The city was eerily dark, not because of the privations of the Blood Robe siege Kip had so recently lifted but rather from the cultural Forester deference to nature and the community: the awesome beauty of the stars was Orholam’s gift to everyone, whereas a torch in the city was a selfish tool for one or two. One should weigh carefully whether the work you did by that light benefited the community more than the beauty you stole from them to do it.
With the urgent preparations to march, tonight there were more lights visible than usual, but with a cloudless sky, the scarce few lanterns of the city still barely dimmed the glory of the stars.
“Gaspar Estratega. Helane Troas. Viv Grayskin,” Kip murmured. The stars, those æthereal fires above, called to the terrestrial fires below, like to like, and mirrored the thaumaturgical lights of Kip’s war map. The vast beyond comprehension and the small beneath notice existed at once, in one city, one room, one mind.
“Zee Oakenshield. Telemachos the Bold.”
All this, all the people below, would move at Kip’s word. Though without mastery of all he should have mastered to deserve such obedience, he was their master. Where he said to go, they would go. They would live and fight and die by his will—and despite his desire, for there was no path Kip could see by which none would die, no matter what he did.
At most, he might make there be fewer deaths. At best, he might make the deaths purposeful. At the end, he might make their deaths buy victory and peace and some meager measure of justice, some semblance of stability, for a time.
Three years ago, Kip wouldn’t have believed anyone would ever follow him. A year ago, he wouldn’t have believed so many would. Now he only prayed that he would lead them well enough.
Hell, three years ago Kip never would have believed any woman would ever want him, much less one remotely like Tisis.
So why was he here, walking in the cold, trying to solve a gift as if it were a problem?
“Garibaldi Phlegethon. Euterpe Tamazight. The Chartopaíchtis.”
Was that it? Had it seemed too easy to become satrap? Like a gift rather than an adroitly seized reward?
In hardly more than a day they’d have the big signing ceremony, and the army would march. People standing around while he signed a bit of paper? Kip hated that sort of thing. He’d insisted it be a small ceremony.
Tisis had suggested perhaps a large ceremony would be preferable, given that becoming a satrap was kind of a big deal, and many witnesses would be better than few.
But knowing that he had to assert his independence and indomitable will or lose the respect of his men, Kip had defiantly insisted on a large ceremony.
That showed her who wore the claws around here.
He called the war map to mind again, its lights overlaying the lights of the stars and the campfires, one reality atop another, like glassine immortals. Powerless here. Watchers, not helpers.
Kip felt like a mere observer himself now. He ran the lights forward and back as the White King’s army invaded. In the night and the darkness, its moving colors became a universe entire. The whole map showed less than one-half of one satrapy, and he was a single splinter aflame among this constellation of torches against the darkness.
“Corvan Danavis.” Ah, he’d said that name half a dozen times. “Darayaus Khurvash.”
And that was the end of it. He couldn’t think of anyone else. He’d named every single great tactician or strategist, every famous general or admiral, every warlord and great rogue, every scoundrel, every leader who came to mind who might, maybe, possibly, have some insight that would help him now and whose Nine Kings card he might have Viewed in that chaotic, compressed rush that had taken him to the Great Library.
Surely, surely in all the cards he’d Viewed of the most important people in history, surely he’d seen at least one person whose experiences could help him. Surely, somewhere in his fat skull was some bit of borrowed genius he could trigger that could set him at ease, that would have sharper insight than his own blunt wit.
But nothing happened.
Soon—maybe too soon—he’d take possession of more than he’d ever wanted, and instead of feeling elation, for some reason it irked him. It felt like failure, and he couldn’t tell why.
Come on, Orholam, I’m fighting on Your side here. Gimme a break.
“The Master. Andross the Red,” he said, unthinking.
His scalp tingled. He sucked in a breath.
Nothing happened. Or nothing more happened. That little tingling had been just him, right? That had been a shot of fear setting fire to his brain like straight brandy would set fire to his belly. That was just his dread of the old man, right?
Right.
He expelled a slow breath as nothing happened.
Oh, thank Orholam. Dodged a bullet there. He did not want to live that old dragon’s life.
Not even if it saves you?
He turned that thought around in his hand as if it were a jagged hellstone that might lacerate him if his grip slipped even the slightest.
No, actually, not even then. To hell with him.
Andross had given Kip no help at all in the past year. He demanded reports, which Kip had sent. He’d sent none in return.
So I’m on my own, then. No magic will save me here. Nor a remembered life or borrowed experience. Nor man. Nor Orholam Himself, though we march in His cause.
He stood alone at one of the crenellations of Greenwall, next to some empty iron frame, perhaps for pots of hot oil or maybe for mounting a scorpion with which to shoot bolts as long as a spear into an enemy army.
No, it didn’t look strong enough for either of those. Something else, then. Whatever.
Big Leo loomed behind Kip, so large and immobile that he didn’t blend into the background, he became the background. The young warrior must have sensed Kip wanted to think and had barred the approach of any of the soldiers who otherwise constantly sidled close to the famous Kip Guile.
Famous. How strange.
The isolation was no favor. Kip looked out at all the lights above and below once more, and felt a crushing tightness in his chest as if it were all falling on him. Luíseach? Lightbringer? Kip Almost was supposed to be the axis around which all the satrapies turned? Kip, the louse-up from Rekton? Kip, who’d started this whole cataclysm by killing King Rask Garadul and allowing the White King to take power unopposed?
People believed in Kip.
But maybe they believed because they had to. He’d fooled them, and they clung desperately to him as the drowning do, ’cumbering his arms and legs, pulling him down.
What had his father Gavin said?
‘Kip, you’re not the Lightbringer, because there is no Lightbringer. That figure’s a myth that’s destroyed a thousand boys, and led a hundred thousand men to cynicism and disillusionment. It’s a lie. A lie more tempting the more powerful you are. Like all lies, it destroys those who long entertain it.’
Kip should have listened. He was flotsam, trash washed down the Umber River, heading for the great cataract below Rekton. He was going to fall, and he was going to take all these people he loved with him.
“I believe,” Big Leo said suddenly. His voice was a low rumble in the half-light.
“What?” Kip asked, turning to the big man, as if the words hadn’t cut his darkness in twain.
But Big Leo didn’t meet his eye, instead searching the darkness for nonexistent threats. His voice rumbled lower. “Nothin’ else to say.”