“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.”
Chapter 148
“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.”