been as far as Eddensea. "They've been hearing about the Khaiem and the
poets and the andat all their lives, but they've never seen 'em. Now
they have the chance."
"Well, it'll help my popularity at the games," Balasar said, his voice
more bitter than he'd intended.
""They don't know the things we do, sir. You can't expect them to think
like us."
"And the High Council? Can I expect it of them? Or are they in chambers
talking about the funny brown man who dresses like a girl?"
Eustin looked down, silent for long enough that Balasar began to regret
his tone.
"All fairness, sir," Eustin said, "the robes do look like a girl's."
It was six years now since he and Eustin and Coal had returned to the
hereditary estate outside Kirinton, half a year since they had recruited
the fallen poet of Nantani, and three weeks since Balasar had received
the expected summons. He'd come to Acton with his best men, the hooks,
the poet, the plans. The High Council had heard him out-the dangers of
the andat, the need to end the supremacy of the Khaiem. That part had
gone quite well. No one seriously disputed that the Khaiem were the
single greatest threat to Galt. It was only when he began to reveal his
plans and how far he had already gone that the audience began to turn
sour on him.
Since then, the Council had met without him. They might have been
debating the plan he had laid out before them, or they might have moved
to other business, leaving him to soak in his own sweat. He and Eustin
and the poet Riaan had lived in the apartments assigned to them. Balasar
had spent his days sitting outside the Council's halls and meeting
chambers, and his nights walking the starlit streets, restless as a
ghost. Each hour that passed was wasted. Every night was one less that
he would have in the autumn when the end of his army was racing against
the snow and cold of the Khaiate North. If the Council's intention had
been to set him on edge, they had done their work.
A flock of birds, black as crows but thinner, burst from the walnut
trees beyond the courtyard, whirled overhead, and settled back where
they had come from. Balasar wove his fingers together on one knee.
"What do we do if they don't move forward?" Eustin asked quietly.
"Convince them."
"And if they can't he convinced?"
"Convince them anyway," Balasar said.
Eustin nodded. Balasar appreciated that the man didn't press the issue.
Eustin had known him long enough to understand that bloodymindedness was
how Balasar moved through the world. From the beginning, he'd been
cursed by a small stature, a shorter reach than his brothers or the boys
with whom he'd trained. He'd gotten used to working himself harder,
training while other boys slept and drank and whored. Where he couldn't
make himself bigger or stronger, he instead became fast and smart and
uncompromising.
When he became a man of arms in the service of Galt, he had been the
smallest in his cohort. And in time, they had named him general. If the