“Art?” Ferkudi asked.
“Fixing the ceiling?” Ben-hadad prompted.
“Oh, right! Right.” Ferkudi looked up. “What’s wrong with the ceiling?”
“Crowd’s not that big. Oh, they’ve seen us,” Winsen said, now beside Cruxer. “Crux? How does a High Magister wave? Like so?” He waved a devil-may-care wave, and Kip could hear the crowd go mad with excitement.
“ ‘Not that big’?” Kip said, suddenly rooted to the desk, papers forgotten.
“Nor that small,” Tisis said.
“How not small is ‘not small’?” Kip asked.
“I dunno,” Winsen said. “Maybe twenty thousand?”
“What?!” Kip shot to his feet.
“He’s joking,” Tisis said. “Maybe a thousand?”
“Nine hundred fifty-seven,” Ferkudi said.
They all stopped. They looked at him.
“You didn’t just count them all . . .” Winsen said.
“Huh? Of course not,” Ferkudi said, as if Win was crazy. “I was guessing. Why does everyone else always guess round numbers? They’re not any more likely.” He suddenly looked troubled. “They aren’t more likely, are they?”
But Kip suddenly remembered. They were worried about spies listening in. Tisis was only bluffing, trying to give the Divines something to worry about—to soften them up for what Kip planned next. She wasn’t serious.
“Breaker,” Cruxer said as Kip stepped up to the window himself, curious. There must be a small crowd at least, for Tisis’s play to have any teeth.
But Cruxer put a hand on his chest, stopping him. “Kip! Don’t you step into view unless you plan to become a king. With all that that entails. For all of us.”
“You’re serious,” Kip said. Since when did Cruxer call him Kip?
“Never more.” The look in Cruxer’s eyes was inscrutable, and Kip suddenly wasn’t sure what his friend would do if he tried to take that last step.
Ever righteous, would Cruxer see Kip taking a crown as treason?
But as if he’d just wondered the same thing, Cruxer dropped his hand as if Kip were burning white-hot.
“Where can I stand where they won’t see me?” Kip asked.
“Let ’em see you,” Winsen said. “ ‘King’s Guard’ has a nice ring to it. Lot better than ‘Winsen, Kip Guile’s Mighty Right Hand, You Know, the Suave and Dashing One.’ ”
“ ‘Right hand’?” Cruxer asked, eyebrows climbing.
Winsen shrugged, helpless. “I can’t stop people from talking, Commander.”
“ ‘Suave’?” Ferkudi asked.
Ben-hadad said, “ ‘Dashing’? ‘Dashing Away from the Fight,’ maybe.”
“Least I can dash, Hop-Along,” Winsen sneered. “Funny, I don’t remember the cripple complaining about my speed when I saved his gimpy ass last night. And I am suave, Ferkudi. Certainly compared with the village idiot of the Mighty.”
“Oh, I’m sure you are,” Ferkudi said. “I mean, if you say so. It was a real question. I don’t know what ‘suave’ means.” He cut off suddenly. “Hold the door! Who’s the village idiot of the Mighty?”
“Was that a real question, too?” Ben-hadad muttered.
Kip peered past the edge of a curtain—and then he understood what Cruxer had meant. Hundreds of people were gathered, yelling and waving crude little green flags and banners he couldn’t read from here.
“They might not look like much . . .” Tisis said.
“The banners or the people?” Ben-hadad asked.
Tisis went on quietly without answering. “But you encourage these ones, and they get excited. They spread the word that becoming king is what you really want but maybe you just can’t say it. Tomorrow the crowd’s bigger. If no one stops them, that day or the next, some disaffected nobles join in, hoping their early allegiance will curry favor. The next day, others are joining fast, no one wanting to be the last.”
“They can’t be serious,” Kip said. King?
“They believe,” Ferkudi said, like it was simple.
Winsen said, “I know we’re not supposed to say the magic words . . .”
“But you’re going to say them anyway?” Cruxer said.
Winsen said, “How are you surprised by this? Being a king? There’ve been hundreds of kings—”
“Not since the Seven Satrapies were founded,” Kip said.
“Being a king’s like barely the second rung on the ladder to the heavens, and you’re heading pretty near the top of it.”
Ben-hadad said, “Don’t say it.”
“You’re the Lightbringer, the Luíseach here or whatever,” Winsen said.
“He said it,” Ben-hadad said.
“He just had to say it,” Big Leo said.
“Win, the rest of you, too?! Are you serious with this?!” Kip said. “Setting that up—even talking about it with the kitchen staff or, or anyone!—it’s totally destructive for everything we’re trying to do here. If you encourage that kind of talk, we might do a hundred amazing things, but if we don’t do one thing from some stupid prophecy, maybe even one we don’t know about—or even if some idiot wrote it down wrong or translated it wrong three hundred years ago or whatever—then all of a sudden, everyone on our side loses heart, because I look like a fraud. Rather than being a leader who’s helping save a satrapy, I look like some delusional megalomaniac who thinks he’s Lucidonius come again! Do you really not see how that’s a problem?!”
“Right, we’ve heard it before,” Winsen said. “It’s too late. You’re asking us to pretend because you don’t like the pressure? Tough shit. People already are joining us because they believe in you. Sure, deny it publicly, play it however you want, but the cards are on the table, you—”
“Enough!” Tisis said. “Win, you’re a moron. Do you not remember why we’re here?”
“We invaded?” Winsen asked. “Liberated, I mean.”
“Here, here,” she said.
Kip saw it dawn on the slight archer: Oh, right, spies might be listening to every word. Shit.
“Kip,” Tisis said, “ignore him.”
Of course, all of them were trying to think whether Winsen—or Kip—had said anything that would be disastrous if it had been overheard.
Tisis went on: “The real reason the people here might dream of you as their king is simple. In their hour of need, Satrap Willow Bough did nothing for them. The Chromeria did practically nothing. You? You saved these people from the Blood Robes. And then you saved them from their own nobles, literally saved their lives when you fed them. And then you gave them reason to be proud of their city and their history when you fixed Túsaíonn Domhan. You gave them a new heart. You breathed new life into them; how can they forget that big empty throne in the audience chamber? Why would they not want you to be king?”
“Pfft. They’re desperate,” Kip said. “But they’re not desperate for me to be king. Me, so obviously a foreigner? I mean, who cares what my grandfather’s titles say? Look at me. Come on. They’re just desperate to be saved. I’m just a vessel to pour their hopes into.”