Eustin nodded to a side room. There was distrust in his expression, and Balasar waited a long moment for him to speak. Eustin added nothing. Balasar went to the wide, dark oaken door, knocked once, and went in. It was a preparation room for servants-muddy boots cast beside benches and waiting to be scraped clean, cloaks of all weights and colors hung from pegs. It smelled of wet dog, though there was no animal present. The captain sat on a stool tilted hack against the wall, cleaning his nails with a knife.
'Captain Ajutani,' Balasar said.
The stool came down, and the captain rose, sheathing his blade and bowing in the same motion.
'I appreciate the time, General,' he said. 'I know you've a great deal on your mind just now.'
'I'm always available,' Balasar said. 'Though the surroundings are…
'Yes. Your man Eustin seemed to think it more appropriate for me to wait here. I'm not sure he likes me.' The captain was more amused than offended, so Balasar also smiled and shrugged.
'Your men are in place?' he asked.
'Yes, Yes. Broken into groups of three or four, each assigned to one of your sergeants. Except for myself, of course.'
'Of course.'
'Only I wanted to ask something of you, General. A favor of sorts.'
Balasar crossed is arms and nodded for the man to continue.
'If it fails-if our friend Riaan doesn't do his magic trick well enough-don't kill them. My boys. Don't have them killed.'
'Why would I do that?' Balasar asked.
'Because it's the right thing,' Sinja said. The amusement was gone from the man's eyes. He was in earnest now. 'I'm not an idiot, General. If it happens that the binding fails, you'll be standing here in Aren with an army the size of a modest city. People have already noticed it, and the curiosity of the Khaiem is the last thing you'd want. They'd still have their andat, and all you'd have is explanations to give. You'll turn North and make all those stories about conquering the whole of the Westlands to the border with Eddensea true just to make all this-' The captain gestured to the door at Balasar's back. '-seem plausible. All I ask is, let us go with you. If it happens that you have to keep to this coast and not the cities of the Khaiem, I'll re-form the group and lead them wherever you like.'
'I wouldn't kill them,' Balasar said.
'It would be dangerous, letting them go back home. Stories about how they were set to be interpreters and guides? Not one of them knows the Westlands except the part we walked through to get here. If the Khaiem are wondering whether you had some other plan to start with
…'
Sinja raised his hands, palms up as if he were offering Balasar the truth resting there. Balasar stepped close, putting his own hands below the captain's and curling the other man's fingers closed.
'I won't kill them,' Balasar said. 'They're my men now, and I don't kill my own. You can tell them that if you'd like. And that aside, Riaan isn't going to fail us.'
Sinja looked down, his head shifting as if he were weighing something.
'I can be sure,' Balasar said, answering the unasked question.
'I've never seen one of these before,' Sinja said. 'Have you? I mean, I assume there's some ceremony, and he'll do something. If there was an andat beside him at the end, you'd have proof, but this thing you're doing… there's nothing to show, is there? So how will you know?'
'It would be embarrassing to walk into Nantani and have the andat waiting to greet us,' Balasar agreed. 'But don't let it concern you. Riaan isn't going to mumble into the air and send us all off to die. I'll be certain of that.'
'You have a runner in Nantani? Someone who can bring word when the andat's vanished?'
'Don't concern yourself, Sinja,' Balasar said. 'Just be ready to move when I say and in the direction I choose.'
'Yes, General.'
Balasar turned and strode to the door. He could see Eustin standing close, his hand on his sword. It was a reassuring sight.
'Captain Ajutani,' Balasar said over his shoulder. 'What were you speaking to Riaan about before we came?'
'Himself mostly,' the captain said. 'Is there another subject he's interested in?'
'He was concerned when I spoke with him. Concerned with things that never seemed to occur to him before. You wouldn't have anything to do with that, would you?'
'No, General,' Sinja said. 'Wouldn't be any profit in it.'
Balasar nodded and resumed the path to his rooms. Eustin fell in beside him.
'I don't like that man,' Eustin said under his breath. 'I don't trust him.'
'I do,' Balasar said. 'I trust him to be and to have always been my staunchest supporter just as soon as he's sure we're going to win. He's a mercenary, but he isn't a spy. And his men will be useful.'
'Still.'
'It will be fine.'
Balasar didn't give his uncertainties and fears free rein until he was safely alone in the borrowed library, and then his mind rioted. Perhaps Sinja was right-the poet could fail, the Khaiem could divine his purpose, the destruction he'd dedicated himself to preventing might be brought about by his miscalculation. Everything might still fail. A thousand threats and errors clamored.
He took out his maps again for the thousandth time. Each road was marked on the thin sheepskin. Each bridge and ford. Each city. Fourteen cities in a single season. They would take Nantani and then scatter. The other forces would come in from the sea. It was nearing summer, and he told himself again and again as if hoping to convince himself that after the sun rose tomorrow, it would be a question only of speed.
In the first battle he'd fought, Balasar had been a crossbowman. He and a dozen like him were supposed to loose their bolts into the packed, charging bodies of the warriors of Eymond and then pull back, letting the men with swords and axes and flails-men like his fathermove in and take up the melee. He'd hardly been a boy at the time, much less a man. He had done as he was told, as had the others, but once they were safely over the rise of the hill, out of sight of the enemy and the battle, Balasar had been stupid. The grunts and shrieks and noise of bodies in conflict were like a peal of thunder that never faded. The sound called to him. With each shriek from the battle, he imagined that it had been his father. The nightmare images of the violence happening just over the rise chewed at him. I le'd had to see it. He had gone back over. It had almost cost him his life.
One of the soldiers of Eymond had spotted him. He'd been a large man, tall as a tree it had seemed at the time. He'd broken away from the fight and rushed up the hill, axe raised and blood on his mind. Balasar remembered the panic when he understood that his own death was rushing up the hill toward him. The wise thing would have been to flee; if he could have gotten back to the other bowmen, they might have killed the soldier. But instead, without thought, he started to bend back the leaves of the crossbow, fumbling the bolt with fingers that had seemed numb as sausages. Though only one of them was running, it had been a race.
When he'd raised the bow and loosed the bolt, the man had been fewer than ten feet from him. He could still feel the thrum of the string and feel the sinking certainty that he had missed, that his life was forfeit. In point of fact, the bolt had sunk so deep into the man it only seemed to have vanished. The breaths between when he'd fired and when the soldier sank to the ground were the longest he had ever known.
And here he was again. Only this time he was the one in motion. The poets of the Khaiem would have a chance to call up another of the andat-and the measure of that hope was his speed in finding them, killing them, and burning their hooks.
It was a terrible wager, and more than his own life was in the balance. Balasar was not a religious man. Questions of gods and heavens had always seemed too abstract to him. But now, putting aside the maps, the plans, all the work of his life prepared to find its fruition or else its ruin, he walked to the window, watched the full moon rising over this last night of the world as it had been, and put his hand to his heart, praying to all the gods he knew with a single word.
Please.
