will, were enough to let them overlook the dangers. The captains, the
men who spoke with Riaan, would be more likely to understand why he
wasn't to be trusted. They might well see what Balasar had seen from the
beginning, even before he had made the doomed journey into the desert:
that the andat were a dangerous tool, best discarded the moment the need
had passed.
But, and here was the trouble, not a moment before that. If the poet
failed him, everything was lost. He weighed the risks for a long moment
before Eustin spoke again.
"Let me send the girl away, sir. I'll give her enough silver to take
herself out into the farmland for half a year, and tell her that if we
see her in the city, I'll have her head on a pike for true. I'll send
the poet a pig heart, say we cut it out of her. The man that runs the
comfort house'll know. I'll tell the men it was your idea."
"It's a gamble," Balasar said.
"It's all a gamble, sir," Eustin said, and then, "Besides. He really did
earn it."
To the east, lightning flashed, and before the thunder reached them,
Balasar nodded his assent. Eustin took his leave, stalking out into the
downpour to make this one more tiny adjustment to the monumental plan
Balasar had devised and directed. At the end of the pathway, the
apple-selling girl sensed some slackening, pulled a hood up over her
fair hair, and darted out into the city. For a time, Balasar sat
quietly, feeling the weariness in his flesh that came from tension
without release. He let his gaze soften, the white walls of the city
fading, losing their separate natures, becoming different shades of
nothing, like the shadows of hills covered by snow.
He wondered what Little Ott would have made of all this: the campaign,
the poet, the wheels within wheels that he'd put in motion. If it came
together as he planned, Balasar would save the world from another war
like the one that had toppled the Old Empire. If it failed, he might
start one. And whatever happened, he had sacrificed Bes, Laran, Kellem,
Little Ott. Men who had loved him were dead and would never return. Men
alive now who trusted him might well die. His nation, everyone he'd
known or cared for-his father growing bent with age, the girl he'd lost
his heart to when he was a boy shaking the petals off spring cherry
trees, Eustin, Coal-they might all be slaughtered if he once judged
poorly. It was something he tried not to consider, afraid the weight of
it might crush him. And yet in these still moments, it found him. The
dread and the awe at what he had begun. And with it the certainty that
he was right.
He imagined Bes standing in the street before him, wide face split in
the knowing grin that he would never see again outside memory. Balasar
lifted a hand in greeting, and the image bowed to him and faded. They
would have understood. All the men whose blood he'd spilled for this
would have understood. Or if they didn't, they'd have done it all the
same. It was what they meant by faith.
When at last he returned to the library, one of his other captains-a
lanky man named Orem Cot-was pacing the length of the room, literally