“You seriously lost Paria? Brilliant leadership, grandfather!”
“And you’re going to help me get it back,” Andross said, eyes flashing.
“What’s this got to do with this girl, Ironfist’s cousin or whatever.”
“If I win, you marry her.”
“Wha—I’m already married.”
“Ah.” Andross gestured with his zigarro as if Kip had a point, as if it were too bad.
Kip’s brow furrowed. What in nine hells? “Not even a promachos can absolve centuries of Magisterial teachings against polygamy, and I can’t imagine the Parians would countenance having their Nuqaba be the second wife of anyone.”
“Of course not,” Andross said blandly.
“You’re not suggesting . . .”
“Ruthgar’s fate is tied to ours now. They cannot leave us. Your marriage to Tisis has accomplished what the satrapies required. Now you’ll put her aside. Your marriage will be annulled—you were a minor at the time of your oaths, and you both married against the consent of your families. It will simply be acknowledged not to have happened. Rather than lose face, Eirene Malargos will have to pretend it’s mutual. Marriage dissolved, excused as the passions of youth, and so forth. No problem. Your failure to produce a child will actually be helpful. A child would have been a complication.”
Orholam’s agonies. It was exactly what Tisis had predicted, only much earlier than even she had guessed.
“Why would you do this to me?” Kip asked, breath short.
“The Parians have a fleet and the best mundane fighters in the world. We need both. In fact, with what you’ve told us about the White King’s fleet, we now need them both far more than I thought we did just a week ago. And he and his fleet are almost here. If we are to have any hope of victory, Ironfist must be convinced to join us. A man who’s declared himself king. A traitor, you understand, must be convinced to make common cause with us, or the empire will end.
“He will demand we recognize him as king. He will want guarantees—and we will be in no position not to give them to him. Naturally, losing Paria would be our fallback position. But better to lose Paria than the whole empire. What I hope to accomplish? Immediate rapprochement with Paria, albeit with special status granted to Ironfist himself for the rest of his life. He will be rewarded with very choice ‘presents’ at your wedding as ‘small symbols of our long love for Paria and its leadership.’ Ironfist will be made very wealthy; he will have enough power and the control of his Nuqaba to make sure he isn’t betrayed or imprisoned in the future; and we will have saved the empire from this immediate crisis. And if I don’t miss my guess, as a wedding gift Ironfist will grant you substantial lands in Paria that the Guiles haven’t owned since my grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s time. You will spend your time between your lands and the major Parian cities, making sure no new rebellion is planned against the empire, and making as much of yourself as you will. When I die, you will take over family Guile, having been given all the advantages I never had.
“Naturally, that’s only one way the negotiations may go, but I need to know what cards I have in hand so I can do the best for the Seven Satrapies that may be done, and after that the best I can do for the Guile family, and after that the best for my grandson’s oh-so tender feelings.”
“This is disgusting,” Kip said.
“This is survival, you preening microcephalic baboon! Exactly which part of survival do you object to? Morality’s a warm blanket, but it’s not worth dying for, and it’s useless to the dead. I have been the one who’s paid the price for our survival until now. I have been the one who killed so that others might live, who took the beating sun on my own shoulders so that others might play in my shadow, safe and ignorant and innocent and carefree. Now it’s your turn. You want the power? You pay the price.”
Kip tried to keep a level voice, tried to speak to Andross in a way he could understand. “You’re asking me to go back on my oath.”
“I’m asking you to save a million lives with your semen and your tears—and you’d prefer they die instead?”
“I swore Tisis a solemn oath. I—”
“When you swear to do what you don’t have the power to do, that makes you a fool, not a liar.”
“I swore a hundred times!”
“You swore a hundred times because you knew the keeping of that oath was out of your control. She asked you to because she knew it, too.”
Kip’s heart was aching already. He was willing to break Tisis with his death but not with his betrayal.
Not even if it saves tens of thousands of lives in this battle alone? Hundreds of thousands or a million eventually?
He said, “You loved Felia, you adored her, she was the heart of your heart. I know she was. Even those who hate you remark that she, she was the one thing in this world you loved. Would you have betrayed her? Would you have betrayed her for all the world?”
Andross’s face grew still and his eyes, gleaming like iridescent-edged razors, turned inward. “For all the world, Kip, I did.”
And Kip felt suddenly like a young dandy lecturing an old veteran on the costs of war.
This was war for the fate of the world. This was war as seen from the vantage of politics, with prices paid in grief and private wounds and terrible compromises and personal failures that could cost the deaths of entire families or entire empires. Andross was the high commander, sacrificing units to gain objectives, sending envoys to their deaths on mere slim chances, and making grand gambles that could cost everything. The currencies were different, but what warrior, having cut down an unarmed, fleeing enemy, could say that his way of fighting was cleaner?
If anyone should understand Andross Guile now, it was Kip.
Kip himself had thought Antonius Malargos a limited general for understanding tactics but never strategy. Andross must be looking at him the same way right now.
The old man spoke again, almost gently. “That bit where we’ll excuse your first marriage as foolish young love isn’t a convenient lie, son. I gave you this year to enjoy life as lesser men may. But this is our yoke. Lesser men give their sweat in labor, give their blood in battle, and give their tears, but their love is their own, if they’re strong enough or lucky enough to claim it. Our duties are different from theirs. Our bodies are pampered, but we pay the price with our souls. We belong not to ourselves. All men are brothers in this, all are captives twisted on the rack until the executioner, Life, has wrung all our vital fluids from us: sweat, and blood, and tears from the commons; and blood, luxin, ink, semen, and tears from us.
“We need those ships and those men, grandson. Excellent mundane fighters, against the bane? Who else has a chance? Ironfist’s fleet could stop the armada and the bane before they even arrive! And Ironfist likes you. If I tie his family back into ours, we can survive this.
“I’m getting ahead of myself, but naturally, should we survive, you’ll have to produce an heir immediately, especially after not producing one with your first wife . . . but even should Ironfist make the marriage contingent upon children being born to our families, it still buys us a fleet for this week. So after the battle, stop drafting sub-red for a while. Impedes fertility.”