was seeing now, which of their number haunted him in that moment, and he
felt the eyes of the dead upon him. They were in the room, invisibly
crowding it as the sailors had.
"Can you tell me they died with honor?" Eustin breathed.
"I'm not sure what honor is," Balasar said. "We did what we did because
it was needed, and we were the men to do it. The price was too high for
us to bear, you and I and Coal. But we aren't finished, so we have to
carry it a hit farther. "That's all."
"It wasn't needed, General. I'm sorry, but it wasn't. We take a few more
cities, we gain a few more slaves. Yes, they're the richest cities in
the world. I know it. Sacking even one of the cities of the Khaiem would
put more gold in the High Council's coffers than a season in the
Westlands. But how much do they need to buy Little Ott back from hell?"
Eustin asked. "And why shouldn't I go there and get him myself, sir?"
"It's not about gold. I have enough gold of my own to live well and die
old. Gold's a tool we use-a tool I use-to make men do what must be done."
"And honor?"
"And glory. Tools, all of them. We're men, Eustin. We've no reason to
lie to each other."
lie had the man's attention now. Eustin was looking only at him, and
there was confusion in his eyes-confusion and pain-but the ghosts
weren't inside him now.
"\\'h-,, then, sir? Why are we doing this?"
Balasar sat back. He hadn't said these words before, he had never
explained himself to anyone. Pride again. He was haunted by his pride.
The pride that had made him take this on as his task, the work he owed
to the world because no one else had the stomach for it.
""I'he ruins of the Empire were made," he said. "God didn't write it
that the world should have something like that in it. Men created it.
Men with little gods in their sleeves. And men like that still live. The
cities of the Khaiem each have one, and they look on them like plow
horses. 'Fools to feed their power and their arrogance. If it suited
them, they could turn their andat loose on us. Hold our crops in
permanent winter or sink our lands into the sea or whatever else they
could devise. They could turn the world itself against us the way you or
I might hold a knife. And do you know why they haven't?"
F,ustin blinked, unnerved, Balasar thought, by the anger in his voice.
"No, sir."
"Because they haven't yet chosen to. That's all. They might. Or they
might turn against each other. They could make everything into
wastelands just like those. Acton, Kirinton, Marsh. Every city, every
town. It hasn't happened yet because we've been lucky. But someday, one
of them will grow ambitious or mad. And then all the rest of us are ants
on a battlefield, trampled into the mud. That's what I mean when I say
this is needed. You and I are seeing that it never happens," he said,
and his words made his own blood hot. He was no longer uncertain or
touched by shame. Balasar grinned wide and wolfish. If it was pride,
then let him be proud. No man could do what he intended without it.
"When I've finished, the god-ghosts of the Khaiem will be a story women