“Il Tornja warned me that Kiel would be here,” she said finally. “He told me not to trust him.”
“And Kiel told me not to trust il Tornja.”
Adare spread her hands. “Sounds like an impasse.”
“Not necessarily,” Kaden replied slowly. “Beyond the opinions of the two Csestriim, there are the raw facts to consider.”
“Facts,” Adare replied warily, “have a way of twisting with the teller.”
“We know this much, at least: the general you rely on so heavily is the same one who murdered our father, who sent close to a hundred Aedolians to kill me, who ordered a Kettral Wing to kill Valyn before he even left the Islands.” Kaden shook his head. “If we’re trying to decide who to trust, it seems to me we might want to look at what they’ve been up to, at what they have done to earn that trust.”
Adare marshaled her thoughts. She’d known all this, of course, but it was different to hear it from someone else, to hear the bloody words spoken aloud.
“There were reasons.”
Kaden didn’t move. “There are always reasons.”
Far out in the bay, a ship tacked against the wind, heeling over to cut across the waves, first one way, then the next, approaching its invisible goal so obliquely that even after watching it for a while, Adare couldn’t say for sure where it was going. After a long time she turned back to her brother.
She needed to tell him something-that much was clear. He already knew about il Tornja, knew that she knew her own general was a murderer. If she revealed nothing else, none of her reasons for everything she’d done, he would go on believing all the things he so obviously believed: that she had seized the throne out of some dumb lust for power, that she’d made common cause with il Tornja purely to consolidate that power, that she cared about her own station instead of the welfare of Annur. If he believed all that, there would be no working with him, and she needed to work with him, with the entire council, if they were to have any hope of saving anyone. She needed to tell him something, to explain. The question was: how much?
“When I took the Unhewn Throne,” she said finally, quietly, “I thought you were dead.”
“I don’t care about the throne, Adare.”
“If I’d known you were still alive, that you were going to return to the city, I wouldn’t have made that move. I wouldn’t have had to, but it had been months since Father’s funeral, months with no word, and if I didn’t take the throne, il Tornja would have.”
“I don’t care about the throne,” he said again.
She studied him, tried to see past those eyes to something human, something true.
“Then why did you destroy Annur? If you don’t care about the throne, why work so hard to keep me from sitting on it?”
“It wasn’t to stop you. It was to stop il Tornja. Annur is his … his weapon, and I could not let him bring it to bear.”
“Did it occur to you,” she demanded, “that I might have already taken il Tornja in hand?”
“Taken him in hand?” Kaden raised his brows. “You slept with him, and then, with his support, you declared yourself Emperor. Not only did you fail to take him in hand, you confirmed him in his post, and then you joined your own military force to his. If you’ve been anything but compliant, I haven’t seen any evidence of it. The fact that you know he is Csestriim, that you know he murdered our father … that just makes it worse.”
She wanted to hit him, to knock some expression into those expressionless eyes.
“Do you think there has been a day since I learned the truth,” she demanded with a growl, “when I didn’t dream of opening his throat?”
Kaden met her glare. “Then why haven’t you?”
“Because sometimes it is necessary to suppress our immediate instincts, Kaden. Sometimes it is necessary to make sacrifices, to accept, if only for a time, the most loathsome situations.” She shook her head, suddenly weary. “It would be nice, wouldn’t it, to always speak the first words that came to mind. It would be a wonderful luxury to associate only with the honest and the upright. It would be so, so satisfying never to compromise, never to make decisions that led you to hate yourself.”
She stared out to the east, to where the evening wind was whipping up the waves. Behind her, the council chamber would still be smoldering, but sooner or later, that clean east wind, salt-sharp and cool, would scour away the last of the smoke.
“Following your own heart might be a nice way to live,” she said quietly, “but it’s a disastrous way to rule.”
Kaden blinked. “Fair enough,” he said after a pause, then cocked his head to the side. “How did you learn the truth about il Tornja?”
“He made mistakes,” Adare replied bluntly.
Kaden frowned. Those burning eyes went distant, as though he were studying something beyond the horizon. “That seems unlikely,” he replied finally. “It is much more likely that whatever you know about him, he wants you to know.”
“Why?” she demanded. “Because I’m just some stupid slut? Because I couldn’t possibly have any insight or agency of my own?”
“Because he is Csestriim, Adare. He is smarter than any of us, and he has had thousands of years to plan. He was their greatest general.…”
“You don’t need to lecture me on his brilliance,” she replied grimly. “You forget that I was on the tower in Andt-Kyl. I saw him command the battle. I know what he can do. I kept him alive because of that brilliance, because I know just how badly we need it.”
Kaden raised his brows. “And you still think that you outsmarted him?”
“I think that even Csestriim can run into bad luck.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning there are other factors in play here. Factors unknown to you.”
“Tell me.”
She barked a laugh. “Just like that, eh?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t fucking trust you, Kaden. That’s why not. The first thing you did when you got back to Annur was to destroy it. You’re trying to stop il Tornja, or so you claim, but Ran il Tornja is the only one actually defending Annur.”
“He is not defending Annur,” Kaden said quietly. “He’s trying to kill Long Fist.”
“At the moment, it amounts to much the same thing.”
“It would, if Long Fist were just an Urghul chieftain.”
And so, after a long diversion, they were back to Long Fist. Adare had never even seen the man, and yet he seemed to be everywhere, the answer to every riddle, the fire beneath every column of smoke, the bloody battle at the end of every endless march. All paths led to him. Every scream could be traced back to his bright knives. Underneath every name she uttered-Kaden, il Tornja, Valyn, Balendin-underneath or above, she seemed to hear the name of the Urghul chieftain echoing.
“And you think he is what?”
Kaden took a deep breath, held it a moment, then blew it out slowly. “Long Fist is Meshkent.”
Adare stared. The small hairs on her arm, on the back of her neck, stood up at once. The evening was cool, not cold, but she suppressed a shiver. Il Tornja had been saying the same thing for months, but she had never believed him, not really. “What makes you say that?”
He narrowed his eyes, studying her. “You knew.”
“I knew it was a possibility.”
“Il Tornja told you.”
She nodded carefully.
“And did he tell you why he was so eager to see Long Fist destroyed?”
“For the same reason that I am,” she said. “For the same reason that you should be. To protect Annur.”
“Why would he want to protect Annur? He fought to destroy humanity, Adare. He nearly succeeded. Why would he care about one of our empires?”
“Because it is not our empire,” she replied. The words were bitter, but she said them anyway. “It is his. He built it. He takes care of it.”