflection in the window.

After a pause, Grinwoody smirked. “Me, too.”

“The Old Man of the Desert,” Andross mused. “I’ve always liked that.”

Grinwoody shook his head. “Your nightly bitter-almond tea was for mithridatism? That was . . . unexpected.”

“Oh, I know. You might’ve chosen any of the dozens of poisons it won’t work for. What can I say? The idea appealed to me when I was young and still romantic.”

“Why did you keep it up?”

“Honestly? It was a convenient way to test new help. I’d tell them not to touch my special liquor. If they got deathly ill shortly later, I’d sell them immediately.”

“I don’t know whether I should be angry at you that you’re so lucky or at my own error, or if I should be impressed that you kept the ingredients secret even from me for all these years. So why is it instead that I’m hurt that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me?”

“It’s a hell of a thing,” Andross said.

“What? All your secrets? My infiltration? Trying not to make a single mistake, knowing it will get you killed, against an enemy who can make a hundred and never lose?”

“Betrayal,” Andross said quietly.

“You goddam Guiles. It’s not even fair, opposing you.”

“You chose to be in opposition. You might have done otherwise.”

“No, I think not,” Grinwoody said.

“How’d you do it?”

“Which part?” Grinwoody asked.

“The hardest part. Getting me to buy you of my own accord.”

“You actually weren’t the target, oddly enough. You were my second failed attempt. I was trying to get purchased by Ulbear Rathcore. He seemed more likely to go far than you did.”

“In a kinder world,” Andross said. He sipped. “But . . . a
slave
?”

“Impossible to keep many secrets from your slaves.”

“And if I were terribly abusive, what? You had a magistrate standing by? Witnesses who would swear you’d been enslaved illegally? That sort of thing?”

“Naturally,” Grinwoody said. “I almost called on him a dozen times that first year. I did not like taking orders. Caused me quite some panic when he died a decade later. Then I realized I had assassins at my command. Getting a magistrate to authenticate papers wasn’t going to be any problem. Now, your turn. Who was your assassin? Everyone drank the bloodwine. I nearly drank it myself. I usually do. You almost got
me
—but I had too much to do in the morning, so for the first time in many years I abstained. But no one else did. I have spotters to watch for such things. The only thing I can figure is that your poisoner must have drunk the lacrimae sanguinis, too. Who was it?”

Andross shrugged.

“There are only five people it could be,” Grinwoody insisted. “And they’re all dead. It was one of my high priests, wasn’t it? Atevia Zelorn?”

“It actually wasn’t my doing,” Andross said.

Grinwoody almost dropped his zigarro. “You can’t be serious. All this time playing against you, and I’m undone . . . by some side player? Who?”

“Karris, I think,” Andross said.

“Little
Karris
?
Karris
killed four hundred and thirty people?” Grinwoody sat back. “And here I thought that Iron White business was a pretention to impress the small folk.”

“Then she became what she pretended,” Andross said.

“Perhaps so.” Grinwoody looked at his empty glass. He set down his zigarro, and glanced at the pistol. “But I did not.”

“I thought you were my friend,” Andross said suddenly. There was a ragged edge in his voice. In another man, it might have seemed close to tears.

“A mistake I never made of you,” Grinwoody said.

“So I see,” Andross said, all iron control once more. “Your papers are on the table. Take them as you go.”

“My papers? You’re letting me live?” Grinwoody asked. But he stood immediately. He was no fool.

“Good play should be rewarded, and you won. Far be it from me to snatch the fruits of twenty-three years of service from your lips. Far be it from me to deny your victory.”

Grinwoody picked up the papers, slowly. “Do I look
victorious
to you?”

“No, but the game that you lost was some other game, against someone else. Nothing to do with me. Me you outwitted,
me
you convinced to expose my back. I have no excuses. Spying is a well-known stratagem in the great game, and betrayal a time-honored tradition. How can I begrudge you those?”

“You surprise me,” Grinwoody said. “I hadn’t expected to find you equanimous in defeat.”

“You’ve never seen me lose.”

“Except your temper.”

“At setbacks. At delays in my game. But our game is finished. Now is the time for me to examine my loss, and to learn from it.”

Grinwoody pursed his lips. “After all these years, you still are able to surprise me, my lord.” His lips quirked to a frown. The ‘my lord’ had been reflexive, a mistake.

“ ‘Andross,’ please.”

“Yes. Of course.”

Andross said, “There’s an island off Tabes on the Ruthgari coast. Good little harbor, tricky approaches to dissuade raiders, and looks crude from without but is luxurious within. Comfortable for a household of fifteen or twenty. I meant to keep it secret even from you. Do you know of it?”

“Yes. Followed the money, of course.”

Andross inclined his head. “It’s yours. The deed’s among those papers. Sell it if you wish. Fair wages, I think, for twenty-three years of your labors.”

“But you purchased me.”

“Yes. Yes, I did. And the man who sold you to me now owes me a great debt.”

He said this without emotion, but the malice was clear. Grinwoody was a victor, but any others who had betrayed Andross were simply enemies. And his memory was long and long.

“Naturally,” Andross said, “should I see you again, or hear of your interference . . .”

“Naturally,” Grinwoody said.

He took his papers and walked to the door as if he expected Andross to shoot him in the back at every step. But he stopped when he got the door open. He looked back. He looked as if to experience this magnanimity from Andross Guile was itself a deep draught of bitter-almond tea.

“I want you to know something,
Andross
. In all my years of working with spies and murderers and traitors and scum,” Grinwoody said, “I’ve never met a man who deserved betrayal more.”

“Sit down,” Andross said. “We have to figure a few things out before we go out there.”

“Do we really?” Kip asked. He came and took a seat, though.

The curtains were wide open in his grandfather’s sitting room, windows open to the sun. Outside, the work of repairing the city—and the empire—was well underway. The funerals were over: by necessity, done quickly, efficiently even for the defenders, and expeditiously at best for the attackers.

The people of the Jaspers would mourn even as they rebuilt, but Andross was keen to give everyone reasons to cheer as soon as possible, to focus on victory and unity, not on the costs of what they’d been through.

“Yes, we must,” Andross said. “You won our game. And though I told you that I would claim the mantle of Lightbringer if you left the beach, you never conceded that. I received the signal the bane had landed moments later, so you may have still been on the shore.”

“Are we really doing this?” Kip asked. “I can’t even draft.”

“Nothing in the prophecies about drafting after becoming the Lightbringer. I managed to do pretty well at ruling for many years while only drafting on the rarest occasions.”

Kip expelled an exasperated breath, looking away.

“The people need a Lightbringer,” Andross said. “One man who will make the changes the empire needs.”

“The
people
do, huh?”

“Have you Viewed my card yet?”

“Yes,” Kip said. “But honestly, I’d like to address my current obligations before I delve any more into the past.” Later today, he was going to visit Cruxer’s mother, Inana, to tell her how her son had died, and how he’d lived.

Andross said, “I’ll tell you Lina’s story when you’re ready. All that I know. But it’s complicated, and no one in the tale comes out looking good. Not me, not her, not Corvan.”

“You added that last part just to make me curious, didn’t you?” Kip asked.

Andross stopped himself before he denied it. “I’d like to get it off my plate. And my conscience.”

For a moment, Kip thought about forgiveness, and time. “I’m not ready. It might be a while until I am.”

Andross paused, then nodded. “I forget,” he said. “Felia would do this to me, too. Great leaps of intuition and then long, slow cud-chewing on facts that seemed simple to me. But she would chew and chew, and then suddenly understand a whole person or a whole family, it seemed. I could never guess where it would strike with her, nor, it seems, with you. How I miss her. I wish you could’ve met.”

“We could’ve, actually. She came to Garriston for her Freeing. She never tried to talk with me. I’ve thought of that a few times. Seemed weird to me that she wouldn’t want to meet her only grandson, bastard though I was,” Kip said. “She was afraid I was
your
bastard, wasn’t she?”

“Yes. Wrongly,” Andross said. “Do you want to have that conversation, after all?”

“No. No. I should have liked to meet her quite a lot, though. It seems to me this family has kept far too many secrets for far too long, to our own injury.”

Andross said, “We keep secret what we fear makes us weak, not realizing in our fear that it is the keeping of secrets itself that weakens us.” He lifted his eyebrows then, as if surprised at hearing the sentiment from his own lips. “Let’s let it lie for now, then, not a secret, but simply a difficult discussion that can wait a while. I do have another that can’t.”

“I figured, coming in to see you, that the meeting wouldn’t be all rainbows and daisies.”

“This will be known henceforth as Ascension Day. In the future, this will be a holy week—from Sun Day to Ascension Day, commemorating the great victory of Orholam’s light over the forces of darkness, and celebrating the coming of His chosen one: me.”

Kip nodded.

“You don’t seem angry,” Andross said.

“Are you worried about threats to your throne already?” Kip asked. “Look, if you need me to join Corvan in the Reconquest or want to exile me to Blood Forest or whatever, I’ll go. I’ll have requests, but I’ll go, and I won’t cause you problems.”

“I know,” Andross said. “And I don’t like it.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve been very carefully vague in my wording with all my commands, in everything I’ve done as promachos to prepare the islands for Ascension Day.”

“Okay . . .”

“I’m saying, when we go out there to the blast of the ramshorns and the dancers and the pyroturges, we have to declare someone the Lightbringer. But it doesn’t have to be me.”

Kip felt like a turtle-bear charging into a granite rock face. “Huh?”

“You could’ve done everything I did.”

“Not true,” Kip said.

“You did more than I did.”

“Arguable.”

“You laid the groundwork for everything I did. You figured out the puzzle. I didn’t!”

“That I can concede,” Kip said.

“You paid more than I did, and if it weren’t for
my
blunders with Zymun,
you
would’ve been on those mirrors all night.
You
would be being declared the Lightbringer in a few minutes. I should be, at best, an adviser to you, if not on the run for my life for everything I’ve done.”

“I would’ve loved to have had you as an adviser.”

“I know the truth. You and your father did the magic; I turned some mirrors.”

“You brought source to thousands of different drafters simultaneously and battered and confused and burned wights and immortals until dawn. No one else could’ve done that. I couldn’t have.”

“Don’t you
want it
?” Andross insisted. “Don’t you
want
to be the most important person in history? It’s this close! Reach out and take it! Play one more game with this as the wager. I’ll do it! I’ll do anything!”

“Anything, anything to prove it should belong to you?” Kip asked.

“You have no reason to believe I’ll rule well.”

“I believe you’ll find reasons to rule well.”

Andross’s face reddened.

“No, no, I know I seem like I’m being flippant. And, fine, I sort of was, because I know how you love that, but mostly I’m not.” Kip took a breath. “There are things in this life that I need. Things that I can hardly function without: My wife, a few close friends, hard work, the camaraderie of shared purpose, things to figure out. Some leadership, because I’m pretty good at it and I chafe under incompetence. But I don’t need power. I don’t need every eye to be on me every time I walk into a room. I don’t need strangers to know who I am or be in awe of me. I wouldn’t give up those first things in order to be the most important man in history. Because that man will also be the most isolated man in history. I’ve been isolated, and it’s not for me. Not at all. If I were declared Lightbringer, could I make it work? I mean, you sort of get to define the job as you go, right? Yeah, maybe I could, with a lot of help. I might even be a good Lightbringer. But I don’t need it. You? You do.”